The Home of Tom & Morven

Team_Bammann has just officially made it to the top 1000 prime number search teams in the world. Good work to myself and to my brother, and stay tuned for the announcement of a new dual cpu, hyperthread P4D @ 2.8GHz adding to the ranks of our computational team!

Finally I have finished writing about my recent holiday along the Great Ocean Road. Please click on any of the photos to go to the photo gallery containing the complete collection of snapshots.

Day 1 (26th): Left Adelaide and stayed the night at Mt. Gambier in a caravan park. It was a long ride on open road, with lots of wind so we were very tired and had an early night and a good sleep in. I got a tad freaked out about the side-wind whilst doing 110km/h, but you can’t complain when you get to see giant lobsters!

The Big Lobster

Day 2 (27th): Left Mt.Gamber and stayed the night in Warnambull. On the way we stopped somewhere near beachport to record movies of us riding, and doing the odd wheelie, etc, to make for an interesting DVD. (Note to my mum grandma: I was the photographer, not the stuntman!!) It is about then that I think we were really starting to act like a real bike possie. Simon and I bought ear-plugs because of the turbulent wind noise from the head-wind at high speed was probably exceeding 110dB(A). I’m always going to carry earplugs on my bike from now on, because it’s just not worth the risk of damaging your ears.

Me checking out the scenery

Day 3 (28th): Left the guys early to ride to Apollo Bay where my cousins Carl and Christie and Uncle Chris were camping, along with my cousins second-cousin (Jonathon) all the way from Denmark! Rode in to meet up with the guys at the St Kilda Base Backpackers that night. With my cousins that day, we had gone to the beach. It was possibly one of the nicest beaches I’ve been to in Australia apart from in Queensland. During the beach fun, we played soccer, wrapped Christie up in seaweed against her will, and then buried her in sand at a rate that she couldn’t escape from, and then buried Jonathon in the sand. I would like to publicly apologise to Christie for being so mean to her with seaweed. SORRY CHRISTIE I STILL LOVE YOU!!

Carl, Christie, myself, and Uncle Chris

Day 4 (29th): This day we went for a ride into the city, and checked out the motorbike stores. One of the guys (Shannon) got a quote for a trade-in deal on a Yamaha R1 from his R6, and now we have to convince him to follow through with it so he can do phat wheelies on the way home. We then did some ‘normal’ shopping and I bought a book on marathon running. I haven’t really read much about marathon running before, so it should help me a lot.

Day 5 (30th):I’m currently writing this from my Aunt’s house in Melbourne. I came here in the late morning, cleaned my bike and washed her car, had lunch, and gave her computer some good maintenance. Right now I’m sitting next to Carl each of us with a laptop, in the dark, simultaneously watching the movie Virus whilst exchanging geeky comments every so often. I’m trying to convince Carl to create an online journal like myn I just heard that their family friend from Denmark, Karen, has just got engaged! Lana and another person I haven’t met are coming in tonight in fact they will be here now I think, so I will head back to St. Kilda where hopefully they will still be shortly after this movie. Tomorrow for NYE I think I’m going to my other cousins house Daniel, where he’s having a house party with his house mates.I got home to the backpackers place fairly late, and went for a quick walk to stretch my legs. During this late night walk I spoke to Ben on the phone who told me that Jordan is in St Kilda!! In fact, he had been at a pub that I had been to a couple nights ago. Calling him immediately, I discovered he was staying in Fitzroy. I ordered him to get out of bed so we could go for some drinks, and I cabbed it over to Fitzroy to meet him, and several drinks were enjoyed. What coincidence!!

Day 6 (31st), NYE: I trammed it back to Fitzroy to meet Jordan again, and we went out for breakfast, and browsed the shops all around Fitzroy, the city, and the Queen Victoria Markets. I bought two rings and a bracelet, each one has its own little gimmic, and each one is stainless steel, my favourite metal. I got a spinning ring that matches the bracelet, the bracelet has a spekky latching mechanism, and the second ring is made up of three rings that join together. How cool!

Being in Melbourne, I decided to randomly rock up to my cousins house party in Camberwell. I took my cousin’s (Carl and Christie) fathers second cousins son to the party as well, Jonathon from Denmark. Although it wasn’t a particularly eventful night because my cousin spent most of the night with his girlfriend, I did at least get to meet some of his friends. I took Jonathon from Denmark to the party, and still am not sure what actually happened to him - he seemed to disappear sometime after 12.

Day 7 (1st): NY day was spent basically sitting around all day due to bad weather - we waited for it to clear to do the Black Spur ride which seems to be the Melbourne equivalent to Adelaide’s 12 minute run to Lobethal. It wasn’t going to clear, so I went back at my Aunt’s and cousins home watching Entrapment with Crarl, and we’re going to leave at 6 in the morning from St. Kilda to do the Black Spur which should be a 3 hour total trip including travelling time to get there. Leaving really early allows us to leave luggage behind, and we can then pick it up before checking out at ten to head off to Apollo Bay, where we’re staying next.

Day 8 (2nd): Got up at 6:30am to do the Black Spur Ride. We majorly misjudged how far away it really is, because we didn’t realise that there were such things as traffic lights every 300m on a highway for 50km! I took us about an extra hour each way to get to the start of the Black Spur Ride. The actual ride itself was beautiful! 33km of lush windy foresty jungley type road. For the way up I told Simon and Shannon not to wait for me so I can take photos of it, etc, and we planned to meet up the top. Unfortunately they decided to go to a lookout at the top. So when I got there, I couldn’t see them and rode back down again because there was no phone reception. After waiting down the bottom I called them, and discovered they were still waiting for me at the top! baah! So on their way down now, they came across a Porsche which foolishly decided to run itself off the road, and created a major traffic build up. Multiple accidents occured after that due to cars and motorbikes speeding around the corner(s) and hitting into this traffic build up! It took them ages to get down, I was so bored!

Eventually we checked out from Base Backpackers several hours late, and started our way to Apollo Bay where we would be spending the night.

The Black Spur Drive

My bike on the Great Ocean Road

Day 9 (3rd): The aim of this day was to do the Beech Forest Treetop Flywalk, located inland from Otway National Park (which in turn is near Apollo Bay). It was a rip-off to get in at $17 per adult, and there was no student concession! Bastards! Anyway, being seven of us Adrian asked for a group discount - but they only would give us a group discount if we had ten or more - bastards! So, Adrian spent 15 minutes rounding up a group of 17 people (i.e. 10 strangers) to get us all in for $15. Fair enough!

The Group doing the tree-top flywalk in Beech Forest

It turns out it was maybe worth the money, with plenty of breath taking views as shown below.

Beech Forest

Beech Forest

We then continued our journey to Port McDonald, along the Great Ocean Road, and I stopped off at as many of the places as I could. Again, I was broken up from the group and left behind, as they enjoyed their high-speed overtaking, etc, on dangerous windy roads. Fair enough! I didn’t mind, as their was plenty of time now for me to take photos such as below.

Me at the Twelve Apostles (now only seven!)

Adrian’s rear tyre, now with about 30mm of bare wire a quarter of the way around the tyre showing, was decided by him to now be unsafe to ride. Actually scrap that - he probably would have kept riding it if we didn’t all tell him not to. My advice was possibly a little bit much for him to handle in his frustrated state (to say the least), and so I left him behind for a change, and continued taking more photos. (Ever heard of the hare and the tortoise?) Below is possibly my favourite rock. I wanted to spend an hour or so at the blow hole near the razor edge rock, although we didn’t have time due to the worn tyre saga of the day. Next time!

The Razor Edge Rock

After finding what the group (i.e. Adrian) had decided to do with his tyre (which was to continue riding it to Warnambool at speeds in excess of 100km/h (obnoxious and a fool) I got roped into carrying Lana’s gear on my back to help Adrian (who was carrying it). Oh yes, “thanks Tom” - “No worries Adrian/Lana!”??

Had dinner with Trent and Simon in Portland that night. Both of these guys are great people. Ended up riding the rest of the way to Port McDonald in the dark, which was kind of scary yet extremely fun.

Day 10 (4th):Being the final day, we all really just wanted to get home. Port McDonald smelt funny. Robin’s tyre also showed signs of kevlar on this last day. He continued riding on it! He was forced to give up his girlfriend (Lana) riding on the back of it. (Did I mention both of them were told before we left that their tyres won’t last the trip, and they should change them ASAP?)

So that’s the entire trip in summary! The end. Next trip, we’re doing Tasmania - transporting our bikes to Melbourne, flying to Melbourne, and picking up our bikes (or buying new ones!) and catching the ferry to Tassie. Can’t wait! Just hopefully, a couple people have learned a major lesson about maintenance of their bikes by this time.

Get Santa drunk here. Do it! My best score has been 467, what’s yours?

Thanks go to Luke E. for this one:

Late last week, I was rushing around trying to get some shopping done. I was stressed out and not thinking very fondly of the Christmas season right then. It was dark, cold, and wet in the parking lot. As I was loading my car up with gifts that I felt obligated to buy, I noticed that I was missing a receipt that I might need later. So mumbling under my breath, I retraced my steps to the shopping centre entrance.

As I was searching the wet pavement for the lost receipt, I heard a quiet sobbing. The crying was coming from a poorly dressed boy of about 12 yrs old. He was short and thin. He had no coat. He was just wearing a ragged flannel shirt to protect him from the cold night’s chill.

Oddly enough, he was holding a hundred dollar note in his hand. Thinking that he had gotten lost from his parents, I asked him what was wrong. He told me his sad story. He said that he came from a large family. He had three brothers and four sisters. His father had died when he was nine years old. His mother was poorly educated and worked two full time jobs. She made very little to support her large family.

Nevertheless, she had managed to skimp and save two hundred dollars to buy her children Christmas presents. The young boy had been dropped off, by his mother, on the way to her second job. He was to use the money to buy presents for all his siblings and have just enough to take the bus home. He had not even entered the mall, when an older boy grabbed one of the hundred dollar notes and disappeared into the night.

“Why didn’t you scream for help?” I asked. The boy said, “I did.” “And nobody came to help you?” I wondered. The boy stared at the sidewalk and sadly shook his head. “How loud did you scream?” I inquired. The soft-spoken boy looked up and meekly whispered, “Help me!”

I realised that absolutely no one could have heard that poor boy cry for help. So I grabbed his other hundred and ran off.

I thought because I never heard back, that I was unwanted as an editor for inthemix.com.au for DNB cd’s. However last night I got a welcome email to say thanks and all that, and I can start reviewing DNB cd’s as soon as I like!! Yay!! Eventually I may be able to review events and get free tickets to do so as well!

Me @ inthemix.com.au

Christmas is here, and I’m an engineer. So, I’m obliged to show you how engineers consider their christmas decorations. Click here to see!

Today I woke up, rolled out of bed, and *started* to do the usual “gourmet breakfast” followed by Starcraft with my just-as-keen-Starcraft-playing neighbour. However 5 minutes into the game Jordan called with an offer to work with him for the day (albeit for not much money) to help deliver furniture with him. This actually sounded like fun, considering I really had nothing to do today, and I’m kind of in the broke. Plus, it’s a good opportunity to hang out with a mate. It ended up actually being quite very hard work, and we were both sore by the end of the day (it’s not his usual job either, delivering furniture). In the end, I got paid quite reasonably, and got a good workout as well. Tonight I managed to get some good quality Starcraft playing time in with Ben, so now I’ve got that fix as well!

Tomorrow I think I’ll spend the morning working on the lawn for an hour or so, getting ready for the first spraying of kikuya death.

Just finished tonight making my ultimate in warfare bike light setup. Screw all this energy saving LED crap, if I want something as professional as that it’ll be when I’m back into XC mountainbike racing, and in which case I’ll buy something off the shelf that I can rely on. In this case however, I’m after something hardcore that I can attach floodlights to, and use as a weapon of mass warfare on the road against cars (or even just when it’s really dark and I’m really scared of the dark).

You can view all the pictures here, but I’ve put a few teaser pics here to get you more interested.

‘Massive spotlight action’

Essentially I have a lightweight 6V NiCad pack for my helmet mounted twin-halogen system, and a 12V 18Ah SLA for the handlebar-mounted twin-halogen system.

The helmet has the functionality of having low beam in a wide strip, or high beam with the same strip for the ground ahead, and a spotlight for the road ahead, which is adjusted to light the road ahead when I’m on my drop-down bars. So when I’m riding without hands and sitting up, the spotlight goes into the air and the beam goes into the distance - presumably if I’m riding without hands it’s obviously bright enough anyway

‘Helmet mounted setup’

Not that it will ever NOT be bright enough, for the handle-bar mounted jobs. These suckers are a 10W and 50W halogen BEASTS. The 10W has the option of being on medium beam, at around nearly 10W, or on the low beam (and exactly how low is completely adjustable up to the full 10W with a screw). Then, if you flick the second switch, the 50W flood-light turns on. No matter what mode the 10W globe is in, the 50W automatically switches off the 10W. The 50W job must be used with caution, since my dodgy plastic mounting stuff probably won’t handle the heat too well - must be moving with this succer!

‘The globes and the switches’

Being someone who’s proud of not ripping off other peoples jokes, and to prove this is a real story, I’d like you to click on the article below to bring it up in full size for your reading amusement!

A major research institution today announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science.

The new element has been named “Governmentium.”

Governmentium (Gv) has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called ‘morons’ which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called ‘peons.’

Since Gv has no electrons, it is inert.

However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact.

A minute amount of Gv causes one reaction to take over four days to complete, when it would normally take less than a second!

Gv has a normal half-life of 3 years; it does not decay; but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganisation will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming ‘isodopes.’

This characteristic of moron promotion leads most scientists to believe that Gv is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration.

This hypothetical quantity is referred to as ‘Critical Morass.’