Thesis Pains

Woo. A close one. My neck is fine. You know what they say... no pain, no gain. How is this relevant? You will see shortly. For those of you who are not quite interested in programming/work I suggest you stop reading now and come back another day :). Maybe you can read on and try to see how much you CAN understand - a game, as it were.

Ok. I've been trying to get the bastard dotLRN to work (a learning management system). Everything would install fine right up until the final step. I looked everywhere - dotLRN forums, google, system documentation. Nada. Zilch. So I started to read code to try and see what exactly happens during install... even worse. I mean... read this for an error.log.

So what I do is post into my learning journal (a requirement for my thesis) saying something like "i've tried really hard but I can't install it... will try harder this week". Then I have one last crack at it - this time by downloading everything via CVS. Guess what? Everything works. So I haven't been able to use dotLRN for one and a half weeks because the tarball on the downloads page is worthless. Great. Maybe I should tell the .LRN community.

So there you go, there's my weekend... stuck doing thesis work, but finally getting somewhere. Pain = huting my neck, Gain = progress on the thesis, relevance to the idiom = care factor = 0.

A tip when showering

If you were looking for something vaguely pornographic then i'm afraid you'll be disappointed - very disappointed. However, I will concede that the title has some not-so-clean connotations. Today's blog entry revloves around a particular incident today, as nothing much else happened. What a boring life I lead.

Anyways, I took a shower today. Hooray. Now after the water stopped running I proceeded to dry myself with a towel - nothing strange there. Personally, I start with the hair... so I face the ground and start scrubbing my head with the towel. I do this so that the water droplets from my head fall to the ground as opposed to falling onto my shoulders. So... scrub scrub scrub and crack.

WTF? Crack? Yep. That was my neck. Note: It wasn't the loudest crack ever, but it was a crack nevertheless. I've been in pain all day and I have trouble looking around, woe is me :(. I'm hoping that this pain will go away tomorow.

So here is my tip - when drying wet hair keep your head straight.

Marky The Cancer Champion

That's it, it's official - i'm a Champion. Yes, yes, hold your applause for later. Ok - here's the story.

I'm running the City to Surf, and i'm doing so for two reasons. One, the Engo boys have put up a challenge and I intend to to come out on top. Secondly, it's a good way to fundraise for charity - well in my opinion anyway.

Just so that the boys get their 5 seconds of fame i'll list the Engos competing in this little competition: Jeff,Kieran,Thus,Dinesh, James,Harshu.

As i'm now running to assist in fundraising for the Cancer Council i'd like to ask for sponsors.
You can donate for several reasons, some of which may include:
- Paying to see me attempt to run the 14km
- You're a nice and generous person that wishes to donate to a reputable charity
- I've hassled you too much so you've paid me to get me off your back
One added bonus is that donations to charity are tax-deductible, so for any tight-arses out there, you can actually benefit by donating! Now, whatever the reason, any donations would be greatly appreciated. I promise not to steal any money - you're name goes down on a form so there's no way for me to steal anyway.

The Cancer Council is the leading cancer charity in New South Wales and I believe that they do a very good job - they're the people that organise Daffodil Day, Pink Ribbon Day, and Australia's Biggest Morning Tea. If you want to find more information about the Council with respect to what it does and what it stands for check out the website.

If you wish to donate, please contact me as soon as possible - via email or through the comments. One alternative method of donating is via a secure website: www.cancercouncil.com.au/sponsor - credit card only and use the full name - Mark Homeming. I've already raised $25. $20 dollars from me and $5 courtesy of my lovely sister, Jessica - good on you Jess.

Finally, just as an appreciative gesture i'll post all of the names who have donated in a bog post after the City to Surf. So there's some more incentive for you!

The first of many

Well well well. I've finally bit the bullet and created a damn blog site. The good thing about this is that i can just type in what I want to say and then voila - it's there. It's unbelievable that I actually tried to write a blogging program back in the day. Stupid me, very stupid me.

Questions such as:
So what's doing?
What's going to appear here?
Shouldn't you be doing something more constructive?
may be asked of me. Well I can answer those three questions relatively quickly - i'm bored, who knows, no.

Now that i've given these impecabbly concice answers i'll stop.