Category: Hot Topic

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!

Walkin’ back to happiness

Last post for a few days. I’m off to Fiordland to “do” the Hollyford Track. I hesitate to say “walk” because jet-boating and planes are involved and real trampers might be tempted to sneer, but I do need real boots and a backpack. It may rain (but the forecast is pretty good). My companions will be a bunch of miscellaneous middle-aged winos (and a winemaker), and eating good food and drinking fine wine will be required. My camera will be ready to snap any moa that might stroll by. If I get back safely, blogging will be resumed on Monday afternoon next week.

[Update 15/12: Three days in a rainforest with no rain, and only one sandfly bite. Two brilliantly sunny days and one cloudy. As I missed out on the full Fiordland experience, I requested a discount. It was refused… 😉 ]

[Title reference]

Welcome to the cheap seats

Hot Topic is pleased to welcome Bryan Walker, a regular columnist on environment issues for the Waikato Times, as its first regular contributor not called Gareth. Over the next few weeks he’ll be posting some of his Waikato Times articles, and as new columns appear in the paper they’ll be posted here (after a short delay). Bryan introduces himself thus:

I’m no scientist – a retired English teacher, and in a distant life before teaching a Methodist minister for some years before changing occupation (not a big change) – but I can cope at the interested layman level. My interest arose because I came to realise three years or so ago that climate change was for real – read Kolbert, Flannery and dismal Lovelock and haven’t been able to detach since – the beckoning serenity of my declining years disappeared – it was probably a mirage anyway.

I’m looking forward to bringing Bryan’s work to HT’s web audience, and I hope his thoughts will spark a lively conversation in the comments. Welcome, Bryan!

[Title reference]