One year on ScienceBlogs

It's been exactly one year since I moved to ScienceBlogs.com. In that time, I've written 540 posts which have generated over half a million page views and about 1,800 comments.

Below is a brief summary of other blog stats, including my top ten posts and referrers.

My ten most popular posts are:

• 1. Amazing boomerang photo (15,433 page views)
• 2. The rise & fall of the prefrontal lobotomy (14,605)
• 3. Unusual penetrating brain injuries (13,875)
• 4. An illustrated history of trepanation (10,175)
• 5. The left brain/ right brain myth (7,497)
• 6. Experimenting with a four-headed penis (6,669)
• 7. Brain-computer interface for controlling Second Life avatars (6, 231)
• 8. CT scan suggests that "heretical" pharaoh was Tutankhamun's father (5,063)
• 9. Doctored photos create false memories (4,965)
• 10. Seeing with sound: The boy who echolocates (4,868)

This Google Analytics screen shot shows the blog's long-term traffic trends:

The first big spike on the graph corresponds to the 7,785 visitors who visited the site on July 31st last year, most of whom came to read the rise and fall of the prefrontal lobotomy. The second spike shows the best day ever on this blog (September 8th), when I got 12,928 visitors thanks to the amazing boomerang photo. At the right of the graph there is a quiet period during which I wasn't updating regularly because of my exams. This is followed by two peaks produced by the post on unusual penetrating brain injuries.

Here are my top ten referrers for the year:

• 1. StumbleUpon (38,121 visitors)
• 2. New York Times (8,714)
• 3. Reddit.com (7,692)
• 4. Boing Boing (7,400)
• 5. Mental Floss (5,744)
• 6. Mind Hacks (4,479)
• 7. Neatorama (2,531)
• 8. Seed Magazine (2,482)
• 9. Dark Roasted Blend (2,190)
• 10. Metafilter (2,190)

My personal life has been very eventful in this time. I started my M.Sc. in October, and have since received distinctions for all three of my coursework essays (on axon guidance, the role of AMPA receptors in synaptic plasticity and cold thermoreception). And, of course, my daughter Isis was born in March. I have some more exciting news which will be revealed in due course.

Many thanks to everyone who has visited Neurophilosophy, posted comments, and linked to the blog over the past year. I'd especially like to thank those readers who made donations and bought items from my Amazon Wishlist. I've enjoyed myself very much, not to mention learned a great deal. I'll carry on blogging, and hope that you'll continue to enjoy reading.