Antarctica

Today I woke to two emails. The first was from our collaborator at Microsoft in Seattle, bringing us up-to-date on what he's been doing, including his trip to Antarctica at Christmas. He sent me this photo of a penguin falling off a iceberg that's too good not to share. He'll be attending our workshop in Edinburgh this summer, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about his trip. The other was from an Australian energy company offering to fund some work. As is my usual tactic, I'll not charge to have a look at their models - to see why we're rather slow at solving them - but I set out the costs if we have to do any real work. 

I also received a letter saying that we'd paid off our mortgage, and that the title deeds would be arriving soon! It's one of life's milestones, but it won't make a lot of difference to us, as the payments were getting very small by the end. 

Earlier I'd walked Django on a cold and sunny morning, with just a sprinkling of snow, that was melting as soon as it came out of the shadows.

I worked from home, finishing all I can do for now on integrating the new solver, and switch to studying another of our solvers to see how I can implement a feature that several clients are keen to have. I was finding it difficult until I went out for some groceries and thought of a new direction in which to probe the code to understand what to do.

Back from shopping, in no time my hunch was proved correct.

Tonight, I'll be walking Django again, and afterwards I'll be able to start adding new code - unless the AFCON football gets exciting