The Home of Tom & Morven

A short movie by Jordan & vi. If it takes too long to load, you may be best off downloading it below, or getting a copy of the DVD from me.

A Brown Cat Brown Dog movie by Jordan and Vi

File Size: 70.6 MB

My buddy Sven just sent me his latest short movie he made with a couple others. I warn you this is completely disgusting, and if you don’t like gore then definitely download and watch this because it will break you in

X the movie, by Sven

File Size: 17.3 MB

Austra VS Italy in the World Cup:

Due to the game being so dissappointing, I almost forgot to write about this. On Monday night I had the guys around to watch the Australia VS Italy game. Inspired by Ben’s awesome waffles he made for us for the Australia VS Croatia game, I also catered extremely well. The night kicked off with a few hours of poker, leading into the game. I don’t really want to talk about that.

I do want to say though, that it’s been absolutely awesome to see Australia exhibit such world class football over the last couple weeks.

Thanks to Morv for this.

Have you ever wondered if you may have some old, forgotten, lost superannuation funds? Are you anxious about your old superannuation funds being eaten away by fees and charges? The Australian Tax Office has the answer. All you need to do is plug in your tax file number and it does all the grunt work for you.

You can also try at the AUSfund Member Search.

Of course, if you find any bling as a result of reading this post I demand a 10% cut.

• Are you sick of getting sick?
• Do you want to avoid getting any of the three currently most common influenza strains?
• Do you have $12 and a Medicare card?

If you answered yes to all of the above, then do what I did, and go to the new medical clinic on The Parade, Norwood, halfway between Portrush Rd and the Norwood Hoyts complex. Ask at reception for a flu shot, and if it’s not too busy you won’t have to wait any time at all. So for $12 ($50 without Medicare) you can avoid getting influenza this winter. Unfortunately for me I went at peak hour and had to wait for three hours

My brother Mike requested I discuss a few things on my blog.

Firstly, he requested I write about the story of me wearing a cardboard box over myself as I crawled through the Norwood Hoyts cinema complex when I was younger and much more foolish. It all started when a few friends and myself (I can’t really remember who exactly was there) were walking down the street alongside the Norwood Hoyts complex, and someone jumped into this big refrigerator box outside a building. This was funny, as when everyone walked past he jumped out. I decided to one-up him, and walk along the footpath with it over me. This prompted me to dare someone to wear it walking past a restaurant on the parade, which prompted them to dare me crawling through the entire Norwood Hoyts complex with it over me. So I did.

We started from the back to give me a chance to put it on without being seen, and I just crawled my way down to the front, slowly and painstakingly. You could hear many people laughing from the restaurant, and I was really nervous. I remember the distinct sounds of my friends laughing with (at) me from afar, but close enough to back me up in case anyone gave me any stick. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, some random stranger from the restaurant rugby-tackled me, and my cover was blown. I quickly put it back on and continued towards the automatic doors at the front of the complex, totally confused why a stranger would rugby-tackle a box.

Suddenly, the box hits something, and a pair of shiny black shoes poke into the box from the floor. A deep, serious, manly voice says “This is not a playground, kid. Get out of here.. and take that box with you.” So I did.

The second thing Mike requested was to mention this cool video of a robot solving the rubix cube. You can download it from its original website, or download my saved copy from here:

Robot solving the rubics cube

File Size: 2.0 MB

From the last half-marathon race I did I won a $130 voucher to Joggers World. Yesterday I went in there to find things to spend it on, and I don’t need running shoes because I already have three pairs that I rotate between, so I spoke to an informative person about electrolyte, energy, and carbohydrate drinks. Between the massive amounts of drinks, energy bars, and a pair of socks this all came to $130, but then I told them how they owed me $130.

They told me I had to go and pick up the piece of paper that says this from the SARRC (South Australian Road Runners Club). This is great, but when I went to the SARRC office straight from Joggers World, I discovered that no one is in either of their two offices on Mondays. Why they don’t just have one person in on Monday and one person in on Tuesday is beyond me, because then people could go there any day of the week without dissappointment. So today after passing back through the city I drop back in to pick up the voucher from SARRC, and go straight back to Joggers World. I gather the dozen or so items up onto the counter, and after much hassle of them finding out the ‘codes’ for all the items, they inform me that the voucher can only be used on shoes. Why!! It’s like having a gift voucher for a record store that you can only spend on rock music - no jazz, no classical, just rock music. Since I can’t go running for the next 6 weeks whilst I’m waiting for a big knife wound in my back to heal, I couldn’t really justify adding a fourth pair of running shoes to my rotational pool, so I just took the voucher and walked out.

If anyone would like to buy a $130 “shoe” voucher for Joggers World for $129 you’re welcome *cough* *tight-arse* *cough* hehehe. It doesn’t have an expiry date, so I guess I’ll just leave it for now. But my quest for electrolyte, energy, and carbohydrate fluids that don’t cost more than beer is still on. And seriously, most of these performance drinks they sell costs more than beer. Does it really cost so much money to construct these drinks? You can make your own electrolyte replacement fluids using water, salt, bi-carb soda and sugar. Sure it has vomit-inducing taste and probably doesn’t work as well as this commercial stuff, but apart from flavourings, what really is in these sports performance drinks? Perhaps when I finish reading this book “Clinical Sports Nutrition” I’ll just be able to make my own sports performance drinks:

Speaking of which, I should hurry up and finish reading it so I can read the other textbooks and the cookbooks in the series.

A joke compliments of my favourite redhead:

A blonde calls her boyfriend and says, “Please come over here and help me I have a killer jigsaw puzzle, and I can’t figure out how to get it started.”
Her boyfriend asks, “What is it supposed to be when it’s finished?”
The blonde says, “According to the picture on the box, it’s a rooster.”
Her boyfriend decides to go over and help with the puzzle. She lets him in and shows him where she has the puzzle spread all over the table.
He studies the pieces for a moment, then looks at the box, then turns to her and says, “First of all, no matter what we do, we’re not going to be able to assemble these pieces into anything resembling a rooster”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cheers to Sven for this beauty!

I was hoping for some biff but a got smash is good enough I guess. As if you can only be wearing shorts and singlet and bounce straight back up again after being hit by a car like that!

Lots of things have been happening in the last fortnight, and I won’t even try to put this into chronological order!

On Tuesday last week I got a phone call from ETSA Utilities, who rang to ask for my postal address so they can send my employment contract to me. This I guess means that I have the job with ETSA, which I haven’t mentioned in my blog yet since I didn’t want to be too preemptive about it. I nearly started working for ETSA in early 2005 although opted to try a PhD instead, so I’m really looking forward to starting work with ETSA. Hopefully it comes in the post early this week, otherwise I’d best find out what happened to it.

On Thursday last week I started volunteer work via Greening Australia, with the Youth Conservation Corps. It was all good and interesting, and I enjoyed working with people I hadn’t met before. I even learnt a few things. However, I only lasted one day before I decided to quit, because of the setup of the program they were running. Because the program is sponsored by the Government for the purposes of giving young people skills to make them suitable for entering the work-force, most of the other volunteers were people that didn’t neccessarily care too much about the work they were doing. The program works such that the team I was assigned to is rostered certain tasks for the week. Since I was an added bonus to the team, all I did for them was to make their job less work, which reduced their individual workload from about 2 hours a day to about 1.5 hours a day, despite them actually “working” for 8 hours a day. I found it hard to believe that people could be doing volunteer work “for the environment” whilst dropping cigarette butts all over the place. In my opinion, the majority of the people that require volunteer work as a means of building up their CV are more likely to benefit from it if the Government pays these “volunteers” a small amount of money such that they can be disciplined for lack of team attitude and work ethics.

I did an extremely hilly 20.3km run on the way home from the job-site of this day of work I did with these people, and at the average pace I did it in after nailing such steeply ascending hills, I think I can say I’m fit to do the Adelaide August marathon this year in at least the 3:15 mark. (Previously I have been hoping to do it in sub 3 hours, but I have been sick on and off for about 6 weeks this year with a virusy type thing).

Sometime last week I cleaned and detailed my motorbike the best I ever have, and took heaps of photos of it. Click on the image below to see all of them.

A lot of my time in the last fortnight has been spent with the lovely Morv. She’s been on holidays which has been really fun but is back at work tomorrow We’ve been for a couple good hikes in Cleland, a DNB event with Technical Itch at the Colonel Light that Eddie organised, together with Darius & Sari, played a game called “pooker” which we’ve devised as a fair way of playing eight-ball together (not quite snooker, and not quite pool, rather more like eight-ball except I have to hit all the balls in in order and she doesn’t, since I’ve played about 1,000 times more pool than she has in her time it puts the game on a level playing-field) and just hung out together in general. The Technical Itch was awesome - I was expecting Tech. Itch to be heavy industrial type DNB but it wasn’t too bad, slightly progressive. We all had an awesome time, but all left by 2am as I think we’re getting old or something. Definitely have to go to some more DNB events in the near future. Morv took me to one of her friend of friends band that played at the Ales and Sails hotel (not somewhere I’d normally go!). The band was called the Lady Beatles - they were a group of chicks (quite young) that play Beatles songs, and their logo is of course a lady beatle! They were very impressive and very talented, it was just unfortunate that there were a few drunks in the pub that felt the need to dance in front of where we were sitting to watch the band. This would be fine if one of the 40 or so year old ladies had not decided to flash her tits, and shortly thereafter moon us. Thankfully I was able to use mind over matter combined with telekinesis to deflect the photons of light beaming from the said “moonie” such that I did not completely burn my retinas, and nor my sanity. I have not been having hallucenagenic nightmares since being mooned at point blank range by this drunk lady due to the quick action I took with the situation, and am trying to move on with my life. I haven’t even required professional counselling…yet.

I also still need to decide on a replacement light-fitting for my bedroom and would like to get some feedback of what you few readers there think of this one. Nai took me shopping for light-fittings and we found this one, which I’m intending on putting in alignment with my desk. So, what do you think? Please, leave a comment!

On another random note, one of my blog entries made it into the South Australian Rogaine Association June Newsletter!! I’ve saved a copy of the newsletter for my personal safe-keeping:

June 2006 SARA Newsletter

File Size: 1.3 MB

What else have I been up to lately.. well the marking of assignments and stuff for uni is nearing complete. I finished all the “assignments” and just have to finish this marking 44 reports that are maximum of 2,000 words each, and then I’m done for good - can’t wait!! Speaking of which, I best get this done ASAP. It is so hard to motivate myself to mark assignments though. As my colleague Laura once said, it is “soul-destroying”.