Nepenthes

Carnivorous Pitcher Plant

 Posted on July 21, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  491 words  |  Ritesh Raj Sarraf

Of the many things we care for in our garden, having some Carnivorous plants was also one to have. Plants are tricky. A lot of information they pass. And depending on where you are and what plants you are with, the results can vary. The Nepenthes family isn’t native to where I live but I still wanted to have them. While not impossible, though a difficult task to bring up such species. [Read More]
Nepenthes  Khasiana  Pitcher  Carnivorous  Plants  Gardening 

Systemd Service Hang

Why and when do systemd services hang indefinitely

 Posted on April 22, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  482 words  |  Ritesh Raj Sarraf

Finally, TIL, what can all be the reason for systemd services to hang indefinitely. The internet is flooded with numerous reports on this topic but no clear answers. So no more uselessly marked workarounds like: systemctl daemon-reload and systemctl-daemon-reexec for this scenario. The scene would be something along the lines of: rrs 6467 0.0 0.0 23088 15852 pts/1 Ss 12:53 0:00 | | \_ /bin/bash rrs 11512 0.0 0.0 14876 4608 pts/1 S+ 13:18 0:00 | | | \_ systemctl restart snapper-timeline. [Read More]
Linux  Containers  systemd  hang  daemon-reexec  daemon-reload  systemd-timesyncd  systemd-tty-ask-password-agent  systemd-time-wait-sync 

ThinkPad AMD Debian

Running Debian GNU/Linux on ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 AMD Variant

 Posted on January 11, 2022  |  7 minutes  |  1457 words  |  Ritesh Raj Sarraf

After a hiatus of 6 years, it was nice to be back with the ThinkPad. This blog post briefly touches upon my impressions with the current generation ThinkPad T14 Gen2 AMD variant. ThinkPad T14 Gen2 AMD Lenovo It took 8 weeks to get my hands on the machine. Given the pandemic, restrictions and uncertainities, not sure if I should call it an ontime delivery. This was a CTO - Customise-to-order; so was nice to get rid of things I really didn’t care/use much. [Read More]
Linux  btrfs  snapper  migration  AMD  ATI  radeon  mediatek  Lenovo 

Lotus to Lily

The joys of nature

 Posted on October 9, 2021  (Last modified on October 16, 2021)  |  3 minutes  |  465 words  |  Ritesh Raj Sarraf

The Lotus story so far My very first experience with water flowering plants was pretty good. I learnt a good deal of things; from setting up the pond, germinating the lotus seeds, setting up the right soil, witnessing the growth of the lotus plant, fish eco-system to take care of the pond. Overall, a lot of things learnt. But I couldn’t succeed in getting the Lotus flower. A lot many reasons. [Read More]
Lotus  Lily  Lilies  Water Plant  Flower  Fish  Nature 

Human Society

My experiences with people

 Posted on October 3, 2021  |  1 minutes  |  145 words  |  Ritesh Raj Sarraf

In my past, I’ve had experiences that have had me thinking. My experiences have been mostly in the South Asian Indian Sub-Continent, so may not be fair to generalize it. Help with finding a job: I’ve learnt many times, that when people reach out asking for help, say, for helping them with finding a job; it isn’t about you making a recommendation/referral for them. It, instead, implies that you are indirectly being asked to find and arrange them a job. [Read More]
Society  Psychology 

Insect Camouflage Plant

 Posted on July 7, 2021  |  1 minutes  |  40 words  |  Ritesh Raj Sarraf

I was quite impressed by the ability of this insect; yet to be. The way it has camouflaged itself is mesmerizing. I’ll let the video do the talking as this one is going to be difficult to express in words.

Plant  Nature  Gardening  Insect  Caterpillar  Camouflage 

Plant Territorial Behavior

Observations of the subtle behavior of plants all around

 Posted on June 29, 2021  |  10 minutes  |  1959 words  |  Ritesh Raj Sarraf

This blog post is about my observations of some of the plants in my home garden. While still a n00b on the subject, these notes are my observations and experiences over days, weeks and months. Thankfully, with the capability to take frequent pictures, it has been easy to do an assessment and generate a report of some of these amazing behaviors of plants, in an easy timeline order; all thanks to the EXIF data embedded. [Read More]
Plants  Mulberry  Berry  Territorial  Botany  Beluva  Bael  Belpatra  Rudraksha 

Setting Up a Secure Webapp

ngingx reverse proxy auth for a basic web app

 Posted on May 22, 2021  (Last modified on May 29, 2021)  |  8 minutes  |  1502 words  |  Ritesh Raj Sarraf

As a person who prefers full access to data in the simplest format, while at the same time having it useful with latest technologies, my quest for trying things out is an ongoing activity. Earlier, I blogged about my needs of collating news feeds in a simple format, readily accessible offline, while still being useful and aligned with the modern paradigm. In today’s age, the other common aspect of our life, is digitization of moments. [Read More]
Linux  Containers  PhotoPrism  nginx  Reverse Proxy  Docker  Proxy Auth 

Cicada Insect

pandemic has made time for things which weren't paid much attention to

 Posted on April 23, 2021  |  3 minutes  |  561 words  |  Ritesh Raj Sarraf

Pandemic With COVID-19, this was the first nation-wide lockdown in my lifetime I’ve witnessed. I guess the feel must be same for many many more people across the globe. It was almost the same time, a year ago, when this lockdown first struck. It being the first time, I wasn’t then really prepared on how to handle it. With everything literally shut down, there was nothing to do than sit where you are. [Read More]
Cicada  Covid-19  Lockdown  Nature  Insects 

Catching Up Your Sources

Keeping track of all news sources - offline and mobile

 Posted on April 19, 2021  |  9 minutes  |  1716 words  |  Ritesh Raj Sarraf

I’ve mostly had the preference of controlling my data rather than depend on someone else. That’s one reason why I still believe email to be my most reliable medium for data storage, one that is not plagued/locked by a single entity. If I had the resources, I’d prefer all digital data to be broken down to its simplest form for storage, like email format, and empower the user with it i. [Read More]
News  RSS  Feeds  feed2imap  Aqua Mail  Mobile  Ellora  Kailasa