Part of the problem was working at home – after a full day spent writing, I struggled to sit in the exact same chair, in the exact same room, and bash out another blog post. Now, I’ve started a new job at New Scientist as technology reporter, so perhaps that won’t be a problem – but I don’t think I’ll get back to regular blogging any time soon.

I’m really glad I started Just A Theory, and I’m very grateful to everyone who has read or written for the site over the years. I hope to post things here occasionally, but for the foreseeable future you’ll find my work over at New Scientist. If that’s not enough, you can also follow me on Twitter – I’m @jjaron. And now, back to your regularly scheduled silence…

Mimas is fast shaping up to be the nerdiest object in the solar system. The tiny moon of Saturn has already been compared to the Death Star from Star Wars, but the Cassini probe has revealed another geek-culture icon – Pac-Man.

Nom nom nom

The appearance of the classic video game character during a thermal scan of Mimas has baffled scientists. It could be due to differences in texture on the moon’s icey surface. Old, densely packed ice conducts heat away from the surface, while recently fallen snow acts as an insulator, trapping heat to create the distinctive Pac-Man shape.

Just A Review: Just A Theory

Physics World has published a rather nice review of Just A Theory. You’ll have to register on their site to see it in full, but here’s an excerpt:

Just A Theory offers a moderately UK-centric perspective on science news for interested members of the public and busy professional researchers alike. You will not find too many detailed, hard-science articles here, but sometimes that is not the point. As a student or professional physicist, it is easy to develop tunnel vision as you dig ever deeper into a relatively narrow research topic, but keeping the “bigger picture” in sight can be a time-consuming process in an ever-more-crowded media world.

Just A Theory has actually always had adverts; a small box of text provided by Google. It fits in easily on the site and is generally inoffensive. It’s also, for the most part, ignored. Now, while I’m not looking to make my fortune writing on Just A Theory, I would at least like to cover the hosting costs. On the other hand, I don’t want to compromise the integrity of the site by filling it full of adverts.

Recently, I was introduced to Project Wonderful, and their model for advertising immediatly interested me. Rather than providing adverts based on the content, as Google does, Project Wonderful lets advertisers bid on spaces. As you can see, the advert on the right will currently cost you $0.05 a day to fill.

This method has two immediate benefits. First, advertisers actually look at the site and decide if their product/service fits in with Just A Theory. Second, all adverts must be approved by me before appearing on the site. As a result, readers will hopefully find that they are actually interested in clicking on the adverts, and everyone is happy.

I’ve seen it work on other sites, and actually found myself clicking on a few Project Wonderful adverts because they were well tailored to my interests. I’ve decided to take Project Wonderful for a trial run, and see how it works out.

It might be that no-one bids, in which case I’ll probably take the adverts down and forget all about it. Or, we could get some interesting advertisers who are actually offering thing you want. We’ll have to wait and see.

Please do let me know how you feel about the adverts, and whether you think they interfere too much with the site. Alternatively, if you have something you’d like to advertise (and that you think the Just A Theory audience would be interested in), why not click on the adverts and set up a Project Wonderful account?

It’s been a while since I posted here, so sorry about that. Clearly when Jacob decided to stop posting every day, it wasn’t the ideal time for me to drop off the radar completely. Happily though, I was blogging elsewhere, and if you ever look at the Guardian’s science site, you might have seen some of my work there. I had a great time on my three week placement, and got plenty of stuff published on the web. In case you haven’t seen any of it, the highlights included:

• An update on that big machine that was meant to destroy the universe
• How do geckos decide when to grip?
• A roundup of some interesting research on oxytocin’s role in bonding
• Can optimism make you live longer?
• What would a digital Noah’s Ark look like?
• Where might we find life elsewhere in the solar system?
• Who’s responsible if an autonomous machine kills someone?
• Can female sticklebacks tell the quality of a male from his red jaw?
• Nanoscale machine parts made from DNA
• What’s the carbon footprint of having a child?

I also managed to get on the podcast: you can hear me asking museum-goers about venereal disease and talking to Prof Will Stewart about autonomous vehicles. I hope to write some new stuff for you here soon, but like the other JAT bloggers, my dissertation deadline looms so I’m not making any promises.

Enjoy the bank holiday weekend. Mine will be spent at my desk.

I interviewed one of the inventors Yoshi Kohno, Assistant Professor at the University of Washington and Peter Sommer, a Digital Forensic Specialist and Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics.

It was great to make the blog go auditory and hopefully there will be more to come soon.

The site has grown from having a readership I could count on one hand, to getting thousands of visitors a month. Along the way I’ve been joined by friends from the science communication course at Imperial College; thank you Seth, Jess, Thom, Emma, Colin and Sam for everything you have added to the site.

Starting this blog is one of the best things I ever did. It’s opened a lot of doors for me – when people asking for writing samples, I can offer 365. I’ve written so much that the WordPress word count plugin actually broke – it ran out of memory. At last count, the blog was pushing close to 200,000 words.

People always ask how I manage to write every single day. The answer is simple: to be a science writer, you have to write about science. Posting something every day has definitely improved the quality of my writing, and for the most part I’ve enjoyed it. Even on those days when writing seemed like a chore, I often found myself having fun by the time I hit “Publish”.

Unfortunately, I’ve reached a point where blogging every day is no longer possible. I’ve still got another week to go at the Guardian, and my final dissertation date is looming with precisely zero of 10,000 words written. Rather than produce a token post every day to keep up with the quota, I’ve decided to go for quality over quantity.

I haven’t quite worked out a new schedule yet, but I’m thinking Monday, Wednesday, Friday with the obligatory Sunday roundup could work quite well. I’m hoping that there will still be something new on Just A Theory every day from one of the other six contributors, but they’ve also got work placements and dissertations to contend with!

So, things will change around here, but I think that’s inevitable as I make the transition from “science communication student” to “professional science writer”. I’ve still not got used to calling myself that, but I guess I probably should. And whilst I may be updating Just A Theory less, I hope that you’ll see my writing cropping up in other places as well.

All that’s left to be said is thanks to everyone who has read and commented on the site in this past year. Your suggestions, criticisms, and maybe even praise are all welcome at any time. I look forward to what the next year holds.

With Jacob pipping me to writing stories both about the moon landings and Lord Drayson’s announcement that the UK will once again fund UK astronauts, you can hear my take on it, as well as a shameless plug for Just a Theory on this week’s BBC 5Live Pods and Blogs podcast.

Head on over to the BBC website to check it out (21st July episode, I’m first up)

More to come from me on tomorrow’s solar eclipse soon!

He’s also the other half of the Papercuts podcast, a weekly topical news show that he does with our very own Sam. Look out for posts by Thom soon.

In the meantime, perhaps you would like to enter this competition to have your radio message bounced off the Moon. Simply come up with something better than Neil Armstrong’s immortal words: “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” Any suggestions?

Having studied astrophysics at Manchester he set out to be a science communicator in all manner of outlets. He gives planetarium shows at The Royal Observatory, contributes to the popular Jodcast and also runs Science Made Fun, a website devoted to exciting children with science.

As well as Colin and the rest of the gang, you’ll soon be hearing from Jessica Bland. After graduating from Oxford last year with a degree in Physics & Philosophy she joined the Imperial course, and she is particularly interested in science policy and politics. Look out for her first post coming up this week. Welcome Colin and Jess!