Well, I survived the first weekend without the web at home. In fact, it was quite pleasant. I wouldn’t exactly say that I was more productive, but I wasn’t trying to work very hard either. Saturday morning I picked up my fixed Canon Powershot from the shop in Montague Gardens: it is a nice trip, but even on Saturday mornings the roads are clogged. There was a severe minibus taxi accident near the R300 and we had to queue for about 15 minutes. The little camera is fine now, even clearer pictures than before. This problem must have been around for a long time. I tried to take some experimental pictures, but the best I would muster was

That is my backyard through one of those ribbed drinking glasses. Not too amazingly strange, but I’ll keep on experimenting. In fact, on Sunday I went down to the beach, hoping to snap some shots, but it was extremely windy. It almost always is at that beach. I’ll have to wait for a windless day to show you “my” beach, and either go very early or very late. Perhaps I can capture some sunsets. Then I tried going up the mountain to the nature reserve, but the weather was just as bad there, and I didn’t take a single picture on these trips. At home I tried a setup in my garage to photograph a jar of glass pebbles that I have had for the longest time, but that didn’t really work out very well either. Lots of failure, but I’m not daunted. In particular, I have never been able to photograph these pebbles properly. They look so appealing, filtering the sun into golden shafts of light, but it somehow never comes out right. Perhaps they are only for looking at in person…?

So, no more postings over the weekend, but I should try to keep up during the week. So at least let me catch up, if only for my own records. Wednesday was a teaching day. Well, so was Thursday really. Except I also gave a colloquium (poorly attended, badly advertised), and competed in Google Code Jam. Results: so-so, but unfortunately I’m through to the next round, so I’ll have to sacrifice at least half of this coming Saturday. Friday I went for a visit to iThemba Labs, a nuclear research facility near Stellenbosch. They have an enormous cyclotron which they use for producing medical isotopes, radiation therapy, and nuclear physics experiments. The place is HUGE and I had a wonderful tour of just about everything. They are interested in joint research (they have a lot of software that they need to develop and re-develop), but I’m not too hopeful that we can really help them (or they us). The software is safety-critical, but there is little research involved, and I’m not sure if these are the kind of jobs you want to entrust to students. I’m sure they’ll be able to participate in research, but they are really looking for production software. It is a great pity, because this is a unique facility, at least in the Southern hemisphere. They treat a lot of people: South Africans for free, Europeans at a price.

One last note: I planned to produce Mark II of my pinhole camera, but the weather was lousy last week, and this week does not look very promising either. Lots of other work to keep me busy, but still…I am kind of excited to see if I can make it work this time.