So, five months into 2010 what have we learned? I am bad at updating the blog this year as well. I’m sorry blog, Twitter is just so much easier!

Here is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while. The Travels in a Mathematical World podcast is on hiatus and I wanted to explain this, since I didn’t get chance to in the last recording.

I intended to get to 60 episodes by Easter, then stop until the autumn, to more or less follow the university teaching periods. The podcast, you may remember, is linked to my work for the IMA, where I am involved in engagement with university students. However, there’s a complicated process for getting the podcast online and a key person was unwell for a few weeks so we only got as far as 57.

I have a few more recordings to be edited and hope to release them in the autumn semester. Ultimately the podcast is supposed to give students an idea of their career options and I think there are a good number and range of episodes to do that. I am now operating a reduced programme of activity for the IMA, having taken back some time to work on my PhD, so the opportunity for recording new episodes will be reduced. So I have a feeling the podcast might max out around 70. We’ll see.

The other podcast I have been releasing is the very occasional History of Maths and x. I have so far recorded two of these linked to articles for iSquared magazine. I have written a third article for iSquared, on probability, which will be in issue 12. This means I am due to give and record a talk. However, the students are currently doing their exams and then will be gone for the summer, so I won’t give a traditional lecture. But yesterday I played with a new tablet PC I’ve got at Nottingham as part of a project I am involved with. I need to try this out, so I might look into doing some kind of recording with this. But this won’t be anytime soon as I have a sore throat!

Issue 12 will be the final issue of iSquared, so I will not be asked to write further articles. Does this mean History of Maths and x is finished? I hope not. I feel like I’ve told part of several stories and there is a lot more to tell. But I have to prioritise the activities I do that enable me to pay the mortgage, and those I pay to do (my PhD). So I won’t officially end the History of Maths and x, but neither will I at present specifically plan new episodes.

Don’t forget, all previous episodes of Travels in a Mathematical World are still available for download, so if you haven’t listened to them then you might like to go back and get them. If you have listened to them all, you will have to wait I’m afraid. While you’re waiting, an iTunes review would be greatly appreciated ;)