My blog lives up to its name

Further update: Highly Allochthonous is now found at:

http://all-geo.org/highlyallochthonous.

I am beginning to theorise that this is a cast iron example of nominative determinism.

When I started blogging, I had no real idea where it would lead. I didn’t know whether I would, or could, produce regular content; or whether anyone else would read it if I did. After a sluggish start, I found that the answer to the first question was yes. As for the second, the number of visitors to this site has been slowly but surely increasing, especially over the last few months; I could hardly claim to be setting the blogosphere alight, but I was reasonably content with progress.

But then, in a rather bewildering fortnight at the end of January, not only do I get the Naturejobs gig, but an e-mail arrives out of the blue from Scienceblogs, inviting me to the top table. And, as such, Highly Allochthonous is on the move; please click through to its shiny new home at http://scienceblogs.com/highlyallochthonous/.

To be honest, I’m still not sure whether I’ll be able to hack it with the big boys (I certainly won’t be able to match the prodigious output that some of them achieve), but it’s an exciting opportunity to get a wider audience. Of course, I’m hoping everyone who has already discovered me will drop in every so often, if only to brag that you read me “in the glory days, man, before he decided to play it safe and post nothing but pretty pictures!”

If at first you don't get published in Nature, cheat

Just a quick plug whilst I settle in down here in Jo'burg...

Actually, I've never even tried to get properly published in Nature - I've yet to stray into fields of study that are 'sexy' enough. Nonetheless, thanks to the mysteriously vanished Postblogger's heads-up, I'm getting the chance to sneak a few words of wisdom into print, as one of this years' four Postdoc Journal keepers. 200-250 words a month might not seem like very much wisdom, but I know some very long words...

My first entry was published the Thursday before last. Quite why I was deemed worthy is uncertain - I suspect that my exotic post-doc destination probably helped matters, but I suspect that all the writing practice I've had on these pages in recent months probably helped too.

Reality intrudes on blogging

You might have noticed that things fell silent here only two days into my promised seven-day epic. As it has turned out, the reasons I prevaricated about signing up to the Just Science challenge in the first place have defeated me: exam marking to get through, a couple of presentations to give, and, due to the fact that next week is my last week here in Southampton, lots of departmental loose ends to tie up. As if that weren’t enough, just when I’d figured that the South African Consulate were going to tell me to get lost, on Wednesday my passport came back with a nice visa stuck in it. It’s really happening – in two weeks, I shall be arriving in South Africa to start my new job. Which means that I have quite a lot to get done between now and then...

Anyway, although I had a number of half-completed posts lying around, and I believed that I would have enough time to polish and post one up every day, I have ended up being too busy, or too tired, to really give them they attention they deserve. And, if I’m honest, my motivation was also sapped by the realisation that for some reason, my posts were appearing in the Just Science aggregator dated as 1969 or something, and were not appearing in the RSS feed either.

However, whilst I have failed miserably, at least one geoblogger is making a good fist of it: Brian is going from strength to strength with a great series of posts on sedimentary geology. I particularly liked Wednesday’s post about the modelling of depositional systems in big tanks.

Prepare for 7 days of pure science

After a lot of dithering, I've signed myself up for the Just Science Challenge:

we would like to propose a Week of Science, to begin on Monday, February 5, and end on Sunday, February 11. During that time each blogger should post about science only, with at least one post per day. Furthermore, issues which are favored by anti-scientific groups (creationism, global warming, etc.) should be either avoided, or discussed without reference to anti-scientific positions.

I like to think I am fairly science-focused anyway, or at least that my digressions into other realms do not overwhelm the geology. But I like the idea of having a week where we don't let creationists, denialists and the other forces of antiscience dictate any of our output. Besides, it's always nice to stretch myself, and a post a day is enough of an increase in my average output to be a nice challenge, even if I've cheated a little by putting in a fair amount of preliminary groundwork.

Linking up

Philosophia Naturalis #6 is up at Science and Reason. Lots of physical science goodness, but scandalously no geology - which is at least partly my fault for not getting around to submitting any suggestions. Perhaps our growing band of geobloggers should fortify ourselves with gin and tonic and gatecrash next months edition at Geek Counterpoint.

On that subject, you may or may not have noticed the new occupant of my sidebar - an amalgamated feed of recent posts from all the geobloggers I'm aware of, created using Google Reader's nifty 'share' function. I thought it was a convenient way of making all (any) of my readers aware of what everyone else in the geoblogosphere is up to. At the rate it's been ticking over in the last week, quite a lot.

Anyone is welcome to hijack the feed (if you can't find the relevant script in my source page, let me know and I'll send it to you) - the more cross-linking the better for all of us, I reckon. And if you write (or know of) a geoblog I've yet to include, drop me an e-mail.

Fiddling while my blog burns

I've been putting off the switch to the new blogger template system because, like Propter Doc, I've been having trouble getting the expandable post summaries to work properly. Rewriting the javascript which did the trick on my old template to use the new metadata labels, and get past a seemingly much fussier XML parser, proved to be a long exercise in fiddling, but I've finally managed it. For those who are interested, this is the code I used. You have to be in the HTML view with the widgets expanded to insert it:

<script type='text/javascript'>
var memory = 0;
var number = 0;
</script>

Then scroll way down the page until you find the div for the post-body and insert the stuff in bold:

<div class='post-body'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<style>span.fullpost{display:inline;}</style>
<p><data:post.body/></p>
<b:else/>
<style>span.fullpost{display:none;}</style>
<p><data:post.body/></p>
<script type='text/javascript'>
var permlink='<data:post.url/>';
var title='<data:post.title/>';

var spans = document.getElementsByTagName('span');
var number = 0;
for(i=0; i <spans.length; i++){
var c = " " + spans[i].className + " ";
if (c.indexOf("fullpost") != -1) {
number++;
}
}

if(number != memory){document.write('<p><a href=' + permlink + '>"'+ title + '" continues...</a></p>') }
memory = number;
</script>

</b:if>

<div style='clear: both;'/> <!-- clear for photos floats -->

The bit in brackets in the document.write statement can be changed if you want it to say something different. Now, when you're writing a post, you just stick the bit you don't want to appear on your front page between <span class="fullpost"> and </span>, and off you go!

Note that I didn't write the original code - I've just (I think) bodged it to work in the new system. Here's another way to do it, from someone who looks like he might know what he's talking about, although for some reason I couldn't get that to work either.

I'll be fiddling with other bits of the template in the next few days, so apologies in advance for when I break the HTML (Update: which I see is already the case for IE users. Bloody Microsoft! OK, have fixed it (sort of) although all the posts vanish to the bottom of the page if you shrink the window too much. Seriously, people, get a better browser.

Feel free to say hola

Higher powers inform me that this week has been declared as Delurking Week. An invitation to any normally mute, semi-regular browsers to say hello, say them; a cunning use of emotional blackmail to garner praise and validation, say I.

Still, self-assessment is a difficult thing, so in addition to random hellos, I would be interested to hear any comments, impressions, or suggestions on possible topics you might have.

Best endorsement ever?

Apparently Highly Allochthonous is 'harder to pronounce than "Pharyngula" '. It's almost tempting to change my tagline...

Whenceforth my blogging?

‘Tis the season for navel-gazing, and appropriately enough the New Year also marks the end of a full year of blogging for me (although I first posted to Highly Allochthonous in September 2005, it was not until last January that I started putting a sustained effort into it). Now, therefore seems an apt time to assess how my little project has been going, and where I see it going next.

I’ve managed 112 posts this year – just over two a week. As most of them are reasonably substantial affairs - rather than simply links or clips posted without commentary - I’m happy enough with that level of productivity. With the whole of Earth Sciences to choose to write about, it’s time rather than a lack of material which prevents me producing more, and who knows, as I get better at this style of communication, I might even manage it.

Of course, the great thing about blogging is that I can write about whatever interests me. But more important for me personally has been the fact that in order to write a decent post about something, I need to read and think about the subject a bit – sometimes a lot - more than perhaps I would have done pre-blog. And this attitude is permeating my life: nowadays, even if I don’t end up posting something about it, I find myself looking more into things than perhaps I did before. A healthy attitude, methinks; the only risk is that perhaps I spend more time in front of my computer researching blog posts than is strictly healthy.

Furthermore, as reassurance that this is not just a massive exercise in self-indulgent ego-stroking, my readership, whilst not vast, is growing, and as a nice bonus I have recently picked up some semi-regular commentators. I’ve even attracted my first creationistID troll. It’s quite nice to think that what I’m writing is of some interest to other people, as well as being fun for me.

And as for next year – well, some changes are afoot in my life, which are obviously going to have an impact, but hopefully the blogging will continue.

Ego boost

A recurring referral in my sitemeter log indicates that I've been nominated for an award. I'm flattered to find myself in some pretty distinguished company, which means that I've not a hope in hell of winning even if the nomination goes forward - unless PZ and Phil really go at it in a tentacles vs telescopes deathmatch...

Where have all my pictures gone?

I've just realised that one of the webhosts I use to host some of the images used on this blog (I don't host them on Blogger much because (a) you can't list them and (b) it converts everything to crappy jpegs) has seen fit to erase everything from my account space. Without warning. I don't know how long its been since this happened, so apologies to anyone who's been image-less (although it's partly your fault for not telling me).

I've restored all of the broken images I've found bar one (the Java strain partitioning figure, which I'm going to have to redraw). Let me know if you find any more. I'm off to find an e-mail address which I can impotently express my displeasure at.

Worship the awesome geo-nerd!

So says Kevin Vranes over at No Se Nada (OK, so I paraphrase a little...). Anyway, welcome to those who have got here from there - the highlights of my last year's ramblings are handily summarised here.

If you haven't, go and read his account of an interesting new paper by Latif et al., which tries to estimate the amount of multidecadal variability in the meridional overturning circulation (MOC). This is poorly known, which makes interpreting the results of Bryden et al.'s Nature paper rather difficult (Kevin's just reposted his take on this, which is similar to mine).

Their estimate is indirect: they've taken the fact that in climate models changes in the MOC are expressed as specific changes in sea surface temperature (SST) patterns, looked for this signal in actual SST records, and used that to estimate that the strength of the MOC might vary by 1.5–3 Sv (10⁶ m³/s) over multi-decadal timescales. For reference, the reduction estimated by Bryden et al. was about 8 +/- 6 Sv.

What I'm still waiting for is the results from the moorings Harry Bryden deployed in 2004, which have been recording real-time data on the short-term (annual, monthly, daily?) variability of the MOC. As I commented over at No Se Nada, I've heard rumours that they've found some and it's significant; I'll revisit the issue when this paper is published (thanks to Steve Bloom for knowing his way around the NOC webpages better than me).

One year on

A small problem with my new flat's electrics prevented me from exactly marking the anniversary of the post that started my little blog. After a shaky start, I have been much better in recent months at producing posts semi-regularly - at least, when I haven't been gallivanting off to some internet-deprived corner of Europe.

As befits my blog’s name, I’ve drifted a bit about through the many different disciplines which fall under the aegis of Earth Sciences. My interest in planetary geology has led to discussions of possible subsurface water on Mars, the past geological history of Titan, and, during the Pluto controversy this summer, how Ceres might be a worthy planet after all (sadly the IAU didn’t agree).

Back on Planet Earth, I’ve looked at the uncertainties behind the doom and gloom headlines about the collapse of the thermohaline circulation, and how even if it happened it wouldn’t be the Day After Tomorrow. I’ve also fixated a bit on the poor understanding of the science, and particularly the limits of earthquake and volcano prediction, one of the items in my list of annoying misconceptions in Geology leading to posts on a rather odd proposed earthquake precursor, the blend of luck and expertise whichled to an apparently accurate earthquake alert in China, and seasonal variations in the frequency of volcanic eruptions. And, in the run up to the UK government releasing a new, improved energy review, I took a skeptical look at their new-found enthusiasm for nuclear power, one of the valid objections to which isn’t that we’re running out of uranium.

Another thing I have noticed is that other than a short introduction to my own subdiscipline, paleomagnetism, I haven’t really talked about my own research, which is definitely something I want to rectify in a few months.

Whilst waiting around in Southampton to defend my PhD thesis, I’ve also been employed as lab-skivvy and teaching cover for my supervisor. It’s not always been easy, especially when I’ve been marking some rather poor exams, but it’s given me some important insights into the art of teaching science. And despite the odd moan, my position has had its compensations - a field trip or two, for example.

And, like most scientists nowadays, I’ve fretted over the rise of irrational thinking, particularly in the form of ‘Intelligent Design’, creationism with added nudges and winks. It seems the UK is not immune; but despite the warning signs, it appears that things are not as bad as they are across the Atlantic.

Of course, the fact I've been writing stuff says nothing about whether it's worth reading. That judgement, of course, is out of my hands.

Geo-porn blog shocker

Now here's something a little disturbing: my blog is first up in Google for the search term 'pictures of scantily clad women'

Don't believe me? See for yourself - this post is first up. I discovered this rather curious fact when looking through my blog referrals in Sitemeter; I somehow don't think that that particular visitor got what he was looking for. I can only assume that this turn of phrase is too subtle for all the real X-rated sites. How quaint I am.

Update: It appears that putting 'porn' into a post title also does wonders for your traffic too (at least by my meagre standards).

A pox on IE

I'm away this week in Ireland, and borrowed a friend's computer to upload the last post. Being an enlightened Opera and Firefox user, it's the first time I've ever seen my new layout with IE; imagine my horror when I discovered the sidebar parked in the middle of the page, overwriting my post! Damn Microsoft and their buggy CSS implementation! Anyway, I've done a crash fix which appears to work on all three browsers... hopefully it will suffice until I can properly sort out what went awry.

Have I made your eyes hurt?

I've been doing a bit of tinkering with my template to personalise things a bit more around here. The main changes so far are to the title bar and the colour scheme, the latter of which is always a risky proposition where I'm concerned. If I'm committing crimes against the colour wheel, the more graphically-inclined of you should let me know.

What does 'Highly Allochthonous' mean?

There are two different answers to this question, the first of which is the technical one. An allochton is a chunk of landscape which has been superimposed by faulting on top of rocks representing a completely different depositional environment; for example, a sequence of deep marine sediments which has been thrust over shallow marine or continental deposits. Therefore, a 'highly allochthonous' sequence is one that has been transported a large distance, usually by thrust faulting (I want to put a graphic in the title bar which expresses this concept, and who knows, maybe I'll actually get round to it at some point).

The second answer (which I know doesn't really flow from the question except in a highly tenuous way - deal with it) is the 'so what's this blog all about then?' one. I could tell you that the name 'poetically reflects my aspirations to cover the vast diaspora of disciplines which make up Earth Sciences', but in truth it's just a cool phrase which formed part of the banter when I was a geology undergrad, and it just seemed appropriate. On balance, I think the geeky true answer is preferable to the poncy false answer. Probably.

As for why I'm doing this - well, I like writing and I like science (my interest just about surviving exposure to the National Curriculum), so I've always been interested in science communication. More recently, as my PhD submission loomed, I've been looking for jobs in that sort of area, but with very little success. So, inspired by some of the excellent science blogs out there, and the fact that Geology appears to be a little underepresented in the blogosphere (from my searching thus far,at least), I thought this would be a good way to practice and develop my writing. It's good for me scientifically too, forcing me to read more widely that I might otherwise; for example, whilst writing my last post, I had to learn about aspects of oceanography I hadn't really covered in detail before. And I'm sure my teaching can only be improved by thinking more about ways to explain technical details of my subject more accessibly. Perhaps fortunately, none of these things specifically require my outpourings to be read! If people do visit and get something from my postings, that will just be a nice bonus (and of course is the thing that I hope for deep in my heart).

I started this blog in a blaze of enthusiasm last September, and realised quite quickly that producing regular posts was not quite as easy as I thought it would be. My so-called 'technical' job has involved a lot of teaching and other tasks strangely reminiscent of an academic position, on top of running the paleomagnetic laboratory and processing data for people. This has given me little enough time to do anything about my own research, so finding the time to write for this blog when I actually felt like writing has proven tricky. And writing each post seems to take much longer than I expect it to, although I'm hoping to get faster with more practice. I'm probably not helped by the fact that for the most part I don't really see the point of posting short links to news stories published elsewhere without adding my own analysis of my own. I'm not sure that will change, but I am hoping to post more regularly than the monthly spurts I've managed up to now. As for sustaining it - well, I have several ideas for posts stored in my brain (and even occasionally partially begun on my laptop), and more seem to pop up all the time, so it bodes well, or ill, depending on your perspective!

Endings and beginnings

Yesterday was my 27th birthday. I am quite introspective at the best of times, and this time of year usually triggers even more wallowing in questions of the "Where have I got to, where am I going, and is this where I should be?" variety. A further contributing factor this year is the fact that on Monday, I also submitted my PhD thesis. Therefore, as well as giving me not one, but two, convenient justifications for demanding free beer from my friends, this week also marks the end of an era. So it's only natural that I look back and ask: what have I learnt from my PhD?

• Don't do any lab work in the month before your funding runs out. It's far better to wallow in ignorance than to uncover data which forces you to completely rewrite your thesis. Believe me.
  
  
• When your supervisor asks you to help with something, 'help with' is invariably a synonym for 'do without any further input from me'.
  
  
• You'll always bump into your supervisor on your coffee breaks or when you're leaving the building at 3:30, but never when you're working feverishly and leaving the building at midnight.
  
  
• The fact that you don't pay taxes will earn you the eternal scorn of all your friends with proper jobs, even though they still take home three times as much money as you.
  
  
• Erm...
  

Seriously, although I have spent almost four years doing research, and have even had a couple of papers published (with more on the way), I'm still not entirely convinced I understand how the whole scientific endeavour really works. Which is unfortunate, because that was the whole point of my doing a PhD in the first place (although the fact that I got to spend a serious amount of time doing fieldwork in New Zealand may well also have contributed to my choice...). At the end of my degree, I knew I wanted a career with some sort of scientific spin, but I couldn't really find anything that really appealed. I liked the idea of doing research, but was unsure whether I was cut out for the academic life.

And right now, I find myself in exactly the same position. I've enjoyed the research, but in many ways my PhD has felt like an extended undergraduate dissertation; lots of time working on my own, and not really feeling part of the research community in my department, let alone in the world at large. So how am I supposed to assess what working in it is like? Or maybe that is what it's like...

Either way, it seems I have a bit more time to answer these questions. Although I now have a few ideas about what else I might want to do, they have yet to bear fruit, so next week I find myself starting a new job working for my PhD supervisor. Nothing like a bit of continuity, I suppose. And I do get my weekends back.