Want a thrilling bike ride?

I just realised I have cycled through one of the so called "super-haunted" roads in Singapore....alone at dusk...

Old Choa Chu Kang Road

Its an old section of neglected road off Jalan Bahar near NTU and i kinda like cycling along Jalan Bahar in the evenings.....

I chanced upon this road on the way back to campus around 7-8pm and so i tried going along it for like 200 or so meters. And then i got freaked out when with the total abscence of sound and the general spookiness surrounding this:




And so i turned the Jamis, powered on the LED headlamps and hightailed it out of there. I have never cycled so fast before, on max gear , and pumping the cranks , wishing i had done the sane thing and just got a driver's license anf brought a car instead.

*goes red*

Fear is irrational, but when i grips you at the wrong moments, you'd do anything to feel relief....


And so, if you think life is boring and you want a cheap thrill, go buy a bike and cycle along this road alone at night or dusk.


Cheers from the,

Matrix

Magically disappearing cash...

Cycling is turning out to be quite an expensive hobby, already chalked up like 100 bucks worth of repairs and accessories AFTER buying the Jamis. Without adding in the gloves mom bought me when she came down with dad and sis last weekend for a short hop over to Indonesia....

makes any nerd look bad ass.....

Truth be told, they are not cycling gloves (i recommend stuff from FOX for bikers) , these are gym gloves for weight lifting and training, but i figured, if it can protect your hands from metal grips of 100 kg dumb bells, a bike handle should be fine no?

I like the black leather upholstery on the palm area and the padding. Plus, the RBK logo look pretty cool on the forefinger. Now Reebok should start paying me royalties everytime i do an advert for em by waggling my finger at random people....

Ferry to Batam Island , Indonesia

My parents came down from KL for the CNY hols and i booked a room for them on campus at the NEC , i won't bother giving the full name for the abbreviation as only campus mates would know what they mean anyway..... but i must admit, the room was pretty good. Plus the PIE highway was just at out doorstep so getting anywhere was no probs.

The one day Indonesian hop was a disappointment quite frankly. Shopping was not good. Limited choices and pricing was not low as we expected for a supposedly duty free place.

Bad timing for seafood as well. CNY period, so hardly anyone went fishing.

The only saving grace was the boat ride. Bumpy, fast, sea spray on your face , the novelty of watching people going green with sea sickness....... ho ho.




Going out for supper seems to not be a prob these days since roomie brought over his Wheeler to campus. Its got better components than mine and despite being like 5 years old, is lighter too.

Shimano Deore rear derailleur , Alivio shifters , Shimano crankset.

Despite hardly maintaining it.....err.....i mean zero maintainance.......its got no rust on it. Deore parts are definitely made of some hardened anti corrosion alloy. Probably with a bit of chromium thrown in...about 11 wt% or something (yikes, materials science knowledge creeping in there somehow...... =S )

5 years of hardship equals this :

We were cycling back from a 24/7 McD at Pioneer after filling up on prosperity burgers and curly fries and milo , when he downshifted on the slope near NEC, and one of the spokes on the rear crankset broke.

Mmmm, brittle failure, too much chromium or work hardening?


Neways, upgrade plans for my Jamis the coming semester:

1) new pedals from Shimano to replace the lousy plastic ones.

2) a waterproof backpack, my canvas bag keeps getting sweat soaked....

3) crankset upgrade to Shimano Deore LX

4) Avid mechanical disc brakes (will only buy them when my Shimano V brakes get totalled)

Deore LX, 50g heavier than the top of the line XTR


XTRs are SGD200 more, 50g lighter is not worth that in my opinion.

Cheers from the,

Matrix

Final Disclosure

Ok, high time i did a proper post on what I had been involved in for the past 5 months.


I had been part of a truly awesome team which designed and built this baby in 5 months. And we are really proud of what we had pulled off, despite some setbacks and disapointments and annoyances along the way.



for the record, we are called LMTForce (Launch Mechanism Task Force) , i guess it took someone 5 mins or so to come up with it, sure got a ring to it though..... :P

Okay, this is my second time building a rube goldberg machine of sorts. Its basically a chain reaction machine for the purpose of entertainment.

The first one was this:



It took BC, YQ , Vee and me a month to plan and build it. Cost = S$0.00

Boxes are nicked from NTU libraries, tennis balls from me, Masking tape and binding materials were from YQ.

We entered it into a rube goldberg challenge the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering school was holding, and we came in second.








Now, Singapore will be hosting the 2010 Youth Olympics and NTU will be the Olympic Village (the reason a lot of people are now worried about losing their rooms). I am pretty sore about NTU just offering to host the athletes without caring for the student population which will be denied rooms.

Now I have no idea how its going to work. Maybe we can get rooms after the Games are over or something. But this is another story altogether.

The point is, on that day, the Youth Olympic Games committe (hence will be refered to as YOGs) came down to take a look at what sort of machines we were building , and then approached Iris later :

meet our boss...

Iris was in charge of the organising team for the rube goldberg challenge, and then she contacted me and i was hooked and managed to rope in BC and YQ. And then we decided to make her the boss again....cause she's awfully good at running teams and projects. She liasoned with profs and lab techs and just made things smooth for us to work. Awesome :P


And so we had meetings........

brainstorming into the morning

showing full scale drawings for visualization. BC adding in details and improvements suggested by the rest.

food keeps us happy and ok with the idea of working late

And so, after 2 weeks, we came up with a not-so-finalised plan which my Roomie rendered in 3D:


I must say, the final thing was soo different. We were even adding in last minute mechanisms a week before launch date.

But it worked out well, despite the pressure. Cause you see, NTU's name and the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering school's name was on the line if we screwed it. And we sure were reminded of that fact many times, especially during visits by one very annoying and totally beaurecratic chap (LMTF, you know who I mean).

Amongst all the advisers we had, I only truly liked one:

Prof David Butler

We were pissed off after the ceremony had ended cause of 2 issues. One, we had built and tested the machine a 7 ply wooden backdrop. If you don't know what i mean, its the extremely tough plywood used to make concrete moulds for construction of buildings.

The idiotic event company gave us cheap 2mm or so thick plywood. We had to wait for it to be reinforced later on before we could start assembly on site.

And to top things off, after the whole thing was over, the YOG committee which wanted the machine taken to their exhibition centre brought a idiotically sized truck to transport it.

Idiots forgot about 2 things.

How the hell are you supposed to move it when you gave us cheap plywood in the first place? The damn thing flexes when you try to shift it.

And how the hell are you going to move it WITHOUT dismantling it?

Cause we were under the impression that after event day, our job was done. Apparently not. Cause we now have to reconstruct it again for exhibition purposes after taking it apart for transportation.

I don't mind doing that, cause i want to see closure to this whole project. But NOT during semester. Call us back in July please.

*apologies for the ranting*

We then decided to sod it and went to celebrate with Butler. He handled the bill after witnessing the previous night's fiasco. Even came down around 12 am to keep us happy with chocolates. Call me cheap, but you can make me very happy by just handing me some chocs.

New York, New York has pretty good food.




even master eater cannot finish half of that

describing what pressure feels like..

Technical Details

Its quite a machines cause we can almost guarantee success everytime we run it. A lot of mechanisms ad manual triggers and switches behind in case things do not go well.

For example, one mechanism was an arrow being shot form a bow. The bow was strung and held by electromagnets which would turn off when a microswitch is hit by a previous mechanism.

We designed the circuit to accomodate a manual switch behind to turn off the magnet manually.

A TV with live feed was positioned backstage to help us view the whole thing in action and to manually trigger mechanisms which did not go off.

On the event day, only the arrow failed to go off, and noone except us knew it was manually triggered.

Now you do too.........



Final Expenses : S$ 8000

Pictures!...

The team

:P




Event venue @ Singapore Management University


backstage

our work area for a month, and our much better quality backdrop.

It was by far the largest project i have ever worked on. And was quite an experience.



Cheers from the,

Matrix

The Machine which launched the 2010 Singapore Youth Olympics Logo

I was part of a 11 man team who built this baby in a month following 4 months of planning and preparation.

Sucked the life out of us for a month, but the end result was the first Rube Goldberg machine to be almost guaranteed 100% success on the event day.

Enjoy!


Cheers from the,

matrix

¡Perfecto! (Project Direct 2009 Finalist)

Awesome!

how to say i love you.

This has got to be the most out of character post i have ever done (generally not much of a romantic type) , but what a move!

Teaser :P

A little insight into what i had been working on with a really awesome team for the past 5 months.

More info later, keep watching this space :P



Cheers from the,

Matrix

We all change with the years....

Yeaps, the kid on the right is me and on the left is my oldest friend ever, Jeremy Ryan De Silva. Got this pic from his last night. Good days.

Knew the chap since i was 7 , on my first day at primary school. And my my, have we both changed a lot.....

not very flattering , but yeah , i used to be sleepy in A Lvls


nice hairdo mate...

So , this kind of got me thinking.....how much have I changed? A lot i must say , a lot since even A Lvls.

Gone is the scrawny chap from Form 5. Gone is the mama's boy from A Lvls. 18 months of making my own decisions in uni sure changes one's way of thinking. Maturity comes and with it comes that trait called knowing one's priorities.

I do miss the comfort of home. More ever whenever i return from a short holiday of doing nothing but bum about the house eating food and watching the telly. Its burn period everytime i return to Singapore , but it so totally worth it.

I have made extremely close friends here , people i can count on and trust. I have become much more vocal , unabashed to just go up to a random person and say "hi!". Its been a 180 degree turn from the quiet goody kid i used to be.

Much more sarcastic , much more sharp with words , though the past year has thought me heck a lot about being subtle , being less robotic and caring more for the feelings of others.

But watch out! When the need arises i can bite with words , and can outgun a lot of people in a verbal battle.

Truly we all change with ever passing year. I know i will in the coming 12 months. More ballsy maybe (the product of my new mountain biking hobby) , a trait i must admit , has to be kept in check unless i want to end up in hospital.


And so, here is to another great and adventurous and enjoyable year. 2008 was fabulous and so will 2009 be.




Cheers from a very optimistic and happy,


Matrix