A past time activity

Both problems were indeed sorted out today, more or less. Peter replied to my email first thing this morning, but his reply was almost as coherent as my question. I'll sort that out later. As for "normal form", it wasn't defined in the lecture, so I asked. All it means is that U_xx, U_xy and U_yy all have coefficient 1. As their coefficients in that question are currently 1+x² and 1+y², achieving this could be rather entertaining.

Today's lecture was on the Wave Equation, which was interesting, but a little confusing. I'm very out of practice when it comes to actual integration and so forth. My course of study this year hasn't involved getting my hands dirty much - it's been fairly theoretical - so this sudden finding of general solutions left, right and centre is a new experience.

Memorably, Peter today accused us all of "sitting there like lumps of potato". We deserved it - no one was answering his fairly simple question. Normally I would answer a question in class only after being driven up the wall by the stupidity of my classmates, but today I was too sleepy even for that. Pathetic excuse, yeah, I know. Lecturing probably sucks more often than it rocks.