Tuesday, January 10, 2012

100,000+ page views on my computer vision blog

I like high-risk / high-reward activity.  While some say that this is my temperament (perhaps a vestige of youth?) I simply say: "that's how I roll."  Maybe I was too young when I read Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, or maybe I was born with iconoclastic ideals, but I earnestly believe that life is too short to always do what you've been told.  One of my favorite maxims is the following: "The only limits we have are the ones we impose upon ourselves."

I took a gamble when I started this blog, blurring the line between all things related to computer vision, philosophy, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other fun things which constitute my intellectual life.  During my PhD I was even discouraged from blogging, because "my superiors" incessantly reminded me that "you get famous by writing CVPR papers" and not by wasting time maintaining a "cute" blog.  Today I'd like to argue that my adventure in blogging has not been a failure at all!

I had multiple reasons for wanting to blog, several of which I list below:
  • I wanted to practice my writing, and what better way to practice writing than by writing!
  • I wanted an outlet to discuss certain ideas which I find invaluable in my pursuit of building intelligence, but which aren't necessarily publishable.  On my blog I am the sole contributor, the sole editor.  If you don't like what I have to say, start your own blog.  I don't need anonymous reviews, the CVPR submission process stresses me out enough for one lifetime.
  • I wanted a medium to advertise my own work as well other works which I find important for graduate students in Computer Vision to know about.
  • I wanted to expose the field of Computer Vision to a broader audience and hopefully get others excited about this amazing research field.


Today I'm glad to announce that according to statcounter, my computer vision blog has reached over 100,000 views.  In an absolute sense, this really is nothing to be excited about.  By since my CMU homepage has approximately 30,000 views, this means that my blog is 3x as popular as my academic homepage!  Next goal: 1,000,000 page views!

I actually meet more people that know me through my blog than through my research papers, even though I put in 100x the effort in doing the research behind those papers.  I don't plan on taking up blogging full time anytime soon, but it feels good to know that my blogging adventure has paid off.

Here are some of the top keywords which have been used to find my blog:

Here are some of my most popular blog posts of all time:

I encourage anybody who reads my blog to shoot me a quick "yo what's up!" at a local conference or where ever else our paths might cross.  I also encourage everybody to suggest the types of things they would like to read about on my blog.

10 comments:

  1. Congrats! This is indeed something to be proud of.
    I've wanted to start one my own many times, but so far has been to busy "getting famous through CVPR papers". Besides, I suck at writing anyway. Luckily, there are people out there who can do it much better anyway ;-) Oh well, perhaps it's not too late.

    Actually, I saw you at your poster at ICCV and thought, wait a minute, it's tombone! ;-) Unfortunately, time didn't permit to say hi, but hopefully some other time.

    Thanks for doing this and keep up the good work!

    - Anton

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  2. Congrats! Keep go on.

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  3. Thanks for the encouragement guys!

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  4. Anonymous5:39 AM

    Congratulations! And don't forget all the people who read blogs via rss like me.

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  5. In hearty agreement. Don't tell my superiors I said this, but... conference publications are the way of the past. Besides the "flatness" of the printed page (vis-a-vis youtube videos, hyperlinks, *color* images, and honest-to-god code distributions), imagine the reduction in time and $$$ if we didn't have to fly across the world, stay in hotels, yadda yadda, just to deliver a 15 minute powerpoint slide deck to a room with only 15 people in it. You're the vanguard, my friend.

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  6. Congratulations. Collecting popular blogs in a blog post.

    Blogspot Blogs Months

    http://blogsmonths.blogspot.com/2012/01/blogspot-blogs-rising-stars.html

    Added your blog. As a faculty member, I also feel happy with my online articles.

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  7. Hi Tomasz, you might not remember me but we met at ICCV 11. I enjoy your blog very much (although I have to admit I do originally know you from your papers...)
    I've started blogging as well, mainly on the subject of computer vision meets philosophy / where is computer vision going.
    Here's the link if you like to have a look :
    http://thoughtsaboutvision.blogspot.com/

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  8. Anonymous10:50 PM

    Hi Tomasz

    I would like to ask you a question - You say that the "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" motivated you to pursue the Computer Vision, instead of anything else. Why only Computer Vision? Can you please elaborate on that?

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  9. I ran into this post after finding you on twitter. You are so right and those dudes who said you are wasting your time are old school... collaboration is now fully moving online into socnets...big data and machine learning with smart semantic algos will only accelerate the process.

    Big congrats..we'll (SiliconANGLE.com) be following your work .. keep it rolling

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  10. computer vision PhD11:20 PM

    What are you going to do with the most useless degree on earth ? Computer Vision.

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