Last post: views since Sept. 2009 top a million

Update: the last three posts below picked up further AI using GIS, AI to convey complex astronomy and global-to-local integration efforts re: Climate Emergency. See my last two AI posts on companion blog here closing my social commentary launched in Kuwait. My Medium Professional Channel also closed on a humorous take on AI here, & my Personal Channel did here. Note also "last post" entries in my feature post atop my blog here. Note finally my internet footprint on the banner menu of this blog's web view here... 

Update 2: at bottom, make that 1¼M... six months later! 

Update 3: And exceeded 10K hits per mo. a month later...

Note: this post is from March 2026 at the 1M mark, and May updates add Copilot analysis.

Is reaching this milestone not fitting on the blog's 15½th anniversary? The 20th anniversary of my return from the US, a mo. to the 50th of emigrating to Canada, & 6 mo. to the 40th of my original pre-internet post ( see 1986, top left banner menu of this blog's web view here)?

As cumulative hits exceed the 1M mark, let's update the last recap here. 

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This is how I ended my feature blogpost on AI:

September marked 15 years of blogging: quite happy with 375 posts garnering over 750K hits topping 50K monthly, up from under 10K before addressing AI; see my next post for stats in the context of web history incl. mine. My web footprint is on the banner menu of this blog's web view, where you can see hits at top right. 

Update: March 15 2026 exceeded 1M hits at 400 posts with monthlies nearing 50K hits. Note that Sept. 2020 had ½M hits... so hits doubled in last 5 out of 15 yrs.!

Detailed evolution per Copilot

I tabulated monthly hits since the beginning here, and the pivot table (Wikipedia) summarizes 15½ yrs in tabular and graphic form:

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Copilot AI traversed the 15½ yrs to tabulate its themes as follows:

Copilot synthesizes it into a Emergence Timeline:

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Copilot estimates a qualitative Intensity Timeline:

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It creates this Visual Temporal Graph:

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Footnote: is it not amazing how Copilot suggested the method, ran the Python script based on the blog to post this graph... all without writing a line of code?!

And finally we have a Color‑Coded Theme Matrix (ASCII Heatmap):

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🧭 What this matrix reveals:

1. GIS dominates early, then stabilizes

    A strong red block on the left, tapering to yellow — your technical foundation.

2. Climate peaks sharply in the middle

    A bright red column in the Climate Era — your environmental deep dive.

3. History explodes suddenly

    A dramatic jump from green to full red in the Medieval Era.

4. Personal + Narrative become your late‑era engines

    The Integrative Era glows red at the bottom — your reflective, essayistic turn.

5. Tools fade but never vanish

    A warm orange → yellow → green gradient — always present, never dominant.

________________________

Apr. 9, 2026 update:

The hardest problem AI ever solved, with Google Deep Mind CEO

In the 1st ¼ hr., I get vindicated for putting my work on the web free-to-reuse (called CC BY-SA 4.0 at the bottom of this blog's web view): AlphaFold was put on the web for free & pretty well every drug is now made today using it (~ 13:00 mark). See also their full movie at the bottom of my feat. post atop my blog. Aside from the million hit mark above, this is a nice way to wrap up my "the internet is free" socials, isn't it?

Update: ditto, bottom of "AI-ding Tools" here, "How Nature Solved Robotics" here ends up sharing widely the know-how around DIY robotics to help improve collective learning... I rest my case!

Last one: posting math problems on the open web spurred pre-AI as well as AI mathematical endeavors inside academia and out: Why the Legendary Erdős Problems Are Falling to AI - Quanta Magazine 

Aug. 5, 2026 update:

My blog hits show no sign of slowing down... 

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Note: the last "drop" is an artifact of counting partial months - compare to the top graph & see numbers jump right away.

Note also monthlies (seen on web not mobile view here) rocketing from ~50K toward 100K... 

Closing addition: see at the bottom of the feat. post on AI here the cumulative graph that echoes the sentence.

Climate & ecological emergency (CEE) from global to local

David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth, 1970s environmental slogan “think globally, act locally” needs to be recast ½ c. later to “think globally, observe locally” in order to better act locally: that is why I push Citizen Science  thru this blog & provide tools, say, to build your own maps here; see the banner map on the desktop not mobile blog here. 

AI drew Lagrange Points in a jiffy

 Astrodynamics published here a new route to the moon that saves fuel & avoids comms break when moon lies between Earth & spaceship. 

It uses a Lagrange point of equilibrium between two planets where an object can be left w no energy needed to keep it there. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST Wikipedia) is the best known at L2 w the Sun, the new lunar route the L1 in Earth Moon pair.

I first heard of it decades ago in Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga (Wikipedia): Joshua Calvert, nicknamed “Lagrange” Calvert in the Night’s Dawn trilogy became famous for risky navigation and jump travel associated with Lagrange-point maneuvers (Perplexity).

Exhuming my thesis, part V... with two sides of AI!

 Update 2: see a second side of AI here (although I did quit AI & socials, see my last post)

Update 1: another GIS also has an AI offering I tested below

This follows on Part IV with further AI investigation in GIS that created the maps in previous Parts. This is also an update on my Community Engagement series ending here. Our non-profit has an opportunity to re-engage GIS & AI after my partner attended an AGI meeting on same. I plan to repatriate to pursue this, stay tuned.

GIS:

We decided to pursue AI offerings on QGIS as it's free - my other account off maintenance curtails my access to AI tools - and the prognosis looks good. First I did a review of what's available in Google Gemini here. The update esp. the closing caveat were particularly useful.

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Here are the latest AI plugins on the latest version of QGIS.

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I loaded my last project I used in QGIS to review my thesis 40 years on, starting here & updated right here. The integrated chatbot question is at lower left, and the answer at middle right confirms that I have used the appropriate data set for regional geophysical data to study geologic terranes in that area.

As with AI topics in my blog feature post here - see this here posted ¼ way down - let me update you on GIS & AI as I keep exploring... Drop in comments below where you think I should use AI in GIS?

Update

giscloud.com proved useful to bird-dog my decades-old projects; I started using it 15 yrs. ago near their launch, because they were the first on-line vector-based GIS... now they prove their ingenuity again w AI baked-in, not a side-car as in QGIS!

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New world & old world

I happened to reread "Whence the Mountains" (Google Books), a memoir in honor of my thesis sup who launched me on this whole adventure: reference is made into a college essay I asked AI to find (Perplexity); not only did it find it, AI suggested how & where to source it... Lo and behold! University of Manitoba Archives sent me a copy barely over hour later... now that's what we call service!

Isn't it also a cool crossing of old & new, AI sourcing  from a college magazine the "words of the master from 72 years ago", per memoir editor?

click to enlarge, full, archives@umanitoba.ca

Read to the end below to get the crux of the issue. And if you read the last two poetic references, you get a hint of one of Ray Price's last piece on the geo-poetry inspired by his mentors SW Carey & WH Hamilton. His 2012 Penrose Gold Medal talk he concludes with a  "geo-poetic conceptual model". Warning: it's long and technical here; thanks co-alumna Tekla Harms for nominating him here.

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Personal footnote: I experienced a similar adjustment in geologic context - although in using & not creating ideas - in my last undergraduate year at the University of Calgary, I attended a plate tectonics class with JF Dewey and K Burke. They inspired here my 4th yr. paper on aulacogens (Wikipedia). In my thesis area I realized the Southern Province was missing the symmetrical counterpart to the S - aulacogens like geosynclines were old concepts assuming symmetry, the absence of which led to drop the former and to see continental margins as extant halves of the latter - this led me to surmise a Manitoulin Island Discontinuity ending the original offshore extent in my thesis, review starts here.