It has been a long month-and-a-bit since I last had the time to write a proper post here. Primarily this is because I am not very good at doing more than one thing at a time – at least while attempting to do those things properly – and I have been working on some real research papers, which I thought I should try to do properly. As a result science communication, and blogging in general, has had to wait. But I will get back in the swing of things very soon: there are some interesting new results, some interesting rehashes of old arguments about inflation, and one of my own papers that I will write about over the next couple of weeks.
One of the many things that I omitted to mention during this little break was the fact that Blank On The Map had its first anniversary a couple of weeks ago. All in all, I would say it has been quite a satisfying year of blogging, and, at least relative to my prior expectations, a reasonably successful one too. Blogger doesn't provide me with many detailed statistics, but it does tell me that despite the low recent rate of new postings, there have been roughly 23,000 clicks over the last twelve months. A sizeable portion of of this traffic came from one link on Peter Woit's blog (boy he must have a huge number of readers!) – though the majority appear to arrive via Google search, either by accident or design.
Anyway, to all those who have arrived here at some point over the last year, welcome! I hope you found what you were looking for, and enjoyed what you read. This explains what this blog is about. In case you haven't worked your way through the archives, here is a short selection of some highlights from the last year:
I should also use this post to try to get some feedback from (all three) regular readers. Do you think I should post more often? Less often? More posts about cosmology and fewer about mountaineering and other stuff in general? Or the other way round? Let me know through the comments box. Constructive criticism of the writing style or any other aspect of this blog will also be well received, though I can't promise to change ...
One of the many things that I omitted to mention during this little break was the fact that Blank On The Map had its first anniversary a couple of weeks ago. All in all, I would say it has been quite a satisfying year of blogging, and, at least relative to my prior expectations, a reasonably successful one too. Blogger doesn't provide me with many detailed statistics, but it does tell me that despite the low recent rate of new postings, there have been roughly 23,000 clicks over the last twelve months. A sizeable portion of of this traffic came from one link on Peter Woit's blog (boy he must have a huge number of readers!) – though the majority appear to arrive via Google search, either by accident or design.
Anyway, to all those who have arrived here at some point over the last year, welcome! I hope you found what you were looking for, and enjoyed what you read. This explains what this blog is about. In case you haven't worked your way through the archives, here is a short selection of some highlights from the last year:
- Steven Weinberg and the 'Crisis of Big Science'
- An explanation of a dark matter controversy
- A question of probability
- The dog who climbed a mountain
- The Structure of a Scientific Revolution
- Explaining Planck by analogy
I should also use this post to try to get some feedback from (all three) regular readers. Do you think I should post more often? Less often? More posts about cosmology and fewer about mountaineering and other stuff in general? Or the other way round? Let me know through the comments box. Constructive criticism of the writing style or any other aspect of this blog will also be well received, though I can't promise to change ...
Given that I read your blog, I would obviously prefer you posted more often. However, I'm also a collaborator, so only post more often if you have time to!
ReplyDeleteI like the mountaineering posts (as well as the cosmology ones, but the mountaineering ones are new to me, so I thought it worth pointing out).
I don't have any constructive criticism. Try using more of the letter b.
Although I come here to read about cosmology, I don't object to posts on other topics. As for how often you should post, that depends on what other projects you're working on; I can certainly relate to your remark about not being very good at doing more than one thing at a time!
ReplyDeleteMaybe when you complete a paper, you could give us a brief summary of its contents and implications, to sort of tide us over until you produce (if you so choose) a relatively full, in-depth discussion. For that matter, if you come across work by others that you find noteworthy, you could give a reference (or a link) to it and, perhaps, a brief account of why you find it significant.
In any case, keep up the good work!
Thanks for the positive feedback! There is now another post up for you to read. The idea of putting up a little summary of my own papers up here is something I've already thought of. I will certainly write about the next paper I put on the arXiv!
ReplyDelete