Friday 8 March 2013

Blog update #4

30,000 page views! I'm amazed how many page visits I've had, I'm very pleased and thankful for the support this blog has received since it started. Though admittedly about 10-15% of these views appear to be bots, the balance are real people some of which have become public followers and many comment. Thank you!

To try and make it easier for people to comment I removed the verification requirement for posting, alas, after about three weeks of a a huge amount of spam I decided to reintroduce the verification. During the time that verification was off the amount of visits per day almost doubled but the visitors during this time was about 50-60% bots. So, that also discouraged me from keeping the verification off. Sorry to those, which is just about everyone, who struggle with the verification codes, it is so hard to read them sometimes.

While I'm giving my blog update I should mention a GNS Science blog (from New Zealand). At about the time in our area that a company was drilling dull stratigraphic drill holes to estimate coal and gas reserves near Grafton and Kyogle, GNS Science was drilling something exciting and incredible. For the first time the Alpine Fault in New Zealand was being drilled to understand the nature of the fault and to install long term monitoring equipment. A GNS Science blog by Rupert Sutherland gave the day to day details. It is well worth a read as are the two other personal GNS Science blogs by Julian Thompson and Sara.

As for my blog the most popular posts to date are listed below. You'll probably notice that three of the five are directly or indirectly relating to the controversial coal seam gas topic. I find that a good because people are clearly wanting to know about the science relating to that topic but unfortunately the average time spent on the blog when the search terms include the letters CSG is only around 5 seconds so maybe I'm not providing visitors with the information that they want, but I avoid as much as possible the politically sensitive and I'll continue to do so - I'm not very bold!

1. Why You Wont Find CSG Here
2. Walloon Coal Measures of the Southern Clarence-Moreton Basin
3. Do You Trust a Geological Map?
4. Mythical Geology at the Mouth of the Tweed River
5. Some Musings on Coal Seam Methane


The 5 biggest referrers were:

1. Google
2. Wikipedia
3. Clarence Valley Today (blog)
4. isearch
5. Look and See New England (blog)

Please note that I probably won't get another blog post up this month as our family is away with our daughter in hospital in Brisbane. It looks like she may be in for a fair while so updates will not occur during this time.

3 comments:

  1. I imagine an extended hospital stay must be very difficult at times, so I hope you, your daughter, and family are doing okay.

    And thank you for publishing your blog. I've been reading via RSS for a while now and enjoy your posts, particularly the ones which mention places I can recognise (parts of Northern Rivers NSW). I know very little about geology but your posts are a good way to learn something new. Thank you.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you Deirdre.

      We have not been admitted hospital in Brisbane for a long time but sadly it came again and was unexpected.

      Thanks for commenting and I'm glad that I can mention places that you are familiar with.

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  2. Hmmm... thank you. Your comment seems quite SPAMish but I'll assume that it isn't for the time being and since it says nice things!

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