So here we are: 31st December. Sitting here, with a film of dubious plot playing on the television, waiting for a sufficient approximation to the New Year to arrive, and thinking about the year just gone and the year that is yet to come, and making resolutions. And on looking back at 2013, one thing that I'm not happy about (while counting my many, many blessings) is the level of output: somewhat limited code, very limited publications – honestly, thanks to my PhD students Ray and Polina for any publications at all: they did the vast majority of the work on papers with my name listed as co-author. There are of course reasons for that, stemming both from personal and professional life, but it doesn't change my dissatisfaction with the end result: there's more that I can do, and more that I should be doing. And doing, as Yoda never said, leads to writing: if the act is sufficiently interesting, it should be natural to talk to people about it, to be enthusiastic about it, and to write about it.

I certainly feel that it's in my nature not to be enthusiastic. Friends, if I have any left, are likely to put my typical disposition somewhere near the cynical extreme – I like to think not without some provocation, but I can also acknowledge that an excess of cynicism can obscure those things that are in fact worth celebrating. I'm certainly not promising to be less cynical about those things which deserve it – many an academic will point at a number of things wrong with the current state of the profession, and I think we're not all harking back to a mislaid golden age when academics were free and academia was purely communitarian – but I think I need to act in positive ways as well as grind my teeth and bang my head against the wall when the negatives arise.

Baby steps first, though. The commitment: I will write more. I will write more about my ideas, my processes, my interactions and my achievements, and I'll do it publically where possible, as it's part of my self-image as an academic to educate by example. (And maybe at some point I will also make this website look pretty. If you're reading this through syndication, count yourself lucky.)