{"id":1014,"date":"2007-01-11T10:32:29","date_gmt":"2007-01-11T10:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2007\/01\/11\/scienceblogs-the-first-year\/"},"modified":"2007-01-11T10:32:29","modified_gmt":"2007-01-11T10:32:29","slug":"scienceblogs-the-first-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/01\/11\/scienceblogs-the-first-year\/","title":{"rendered":"ScienceBlogs: The First Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One year ago today, Uncertain Principles went live on ScienceBlogs. In honor of the anniversary, here&#8217;s the first year at the new site, in one graph:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/467\/files\/2012\/04\/i-4cfbd06cdbd995464b28adaaa28b28b6-traffic06.jpg\" alt=\"i-4cfbd06cdbd995464b28adaaa28b28b6-traffic06.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Well, ok, that&#8217;s not that informative. In fact, for all you know, that could be an NMR trace from a chem experiment&#8211; the little bump to the right is the reactant, the little bump on the left is the product, and the two big spikes in the middle are solvent. A more informative version is below, along with a few of my favorite posts:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/467\/files\/2012\/04\/i-d73c7013a6cdeea3c21e3f46309b5a0b-traffic06_log2.JPG\" alt=\"i-d73c7013a6cdeea3c21e3f46309b5a0b-traffic06_log2.JPG\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Like a good physicist, I&#8217;ve re-done it as a semi-log plot (which is appropriate, given that the traffic numbers span a couple of orders of magnitude), and I labelled the four visible spikes from the previous graph. In order, those are due to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/02\/top_eleven_time_to_vote.php\">Top Eleven: Time to Vote<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/blogger_sat_challenge_unleashe.php\">The Blogger SAT Challenge<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/local_realism_loopholes_and_th.php\">Local Realism, Loopholes, and the God Delusion<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/12\/all_that_i_want.php\">All That I Want<\/a> (in which I got tenure)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The first two are definitely at the top of the list of the achievements I&#8217;m proudest of on the blog. They both involved a fair amount of work&#8211; the Top Eleven vote was the culmination of a couple of weeks of researching and writing short descriptions of classic physics experiments, while the SAT Challenge took a fair amount of effort from both me and Dave. The fourth is, of course, the highlight of my year, on the blog or off it.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m reasonably happy with the EPR\/ <cite>God Delusion<\/cite> post (which got picked up by Digg), though it wouldn&#8217;t make my top five favorite posts. The post in that vein that I&#8217;m happiest with was the follow-up on <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/atheist_church_socials.php\">Atheist Church Socials<\/a>, which didn&#8217;t get anywhere near the traffic. It&#8217;s too squishily moderate to really drive a lot of traffic, and doesn&#8217;t either insult people or invite insult enough to be a big draw. I put a lot of thought into it, though, and I&#8217;m happy with how it came out.<\/p>\n<p>The most widely cited physics post of the year is probably <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/04\/physics_funding_fundamentalism_1.php\">Physics Funding Fundamentalism<\/a>, which was excerpted in <cite>Seed<\/cite>, and will appear in the <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/clock\/2007\/01\/science_blogging_anthology_the.php\">science blogging anthology<\/a> Bora&#8217;s putting together. That got me a couple of contacts from reporters, as well, which tells me I probably ought to spend more time writing about science funding&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>My other favorite post of the year would have to be <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/01\/how_to_tell_a_true_lab_story.php\">How to Tell a True Lab Story<\/a>. I keep thinking that I ought to polish it up a bit, and see if the Corporate Masters would take it for <cite>Seed<\/cite>, but I keep getting distracted by shiny things and forgetting to send the idea to the editors.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, those are the highlights of the year. I&#8217;ve been pleasantly surprised at how quickly I picked up a much larger readership than I had at the old site (491,000 visits!), and how many people have stuck around. It was especially gratifying to have a hundred-odd people leave congratulatory comments to the tenure post&#8211; thank you all.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been fun so far. I think I&#8217;ll keep it up for a while longer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One year ago today, Uncertain Principles went live on ScienceBlogs. In honor of the anniversary, here&#8217;s the first year at the new site, in one graph: Well, ok, that&#8217;s not that informative. In fact, for all you know, that could be an NMR trace from a chem experiment&#8211; the little bump to the right is&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/01\/11\/scienceblogs-the-first-year\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">ScienceBlogs: The First Year<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}