Well, I don’t know if any of you know much about software development, but it seems to be a deeply frustrating business. Basically, every change suddenly has all sorts of unforeseen effects. Or something goes wrong, all of a sudden, and no-one knows why, and then it turns out it was because there’s a comma in the wrong place. Or missing.

I went to a talk by a man called Gary Marcus on Wednesday, basically arguing than our brains are badly put together pieces of kit and computers are much better. Seeing software development up close like this makes me think he’s really missed the point. Yes, computers are more precise at lots of things, but my brain doesn’t malfunction if I read an instruction with a comma in the wrong place! (Although I can sometimes get pretty annoyed by misused apostrophes…) Human brains are a lot more resilient, so surely that means we win?

Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying that the site is still not live as the developers are working overtime to correct some last minute problems. Sorry everyone! If I could code I would be be helping things along faster, but as it is all I can do is complain at them, which apparently we call ‘documenting bugs’.:-)

Scientists and teacher packs, (which include log in details) have all been sent out by now, but of course, no-one can log in until the site is live. It’s all so tantalisingly close! Those of you who are participating, if you can see this page, the site is still not live, I’m afraid. I will email you any more info when I have it.

Enjoy your weekends. I’ll probably be hunched over a computer…