Subversion Repositories

When I left Uni I had a what I thought was a good idea...to digitise all of my notes!

The reasoning was sound, I could digitise and sort my notes so they were sortable and easy to store in case I ever wanted to go back to them (and actually learn the stuff they taught me!). However, I quickly realised there were a couple of problems:
1. I have a lot of notes. 4 years worth of lectures, practicals and programs to be precise!
2. I don't have a scanner so OCR/scanning is out
3. I am not typing out that many notes

 So clearly we have to start small. Before I jump into scanning all my notes I decided to work out the storage mechanisms first.

There were a lot of programming modules on my course (well it was Electronic and Software Engineering!) so a source code repository seems like a good start.

I've used Visual SourceSafe from Microsoft before, unfortunately this would require a Windows Server License and a Visual Studio license. Both of these licenses are beyond my target cost of £0. Therefore it falls to another source code control system I've used, SubVersion.

The blurb from SubVersion is...

"Subversion is an open source version control system. Founded in 2000 by CollabNet, Inc., the Subversion project and software have seen incredible success over the past decade. Subversion has enjoyed and continues to enjoy widespread adoption in both the open source arena and the corporate world."

- http://subversion.apache.org/

It didn't take long to set up an Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS server, and then it was simply a matter of finding a tutorial and following it.

So it appears I am indebted to "Arbab" from "Lazy Geek -:)" for his post SVN Server on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with Web Access.

It was concise and easy to understand, in less than hour I had my SVN server set up and working!

As with anything there were a couple of problems post install, though these were predominantly down to me not checking what I was doing. Such as forgetting to perform the chown step on new directories.

But it's now sorted, all I need to do is stop putting of digitising my notes and make a start!

Injury #1

 23/10/2012 (Forgot to Publish)

So yesterday I joined the realms of climbing injuries and popped my first pulley.

Looking back it was quite surreal, I was side pulling on a small crimp (it's really a wooden foot hold) and there was a small crunch. At the time, I thought it was the wooden hold that had settled on the board since it had only been up an hour or so and I was one of the first people on it.

It was when the guy I was climbing with asked "Are you OK?" that I realised something might be up.

As it stood, I was unable to bend my finger fully (it's the ring finger on my left hand) and pulling down on an edge hurts a little. As it's not excruciatingly painful I doubt that I've damaged the tendon, the most logical explanation is a pulley so that's what I'm sticking with.

Of course it's at this point where I started thinking "Shit. What have I done?! Will it ever heal? Will I be able to climb at all? Will it need to be amputated?", well OK that last one is a bit excessive and didn't really go through my mind but the others were all fleeting reactions to my first injury.

The anatomy of the damage is a little hazy for me (Biology was never my strong point), however the following website explains it extremely well; http://www.nicros.com/training/articles/finger-tendon-pulley-injury/

It's interesting reading various opinions round the internet about what to do in case of this injury. The most common piece of advice is to rest it and ice it. However, the length of time to rest it is where the problems start.
The nicros website indicates that the rest period should be from 2 weeks up, however other sources (none of which I have to hand) indicate 1 to 2 weeks. I think it depends on the extent of the injury.

Since I do not know the fully extent of my injury it's hard to gauge how long it'll take to recover. So this is what I did...

Week 1.
What I did do:
No climbing. Minimal exertion of finger, fortunately I have a desk job so this isn't too much hassle.
What I didn't do:
I didn't ice it. I forgot.

Week 2.
What I did do:
Introduction back to climbing for 30mins, no crimpy stuff. For those of you with access to a Beastmaker 1000 finger board, I stuck to the jugs. As soon as it felt stiff or painful I stopped.
What I didn't do:
No ice, no anti-inflammatory's (but it wasn't inflamed!)

14/11/2012

So how is it now?
Well, it's been nearly 4 weeks and the finger no longer hurts. I'm pretty sure that the full range of motion has returned (though since I have no reference other than my right hand I can't be entirely sure. It does not hurt to climb on, however it can be a little stiff after climbing for a little while.

When I'm climbing I try to not to do anything to aggravate it and when I'm not climbing I try to maintain movement.


If such an injury happens again, I will aim to ice it earlier and perhaps rest it for longer with a complete cessation of activity. Lessons learned though!