I will be out of the office and away from all things digital next week, for a much-needed break. The next full entry will be on Monday, December 14th - but don't forget the 2009 Hubble Advent Calendar, which will keep updating once a day until the 25th (hurray for automation).

Before the year is out, I'll be working on Photos of the Year entries, and will hopefully have the time to do some small work on the site. I intend to resize this "Big Picture Notes" blog to full 990px size, and post here more often (famous last words), so that it's more than a vacation-announcement blog :P On the main blog, I also intend to do a little more work to make translation of text and captions simpler, and have some other plans regarding comments and feedback. Nothing huge, and surely no drastic changes.

My position here at the Boston Globe has changed a bit recently, as I've been moved out of the development group and into the editorial group. In day-to-day work, it won't mean that much of a difference, but I'll soon be putting more of my development time into editorial projects, rather than structural or support projects (things like integrating 3rd part APIs). Working on the Big Picture will still be a large part of my job, and I look forward to continuing with it as we roll into 2010.

Finally, as an early year-end wrap-up, below is a list of the top 10 Big Picture entries for 2009 (by pageview count)

1. The Inauguration of President Barack Obama (4,675,000)
2. Earth Hour 2009 (2,188,000)
3. Typhoon Morakot (1,252,000)
4. The year 2008 in photographs (part 1 of 3) (1,168,000)
5. Iran's Disputed Election (1,115,000)
6. Wildfires in Southern California (941,000)
7. China celebrates 60 years (878,000)
8. Hubble's final servicing mission (875,000)
9. Red River flooding (848,000)
10. National Geographic's International Photography Contest 2009 (822,000)

Take care, and I'll see you all in a week.