Let’s do those in reverse order. The first review of the Torture Memos album:

The Torture Memos – The Parkdale Revolutionary Orchestra (www.parkdalerevolutionaryorchestra.com): Composer Ben Mueller-Heaslip uses texts drawn from the writings of John Yoo and his colleagues at the Office of Legal Counsel for the George W. Bush administration for this unusual song cycle. The stark orchestration includes saxophone, violin, cello, bass and drum kit to accompany the declamatory vocals of soprano Kristin Mueller-Heaslip. The result is very effective but hard to define or categorize. The composer sites Schubert, Philip Glass and David Byrne among his influences and the music is as eclectic as might be expected from such diverse roots. Concert note: The Parkdale Revolutionary Orchestra launches “The Torture Memos” at The Tranzac Club on December 11.

And now the bad karma!

Last night it started to rain just as I was leaving my second-last lesson. I hadn’t worn my waterproof outerwear (more accurately, waterproof pants and somewhat water-resistant jacket) because, when I left the house, it was a gorgeous if cool day without a cloud in the sky.

After saying a small prayer to the weather god for the rain to stop before the last lesson was over, I went about my business. Unfortunately the weather god failed to respond. I’m guessing this is because s/he doesn’t exist, but it might have been my failure to sacrifice a goat. So, rather ruining my wool coat and nice pants with 35 minutes of rain biking, I took the subway home.

If you are unfamiliar with the Toronto subway and are thinking that it’s something like the London Underground or the New York subway, let me disabuse you of that notion. As far as the actual trains go it’s great. They work, they’re clean-ish, they come pretty often, and there really ought to be about eight more lines but for the area they cover they’re just fine.

The money-taking part of the system, however, is kind of a mess. Unlike, say, New York or London, you don’t get a fare card from a machine. You can either:
- pay cash (about to go up to a nauseating $3/ride)
- buy tickets/tokens (varying discounts)
- get a day pass ($9)
- get a monthly pass (no clue, haven’t had one in eight years)
- I think there are weekly passes too, but have never bought one.

So, because the fares are about to go up AGAIN people were hoarding tokens. The last time I tried to buy some they were out, so I ended up just using cash. Thus when I got to the subway station last night I had no tokens or tickets, just a $5 bill that I needed to break to get on and get home.

Except there was no ticket collector.

The little booth was empty. And, unlike some stations, this particular one didn’t have an automatic token machine.

I waited a few minutes, shrugged my shoulders, took my bike through the gate and went to the train platform. And of course, since I got on the train for free, the ride home was miserable. At the station where I changed trains I couldn’t find the elevator, then was crowded out of getting on one train by the assholes around me, then had an old lady yell at me for having the nerve to want to get off the train when I did get to my station, because apparently some people never went to kindergarten.

On a plus note, I found an awesome squid hat pattern and made a prototype squid headdress that will be PERFECT. Anyone want to come over this weekend and help with the squidifacturing?

Note: I wrote this yesterday and totally clicked “publish”. Yet wordpress in its infinite wisdom saved it to “drafts”. Rat bastards.

Almost as if I were a normal person with a real job, I was out of the house for 12 hours yesterday. I had an extra lesson tacked onto the beginning of my schedule, plus I had to run a bunch of minor but vital errands (pick up a score, get some books for students, buy new bike lights etc) before work, then we had rehearsal. This is what I ate:

Breakfast – Toast and an apple
Lunch – 1 Chinese bun
Snack at around 4:30 – 1 energy bar, which I’d had the forethought to pick up while buying bike lights at MEC
Dinner (11 PM) – Giant amounts of Tandoori chicken and naan. Thank god for the Lahore Tikka House, that’s all I can say. Every neighbourhood needs an Indian restaurant constructed entirely of scarves that is open late on weeknights.

So I’m still tired and sore, and after I finish teaching tonight I need to design squid costumes. Any ideas on how to make a squid headdress that won’t fall off when you dance?

ZOMG! An athlete that receives accolades and has shitty blogs named after him was caught for speeding! NOOO! I feel so cheated! I also feel like I should be a responsible human being and care about this. 109 in a 55 zone is pretty damn fast, reckless, and dangerous to himself and others around him. What if he were to get in a wreck and ruin our Super Bowl chances? How fucking selfish. Although, he’d probably just recover three days later, anyway. The other part of me thinks that this is going to be made into a minor admonishing news story from the media, but really, when put into perspective with other items of interest this past week, it’s pretty innocuous, which is also why I’m not going to bother writing a funny dick joking post about it, because I don’t really care. Instead, watch that video up top and let’s all laugh at how short Percy Harvin is. Combine height? That’s classic. Also, I think I like the nickname “Squid” for Sid the Kid, so we’ll have to see where that takes us.

Anyway, remember to send in your questions, comments, funny stories, depressing stories, pictures, videos, Twitter feeds, used panties or whatever else to purplejesusdiaries@gmail.com, hit our Twitter feed, or leave a comment here. Mail dump time tomorrow, people! Get with it!

I love thai food and can never grasp why I didn’t find a thai food place i love yet. So we decided to try Sala Thai on 89th and 2nd. We first got the appetizers for two, I loved the curry ravioli (whatever they call it) in the combination plate. The outside was crispy and the inside is not overwhelmingly powered with curry but tasteful. The crispy shrimp was good with the thai peanut sauce as well. The spring rolls were just okay, nothing that stands out. For entrees, I got the chicken with basil sauce. I liked theirs better than the other one I posted, it’s not as sweet, spicy and basil-y, perfect combo. Jason got the squid and hated it because the squid was overcooked and the sauce was just not that flavorful comparing to my dish. The price is within the norm, nothing too expensive. 

Overall, the place was decent, but to search for my ultimate thai food place, I will find other ones to try and blog.

Yep, they’ve release a new colorful picture of the previously blogged about Squid concept. A very vibrant red squid with bright yellow eyes in a colorful setting. Very exciting!

Why? Well, it looks like the Creation Lab needs some inspiration for new “creatures”. Want to help? Then visit here! Whether the monster scare minifigures or make them fall in love. You choose.

It looks like this mischievous minifgure is trying to creep past the squid, which is getting cleaned by its pirate and the squid acts like a cannon shooting the minifigure into the air. Is this a game or part of the storyline? I can’t wait to see this scene moving and in colour!

What’s happening in this picture?

This storyboard describes the sequence of events surrounding the discovery of a pirate washing his land-locked squid and what happens when you try to sneak past them.

What were the inspirations behind this image?

The great link between seaworthy pirates and giant octopi.

Commonwealth of AUSTRALIA

stamp: 45 cents

year: 1998

marine life: squid

As I have stated many times before on this blog, I love ships and boats and submarines of all kinds. While walking along the industrial harbor front of Shiogama City in Miyagi Prefecturre (way up north of Tokyo) I came across these fishing vessels gearing up to go out for a night of fishing on the east cost of Japan. I believe that the huge banks of light (that are lowered and extend far out across both sides of the vessel) are meant to attract Squid that are hooked on long line trailing the ships. Just look at all that glorious machinery! Commercial squid fishing is no walk in the park and it takes serious resources to do it profitably. I believe these vessels were all part of the same fishing corporation. Dusk, Saturday night, Miyagi.

With Thanksgiving 2009 effectively behind us all, Americans are moving into their Holiday food phases. Christmas, if you forgot, tends to be the second biggest meal every year for most families.

And as Black Friday turns into the holiday season and students come home for their long-awaited Winter breaks, regular foods move from Autumn ghords and vegetables, to Wintery smells of peppermint, cinnamon, and other sweet smells.

Like Thanksgiving, these tastes are of a more acquired group, because of their place in Christian and Western culture. To someone like me, who doesn’t ardently follow the norms of the annual festivities, these tastes are more tradition oriented than I would like.

And so my advice for this year, unlike my take on Thanksgiving; change something. If staunch tradition is what you enjoy, then by all means stick with it. But if you’re like me and you’re easily bored by ham, or some kind of roast, go for a different center-piece.

Paella (Courtesy of Stockmann.fi)

This year, my family and I will try our hands at a seafood Christmas dinner, consisting of crabs, clams, mussels, squid (put together in a paella), and whatever the Hell else we feel like, considering that we enjoy these foods much more than the albeit boring tastes of ham. Plus, it’s not as risky as Thanksgiving.

Ian Arcticus - Sketch - Bent Tentacles

Medium: Traditional & digital art, drawn with pencil on white paper, scanned, colored in GIMP with Wacom Graphire2.
Textured background from http://www.flickr.com/photos/31124107@N00/2118265369/ by http://www.flickr.com/photos/bittbox/

Art Copyright I. Arcticus (A.G). ~ Do not distribute.

... we occupied 2 tables despite the place was packed with people. But 1 table was too small anyway for the 4 of us.

At first, I’ve got no idea where was this place when my sister told me about it. While on the way, I realised that I’ve came here before, but that was eons ago. Probably 7-8 years back. When we were there, I was thinking we probably can’t get a table cause it was already packed with people. Fortunately, there were 2 tables side by side which could fit the 4 of us, nicely. Though 1 table would do, but I don’t think the table would fit our dishes anyway.

Upon ordering, the lady boss said there are no chickens. They served only “魚、蝦、蟹” (fish, prawn, crab). It sounded funny because “魚蝦蟹” means “et cetera” in Cantonese term. Anyway, we proceed with our order of fried rice as my sister has been praising it. I requested for Tom Yam. What would it be like without Tom Yam when we were in a Thai restaurant, right?

... it was so long ago since I last had a Thai coconut. It was so refreshing and sweet.

... these Chinese crullers similar were little. Probably Thai style crullers. It came with green kaya as condiment, which wasn't too sweet. But the crullers were very oily.

These drink and snack were separately charged. RM4.50 for one coconut was very very costly. The crullers were RM3 per plate. There were only like 11 pieces of them on the place. If given RM3, I think I could have Chinese crullers to my heart’s content.

... condiments for the stuff that we are about to receive.

... there were only 2 choices of vegetables. Kailan and this mixed vegetable.

... this was only plain fried rice, not Thai style fried rice or anything that I was expecting from this place. But there were countless number of prawns in it. Only RM15 for 3 pax portions, very cheap.

... I wasn't too hungry yet, so I wanted something sour to boost my appetite for the dinner.

... this was probably the best tasting grilled squids I've had so far. I was expecting bland tasting grilled squids at first, like I used to have most of the time. But these came as a surprise.

... steamed tilapia. It was somehow prepared in Thai sauce, probably to negates the foul smelling meat of the fish.

Rating: 6/10

Frankly, the nice fried rice was an overstatement. There were a lot of prawns in it for the price of normal fried rice, which was commendable. I guess that’s the reason why most of the tables ordered fried rice, instead of white rice. At only RM5/pax of fried rice, I had at least 5-6 pieces of prawns, average. They were not small either. But in term of the taste department, it tasted like white rice fried in soya sauce. Yup, I could only taste the soya flavour in the rice, nothing else. The egg doesn’t produce any fragrance and the prawns don’t make the rice taste any sweeter either. Anyway, I guess there’s no complain as the portion was big. Mixed vegetables were nothing spectacular either.

The Tom Yam which was prepared in clay pot was acceptable. It was sour and quite thick. Plenty of squids in it and some prawns. Though I prefer a thinner soup base. Grilled squids were my favourite dish of the night. Unlike most grilled squids that I had, this actually tasted salty. And of course, it was best served hot. After it was cold, it no longer taste good anymore. Lastly, the tilapia which was fortunately enough, not very smelly. The meat was soft. Probably because it was prepared in Thai sauce, hence the foul smell was reduced to minimum. Anyway, the sourish and spicy sauce used was very appetizing. I found myself dipping my grilled squids in it and also mixing them into my fried rice.

Location: N3 08.515 E101 45.286

After class, Kpop Lover, Audrey, Goldie, and I had lunch together at a Vietnamese restaurant. The menu was a bit expensive, I must admit, but I thought that it’s also good to try something new once in a while. Before that, I have eaten in a Vietnamese restaurant only once. That was way back in San Francisco two years ago. All I can remember from that day was me and my mom and my uncle sipping from a bowl of noodle soup topped with a lot of what looked like strips of cabbage or lettuce. Until now, I have no idea what exactly those strips were, but I do remember that my uncle called them “grass.”

Mi Tom Thit

Audrey and I ordered a bowl of Mi Tom Thit (noodle soup with egg, shrimp, squid, etc.) and a plate of Com Tay Cam Ga (rice topped with chicken and greens). We noticed that Vietnamese food has a lot of greens. “Tastes like grass,” Audrey said. Kpop Lover and Goldie ordered a bowl of Bun Bo Xao (cold noodles with beef and a lot of grass greens), and another order of Com Tay Cam Ga.

Bun Bo Xao

When the waiter served Kpop Lover and Goldie’s Bun Bo Xao, we were like “Wow… that looks so delicious!” They really looked so yummy that Audrey and I kind of regretted having ordered Mi Tom Thit. Anyway, when our noodle soup was served, it looked good nonetheless (but the Bun Bo Xao still looked a lot yummier T_T). When I took a sip of our Mi Tom Thit, it tasted good somehow. But there was something different with it. “Tastes weird. Tastes like…chlorox!!!” Audrey said. We tried to squeeze in a little calamansi to improve the taste, but then it only tasted like chlorox with calamansi scent.

Com Tay Cam Ga

On the other hand, Goldie and Kpop Lover’s Bun Bo Xao was awesome. I loved it! We all did. If ever I would eat at that Vietnamese restaurant again, I would definitely have a bowl of Bun Bo Xao. The delicious taste of beef and strips of grass lettuce complemented with the “plainness” of the cold noodles very well. My taste buds were greatly satisfied. Our rice topping, Com Tay Cam Ga, was also good. I think I ate more than half of it when Audrey and I were actually supposed to share. Sorry, Audrey. (peace)

Also, after reading the names of the other dishes on their menu, I learned that Mi means “egg,” and Bo means “beef.” In the menu, above Mi Tom Thit was another dish which also had a Mi in its name. I read both of their ingredients and noticed that the only thing they had in common was egg, so Mi must definitely mean “egg.” Same with Bun Bo Xao, I also found another dish with Bo in its name and the only ingredient they had in common was beef. Ergo, Bo=beef! Amazing?

In light of my great respect for the fine art of Kaiseki, Yuki’s mom decided that she wanted to take me out for another style. That woman loves me! Frankly, I can’t blame her. At any rate, a friend of hers had recommended Ushiyama in the Meguro neighborhood of Tokyo, so we gave it a shot last night. And what a shot it was! Slam dunk!

It started off with a plate of carrots, shiitake, and mibuna with grated apple. Who would have thought of putting grated apple on mushrooms? Ushiyama, that’s who. I’m damn he did, it was amazing!

After that came a dish of four. I ate them clockwise from bottom left. Ama ebi (sweet shrimp), raw sardines with thinly sliced onion that’s been soaked in cold water to remove the sharpness, warm salted ginko nuts skewered on pine needles on top of seitan (wheat gluten) cakes on top of grilled sweet potato that was shaped like a ginko leaf, and uni in a lily blossom. No, I did not eat the maple leaf in the center of the plate nor the pine needles.

Next was the soup course. I heavily bonito flaked dashi broth that was nice and smokey with a rinkon (lotus root) and mochi dumpling and a bok choy leaf with some yuzu zest. It ranks right up there with the best soups I’ve ever eaten, next to the one I ate a few years ago at Iron Chef Michiba’s restaurant.

After the soup course was the sashimi course. It consisted of suzuki (sea bass), melt-in-your-mouth tuna, and ika (squid). It must be ika season because the ika I’ve eaten on this trip is by far the softest and sweetest I’ve ever had.

Then they served us home-made soba noodles in a light soy-dashi with some thinly sliced negi (green onions) on top. I’m telling you, there is absolutely nothing like top quality freshly made soba noodles. I don’t know if I can go back to store-bought dried soba when I get home. I mean, of course I can, but it just won’t be the same. So chewy and clean tasting.

Next up was the grilled course. Sawara (a cousin of the spanish mackerel) grilled with yuzu-miso and served with yuzu-miso konnyaku and daikon that was cut into a flower with a small slice of red pepper. I’ve never had yuzu-miso before, I’m a huge fan!

After that was the simmered course which was kinmedai (splendid alfonsino) in a ginger sauce. It was served with spinach and daikon radish with chawanmushi in the middle.

For the fried course we got a dish with some tempura. Shishito pepper and ebi imo (a kind of yam) served in a light dashi with momiji oroshi and chopped chives.

Then came the rice and miso course. The rice was a glutinous rice with chirimenjako (baby sardines simmered in saltwater, dried in the sun, and covered in a sweet soy marinade), sliced shiso, and served on top of a cherry leaf. The miso had mizuna greens in it. There was also some lightly pickled cucumber and daikon on the side (yes Nick, I even ate the pickles!).

Finally, for dessert we got sweet potato mousse. It was so soft and lightly sweet, it was really more like a light sweet potato cheesecake. Served with a sweet potato chip on top.

This Kaiseki was Kyoto-style which is considered to be the most sophisticated and delicate of all styles. Hard to argue as the food was simply magnificent! Plus, all of that food for only $50 per person! I challenge anyone to find a deal half that good for a meal of that quality prepared with that caliber anywhere in the states. Thanks so much for bringing me here Tamiko!!!

解壓縮
# tar zxvf squid-3.1.0.15.tar.gz

切換到解開的資料夾
# cd squid-3.1.0.15

先確定有 gcc 和 gcc-c++ 這兩個套件
# yum install gcc gcc-c++

執行編譯及安裝
# ./configure –prefix=/usr/local/squid; make all;make install

切換資料夾
# cd /usr/local/squid/etc/

編 輯squid.conf 設定檔
# vi squid.conf

設定程式及資料夾權限
# chown -R nobody /usr/local/squid/var/

設定 cache 資料夾權限
# chown -R nobody /cache/

產生 cache 快取目錄
# /usr/local/squid/sbin/squid -z

啟動 squid 並放到背景執行
# /usr/local/squid/bin/RunCache &

確定 3128 port 有啟動
# netstat -tln | grep 3128

更改設定之後重新 reolad 設定檔
# /usr/local/squid/sbin/squid -k reconfigure

One of the great things about getting down to our beach house at Lorne for the weekend is the opportunity to cook up a feast for our family and friends.

The other is to make use of the fine seafood, vegetables and smallgoods available at the local stores.

For a party of six or more, a paella is the perfect dish to conquer both of the above.

The paella is a rice based dish, originating from Spain. It is thought the first paellas came from the Valencian region, typically using rabbit or chicken, snails and beans. Nowadays, the many paella variations now found in restaurants will likely bare little resemblance to the first dishes from 19th century Spain. The classical “Western” paella consists usually of seafood (often prawns, mussels and fish) and perhaps a surf-and-turf inclusion of chorizo and/or chicken.

While a traditional Spaniard may scoff at some of these new age interpretations, my opinion is that even a more Western paella, when executed in accordance with some basic paella principles, can still capture the spirit of the original dishes.

These principles are:

Rice

The rice is the star of the dish, everything else plays second fiddle. Therefore, the correct rice selection is crucial to a great paella outcome.

Short grain is strictly only acceptable, and preferably either Calasparra or Bomba rice. If the only thing you have is Arborio, then this is a one-time-only acceptable substitution. Jasmine or basmati are a definite no-no.

My preference is calasparra, I think the texture is perfect. It is also relatively easy to find at local markets and delis. Yes, it is worth the search.

Sofrito

The sofrito is a rich and jammy sauce, that provides the rice with some additional flavour and liquid. The sofrito I made was a combination primarily of capsicum and tomatoes, as well as bay leaves and garlic.

My version below was based on the Movida recipe I followed. I imagine that you could use a variant of these flavours to taste.

Stock

You really need a great stock for a paella. I wanted to make a great fish stock for my paella but I had trouble tracking down fish heads at short notice (a trip to South Melbourne market, Victoria Street in Richmond and even the fish co-op at Lorne brought no joy). This meant I had to purchase 1.5 litres of fancy stuff from Lorne Greens. ($24?!).

Make (or purchase) the best stock you can. It makes a big difference to the flavour of the rice once it all comes together.

Paellera

A paellera is a large, shallow pan for cooking paella. If you can’t obtain one of these, use a large frying pan.

Socarrat – optional(!)

The socarrat of paella is the burnt and slightly caramelised crust that forms on the bottom of the paella pan.

This crust of burnt rice is achieved by not stirring the rice for the duration of the cooking/absorption process.

Unfortunately, I think the heat was not quite strong enough during my cooking to achieve the much admired socarrat. I’ll mark this as an optional outcome from a paella, as you can certainly get a great tasting dish without the socarrat making an appearance.

The recipe I used was based on the Movida cookbook, by Frank Camorra and Richard Cornish. Frank being the chef from the famous Melbourne restaurant by the same name. For my adaption, I excluded the rabbit, fish and periwinkles. I added squid, mussels and chorizo instead!

Making the Sofrito…

Here are the ingredients!

EVOO, Capsicums, Tomatoes, Bay Leaves, Onions and Garlic

Fry up some diced onion, garlic and bay leaves for around 10 minutes.

In the meantime, dice up the capsicum. (This sends you a little crazy after four of them…)

Loads of diced capsicum...

Add the capsicum to the onions. Keep stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn’t stick. It takes over an hour for it to really come together.

After an hour or so, it starts to go quite jammy...

...now jammy!

Making the Paella…

Here are the ingredients!

Peas, sofrito, squid, raw tiger prawns, white wine, fish stock, lemon, bay leaves, thyme, rosemary, parsley, garlic, safron, chorizo, calasparra rice and mussels. Phew!

Firstly, take out your paella pan and fry up some olive oil, the saffron, rosemary, thyme and garlic. At this stage, you can also fry your chorizos. On a large barbeque, it was useful to be able to do this side by side with the paella underway…

Paella pan with chorizo cooking away...

Frying up the herbs and spices

Next step is to add the rice. Warm it through for a minute or two, then add the sofrito to stir through. Great colour!

Rice goes in...

In goes the sofrito...

Add the white wine and the fish stock. Now, from the point on, you should no longer stir the dish, in order to create the socarrat crust on the bottom (theoretically!).

Looks like too much liquid. Never fear!

The next 20 to 30 minutes is done by look and feel. Keep the heat as even as possible on the bottom of the pan. As you can image above, on a barbeque the heat in uneven. We continually rotated the pan at achieve an even heat.

Over the next little while, the rice will begin to absorb the liquid. Don’t stir, it’s not risotto!

Almost there. Adding the seafood...

You’ll see it get to a stage where it’s almost ready. It’s probably best now to add seafood at this point, as it needs the least cooking. A handy hint from my recipe was to place the prawns over little air bubbles in the rice, where steam was escaping.

Once you’re happy with it, cover with foil to rest.

While resting, fry up some garlic, a bit more of the wine and steam the mussels in a pan. Give them a shake after five minutes and throw out any that don’t open.

Place the best mussels on top of the paella. Garnish with lemon and parsley.

Voilà!

Sofrito

125ml olive oil
2 white onions, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
4 bay leaves
4 large red capsicums, seeded and diced
4 ripe tomatoes (alternatively, ~300g canned tomatoes)

• Heat the oil in a heavy based saucepan over low-med heat
• Saute the onion, garlic and bay leaves for around 10 minutes to soften
• Add the capsicum. Cook for around 30 minutes.
• Add the tomato and continue to cook at a low heat for another 1 to 1.5 hours
• Makes around 450g (or two cups)

Paella

100ml olive oil
pinch of saffron
2 tbsp of thyme leaves
2 tsp of rosemary leaves
4 garlic cloves, finely sliced
800g calasparra rice
sea salt
500g sofrito
1 chorizo sausage, sliced and grilled
250ml white wine
1.5 litres of fish stock
extra hot water on hand
1 squid tube, sliced into strips
small bag of mussels, debearded
12-15 small raw prawns
handful of frozen peas
2 tbsp of flat leaf parsley for garnish
1 lemon, sliced for garnish

• Heat the oil in your paella pan.
• Add the saffron, thyme, rosemary and garlic. Stir for a minute or so.
• Add the rice, with perhaps a few pinches of salt. Stir for a minute to coat the rice in the herbs and oil.
• Outside of the pan at this time, fry up your chorizo.
• Add the wine, and then fish stock, and stir to combine. Increase the heat to high to bring to boil.
• From now on, do not stir the dish.
• After 15-20 minutes, the rice will have made it’s way towards the surface. If you’re short on liquid, add more hot water if required. Don’t add more than necessary. Better to have to little than too much.
• Add the chorizo, dotted around the rice.
• Once the rice has almost absorbed all liquid, place the prawns and squid around the rice. Add the peas.
• Continue to cook for another 5 minutes or so until rice is done and no liquid remains.
• Remove from the heat and cover with foil, rest for 10 minutes.
• While the rice is resting, fry up a little extra garlic with wine and olive oil. Add the mussels and steam for 5 minutes. Discard unopened mussels.
• To garnish, add mussels to the top of the rice. Cover with the chopped parsley and sliced lemon.
• Serves six people very generously

The piglet squid live near the surface of
the oceans, between 100 m and 200 m
deep. Their average size is 100 mm.

It is its habit of swimming upside down
(compared to the way we are used to
seeing squids), which makes its tentacles
look like a crazy mop of hair.

These pictures were taken by a submersible
robot off the Gulf of Guinea, West Africa.

Because of its deep water habitat, little is
known of its behaviour, although not
surprisingly, judging by its body shape, it
is known to be a sluggish swimmer.

heliococranchia

You know, its been so long since I browsed the web with anything other than Firefox with the Adblock Plus addon installed that I didn’t realize how horrible the web has become lately.  Sure I do a lot of web surfing on my Android phone, but the mobile views most websites serve these days are luckily ad-free.  Or, the ads aren’t big massive Flash things that steal your eyeballs.

I’m trying to make the shift to Google Chrome for the simple fact that it is noticably faster and less memory hungry than Firefox.  Unfortunately the default installation of Chrome doesn’t support extensions or addons, and surfing with annoying ads is something I can’t put up with.

Thankfully there are always great, cheap and easy ways to do things!

On any corporate or medium biz sized I typically install a Barracuda Web Filter, a device that sits in the physical network at the edge between the switch and the firewall.  This way all traffic must pass through it, and I can filter HTTP and HTTPS requests without having to tweak proxy settings on all the various systems and applications throughout the building.  It is simple, effective, and in my opinion the perfect way to filter, log, and analyze web traffic.

For my own office though I don’t really need the powerful benefits of the Barracuda, but I still need a way to block ads and other annoying bandwidth sucking, eyeball killing web content.

The easiest way to accomplish this was to use my existing firewall, a small old clunky Pentium-3 PC that’s running pfSense.  pfSense, in case you aren’t in the know, is a free firewall/router operating system that can run on pretty much any old hardware you might have lying around.  For a small operation like mine, this Pentium-3 with 384 MB of RAM is plenty, in fact high usage doesn’t even make a blip on the CPU or memory usage radar.  A network with more traffic might want to run a Pentium-4 or higher with a Gig or more RAM.  That isn’t really necessary, I used a similarly equipped Pentium-3 as the main router/firewall for a large downtown hotel (all staff and all guest traffic) and it held up beautifully.

pfSense has a great third party plugin community, and the very popular and very useful web proxy software Squid is just one of those plugins.  “Squid is a caching proxy for the Web supporting HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and more. It reduces bandwidth and improves response times by caching and reusing frequently-requested web pages. Squid has extensive access controls and makes a great server accelerator. It runs on most available operating systems, including Windows and is licensed under the GNU GPL.”

Well, it’s these “extensive access controls” that I’m interested in right now.  Lets get cracking on banishing the web ads.

Installing it is a snap, just pick it from the list of available packages from pfSense’s Package Manager.  It installs immediately, and now appears in the menu options under Services.

There are a few options to check first, such as Transparent Proxy (this means it automatically filters HTTP/HTTPS requests without any other configuration on the end user side).

The meat of the project involves heading to the Proxy server: Access control page.  Head down to the Blacklist box, enter in a few domains, try surfing.  All you’ll get is an error message.  Perfect, this is how you’ll block ads.  You can tailer these error messages with another plugin (essentially a plugin for this plugin) called squidGuard.  This adds a great layer of customization on top of Squid, but isn’t necessary for basic page blocking.

Now the fun part, populating that Blacklist box with a list of ad-serving websites.  Open this doc, cut-and-paste.  The top contains some regex that should catch a ton of ads that aren’t included in the specific domains below it.

Click here for the list.

Don’t forget, because it is a proxy server first and foremost, it will now be trying to cache contents intelligently.  I noticed first visits to websites were a bit slower than usual, but speeded up dramatically on their second and subsequent visits.

如果 proxy server 不支援 IPv6 的話，
那 client 端對 IPv6 網站的連線要求，
到了 proxy 裡面，
就會因為網域名稱無法被正確解析而無法瀏覽 IPv6 的網站。

Linux 系統的 squid 是知名好用的 proxy 伺服器套件，
但在 2.6 版仍未支援 IPv6 ，
必須在 3.0 版之後才能支援 IPv6 。