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Published on Nov 1, 2007 at 5:25 pm.
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I have missed seeing the comet for the last two days. This is day three of clouds, haze, or similar poor comet watching weather. Unless it clears up later tonight, I’ll miss the comet again. 
There is a chance that it will clear up, but it is looking like the third day for me without seeing Comet Holmes. Well, as I tell my students, I’ve likely spent cumulatively weeks sitting around looking at clouds waiting for them to clear so that I could observe something.
But, there is another reason for the title of my post. This also marks the second anniversary of Astroprof’s Page on the internet. At the time, I had been reading several other people’s blogs, and had decided to start writing my own. A couple of friends I had been reading for well over a year at that point, and I thought that it was high time for me to join them. Being the sort of person that I am, I had to be different. Rather than going with Blogger or one of the standard blog sites, I decided to start Astroprof’s Page on MSN Spaces. I have had an email account with them for years (since I bought a computer back in 1998). I had never blogged or anything like that, and they had a pretty easy way to get started without having to learn anything. My first posting was November 1, 2005. Within a couple of weeks, I had established my style and type of content. Soon, I learned, though, that being different isn’t always the best thing. MSN Spaces (now Live Spaces) was very limiting. I couldn’t post everything that I wanted, and I had very little say about the format, look, or content on my blog. MSN Spaces, in typical Microsoft fashion, was also hard to work with. Commenting on the site was difficult for other people. They had to sign up for an MSN Account. Yuck. It was free, but still … .
Yet, I stuck with it. I am awfully busy, and I was getting along OK, gradually building readership. But, in the Summer of 2006, MSN Spaces went through the rather radical change into Windows Live. They changed things. I didn’t like the changes. They changed the look of my blog. They changed the interface. Then, they did more changes. Why change something if it is working, particularly if the changes are not for the better? Yes, it was limiting, but at least it worked. A change for the better would be nice, but that isn’t what they did. The thing didn’t display properly on the computers on campus. It became awkward for me to write posts. It was awkward for others to comment. It just really irritated me. A few other folks had suggested that I change platforms. Blogger would have been a natural choice, since a lot of other people were doing that. But, my independent streak held fast. I signed up for my very own domain through BlueHost. (They have been very good to me.) Astroprof’s Page blog became astroprofspage.com. Wow. My own little corner of the internet all staked out. My first posting on the new site was in August 2006. I got a new look, my own template, and complete control over my site. I have been happy. I have really enjoyed having my own site. I imported most of my postings from the old site to this new one. However, somehow in the changeover to Windows Live, MSN lost the first two weeks or so of my blog!
And, I think that I’ve done well. Over time, my readership has increased. I signed up for the Google Adsense ads. The intent was never to make tons of money here, but the income has finally risen to the point that I at least make up the cost of having the site. Also, in the 15 months that I’ve had my own domain and corner of the internet, I have progressed to a Google ranking of 6. That is not bad at all for a site that is only a year old! I regularly get somewhere around 750 to 1000 readers per day (that I know of — I don’t know how many read the RSS feed).
Well, I am telling you all this, particularly for my regular readers, because there are some changes underway. The folks over at ScienceBlogs have asked me to join them. I have decided to go ahead and do that. I really hate to lose this independence that I’ve gotten with my own domain and being the webmaster of my own site, but there really are advantages to being part of a network of bloggers, and they seem to be a very good group. I’ll be joining several other folk who have been regular readers of my site. It will likely take a couple weeks to get my site there ready to go, so I’ll keep posting here. When I am ready for the switch, I’ll be sure to post something here about that, and I’ll also have a prominent link to the new site somewhere near the top of the page. Then, you can change your bookmarks.
But, as I said, I really like having my own piece of the internet. So, I am not sure that I am really ready to give up astroprofspage.com. The hosting is paid up through next summer. So, I think that perhaps I’ll change the character of this site. I may keep some blogging going on here. For sure, I’ll have links from here to the new site so that if you come here you can see the titles of the posts on the new site. But, I am not sure what else to do with this site. Perhaps I’ll have teaching resources? Perhaps student resources (a dictionary of astronomy terms, maybe), or perhaps I’ll have a monthly column about what you can seen in the sky that month. Does anyone have any suggestions? I don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll do what I can, but probably not as much as I’d like to do.
But, for now, I am back to grading a mountain of papers. Ah, the life of being a professor: grading, going to meetings, writing reports, going to more meetings, teaching, going to more meetings, filling out reports, grading more papers, going to more meetings, filling out more paperwork, and if there is time, doing real science.
-Astroprof
