Mine Appollo has a blog too

After all kinds of blogs here is one original blog about mine appollo which is the favorite noodle of the Mauritian nation.

I normally eat mine appollos like at least 3 times a month .Some while back when I was still going to college , I used to eat at least one everyday. I even took 5 packets to South Africa last year and I must say it was just fantastic to enjoy a good mine appollo far from home.

Mine appollo comes in at least 4 flavours there is Shrimp , Chicken and 2 Vegs , if am not mistaken here (please correct me). I love the Veg ones then I can add all kinds of toppings to enhance the flavoring.

On the mine appollo blog you will get all kinds of recipes that you can try at home. If you live outside of Mauritius , I can always send you a packet of noodles by courrier ;).

Maven2 SSH site deploy Tip

Am gonna walk you into how to achieve deployment of maven site from a windows XP machine to a Redhat box, assuming you already have installed maven2 and the know-how to execute commands.

These are the stuffs which you need to perform:

1. Configure your POM.xml by adding the distribution management tag:

< distributionmanagement>
< site >
< id > redhatServer < /id >
< url > scp://HOST /var/www/html/site < /url >
</site >
< /distributionmanagement >

Note: HOST is the ip address to your webserver.

The id element must be a unique name to represent your site.
The url element must point to the location on your remote server where you want to deploy your site. Do note that scp:// is prefixed , this specifies that we are using ssh for tansfer.

2. Edit your settings.xml file ,which should be located under C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR_USERNAME\.m2 , by adding the following:

< server >
< id > redhatServer < /id >
< username > USERNAME_ON_REMOTE_SERVER < /username >
< password > PASSWORD_ON_REMOTE_SERVER < /password >
< filePermissions > 664 < /filePermissions >
< directoryPermissions > 775 < /directoryPermissions >
< /server >
< /servers >


USERNAME_ON_REMOTE_SERVER and PASSWORD_ON_REMOTE_SERVER should correspond to your username and password on the remote server (RedHat box).

3. Run mvn site site:deploy

This should now start creating your site and deploying it to your remote server.

4. If you get a nagging prompt that keeps coming like the following :

The authenticity of host '10.206.14.48' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 14:93:e7:25:e5:cb:fe:d9:8b:3f

:c2:81:84:9f:b5:15.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting? (yes/no):

Then all you need to do is create a directory called .ssh under C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR_USERNAME\ .

You would require to use the mkdir .shh

Thats all that is required to perform the site deploy, hope it will help you out . I know this post is going to be boring for my not so techie readers :).

The Jeep Waterfall

What if you could draw in a waterfall ?

Leja Leja

Heard a nice indian song called Leja Leja on B4U music the clip is sadly copied from Daniel Porter's Bad day video.

They used to copy movie scripts now even song scripts are being mimicked have a look:



Whats annoying is that the song is actually awesome save for the copied video.

By the way here's Doorie from Atif Aslam , god there are all videos on youtube :

Take care of your car

Jalopnik.com provides an interesting section about car care. Here you will find why you need to check your engine oil level every now and then and how to take care of your car battery.

These are stuff that many of us , including myself ..take for granted and leave it to our mechanics but its very important to do these verifications regularly.

French Special Characters Shortcut

Here is a list of those special characters shortcuts that you always find hard to obtain :

Use ALT + the 4 character codes for these French chars:

133 à (0224)
131 â (0226)
135 ç (0231)
130 é (0233)
138 è (0232)
136 ê (0234)
137 ë (0235)
140 î (0238)
139 ï (0239)
oe ligature (0156)
147 ô (0244)
151 ù (0249)
150 û (0251)

183 À (0192)
182 Â (0194)
128 Ç (0199)
212 È (0200)
144 É (0201)
210 Ê (0202)
211 Ë (0203)
215 Î (0206)
216 Ï (0207)
OE ligature (0140)

A full list of special character shortcuts can be obtained from starr.net .

Adding a flickr badge to your blog or site

This may sound stupid but I never quite figured out where to find the settings from flickr to obtain the javascript code to paste on my blog to be able to get the flickr badge until tonight.. when I finally found the page for the flickr badge.

Turkish PopStar

The turkish Popstar video :



I can't understand a single word that the girl is singing but hey its way much better than Star Academy or a la recherche de la Nouvelle star . Excellent music!

Giant Rabbit in your plate

The North Koreans finally found a way to solve their hunger problems , giant rabbits !

A 67 year old pensioner Karl Szmolinsky has been asked by the North Koreans for his secret in breeding giant rabbits. The rabbit expert has already shipped some of the rodents to Korea already along with tips on how to feed the monsters.



Apparently one giant rabbit can feed up to 8 people... so can sheeps ! However I guess that since rabbits have babies really fast thats why the Koreans are seeking to breed rabbits instead of sheeps.

13 Jan Saturday blues

As usual I went to the Cite Martial bazaar (la foire) in the morning only to find out that it had moved to another location inside a brand new building with separate sections for vegetables , fish , chicken , beef and cloth/accessories sellers. The new bazaar is located behind the Mahmmad Elahee stadium up near the mountain..actually just at the foot of it .

The shift was not made smoothly as there were many merchants who were unable to find stalls at the new complex . This is why the police force made sure to show their presence in the area and where the old bazaar stood the roads had been blocked.

Afterwards I headed to galaxy where there was a sales going on .An advert had been playing on the air assuring that you would be glaxaciter (..apparently get excited) by their sales. Personally I didn't find anything really interesting or worthwhile. There might have been like 10-12 persons more than usual but nothing worth getting excited about.

I also went to the Cash & Carry to get a new iPod but the price tag was still too heavy at Rs10,000 something , I guess I would prefer buying it out of the country.

Then I came back home and decided to have a go at Second Life , I initially downloaded the client last year when I bought my PC but then gave up on it. After a 26MB update I was teleported to an empty landscape ,seems there are less and less people in the virtual network.

Suddenly it came to me that I should blog about all this uninteresting things because I really didn't have anything better to do :).

Hot phones for 2007

The hot phones to expect from 2007 have already been announced at the 2007 International CES. I know you must be salivating to know them better.

We start by the N800 which looks like an old grandpa transistor with a wide screen. This handset is meant for those geeks that really can't live without checking google.com every 30 minutes. If you always want to be online then the N800 is your phone.

The Nokia N93i is the smaller sister of the N93 . It is an inch or so smaller than its predecessor and is blogger friendly according to Nokia. With its 3.2 megapixel camera this baby can shoot DVD like quality video upto 45 minutes. The price should be around $780 which makes it one of the most expensive Nokia phones.

Am seriously looking for a clamshell since last year I have been following closely the N93 but then there were 2 factors that really deterred me from getting one the first being taht the price of the handset was way too high ...at Rs 30,000 I could buy a new pc instead ..and the other factor was the size of the phone ...really big , which is such a shame.

When I saw the N76 like an hour ago I thought hey this might just be in my pocket in a few months time. This is the first slim phone a la RAZR from Nokia. Its attractive , trendy , fashionable , comes in 2 shades black and bright red. And above all its a smartphone.. can't wait for it to come out. Should cost around $507 - Rs 18,000 something.

See all the nokia phones in action from the nokia site .

Another interesting phone is the iPhone , yes you heard it right the iPod just got magical powers. Now not only can you listen to music but you can actually take calls too!


Its designed to provide easy access to the web and your email. Apple is convinced that it's a breakthrough Internet communications device .The iPhone will not have any buttons but will be controlled with its touchscreen. The nice big screen is certainly a wow factor along with the big storage unit which will allow up to 3 films to be stored , 4GB and 8GB units will be available

However with advanced technology comes big price tag so do expect to spend at least $500 for the 4GB version and $600 for the 8GB one.

thephonespot.com Review

The article below is a paid review

Design is not the most striking point about thephonespot.com. Initially I thought it must be just one of those commercial phone sites that are appearing here and there on the web until I discovered that the engine behind thephonespot.com was simplicity.

You can nagivate through the mobile phones being offered either by make or by network. Most of the new phones on the market including the N93 are listed on the site.

A good tool to find your dream phone is the Refine your search option which is very easy to use. In my case I usually just click on the features that am looking for my new phone and there you go a list of available phones just pops up beneath.


If you are a trendy shopper well you can always check out the latest phone section as you can see from the screenshot above. Here the N93 seems to be at the top of the chart . I believe its a cool phone the only minus part is its size which is monstrously big, if only it was a little bit smaller!

Clicking on a phone provides you with a list of its features .There is also a full specification and a nice 3-D view page that is available for each phone. I like the 3-D view page as it gives you more insight as to what to expect design wise from the handset especially when you haven't seen it close up before.

It would have been nice however if they had offered videos of the phone . Some phone sites are now offering this feature thus providing more in-depth coverage as to how the phone works and looks like.


The most remarkable thing I discovered about thephonespot.com was the PhoneFinder service . What you must know is that phones on this site are sold based on packages that are offered by 5 popular networks namely Orange , T-mobile , Virigin , 3 and O2 . Now the same phone based on different types of packages will be sold at different prices and the monthly package fees will also vary from network to network.


In the end it does become a headache if you have to manually calculate the right package which will fill your needs. This is where the PhoneFinder service kicks in . A wizard like character dressed like a salesman will guide you from the point of choosing your ideal phone from all the options that you are looking for (e.g 3G , Video , Bluetooth,etc..) to actually picking one phone from the list that is proposed to you and finally choosing from the 5 networks the best package that suits your needs.


Whats nice is that the sales-man wizard is funny and even gives his suggestion as what he "thinks" is the best solution package wise.

Personally I think that this site does its job smoothly and effectively without any unnecessary bells and whistles. This is certainly a site am gonna come back to if I need to buy a phone in the very near future :P .

On demand Video in Mauritius

The general trend these days is that the web is getting everywhere and allowing bigger chunks of data to be propagated throughtout its global network as more and more people get connected via broadband.

Thus it becomes plausible to watch TV and listen to music via streams. I find it really enjoyable to be able to control what I want to watch. Personnally I think video on demand or VOD has great prospects.

In my little room at home for example I got a DVD player , Satellite TV and my livebox with a VOD settop box. The DVD player is cool you can watch your DVDs on it ...obviously .. but you need to feed it with media. Satellite TV provides a ton of video content , channels with specific genre for example Cuisine TV channel provides recipes, cooking tips and National Geographic channel provides documentaries about animals , plants and nature in general.

However at times you don't have any new DVDs to play nor do you find any interesting content on Satellite ,you end up either on the Net or in bed ..fast asleep from boredom. Of course it would have been healthier if you did some exercises instead.

With VOD this is another story depending on the video on demand service to which you are subscibed , in my case its MY.T watch, you can choose from a collection of video provided online. Its like another type of freedom the freedom to choose what YOU want to see.


Unfortunately for my case the video archive for MY.T is not very big as its still a new service and trying to seek its niche in the booming broadband market.Am however confident that in the coming years either MY.T watch or another VOD service provider will find its place in our bedroom/living room.

The logo homepage

Did you know there exists on the web a place where logos reside, an actual homepage for logos?



...well there exists such a place , actually it looks like a big ad page a la million-dollar-page , but still its nice to look at :D and you can actually click on the logos to go to the respective site.

You can also submit your own logos to the site which is neat , provided you have one .

Toyota Ad

One well made advert from Toyota:

The Mauritian Tuition

The start of a new year implies a lot of different things to different people. For me its about keeping my resolutions whilst for many secondary students new year means new teachers , new mates , new subjects , new uniform ....and new private tuitions.

I remember how private tuition selection used to be in my days , we used to talk between friends which tuition had the greatest concentration of cool people or which tuition professor was the most brilliant ever ...

But then there was those private teachers that had built a small empire from mass teaching school kids and this is why am writing this blog. I know at least a handful of these so-called "semi-god" teachers .Parents love them and other teachers worship them. From my personal experience I have only one word for these individuals "escroc" !

There is no such thing as mass teaching with a small room filled with knowledge hungry teenagers. Come on tuition are meant to be given to help a student in a specific area where he or she requires more attention. Now how can an idiot with 30 students in his room be able to achieve that in 1hr every week ?

On top of that some of these "teachers" are so unreachable that you actually need to book an interview for your child with him. I know of one star (etoile filant) which used to give GP tuitions in my days...and apparently still does. The guy was on every parent's tuition wish list for their kids. Kids who were unable to squeeze into his tuition used to feel as if they would never pass the General Paper exam. I got the "privilege" to be in his class at school .... guess what he did to make pupils learn to write essays ... well he gave them the essays to learn ..pre-mache.. the ones where he has already thought about what should be written.. so dumb.. I would say its a sacrilege to our freedom of thinking.. come on make your pupils creative and make them think for themselves.

I got the incredible chance to have a great GP tuition teacher on the other hand ,called Mr. Kudrath ,which I respect a lot . I never got the chance to thank him for allowing me to express my gratitude and thankfulness for helping me develop a creative and scientific approach into writing essays and in other every day life situations.

Mr. Kudrath instead of having a room of 30 students would have only around 5-6 people at max and he would take the time to talk about different subjects and allow you to express your feelings and opinions. I really enjoyed going to his tuitions that was something really worthwhile in my teenage life.

Thanks also to Mr Luximon and Mr Payandee for maths and physics if it wasn't for these two people I would not have developed a love for solving problems . Parents if you are reading this don't go for the teacher with the most students go for the teacher with the teaching vocation.

1st of Jan 2007 in Mauritius

I woke up late usually by 6:30 am already on my feet but this morning was hard maybe because I slept on a different bed , had to giveaway my room to my cousins as they were crashing at my place for the night.

My head is still full of last night's new year celebrations at the Caudan waterfont. 2006 had a better fireworks than the one we had on 2005 which was spoilt by rain , not may people had gone out of their homes that year..

Several people after midnight struck where lighting really big and dangerous fireworks on the esplanade and placed them in water bottles before setting fire. Now yesterday ,as is the case still this morning, was very windy due to a cyclone passing in our region and many a time the water bottle would fall down or move resulting in the firework going towards a crowd on the ground or towards the Caudan Labourdonnais hotel. In one instance a tourist at the top of Labourdonnais hotel in his room was quietly enjoying fireworks when one of them fireworks went straight from below directly into his room , needless to say the guy was really frightened.

Strangely yesterday I didn't have much problems sending SMS or making calls around midnight on the CellPlus network. Reading through the papers this morning it seems that around 6 million texts have been exchanged overall yesterday which is a record. Both Cellplus and Emtel had made special arrangements to cater for the load of the festive season.

On moving out of the Caudan at around 1am in the morning there was a really huge queue and it took me at least 20 minutes to get out. Thank god there is Caudan if there wasn't we would have probably been enjoying the New Year at Champs de Mars.

Anyways just would like to wish you all a very happy and prosperous new Year 2007.