Spring?

There was a feeling of spring when I went out after lunch to stretch my legs. The sun was out and the wind had dropped, and the temperature was pushing 10C. I went up to Uttershill Castle, with its view out over Penicuik to the Pentlands (see extra). Much of yesterday's snow has melted, despite the frost overnight, and down at Valleyfield Pond some delightful crocuses had come into flower. I completed a circuit of the centre of the town, and returned to my desk, where I'm about to start writing an interface between a popular open-source Maths software system (Octave) and our solver. It won't make any money for us, but when you get the "community support" that I've had from the few Octave people who responded to my proposal, it feels like the right thing to do.