IMS_Blog

I was thinking recently (as in this morning) about the topics I often make posts on. Given that I’m a physicist there seems to be surprisingly little science and quite a bit web design. At the time of writing this there are 40 posts in the Web category and 31 in the Physics category. But the later probably contains at least ten dealing with writing my thesis. Whilst the former does contain posts about this website I think it probably contains a greater number of different topics. Some of the Physics posts are almost technology more than physics too.

So I’ve been wondering why this is. I think there are actually several reasons. Partly it’s a bit due to the fact that when I was writing the thesis I couldn’t really bring myself to think about more physics outside of that. Then when it was done I spent a couple of weeks just not wanting to see physics again ;-) Partly it’s a sense that where as a new web design tool or technique is going to last a while (and possibly be immediately useful to others) physics moves so quickly its more transitory and more news like. This is evidently not true after a moment’s thought (for instance, the discovery of neutrino mass while news worthy would certainly have also been blog worthy). Partly it’s the fact that pointing to the success of a new test of the equivalence principle just doesn’t seem as cool a thing to do in a blog, but then I don’t really care—it’s still interesting—so I’m not sure that’s it. It think one final part of the problem is that I read a lot more feeds about web design than I do about physics, so I’m immersed more and hence things catch my eye more. Back in the days (those short months ago) when I was doing actual research I’m not sure that was true—at least as far as anything related to rare earth silicides was concerned ;-)—but it certainly seems to be now. So I’m hunting around for some good science (and preferably physics) based feeds. If anyone reads this and knows of one, comment. I may or may not post about those I find.