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. 

click to enlarge (see note at bottom)

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.

Bird-dogging COVID, a five year retrospect

This follows on the last COVID update  here, 5 yrs. after polling COVID stats Jan. 2020 to May 2021.

I went to London exactly 6 yrs. ago to get my Canadian passport: my UK "settled status" as a French national wasn't in yet; if they didn't take me as EU citizen, they couldn't refuse me as Commonwealth citizen... I met my best friend in Chinatown to witness my passport pics, before I went to the consulate to renew my passport... Well Chinatown was already all set up with one-way ingress-egress in stores, social distancing & face masks! The consulate also closed for no reason given. So, everyone but uk.guv seemed to know what had started in China late Nov. early Dec 2019 had already arrived here... 

Even more maps, with a twist

In this opening view from this video here, doesn't the Grand Canyon appear inverted to you? As in the deep parts pop up instead of down!

click to enlarge 

Andrew's AI crash-course

Last update by the numbers at bottom, with a dash of humour

One more for the road: Andrew Zolnai Private Blog, AI help example

Ongoing 'AIding' Tool closed, above videos & at bottom

Updated last Medium Pro. post just above Medium Perso.

Added: AI generated GIS maps, under Flickr

Added fact-checking tip & shortcut under: AI's little helpers, halfway down

New channels: Kuwaiti blog, YouTube Shorts and Other

New how-tos: building AI agents + disaster response

New human-centeredness: with a little help from AI

New tools: Copilot help & Perplexity summaries

New twist: look for AI-assisted story-telling below

Update 4: a three-part manifesto closes this review

Update 3: added a note on "AI's little helpers"

Update 2: a French look into the future of AI

Update 1: ongoing collection of AI mods on Flickr 

Have I mentionned that AI will need skilled writers more than skilled coders? Forbes wrote here about a US efforts in that regard. [ 6 mo. update: Fortune reiterated that here. ] The one thing AI won't replace,  acc. to the starred "AI-ding Tool" example below is curiosity:  it mirrors Steve Jobs' "stay hungry, stay foolish" at Stanford 2005 Commencement Address here.

A conversation with AI (long read)

Update: a short read on Medium tells "the story behind the story" of American & French Revolutions.

Shakira YouTube channel posted this video #LMYNLWorldTourCDMX: 

How a confusion between CDMX (Ciudad Mexico) and MCDX (1410 in Roman numerals) lead to a far-ranging AI chat thru culture, geography, career and climate activism. MSFT Copilot (here) transcript (Italics: me, regular: Copilot):

Senegal delta sea level rise map

Five friends at Arts & Metiers engineering school in Paris took a ten month leave to sail around the North Atlantic: Lez'Arts Marins (here) sail south from Britanny past the Azores & Madeira to Senegal for a moth humanitarian aid project, west across to Martinique and northeast N of Scotland to Scandinavia and back.

"AI for the rest of us", Part VII

Update: the last of a series, follow my recap blog post here incl. Medium Channel posts on AI.

Note: the last post on my personal Medium channel shows how I used Copilot AI to good effect for fact-checking. 

Last we showed here how to create "quick & dirty" graphs while chatting on ur mobile. Now we'll see how we can create summaries, not from "text to hand", but from that cribbed off the internet. 

Having left socials, I'm down to corresponding at Extinction Rebellion "Media Tell the Truth" WhatsApp group. Jon Fuller there is also at "Climate Genocide Act Now" here. I was a scientist for Extinction Rebellion, and blogged here about the pandemic against the lies of the British government, as well as about floods and rising sea levels in East Anglia. I didn't know GCAN, however, as I'm no longer active.

"AI for the rest of us"

 Update: follow on Part II.

In my other blog (here) Language and mores, Part VII (here) described what I found out about my family's status as immigrants in our complex story of a pregnant mother's escape from Hungary and my siblings ½ generation later. When I later discussed how I thought my marriage ended, my family saw a Jungian influence in my thinking. Jung's disciple Adler apparently inspired Kishimi & Koga's recent best seller "The Courage to be disliked" (Google books). Ensued a three-language dicussion to understand what this was all about... Mum prefers our mother tongue Hungarian, my brother lives in Montreal and my sister in Paris.

Community engagement and social prescribing

Community Engagement 1,... 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 & 25

This follows an update on this blog here, where I announced my move away from Cambridge. This is also a good place to end the Community Engagement series. I will however continue on topics as they arise like re: AI here, or Sea Level Rise here & updated Thames Barrier starting here. Follow also the Blog Archive to the right-hand side of the desktop version here, as well as the right-hand side of the Banner Menu atop.

We recently rebranded Cottenham.info to Cambridgeshire.ai: the domain name is acquired but page not done yet finished; we have a prospectus as an evergreen document, meaning ever evolving.

Our community involvement over 5 years in March is one object of this blog starting  here (follow the links) and listed here. We engaged with various community interest  parties at the impact of climate change then the pandemic on social isolation in East Anglia.

Community Interest Company blog recap

Community Engagement 1,... 20, 21, 22, 23 & 24

As I move away from Cambridge to SW FR in my family home, I will also exit socials and rethink my online engagement, where I lost all my pensions! I have also moved my domain to a new provider: it preserves this blog, Personal & Professional Portfolios and My Year+ in Kuwait in my web (not mobile) blog banner menu here; it loses the superseded web page and my email now on Yahoo. I do, however, stay engaged with my Community Interest Company Cambridgeshire.ai at right. See following post here.

AI Prompt Engineering Trial 2

Community Engagement 1,... 20, 21, 22 & 23

Update 2: next blog installment is here.

Update1: Medium prof channel reflects this here.

My post here, starting my experiment to convert my CIC (non profit) from Cottenham.info to Cottenham.ai, showed how can we use AI (Wikipedia) for good. My CIC started to address rural isolation in East Anglia in light of climate change and the pandemic (here and here). After a COVID hiatus forced this reassessment, the advent of AI piqued our interest beyond the hype in the press - see my companion Medium series on this topic, following four posts from The future is digital… only it’s not what you think! here - this lead into a curious interaction and my partner finding a new direction.

Cottenham Open CIC rebooted

Community Engagement  1, ... 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 & 21

Update: the next post (here) will show how a blog post on creating maps, is created by generating prompts  using Bing AI in a Udemy course on prompt engineering following STAR (style-task-audience-role).

Re-engaging après-COVID what is in LinkedIn, below & Esri Hub: Part 1 outlined Community Engagement. Part 2 built a story introducing the community. Part 3 tied together community maps and climate mapping. Part 4 introduced a process framework for this community engagement. Part 5 expanded on our aim toward a community engagement.  Part 6 added our own Wikipedia Gazetteer as we build up the local landscape. Part 7 showed a draft Press Release introducing our social enterprise. Part 8 on coastal inundation scenarios adds some parameters in the debate. Part 9 on temperature anomaly scenarios further constrains the debate. Part 10 followed up village engagement process via recent Parish Council update. Part 11 added flood risks to coastal inundation and temperature regime models. Part 12 described Cambridgeshire Parishes affected by sea level rise. And finally here we introduce AI with a local twist.

A brief history of mine

Update 2: see my journey on the web here.

Update 1: a duo of posts on my Medium professional channel here relates my early computing.

As I go through a 'hard reset' in my life and plan to exit social media, this may be a good time to pause and reflect on my IT journey.

"So long and thanks for the maps" - Pt. III

Following on the listings in the previous post, lets revisit some blog stats Google handily collects for us! This is an update from two years ago:

... We hit the 13 year and exceeded the half million hits mark!

"So long and thanks for the maps" - Pt. II

Part I announced my exit from social media & web mapping. Here's my topical catalog:

Fun with puzzle maps

 Look what I found!

Having taken a vacation from work and social media, I found a puzzle box in my late Dad’s old office, while visiting my Mum:

The Puzzle of the Plates

Spilhaus Repeating World Maps

1985 American Geophysical Union 

Created by Athelstan  Spilhaus

"So long and thanks for the maps"

"So long and thanks for all the fish, I meant maps (apologies to Douglas Adams)" was the last post in my #30DayMapChallenge reported below, not incl. an extra one at the end. As my life situation has changed, however, this proved to be prophetic: I'm withdrawing from social media, activism and geo work until I sort my life out. It’s been a pleasure participating in mappy adventures with y’all. Ta for now.

East Anglia Flood Defences Final

Community Engagement  1, ... 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 & 18

[ Update: see post #19 on an opportunity to use land cover information to study peat lands ] 

This extends the previous flood defences update into a 3D interactive map. It also explains the DEFRA flood defences data update, in order to map the infrastructure complete with various sea level rise elevations. [Story map full-page here.]

Digital Nomads and Digital Divide

 Here is the Parliament   f i n a l l y    addressing the challenges posed by the pandemic, with a fairly comprehensive review of the facts they gathered.

Sea level rise web map, poster and pirate map

[ Update 3: action in Update 1 resulted in Trinity Hall declaring divestment... hurray!
Update 2: the next post rounds this up with a Story Map that includes flood risk
Update 1: here is a video of the action mentioned below, re: colleges divest from oil ]

An Extinction Rebellion Cambridge action, demanding colleges divest from oil investment, led to a simple yet arresting idea: map the level below 12 m. sea level rise each college would be under, if climate change we left unabated, as a means to help convince them of the consequences of climate inaction.