26 March 2013
One Hundred Thousand!
At some point while I was being slack and not blogging very much Karmasotra hit 100,000 views, in fact that was a while ago because its now on over 107k. Hardly Inspector Gadget or the Huffington Post but not bad, for a little blog with no real theme or purpose.
The most popular posts to date are:
A fashion article about stupid facial hair c. 3000 hits!!!
How to pay a Catalonian speeding ticket - lots of people speeding in NW Spain c. 1100 hits
Midland Campers - glad to see the word is out on to them c. 1000 hits
Speed Cameras in the Lærdal Tunnel - less people getting caught speeding in Norway c. 900
Various stupid jokes (average about 600 hits)
So after 5 years of blogging, my most popular post by far is one about people with moustaches! I must be doing something wrong here...
Still 100,000 has a nice ring to it!
25 March 2013
What's in a name?
Not a lot!
It would appear that my name sakes include all sorts of people who are nothing like me what so ever. There is a Tory Politician - the irony is crushing!
I checked him out on wikipedia. Fairly mundane stuff except for the last line of the entry....
This made me laugh out loud and warranted a screen grab...
There is also an ex-American Footballer who is an avid hunter (FFS!) and a country and western shock-jock who loves Bush and the Republican train wreck.
On the flip side there is at least two academics in the UK inlcuding an academic at Glasgow Uni and another at Bath Uni who is also a climber. So its not all bad!
It would appear that my name sakes include all sorts of people who are nothing like me what so ever. There is a Tory Politician - the irony is crushing!
I checked him out on wikipedia. Fairly mundane stuff except for the last line of the entry....
This made me laugh out loud and warranted a screen grab...
 |
| Of course he is "pompous and indifferent to your views" he is a Tory Politician! It would be against the natural order of the Universe if it were any other way |
On the flip side there is at least two academics in the UK inlcuding an academic at Glasgow Uni and another at Bath Uni who is also a climber. So its not all bad!
24 December 2012
Christmas 2012
 |
| At Cowieswells, December 2012. Note the house is not quite as finished as it should be! |
After reading this I was almost tempted not to write
anything this year but then I decided not to be bullied by cynics but I promise I will keep it short and sweet.
It has been another busy year for us, Sophie is growing-up
fast, the house is getting built (although not finished as we had hoped) and time
is flying by. Katharine has been working full time, designing large chunks of
the house and bringing up a small hyper-active child who doesn’t sleep very
much. She is also pregnant and growing another baby that, all things being
well, will be born in April 2013. Not surprisingly
she is sleeping a lot! Who would have believed that bed at 9pm would have
become a norm?
Sophie is almost 2 and growing fast. She is now fully
mobile, running, shouting, laughing and generally keeping us busy. She is a
bossy little madam who knows her mind (can’t imagine where she gets that
from!). She can string a few sentences together and will very earnestly tell us
all about her day and what she wants to do next. Collecting stones from the
beach is very popular at the moment (guess where that comes from?). We are
steadily priming her for having a sibling and have high hopes that she will make a great
big sister. All in all, being a parent is hard work and fantastic!
I have been overseeing the house building and working in
between. Lots of travelling to Utah, Spain and the Middle East. Even managed to
full fill a life time ambition and do field work in Greenland this summer. An
amazing place and playing with guns, helicopters and technowank, while dodging
polar bears was a perfect way to spend two weeks in the summer. Apart from that
I have spent about ¼ of my time in Norway where I moved into the
Fosswinklegates ghetto. Living in town has been nice and gives me a chance to
catch up with people when I am in town. Still can’t wait to be living out at
Cowieswells and spend as much time as possible there, in between everything
else.
Building our new house at Cowieswells has been a long process and it is now about 3 months
behind schedule. We had hoped to be in for Christmas but the weather and Nordan*
conspired against us. Its good to look back at the pictures on the blog and see
how far we have come in 6 months and when we get in it will be an amazing place
to live. Latest guess is now Febuary 2013!
Lots of good stuff to look forward to next year. New child,
new house, a bit less travelling (hopefully), fieldwork in great places, buying
a tractor and maybe even getting those Alpacas!
In the meantime we wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and
hope to see you all in the New Year
(*Nordan – Norwegian company who make great windows but have
an interesting perspective on time keeping and deadlines)
17 December 2012
The Power of the Sea
As a geologist I spend quite a bit of time looking at rocks that were deposited as sediments in shallow marine settings (beaches etc) and we expend a lot of effort trying to understand the dynamics of the sediment transport processes. So it's always good to have a bit of a reality check by studying modern systems.
Last weekend a moderate storm, coupled with high tides created a fair bit of havoc along the NE coast of Scotland especially in Stonehaven. .
We went down there on Sunday to visit Cowieswells to check on everything. All was fine there so we went to the UK's best fish and chip shop (The Bay) for a spot of Sunday lunch and the damage was pretty impressive.
Last weekend a moderate storm, coupled with high tides created a fair bit of havoc along the NE coast of Scotland especially in Stonehaven. .
 |
| Large wave's breaking over the harbour wall on saturday (STV) |
 |
| This is a road - well it was 2 days ago |
 |
| We are 4 metres above the sea, but check out the size of these rocks. Its amazing to think that waves, breaking against a sea wall would still have the energy to move something so big. Note also the fence in the background has taken a bit of a pounding |
 |
| Hmm glad thats not my caravan |
 |
| Sophie, with her new friends owl and duck, checking out the distribution of stones in the park |
05 December 2012
ComCab, Aberdeen Taxi
In short - AVOID AT ALL COSTS
Last week my wife's mother almost missed her flight because the pre-booked taxi didn't show up, despite repeated calls. After 45 mins of waiting our poor 2 year old daughter had to be bundled in her pyjamas into the back of the car and Katharine drove her Mum to the airport. If she had continued to wait she would definitely have missed the flight. They were apologetic but apologies don't get you to the airport.
Then this morning I booked a cab to take me to the train station, again no show. I called them and the drone that answered the phone could only tell me that no cab had yet been dispatched and she had no idea when one would be. I had to take our car which meant Katharine had to walk to work and I incurred parking fees etc.
Once is forgiveable, twice is not.These people are not reliable and, if you need to get anywhere at a set time I would suggest that you and the hundreds of people per day who read this blog avoid them at all costs.
ComCab, Aberdeen Taxi, 01224 353535
Last week my wife's mother almost missed her flight because the pre-booked taxi didn't show up, despite repeated calls. After 45 mins of waiting our poor 2 year old daughter had to be bundled in her pyjamas into the back of the car and Katharine drove her Mum to the airport. If she had continued to wait she would definitely have missed the flight. They were apologetic but apologies don't get you to the airport.
Then this morning I booked a cab to take me to the train station, again no show. I called them and the drone that answered the phone could only tell me that no cab had yet been dispatched and she had no idea when one would be. I had to take our car which meant Katharine had to walk to work and I incurred parking fees etc.
Once is forgiveable, twice is not.These people are not reliable and, if you need to get anywhere at a set time I would suggest that you and the hundreds of people per day who read this blog avoid them at all costs.
ComCab, Aberdeen Taxi, 01224 353535
09 November 2012
Publishing Milestones
Being an academic, one of the key things is to disseminate your work, after all, there is not a lot of point solving a problem if you don't tell anyone about it.
So we publish papers, in journals, in books and in conference proceedings. I try and keep a a track of how many I have published and today, whilst updating my CV I realised that I had reached 100 published articles. That 100 only includes things that are in some form of peer reviewed scientific publication (so not magazine articles, blogs, jokes or other stuff like that).
Now I do not claim that all of these are marvellous pieces of work, in fact some of them are plain wrong, some are just crap and a few are ok. I am not going to contemplate their various merits here I am just going going to celebrate the big round number.
So here is a bit more of a breakdown
100 Articles
50 in main-stream Journals
31 in Books and Special Publications
19 in Conference Proceedings
I am first author in 21 of those, which might mean I am a free loader, but I prefer to think it means I don't hog the glory. There are approximately 140 co-authors at least 20 of whom I have never met.
I have been publishing since 1993 which is almost 20 years, so that's an average of 5 articles per year. It's nowhere near linear though so when I have some more spare time or when I am very bored I will plot it up in excel. It will be interesting to see because for the last 6 years I have only been an academic 50% of the time (worked in industry the rest).
For anyone who knows about metrics such as the H-factor, mine is 17 or 18. This is ok for my career stage and better than Brian Cox, but the sad reality is that it means 4/5 of my research output has been cited less than 20 times by others.
Then we get into the money bit! During my research careerer I have raised approximately £3.6 million which means that on average, each paper cost £36k. Each H-point cost £211k . I am not sure if that is good value or not, but I had lot of fun along the way.
Anyway I think I'll go out tonight and celebrate the double milestone of 100 articles and 50 journal articles with a cold beer. Which makes me wonder how many beers each paper has cost...
So we publish papers, in journals, in books and in conference proceedings. I try and keep a a track of how many I have published and today, whilst updating my CV I realised that I had reached 100 published articles. That 100 only includes things that are in some form of peer reviewed scientific publication (so not magazine articles, blogs, jokes or other stuff like that).
Now I do not claim that all of these are marvellous pieces of work, in fact some of them are plain wrong, some are just crap and a few are ok. I am not going to contemplate their various merits here I am just going going to celebrate the big round number.
So here is a bit more of a breakdown
100 Articles
50 in main-stream Journals
31 in Books and Special Publications
19 in Conference Proceedings
I am first author in 21 of those, which might mean I am a free loader, but I prefer to think it means I don't hog the glory. There are approximately 140 co-authors at least 20 of whom I have never met.
I have been publishing since 1993 which is almost 20 years, so that's an average of 5 articles per year. It's nowhere near linear though so when I have some more spare time or when I am very bored I will plot it up in excel. It will be interesting to see because for the last 6 years I have only been an academic 50% of the time (worked in industry the rest).
For anyone who knows about metrics such as the H-factor, mine is 17 or 18. This is ok for my career stage and better than Brian Cox, but the sad reality is that it means 4/5 of my research output has been cited less than 20 times by others.
Then we get into the money bit! During my research careerer I have raised approximately £3.6 million which means that on average, each paper cost £36k. Each H-point cost £211k . I am not sure if that is good value or not, but I had lot of fun along the way.
Anyway I think I'll go out tonight and celebrate the double milestone of 100 articles and 50 journal articles with a cold beer. Which makes me wonder how many beers each paper has cost...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
