[spooningtamarin]

Simulated annealing is simple. It's just the acceptance criterion of simulated annealing that you are using.

You take the previous solution, and the current one, the difference of the cost (up or down) and plug it into the formula.

Simulated annealing allows some jumps up and jumps down, hill climbing goes only up.

[baldeagle]

And the purpose of the down jumps is to move you away from a local maxima. For example, if you were wanting to climb [any large mountain] and could only gain elevation, then you would fairly easily get stuck in the stairwell of the hotel in the valley.