Well, in fact they’re already here, as you can see. It was about time to change the look of this blog, and although the previous theme that I used is one of the more interesting ones out there (especially because of the user-adjustable width), it was getting rather old. There is in fact a whole new variaton of the Inanis Glass theme, dubbed Inanis Seven, but the author’s website is down and it is not currently accessible even via WordPress. Anyway, I tried the beta and I didn’t like it as much, so it was time to go for something else.

I like the look of this theme, but there’s still some tweaking to be done. I’m planning to take advantage of the widget function in particular, and you should already see an RSS feed from my Garmin Connect page to the right, providing easy access to my recent training sessions. You can click on the title links and they should take you straight to the activity on Garmin Connect. It shows three recent activities at the moment — should it be more/less?

My actual website could also use a facelift, and one thing that I’m concerned about is the disintegration of the blog and the website: I wonder if people are finding their way from one to the other, and especially from the blog to the website. There’s only two ways to solve this problem really: either I should integrate the blog to the website, or I should integrate the content of the website to the blog. The first option would require more time and coding than I can be bothered to spare, besides I quite like WordPress so I might as well use the functionality it offers. The second option, however, will not give me nearly as much liberty in terms of the other content as I would like. I might consider doing it anyway if this WordPress theme proves to be easy to customize. On top of that, there’s my Photo Gallery, which I recently updated to Gallery 3. It’s a mess at the moment though; I want to at least change the theme, organize the albums better and get the tags sorted — but that’s a big project and may take some time. I’m not seriously considering of integrating the Gallery into the rest of the website, since that would require an INSANE amount of coding if I’d hope to get anything remotely close to the functionality that Gallery 3 offers. I will look into ways of making it more visible in the blog though.

Any feedback on whether you like this WordPress design more or less than the last one would be most welcome; and if you have any input on the blog/website integration issue, or general design suggestions or comments regarding any aspect of ttahko.net, do let me know. For now, let me apologize if things are a bit messy for a while as I’m revamping the blog and my website. If things look strange, try reloading the page first, and if that doesn’t help, check back in a few hours — if that doesn’t help, drop me a line and I’ll see what can be done.

Since running has become a major part of my life in the last year or so, I thought it was time to update my website with a specific section for running. In fact, I should probably update the website in general a little bit (graphics?), but that can wait a little longer. The purpose of the new section is to provide a summary of my current records, targets, race schedule, and previous races. You can find links to some planned upcoming races, including a few in New York this Spring and some potential ones in Finland over the summer and later on, as well as all my previous race reports. I will try to keep it updated as I (hopefully!) reach my targets for the season and book new races etc.

2010 was a rather stressful year for me with some insecurity about the future and most of all a feeling that I ought to move on after spending five years at Durham. This was especially prompted by a six week visit to Geneva in the end of 2009. Well, in the end I prevailed and secured a three year postdoc here in Helsinki — a project which was due to start in the beginning of 2011. I’ve now settled back in Helsinki and even bought a flat, so I hope that 2011 will be a bit more productive than 2010 was. 2011 will at least see the publication of my volume Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics, which is almost finished and I’ve got a visit to NYU planned this Spring.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be about 2010, so I’ve pulled some statistics about the year.

• ttahko.net
  The traffic to my website has increased steadily through 2010, although there was a slight dip towards the end of the year as I’ve been posting less on the blog. In any case, the number of visits was just below 50k, at 48999, peaking at 2595 unique visitors in September. The website received just over a million hits at 1052206 and used 12.83 GB of bandwidth. Top countries on the visitor list were US, Great Britain, Finland, Germany, Russia, Japan, Canada, China, the Netherlands and Italy. On the blog, my announcement concerning the Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics volume was the most popular post by far, at 1889 views. The top paper was the draft of my paper, ‘In Defence of Aristotelian Metaphysics’ for the mentioned volume with 429 downloads. An old paper on the a priori received 383 downloads and many others were downloaded hundreds of times as well. I hope that the website and the blog continue to interest a wide audience in 2011 (and do leave some comments as well!).
• Running
  If anything, 2010 was a year of running for me. I started more serious training in February 2010 when I got my first GPS-enabled sports watch and since then I’ve advanced to 200 mile months. My total running mileage for 2010 (since I got the watch) was 2755 km (or 1712 miles) with an average distance of 13.44 km for each run. The number of separate sessions was 205, so I’ve been running just under four days per week on average. I hope to increase each of these numbers considerably in 2011, with a target mileage of at least 2000 miles for the year. All this running took me just under 235 hours, so just under 10 full days of running! That makes an average speed of 11.7 km/h. Oh, and apparently I burnt 142,964 calories while I was at it… In terms of races, I ran eight official races plus seven Parkruns (i.e. less official races), including two half marathons and a marathon.
• Travelling
  I did an average amount of travelling in 2010, although any amount of flying is too much flying… I attended four or five conferences, which isn’t a huge number. I visited six different countries, which were, in addition to the UK and Finland, Germany, Czech Republic, Italy and Hungary. In addition I did some travelling in the UK. My trip to the Dolomites in Italy for some hiking was among the best, and a road trip in the West Country with my mates Lloyd and Pekka was very nice as well, but my most recent trip to Budapest over the New Year with Pekka may take the title of the best trip in 2010: the number of random alternative clubs in old ruined houses was something of a unique experience!
• Literature
  I can’t believe how few books I read in 2010. My list claims that I read only ten books from cover to cover, that includes War and Peace, which I’m still reading. Hopefully I can fit considerably more reading in this year. My favourite book of the year must’ve been Lee Smolin’s The Trouble With Physics (see the link for my review).
• Photography
  I haven’t been shooting as much this year as I did the year before, mostly due to a lack of hill walks, which are my favourite photography opportunities. But I did go on a number of good hikes (with good weather) and I got some reasonable shots on my other travels as well. I’m just going to pick one shot as a favourite of 2010 (below), it’s from a hill walking week in Scotland, a panorama featuring the Five Sisters of Kintail.

The Five Sisters of Kintail

The finalists for the 3 Quarks Daily philosophy blog post contest have been determined, and I’m pleased that my post on Counterfactuals and Modal Epistemology has made it into the final. Here are all the finalists in alphabetical order:

1. Brian Leiter’s Nietzsche Blog: Katsafanas on “Nietzsche’s Philosophical Psychology”
2. Justin Erik Halldor Smith: More on Non-Western Philosophy (the Very Idea)
3. Minds and Brains: The Myth of Sensory Immediacy – Why Berkeley Was Wrong
4. PEA Soup: Am I a Consequentialist?
5. Philotropes: Do folks think that consciousness matters for moral responsibility?
6. The Immanent Frame: Secularism, atheism, antihumanism
7. Tomkow: The Retributive Theory of Property
8. TTahko: Counterfactuals and Modal Epistemology
9. Yeah, OK, But Still: Marriage

It is perhaps worth noting that my post is really the only one in metaphysics — there weren’t even very many entries in metaphysics. The winners will be selected by Akeel Bilgrami and announced on September 22.

I’m pleased to report that my entry for the 3 Quarks Daily best philosophy blog post made it to the semifinals. Check out the other top 20 semifinalists on the website. Not necessarily a huge indication of esteem since anyone was eligible to vote for the entries, but nevertheless. Fingers crossed for a spot in the final! If you haven’t seen it yet, my entry is a post on Counterfactuals and Modal Epistemology.

Oh, and I can post this Semifinalist banner here as well: