The Home of Tom & Morven

Mike is in the latest Adelaide Matters magazine with his Wollemi Pine. I love it how he mentions me in it too, cheers bro!

Click on the image below for the enlarged copy of Sven’s Photography Exhibition Flyer.

I’ve started using Google Calendar today, and I’m as pleased with this calendar system as I’ve been pleased with any other system. You can import and export in both CSV and iCal standard format files, share calendars with other users on pre-defined privacy settings, have email reminders, invite other users to your appointments, and more.

This is a link to my ‘public’ iCal file. Alternatively, if you think I’d be happy for you to see my full private calendar, and you also use Google Calendar, log in to your Google account at http://google.com/calendar, search for my calendar (Tom Bammann) and lodge a request to me to gain full read-access to my calendar.

As Autumn has settled in, my (/my parents) Santa Ana cooch lawn has settled in for dormancy, and the winter grass has taken away. Thanks to Paul Munns weed chart I was able to buy special winter grass killing stuff. Winter grass supposably doesn’t harm cooch lawn, although in the long run if you don’t control it, your entire lawn may be covered in it, and could be detrimental to the cooch in the winter. I figured it’s better to make the sacrifice of having potential dirt patches for one winter than have to worry about it every winter.

Veronica and Nigel had their engagement dinner last night, which I felt very priviliged to attend. I hadn’t realised how small the dinner was going to be, which really made me feel like one truly appreciated friend - thanks guys I guess this is a product of being in a similar circumstance to someone else, and friendships are often forged stronger when big decisions are to be made. Norton Summit Hotel is the best food in the world (except my mum’s of course).

Sat. morning my bro took me to the uni gym, which I can’t believe I’ve never been to before. It was pretty good, except the treadmills don’t go any faster than 20km/h (pfffffffft what’s with that!?!?) and I could leg-press the entire stack they had 30 times without stopping, and really slowly at that (don’t mean to brag or anything ). I knew I had strong legs from my cycling days but they seem to have become stronger with the endurance running I’ve been doing. I guess I’ve been pushing myself a lot harder at late. I’ve also developed more mental strength to hang in there and push the barriers.

This morning I finished a batch of marking, although I really should have done another batch today.

Speaking of marking, I better go running now as an excuse to procrastinate

Selling my Zen Touch on eBay, just in case anyone wants to purchase it outside of eBay give me an oi.

My sister and I have both just ordered a couple tiny Zen Neeon’s.

Thanks to Warrick for this pic. Click to enlarge.

Today I’ve been researching an installation of rainwater tanks in my home, and found a few interesting links about sustainable living in Adelaide that I’ve placed on the right of this page in the sidebar, under ‘Living in Adelaide?’.

Thanks to Nai for this joke:

Two men dressed in Pilots’ uniforms walk up the aisle of the plane.

Both are wearing dark glasses, one is using a guide dog, and the other is tapping his way along the aisle with a cane.

Nervous laughter spreads through the cabin, but the men enter the cockpit, the door closes, and the engines start up. The passengers begin glancing nervously around, searching for some sign that this is just a little practical joke. None is forthcoming.

The plane moves faster and faster down the runway and the people sitting in the window seats realize they’re headed straight for the water at the edge of the airport.

As it begins to look as though the plane will plough into the water, panicked screams fill the cabin. At that moment, the plane lifts smoothly into the air. The passengers relax and laugh a little sheepishly, and soon all retreat into their magazines, secure in the
knowledge that the plane is in good hands.

In the cockpit, one of the blind pilots turns to the other and says, “You know, Bob, one of these days, they’re gonna scream too late and we’re all gonna f*#kin’ die.”

Sven sent me a link (NY Times) about how Dr Brooks, a scientist, has proven lactic acid to actually be a fuel for muscles, rather than a waste product of energy produced by muscles.

I find this extremely hard to believe since it means that lots of people are very very wrong. I did a quick googling and found a more thorough explanation, but still, I’d love to get a handle of Dr Brooks’ PhD thesis. If I do, and then if I do and actually read it, I’ll give my summary of how this proof is reality. Comment below if you would like this

Do you live in Australia? Have you heard of ACF, the Australian Conservation Foundation? Well now you have!

Go to GreenHome immediately, and find out how you can help Australia once again become self-sustainable so our grandchildren can enjoy the country the way we’ve been fortunate to enjoy it.

http://www.acfonline.org.au/greenhome

GreenHome has a really cool user login system where you can set yourself challenges to personally become more sustainable by committing yourself to certain tasks. Each tasks benefits to the environment are tallied up and GreenHome will tell you how much of each resource you have saved to date.

If you join this GreenHome Challenge by the 25th of May 2006 you go into the draw to win a $1,000 1.2kL rainwater tank!

ACF GreenHome is definitely the central place to go to for Australians to become more environmentally aware, and make a difference to our long-term sustainability.

Besides GreenHome, ACF run plenty of other campaigns for you to use as a central reference point for information, such as Marine, Salinity, Climate Change, Rivers & Water, to name a few:
http://www.acfonline.org.au/campaigns

If you are reading this I’d love it if you comment below on anything interesting you’ve found out as a result of this website.

My aim for 2006 is to install a MASSIVE rainwater tank