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17 Years In The Dark

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on September 15, 2025 by telescoper

I just received the following message from WordPress.com reminding me that today is the 17th anniversary of my registration with them, which is when I took my first step into the blogosphere. That was way back on 15th September 2008…

I actually wrote my first post on the day I registered but, unfortunately, I didn’t really know what I was doing on my first day at blogging – no change there, then – and I didn’t actually manage to figure out how to publish this earth-shattering piece. It was only after I’d written my second post that I realized that the first one wasn’t actually visible to the general public because I hadn’t pressed the right buttons, so the two appear in the wrong order in my archive. Such was the inauspicious beginning of this “shitty WordPress blog”!

Since then I have published 7,418 blog posts posts (including this one), which have altogether received over 5.8M page views from 2.4M unique visitors. That doesn’t include the 2000+ subscribers who receive posts by email nor those who view the federated version via the fediverse. The largest number of hits I have received in a single day is still 8,864 (in 2014, at the peak of the BICEP2 controversy).

This time next year this blog will be an adult! Having gone this far with it, I might as well continue until I retire…

P.S. I noticed recently that this blog is getting some traffic from China, where it was previously banned. along with all other WordPress.com sites. It’s interesting that this ban appears to have been lifted.

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Beating the Ban

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , , , , on September 18, 2024 by telescoper

Access to this blog is still blocked on Maynooth University campus. I was told that this was because of phishing activity, but IT Services are not replying to my requests for information about this alleged misconduct. If it were true I would have been subject to disciplinary action, and I haven’t because it is not true. I can only assume that it is a half-witted attempt at censorship.

I did originally think that the entire WordPress.com domain was blocked but I found that I could access the excellent blog by mathematician Terry Tao so it does appear I have been singled out for banning.

You can still read this blog off campus, but if you want to read it on Maynooth University campus, my posts are available in full federated form on Mastodon by following In the Dark on mastodon.social here.

That means you can read whole posts there rather than having to follow a link as on other social media (Threads, BlueSky, LinkedIn and Facebook).

Alternatively, you can receive posts via email here:

In the past I have used this blog, along with my other social media, to promote activities, courses, and job opportunities at Maynooth University. I will not be doing that until the ban is lifted. I have of course also posted items critical of the University management and will continue doing that.

UPDATE: By sheer coincidence (?), just a couple of hours after posting this item (from home), IT services contacted me and told me that this page has now been “reclassified as a blog” and is now accessible from campus (which is where I am writing this update). What it was classified as before is anyone’s guess, but access from campus has now been restored.

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16 Years In The Dark

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on September 15, 2024 by telescoper

I just received the following message from WordPress.com reminding me that today is the 16th anniversary of my registration with them, which is when I took my first step into the blogosphere. That was way back on 15th September 2008…

I actually wrote my first post on the day I registered but, unfortunately, I didn’t really know what I was doing on my first day at blogging – no change there, then – and I didn’t actually manage to figure out how to publish this earth-shattering piece. It was only after I’d written my second post that I realized that the first one wasn’t actually visible to the general public because I hadn’t pressed the right buttons, so the two appear in the wrong order in my archive. Such was the inauspicious beginning of this “shitty WordPress blog”!

Since then I have published 6,974 blog posts posts which have altogether received over 5.5M page views. That doesn’t include the 2000+ subscribers who receive posts by email. The largest number of hits I have received in a single day is still 8,864 (in 2014, at the peak of the BICEP2 controversy). The most popular post in the last year was this one.

P.S. Blog traffic had been slow recently, but has increased dramatically in the past few days, perhaps because of the ban on access to it from Maynooth University campus…

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