Tag: Hot Topic

Hot Topic shortlisted for Royal Society of NZ science book prize

I am very pleased(*) to report that Hot Topic has been shortlisted as one of five finalists for the first Royal Society of New Zealand Science Book Prize. The competition’s stiff. HT is up against four extremely good books: The Awa Book of New Zealand Science, edited by Rebecca Priestley (Awa Press), Falling for Science, by Bernard Beckett (Longacre Press), In Search of Ancient New Zealand, by Hamish Campbell and Gerard Hutching (Penguin), and Wetlands of New Zealand: A Bitter-sweet Story by Janet Hunt (Random House). More details here. It’s a great honour to be shortlisted, and not just because the prize is worth $10,000… The winner will be announced by Richard Dawkins (via a video link) on May 15th in a special event at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival. I wonder if I’ll have the chance to draw his attention to the error about truffles in The Ancestors Tale… 😉

[* – Something of an understatement.]

Goin’ back

FrenchPassVortex.jpg You may have thought I was on holiday, but in reality I was gathering blog-relevant material while eating and drinking too much on a catamaran tootling round D’Urville Island. I took a look at DOC’s new bush regeneration for carbon offsets project in Greville Harbour (from the beach), assessed fish stocks (with a rod and line) marvelling at barracouta chewing blue cod before they could be hauled into the boat, saw a seal tossing an octopus snack, enjoyed the company of Dusky dolphins, and ate rather too much crayfish. I’m a bit late for Seaweek, but given I’ve been on the sea most of the week, it deserves a plug.

Readers may recall I posted about von Karman vortices in clouds last week, and as Jamarh navigated French Pass, I saw another fine example as the tide flowed past the channel marker in the middle of the strait. You can clearly see the vortices forming as whirlpools downstream of the pillar.

And now, after a week without radio, TV or cellphone contact, I have some catching up to do…

Trumpet, blowing of one’s own, #2

Durville.jpgBy the time this post appears, your blogger-in-chief will be embarking on a five day boat trip around D’Urville Island with a collection of winemakers and winos. It’s supposed to be all sun, sea and seafood, but at the time of writing it looked as though there would be gales and rain, at least for the first day or so. (Schadenfreude ill becomes the climate cognoscenti, but I expect our tame cranks will be happy).

But before I get too wet, a small toot on the brass instrument of self-promotion: Hot Topic has made it into New Zealand’s top 20 blogs, as calculated by the estimable Tim Selwyn at Tumeke! and his nzblogosphere listing. Keeping clicking, folks. Tomorrow, the world…

While I’m away, the equally estimable Bryan Walker has the reins at Hot Topic. He will be ruthless with rude comments, and perceptive on any issue he chooses to discuss. Good luck, Bryan!

Bits & pieces

Mugshot.jpg Some bits and bobs of blog-related news. Eagle-eyed readers will note a new addition to the right hand sidebar — an exhortation to buy books at NZ’s own on-line bookshop, Fishpond. Because we’re now carrying regular climate book reviews by Bryan Walker, I’ve taken the opportunity to make Hot Topic an affiliate of the store, and as a result the site receives a cut of all sales made when people use links at HT to visit Fishpond. This will help me to cover the hosting costs for the blog, but I don’t envisage getting rich. Still, if you find HT useful, interesting — even entertaining — and buy books on line, here’s a chance to show some support. And you don’t have to buy only the books I link to — all sales made after following a link from HT will count — CDs and DVDs too…

Being an inveterate tinkerer, I have taken the opportunity of a new gadget purchase to update Hot Topic’s look and feel. You’ll only notice a difference if you access the blog from an iPhone or iPod Touch, but if you do I can assure it’s very spiffy, thanks to an excellent WordPress plug in called WPtouch.

Finally, though I don’t often (ever) make a song and a dance about HT’s traffic statistics, I am pleased to confirm that in the NZ Blogosphere rankings, compiled as a labour of love by Tim Selwyn at Tumeke! (thanks, Tim), HT is holding its own in the mid-20s of the blog charts, despite a quiet second half to December. Our overall traffic — averaging 10,000 page loads a month in the last quarter of last year — is peanuts compared to NZ’s biggest blogs or the heavyweight climate blogs, but readership is steadily increasing. And of course, it’s a very high quality readership…

I use a number of (free) stats packages — Statcounter, Woopra, Google Analytics and WordPress — but all show the same basic picture. Half of all visitors come from NZ (which I think is surprisingly low, given we’re an explicitly New Zealand site), 20% from the USA, 5% each from Australia, the UK and Canada, with the balance provided by an eclectic mix of nationalities — India heading the list. Ignoring the visitors who arrive from Google, Open Mind provides most referrals, followed by RealClimate, No Right Turn, Brave New Climate, Scienceblogs (mostly Deltoid, sometimes Stoat), and Kiwiblog. Thanks to you all for turning up, now go and buy some books… 😉

[Dave Clark Five]

It’s comin’ on Christmas

A very merry Christmas from Hot Topic. Thanks to all regular readers and contributors — Bryan for his reading, especially. Meanwhile, I have a turkey to stuff…

Pip pip!