Conda packages are now available for most of the underworldcode suite of software (Underworld, UWGeodynamics, Lavavu, Stripy) from the geo-down-under conda channel. Let’s face it. Users don’t want to spend time compiling code on their machine. It is time consuming, requires some specific skills and creates unnecessary hurdles in a workflow.

As the old truism states, the best way to learn is by doing. This is terribly unhelpful since, really, you can't 'do' anything until you learn. This is a Catch-22 that every grad student encounters; doubly so when it comes to anything involving code, where daily life provides very little in the way of intuition. Unlike other geodynamic modelling software, Underworld is designed to be approached with code.

Version 2.8 of Underworld has been released recently. As with all major releases, this release brings numerous new features, enhancements and bug fixes. A summary of changes may be found within the usual CHANGES.md file. As is also usually the case, numerous API changes have been necessary or warranted.

Zenodo is a repository for immutable versions of software that are provided with a persistent DOI for the purposes of citation and reproducibility.   Underworld can be cited via a zenodo DOI. There is a master DOI for all releases (10.5281/zenodo.1436039) and releases after 2.6.0 are automatically given a DOI _under the master_.

Well, at least partially self-updating. You still will have to write the sentences and all that… Suppose you are at the beginning of a project and have written some classes.

Silvio Peroni has recently created LODE (Live OWL Documentation Environment;

I spend a lot of my time arguing that many of the problems in the research community are caused by journals. We have too many, they are an ineffective means of communicating the important bits of research, and as a filter they are inefficient and misleading. Today I am very happy to be publicly launching the call for papers for a new journal. How do I reconcile these two statements? Computation lies at the heart of all modern research.