Prawning

********** DISCLAIMER **********
This post contains images and material that may not be suitable for the faint hearted. If you have something against humans catching, preparing, cooking and eating their food like what has been done for thousands and thousands of years naturally, do not read further!
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Two weeks ago my friend suggested we go prawning. "Prawning?", I asked, "It sounds so boring!". Nevertheless. I decided to go with them for the age old human practice of "hunting". Just that this was in a highly controlled environment. After dinner we arrived at the prawning place. It costs $30 to rent a fishing rod for 3 hours. Rather expensive it seems.

The controlled prawning environment -- black freshwater pools with unknown number of prawns within. They add new prawns periodically.


The bait -- chopped chicken heart


A catch!!!


You have to unhook the hook from the prawn's mouth. Sometimes we have to remove the pincers of the prawn in case we get clamped.


Hohoho, the catch


Washing the prawn


Skewering the prawn (un)fortunately they are still alive and kicking


Whole bunch of skewered prawns. Most of them are female with roe.


Grilled with lots of salt. They don't have much taste.

All in all, we caught 18 prawns in 3 hours using 3 rods. That cost us a whopping $90! I guess prawning is not something one would do frequently. Furthermore, I guess we did not wash them too cleanly at the cost of my stomach...

Why Convict an Animal?

Because it can get you cash!

Secure Web mail Access

Ever used Gmail's large storage space to store personal data (or even as a file system)? The bad thing is, accessing a web mail site like Gmail is only secured during login. All other data transferred to your web browser, from viewing of mail, saving drafts, etc, can be easily hijacked especially in a public wifi hotspot. Even loading the first page with all the subject headers and first line of the message body can give a hijacker insight into your personal details. The solution is to use,

https://mail.google.com

to access gmail. After login, you will be redirected to your mailbox also under the https protocol. One possible mistake is to use,

http://mail.google.com

instead and thinking that since the login will be under https so will the mailbox. This is not true, the redirection to mailbox will be over the http instead of https. Before you know it, someone behind you will already have the first page of your mailbox on his screen.

Another interesting side-effect of using https is that if an in-house firewall has blocked http://mail.google.com, it might not be set to block https://mail.google.com, effectively allowing access to gmail.

JVM Max Heap Size on WinXP 32-bit

I have been trying to run some memory intensive java program on a WinXP Pro system with 2gb of RAM. Unfortunately, I could never reserve more than 1.4gb of memory on it for the JVM heap (using -Xmx). Frustrated, I turned to a 32-bit Linux server on Fedora Core 5. To my surprise, I managed to reserve 1.8gb. It appears that on 32-bit systems the maximum one can reserve is slightly less than 2gb and because of OS constraints, different OSes (hence different JVMs) have different limits on max heap size. WinXP Pro only allows from 1.4gb to 1.6gb. Anything more than 2gb requires a 64-bit machine as stated in Sun's FAQ here.

Greek Masterpieces from the Louvre

A few weeks ago I decided to visit the Greek masterpieces exhibit from the Louvre at a local museum with a few friends. Not that I have not seen enough Greek masterpieces at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, I just felt it would be fun anyway. Now one may wonder why does a French museum have greek masterpieces, did they cart them off to France from Greece (like ahem...)? Well it turns out that most of them were Roman copies of earlier Greek originals and pre-France was an important part of the Roman Empire. One thing I did like about the exhibit compared to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens was the lighting. For this Louvre exhibit, good lighting made for better pictures. Also, they did not really seem to stop anyone from taking pictures with the masterpieces unlike in Greece where this is forbidden (you can take picture of them not with them).

The local Museum.


Whenever I see a dome I snap...


Here we are.


The goddess Athena


Probably a grave relief of depicting some Greek Gods


Athena again. Unlike the other Greek goddesses Athena is always depicted fully clothed in garment.


I forgot who this lady is.



A vase with red paint style illustrating an epic battle between the Gods and the Titans.

This grave relief is about two lovers. The woman (middle) passed on and the man (right) pleaded with Hades to see her once more. Hades agreed but instructed that he must not look back until she has been escorted out of the underworld. Unable to resist (a common theme in Greek tragedy?), on the way out he turned back. In that moment he realised that she will never be able to return with him. The God on the left is Hermes, whose job is partly to escort the deceased to the underworld.

A lion


An artist's impression of Socrates. No one knows if he really looks like this.


A discus thrower captured in a moment of contemplation.


A clenched right foot indicates that the athlete may have decided upon his technique.


These somehow look like angels





Miscellaneous exhibits


Apollo with tree and lizard.


Ganymede, mistakenly labeled as Paris


One of the main highlights -- Aphrodite


That ball, is the apple, which she was present to by Paris since he regarded her as the fairest of them all.



Ares, the God of Battle Frenzy. Portrayed with a metallic ring round his leg. He was caught by Aphrodite's husband during an "exciting" tryst with her.


Eros, whom is more commonly known by his Roman name, Cupid



Aphrodite with an apple clearly depicted.


We left, some masterpiece we created outside



A display of traditional opera costumes


Lunchtime! Root beer float

By lunchtime we were done. It was a good exhibit definitely worth a visit -- just make sure that you arrive in time for one of the guided tours conducted by volunteers for a better experience.