As we eat a fair few minties at work, i decided that we should be able to recreate the Minties cartoon sequence.  It was a little more tricky than i first anticipated because after a short time i realised that although the same cartoons would appear, the adjacent cartoon would be different on some wrappers.  I remember seeing a blog where someone else found the same thing and then threw the idea into the too hard basket.

Of coarse there must be an explanation.  I toyed with the idea that there could be multiple rolls and that i would need to do a statistical analysis and calculate the probability of multiple rolls.  I then had the idea that maybe there could be a single roll with duplicate cartoons and so i set to prove my single roll theory.  If i could make a single chain out of the wrappers, that loops and uses all the cartoons then it would be true; else there would be cartoons left over proving there are multiple rolls.

I suspected that a tally of each cartoon sighting should be similar except for duplicates which should be seen more frequently.  After making a successful sequence using all the cartoons, I tried taking a subset of the sequence to try and make more than one repeating sequence that includes all the cartoons and could not find a way.

I now conclude that there are 18 cartoons on the roll with the diagonal edge pattern.  There are 3 duplicate cartoons which leaves 15 unique cartoons on the roll.

Update 17 Jan 2010:  Barry Mitchell has challenged my single roll theory, calling it an 'Official Challenge'.  In do so, he presented me with a solution using the same wrappers but splitting the sequence into two separate rolls.  The solution looks to be valid to me and is more likely to be the real sequences since the horizontal pattern has two rolls as well.

I haven't scanned the horizontal wrappers yet.

When one of Laiken Newcombe's bottom teeth fell out, his little brother Blayne felt that he should have a souvenir tooth to carry around as well.

"Mum, I want a wiggly tooth too" Blayne said.  Renee told Blayne that when he's older, he will be sure to have a few wiggly teeth.  Being an impatient little boy, he wanted his wiggly tooth right now so Renee told Blayne that if he asked me then I would rip his tooth out right now.  I agreed appearing to be delighted at the opportunity to cause him some pain.  I tried to make the tooth extraction process sound horrible but the little bastard called my bluff.

I asked questions like, "Is it ok if i knock the ones out next to it?" and "Can i take out one of your other bigger teeth?".

I then told Renee that i would need to use her tenderizer mallet and some sort of chisel.  She opened the cuttelry drawer and handed me a metal hammer and a butter knife for prying the tooth out.  I took the two banged them together hard while telling Blayne that i was just getting a bit of practice before I started on his tooth.  I expected him to change his mind about the tooth but he didn't.  I then had to ask myself whether i was prepared to go to the next level where i put him in some awkward position so that i could get at his tooth.

Meh, he wins this one, i couldn't be bothered.  I decided to change the subject.

Today Noel and Amy and I went to the range to let off a few rounds.  Noel organized a 3pm start because the majority of shooters have left by then and we can have more freedom to walk on the range at that time of day.  After the sign-in process we got straight to business.

Ken English was sharing the range with us, he told us that he had come to the range to shoot off all his old ammo so he offered Noel, Amy and myself the opportunity to fire the handguns that he had brought to the range.

We shot off 300 rounds out of Noel's Glock and about mag or two each for Ken's guns.  At 40c per round, it's not exactly the cheapest hobby you could find but hey, you get to shoot shit. 

On Sunday we took the solar car for a run.  While we were gone we closed up the solar car trailer, but when we opened it up again after we came back there was a tree snake curled up on the floor.

Tree snakes are not very dangerous so I picked it up.  I can’t really say ‘him’ because I don’t know what sex it was, and if I say ‘him / her’ it sounds a bit stupid, so let’s just say ‘it’.