I’m not sure I’m ready to take another look at my Friday, December 28, 2018 posting; at this point, I’m feeling embarrassed at being so cranky that I forgot to note how much I have appreciated WordPress software over the years. It should also be noted that the updated ‘linki’ function in WordPress 5.0 is easier to use. Unfortunately, that’s all I can find to praise but my fingers are crossed in hope that the issues I’ve identified are resolved or on the way to resolution at some point in the next six months or so. Meanwhile, I’m going to change things here and my first thought is: less frequent posting.

To be fair, I have been considering a change in frequency for some months now and this WordPress 5.0 imbroglio may be just what I needed to kickstart my vague plan into action.

2018 in review

Rough roundup of site statistics

For some reason readership from the Ukraine has skyrocketed into one of my top five countries for readers in December 2018. Over the last few years, Canadian readership has finally cracked into the top five although it doesn’t happen every month. The French have shown an unprecedented level of interest by creeping into my top five and the Brits after being a mainstay in my top five have become a little less interested thereby sliding out of a regular spot in the top five but remaining in the top 10. China and the US readerships after intermittently competing for the top position for several months have been overtaken, as noted earlier, by the Ukrainians with the Russians in second place. Meanwhile, China has slipped to the 10th spot in this last month of 2018.

Musings on the Canadian scene

I don’t have a lot to say about the Canadian science scene other than we seem to be getting better about making news about research more publicly available. Also, the Canadian art/science (also known as sciart) community taking form. Perhaps would be that there’s a nascent community that appears to be reaching a critical mass.

• A Dec. 10, 2018 posting on the Science Borealis blog lists residencies for artists who want to work with scientists.
• Beakerhead is an art/science/engineering festival held in Calgary, Alberta.
• ArtSci Salon at the University of Toronto has organized a number of art/sci events.
• Tech Art Fair being held at the Ontario Science Centre (see my December 20, 2018 posting about the call for submissions)
• Curiosity Collider in Vancouver regularly holds art/sci events and they have a calendar of other local art/sci events. They are planning a larger than usual event, Collisions Festival (see more about the proposed festivel in my November 14, 2018 posting; scroll down)

There’s a lot more too. You can try ‘art/sci’ as a search term on this blog and there’s always Duck Duck, Bing, Google, etc. where I’d also use ‘art/sci’, ‘art/science’, ‘sciart’, and any other variant that I could imagine along with ‘Canada’ to find other Canadian organizations and events.

Happy New Year 2019!