A tale of failing

My beloved bicycle elegently lean on a post in Melbourne Central

Some time ago, I was unfortunate to lose a 2.5 year old friend -- my purple mountain bike. The rear wheel axle was found broken.

As an enthused mechanical engineering student, I naturally had some though of the causes of the failure. After the dissection of the rear hub, and carefully examined the broken edge of the axle, I hypothesized that the axle was failed by fatigue due to cyclic bending load.


shiny or grainy broken surface of the axle suggested that the failure was due to fatigue.

Fatigue is a kind of failing mode which happens when cyclic tensile load is applied to the material. Unlike yielding, it can occur below the yielding stress of a material. Also, unlike human, fatigue of an engineering material cannot be recovered by resting.


Side view of the broken axle

Since the an axle was not subjected to torsion, it was unlikely that the axle was failed under torsion load. This hypothesis is also confirmed by the broken surface. If one examined carefully, it can be noticed that the broken surface is flat. Normally, in fatigue under torsion load, the broken surface would be in cone.

Since the bicycle is no longer performing its function due to broken rear axle (in other words, it fails to meet its objective), I cannot sell it. In fact, I would like to sell it, but no one will buy it (at least I had tried the Cash Converters).

So, lets give an honour to my beloved bicycle for its contribution during its life time.

Adventure to Dights Falls

In an attempt to practice my jotting skills, the delivery of this document was expedited. A description of the adventure to Dights Fall would be expected in this document.


The first spot of interest during this trip was Ceres Environment Park. There was a market in the park. Many things were sold there, which includes lots of vegetables.


Some living chickens can be found in the market.


And also some pumpkins.


And also some carrots.


And also some soaps.


During the this trip, many different kinds of track were used. This is track is a track that situated besides the Merri Creek.


We also crossed some bridges.


And climbed some hills.


Belief it or not, we even took a train.


Along the track, some interesting machineries were noticed. This is a wind mill.


This is a crane.


And this is the Merri Creek.


Naturally, when there is a river, there would be some bridges. And this arc bridge is one of them.


This is another bridge. Take note of the interesting structure of this bridge.


At some point, we stopped in the middle of somewhere to take some pictures. (This is why I had so many pictures posted here.)


To prove that I had taken many pictures, I posted this one. Can you see the city from here?


Lastly, we reached our destination -- Dights Falls.



And then, I took some more pictures at Dights Falls.


Before ending the journey, the crew had a lunch at Dights Falls.


The crew members consist of ...


Crew member 1, and


Crew member 2, and

Crew member 3.


[Due to the nature of thing goes, some details of location were deliberately left out.]

Exam Results

2005 Semester 1 results are out!

Suddenly the day seemed gloomy; and everything appeared to be black and white. I almost had a heart attack and totally despaired of life.

And then, I remembered Forrest Gum's mother once said, "Life is like a box of chocolate -- you never know what you go'nna get."

So, I took the picture above -- hoping that it would do me some good.

Epilogue of Sydney Trip June 2005

more...

During this trip, all of the pictures where taken with a Kodak DX6490. This is my first attempt of documenting the whole trip with a digital camera. There are some benefits and catches along the way.

Firstly, credit goes to the sharp images and nice contrast from this Kodak built camera. It is also much more lighter than my near-to-extinction Nikon F50 SLR camera. Weight is a very important constraint for a backpacker who is attempting to travel as much as possible with foot. The powerful 10x Schneider zoom lenses mounted on this Kodak camera is indeed very useful for (my humble attempt to) creative photographing.

However, the focusing system of this build is not perfect. I had made several mistakes by focusing the wrong object. It is not as straight forward as a SLR camera when trying to focus some tricky foreground/background object. The focusing system and the image processing are slow as well.

The lenses are not 'wide' enough. Naturally, I missed the 24mm wide angle lens of my Nikon SLR a lot. Nevertheless, for general usage, the Schneider lens are very satisfactory.

Another common problems with a digital camera are battery life and memory limitation. Unfortunately, I was faced with both of the problems in this trip. These problems can be easily solved with a portable battery charger and having access to an internet cafe.

Other minor problems are limited aperture range (f2.8-f8.0), limited exposure range (1/1000-16"), and very rough pixel at ISO 800.

Since this was my n-th [where n>1] trip to Sydney, I had attempted to avoid taking typical postcard shots (as I had attempted in the previous trips). However, this sort of avoidance proved to be difficult. My subconscious tended to drive myself walking to a similar spot, taking similar pictures as my previous trips.

Lastly, an advertisement for my DeviantArt web page goes here. Interesting bits are categorized under 'photography'.

Snoopy's Trip to Sydney

This is a brief report on Snoopy's trip to Sydney during last week.


Before the trip, Snoopy had a nice dream on the mouse.


Snoopy travelled to Sydney by bus. The bus departed from Franklin St., Melbourne at 8pm. Bus is by far the cheapest transportation to Sydney that Snoopy can find.


The first stop that Snoopy visited in Sydney was University of New South Wales. This picture was taken after Snoopy toured around the department of Mech & Manuf Eng.


A self-portrait of Snoopy taken in the YHA. It was a miserable rainy day. The background was another YHA building opposite the Central Station in Sydney.


Snoopy visited places outside of the Sydney Opera House.


Another picture taken with a landmark of Sydney as background.


After a day of 'attempt to measure distance by foot' in Sydney, Snoopy was too tired. Hence, he slept on the bed in YHA.


During the trip, a wide range of transportations was used. Apart from buses, Snoopy also travelled by train. This picture was taken inside a train. The train and bus systems in Sydney are marvelous (except more expensive than Melbourne).


Since Snoopy likes seafood, he visited the fish market.


Snoopy travelled on a ferry to Manly Island. Yet another kind of transportation used.


On Manly beach, Snoopy found an unoccupied sand castle. Thus, he promptly captured it.


On the way home, Snoopy travelled by bus again.