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Hit my pre-Xmas target. Now 7th on the leaderboard - the 4th team. Stopping for Xmas.

Came across this great gadget for the Google homepage:

By Rob Kodey
Watch the Netflix Prize Leaderboard, right from your Personal Homepage! NEW: Wide Mode option. NEW: See how team scores are improving. See how teams are moving up and down the Leaderboard. User Preferences control the display. Comments, feedback, and suggestions welcome.

I can now watch my progress without leaving Google. Great.

Also started trialling Mathematica (so that I can hide my mathematical ignorance from my family!). It looks very powerful, but its going to take some time to figure out how to work it.

Presented latest model to family for mathematical analysis. Roundly condemned for its inadequacy. Back to the drawing board...

I've been wrestling with a deceptively formula for about a week and a half now. I cannot get it to yield up anything exciting (and that's before I try and code it). This project can absorb a lot of time!

Gave my daughter some more differentiation. Tested the results with some numbers in Excel - she'd got it right. It gave her great joy to apply her school maths course to a real problem and get a result. Perhaps we should figure out a way of getting all kids to solv real problems in the maths class. It might encourage maths takeup.

I think we have a new partnership. I come up with the ideas and she figures out the maths and I program the maths. It should speed things up.

Enlisted my daughter and a friend of hers to produce a mathematical function for me. Pleased to see that the A level maths course is proving useful.

Complaints about the noise of the computers at night. It looks like the proverbial garage might become a literal garage. Have toyed with the idea of putting the computer in the shed - its good and cold, but unfortunately I think it would get stolen.