Tuesday, February 21

Home, 23:30

I went to Arcada this morning under a clear bright sky. The weather was suddenly very warm. I spent the morning taking first year students through the outer limits of xsl transformations, and by lunchtime some of them were doing it and some of them were puzzled.

Then I met Riita to discuss the next steps in creating a joint sports psychology/synthetic worlds project. We planned the lecture that I will give to her first year students in two weeks time. Then I left for home, where I found my wishes more than met. The snow-plough had finally been down our road and the result was a flat (albeit still artificially narrow) road anyone can walk or drive down. There was another result in that the snow-plough had created a neat, one metre high wall of hard, compressed snow along the front edge of our drive.

The wall was about 1.5 metres wide and a nice triangle shape composed of commpressed snow that had thawed slightly and then frozen again. I had been planning to take the car for a drive but it was simply impossible to get it out before clearing the wall. Clearing it involved several hours and the use of an ice axe, and well as spades. By the time it was finished it was dark and my shoulders and back were aching. The drive was cancelled.

Naa’s iPod has gone wrong again, and I had promised to fix it. I had a cup of tea and set to. I have just finished, by which I mean that I have just decided that it is beyond repair. I went through the same precedure as last time, but the result was that twenty minutes ago two colored circles grew across the screen and the light went off. The circles are still visible when the iPod switched off so I think I have destroyed the screen itself.

Ho hum.