A yearly roundup

Well, nearly at the end of 2009, and I don't know if I will get another chance to blog, so here's a quick roundup. All in all it's been a busy year:

On the literary front I've finished two novels - a bit of a change of direction from my normal books, but definitely interesting. In November I completed Nanowrimo, although that story is not finished. Instead of December being the month of novel-finishing it was the month of frantic ecommerce.

Online it's been busy: I've built a steady income from royalties on print articles but between discovering article writing, and affiliate marketing this has expanded my options. On the charity front, on Squidoo I got two hundred-plus lenses done and completed my target 200 challenge to myself.

• Made Squdioo Giant
• Made Squidoo Top 100
• MVP for KabFab's squid squad

And of course, that doesn't count moving house and getting the cats.

On a side note however, I would say that getting inside two nuclear bombers this year would definitely count as a high spot, as would getting a chance to have a look round the A1 Tornado when it pulled into the station.

It's been a mixed year. Hopefully 2010 will be a better.

A new article: The Surrey Iron Railway

A new article on Bukisa:
About the Surrey Iron Railway.

I am turning several of my lenses into articles after a number of users requested printable versions. My initial experiments with Lulu and free e-books was interesting, but there were complaints about download speed for the PDFs - and a few users whose security settings would not let them get the download after they requested it. If it wasn't free I'd feel quite bad for them, but fortunately I could send them one directly.

Instead, I'm now going for the best of both worlds. If the articles are on Bukisa online they can be read or printed for free by the user, and I get a penny a view for good causes so the work is still fund-raising.

Updates are likely to be patchy until after christmas though - working in ecommerce this is definitely the silly season!

Why vote? A new lens

Vote Rackcard by tirial
custom printed rack cards made on zazzle

http://www.squidoo.com/why-vote
Why should you vote? Election myths exploded

A new lens (I think it's number 237, but I may be wrong) about voting and British elections. I did this one because there is an election coming up in 2010, and frankly what I keep hearing locally is people saying they won't vote because it won't change anything.

Since that sounds rather like the counsel of despair, I thought I'd knock a few of the myths that keep coming up on the head. I've rounded up the worst of the ideas that seem to contribute to this view and put them in the lens, with details of why they are flawed.

The lens itself was a test, and will probably grow, but it got such a good reception when I put it up (thanks prosperity66!) that I thought I might leave it for a while.

NaNWriMo 2009 - Winner!

I just thought I might mention that despite a Word crash losing two hours of writing I just hit 50,000 words. And I have just realised I did that in 14 days (must be a faster typist than I thought).

My: profile

Fortunately (or otherwise) the story has not told itself in 50,000 words, so I'd guess I've got another 30,000 to go to complete it. Oh well.

NanoWrimo

What can I say? I just reached 44,000 words and am taking a break. I had another idea, so I wrote it.

And I feel like I've run a marathon, which is always the problem with extended action sequences. (This might also be the last stages of the cold from the weekend).

There are still huge gaps early on, I haven't bothered dividing it into chapters, and the whole thing is likely to be riddled with spelling mistakes since I turned the spell checking off to let me type faster, but my beta reader keeps demanding I get more written because they want to know how it ends.

Hopefully this is a good sign.

Out of ideas and ill

What a combination. Eight days to go, and feeling lousy.

And thanks to someone who keeps making "helpful suggestions" I've lost the thread of the story.

Oh well, it wasn't likely to get published anyway.

NaNoWriMo progress

22,000 words, give or take a few. A notebook full of un-typed up scenes. 8,000 words to do to catch up.

What stands in my way? Interviews over the next few days, and mainly two very demanding cats. (That's not quite fair - interviews are an excuse to get away from the cats and fill yet more notebooks.)

What is beginning to scare me is finding out that a lot of what I thought was blue-sky thinking for the story is actually genuine rocket science theory. It seems having aviation as a hobby pays off.

New lens and NaNoWriMo

It's been a busy writing day for me. On NaNoWriMo I've broken 11,000 words and am hopefully on course. I need to get a few more notes written, but the story is coming together. There's now a two line summary and excerpt also up.

I also have a new lens up. The Surrey Iron Railway was a horse drawn railway established in 1801. Although it was in use for only forty years, it was the first public railway in the world.

Surrey Iron Railway
http://www.squidoo.com/surrey-iron-railway

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo by Hope_Breedlove
Make a customized t shirt online at zazzle.com

I finally got round to typing up parts of my story for NaNoWriMo. It's not a great one, but then NaNo tends to be about quantity not quality (and if I like the end result I can always edit it afterwards).

Unfortunately cat herding has left me rather short on the wordcount, so whether or not I will complete it within time is going to be tricky.

• NaNoWriMo progress

In practice however I have definitely written more than 50K words this month already: two new lenses and the Stephen and Matilda blog

The Stephen and Matilda blog actually seems to get more interest in this one. It's probably because of cute cats.

Anyway, I need to get away from ninja felines and back to typing.

New lens - MacRobert's reply

Seasons Greetings by Hanger_19
Browse other Christmas card Cards

Lady MacRobert's Reply
http://www.squidoo.com/macroberts-reply

In the second world war, Lady MacRobert lost her sons who were serving in the RAF. Her reply was to donate a cheque to purchase a Short Stirling Bomber. She wanted to respond appropriately, and called it "a mother's immediate response."

Since then, one aircraft in 15 Squadron RAF has been called MacRobert's Reply. The lens has the full story.

Updates and Zazzle

I am about halfway through an update to all my lenses, adding MediaStorehouse images and links, correcting several broken links, and revising the content.

My other update was a new set of products created on Zazzle for my Stephen and Matilda blog, as well as some more generic ones made for general sales. Matilda is doing surprisingly well - she even made featured kitty status on Redgage for a photo:

• Matilda in a knot

Here's another photo of her, again being decidedly cute.

Matilda in Bed by tirial
More Matilda Mousepads

Feedmysearch issue

Anyone using Feedmysearch might have noticed that they have been having issues. Having hoped that they would work through them, I now find this was a mistake on my part. The feeds I have created on each page now display a large ad saying that Feedmysearch is going down unless extra funding can be found.

I have found another way to create the feeds I want, but it will take a lot longer to set up, so please be patient while I got through the entire lot and switch the modules.

Why Google doesn't just offer the same RSS as Feedmysearch I will never understand.

A general update

My time is currently being taken up with a sick cat. Thankfully, he now seems to be on the mend, and I can get back to writing, making lenses and work (the thing that puts food on the table and cat food in the bowl).

The novel is now at a publisher, and sitting with a few agents to see if I get any feedback. I was somewhat disappointed with one such contact, who I had submitted two items to and got two identical rejection emails. However they looked too identical, so I also checked the mime headers and properties on the email. It appears to be auto-generated, possibly on a timer from date of receipt. The timestamps on both certainly make for an interesting comparison. This doesn't give me any great hope that they actually read it. So if you're an agent, I know that you get hundreds of manuscripts through daily, but please be honest if you aren't going to read them or aren't accepting submissions right now. It saves me time on stamps and emails.

I've put together a Stephen and Matilda lens about the cats to try nand ease myself back into it.

The travelling squid is causing me a problem. The memory card in my camera was broken, so when I took the shots it saved them into memory. However I now can't get them out to send them on for the blog. ARGH!

Mosquito Images alert

I think I've finally got linking working and have started adding a few images from the datafeed to the de Havilland Mosquito page. One of the best is this cutaway view of the Mosquito Mark II:

• DH Mosquito NF11: Published 06/05/43 - Media Storehouse

Unfortunately it doesn't have a preview image available, or it would be straight on the lens, since its a mechanic's dream. It takes a bit of time to set these links up, so it might be several days before they appear on my other lenses. The problem is that neither squidoo nor google sites allow script or PHP links, which are the default. Getting a link set up required playing with the datafeed to get an HTML format set up. Let me know what you think.

For images like the one on the left from £9.99, it definitely seems worth the hassle though.

Currently I'm just running through adding a text link to each collection's homepage. Then I need to see which ones I can get preview images for from the datafeed and add them (how I did the Mosquito lens).

It's also a chance for me to try and deal with the cats who have discovered that they can get into the boiler cupboard. Burnt cat's fur smells horrible, so I'm trying to avoid it.

A small update

Well, I've got permission for the aircraft photos but their link widgets don't work with the sites I need to use them on, so some creaive coding may have to take place.

Yesterday I got a lens set up for the google site I am working on, and it's already getting some traffic.

Squidoo are trying an interesting experiment about splitting long lenses over several pages. I haven't volunteered any of mine, because the links in the nav are a dropdow and not obvious. However once they have sorted the teething problems out, this could let me expand a lot of the aviation sites considerably.

And having been awake since 3 dealing with a catfight, anything I do will be completed in the afternoon.

Updates and a new google site

Well, a few updates from here:

First, novel #3's wih an agent. Lets see if it gets picked up.

I've found an interesting resource for aircraft photos and written off for permission to use them. I should hear back in a couple of days, but if I get it, then my aircraft lenses should be getting a thorough upgrade.

The cats are settling in, but I spent most of last week dealing with them - hence the lack of updates and writing in general. The travelling squid was completed and delivered into the tender mercies of Royal Mail. Whether it will ever been seen again, who knows?

A new Googlesite went live just now: The Buccaneer Series. It's about the Buccaneer Books - a series of children's books designed to help children learn to read. Written by Shiela K. McCullagh they are about a young boy called Nicholas who finds a magic painting of a Silver Ship that lets him enter a world of pirates and privateers.

And I'm working on a new lens about a horsedrawn railway, hampered by a severe lack of resources on the topic.

Still no ideas for nanowrimo though.

Done it

November is for Writing by thefunkhouse
View more Nanowrimo T-Shirts

I have just finished 60,000 words in less than four weeks. I am exhausted. Novel No 3 is ready to go out the door.

And in a month's time I'm going to be doing NaNoWriMo, if I get any ideas between now and then.

The cats are driving me nuts, since the larger one has worked out that ramming my arm while I'm feeding him can result in extra going into the foodbowl, and if both cats stick their heads in I can't judge how much they've eaten. They also kept me awake for two whole nights running, and then spent this afternoon looking angelic on the bed - fast asleep.

Little rats.

Good, better, best

Good... is that squidoo appear to have sorted their reporting out. I noticed yesterday that the figures were now correct for those lenses (and even a few others - like the one that was showing royalties I earned in a month that hasn't happened yet).

Better... is that I gave my manuscript to an editor yesterday. When I wandered back to the resturant three hours later he was still there reading it and I got a very good review.

Best... would probably be the two cats hiding under my spare bed right now. After a successful introduction at the adoption centre, we have two rescued kitties moving in with us. One of them is sweet shy and intelligent, and the other, well the other could give Snooch from Two Lumps a run for his money.

Somethings a bit screwed up

I heard from Squidoo.

According to them my two top charity performers got $14's each.
According to my royalties page, they got rather less (in one case $0.08 cents).

Unsurprisingly, I've queried this. As the by-month payment data only goes up to July, it looks like I may be sitting down and doing a spreadsheet of all the data from Royalties pages to check what the payment was and what it should be. However it looks like either there's a problem with the payouts or the reporting.

Off goes the bug report.

View Larger Map

On other topics, novel number three is getting a quick edit for accuracy and then will be hopefully ready to go out. Despite having been in the cockpit I forgot one vital characteristic of the aircraft, so since anyone reading it who knows the plane will spot the error in two seconds I'm making a few corrections.

And fingers crossed for Sunday, that everything works out. I actually found something more important than visiting an aircraft open day, which for me is pretty unusual.

And finally for anyone not doing anything at the weekend, here's a quick plug. Gatwick Aviation Museum's open day is 11th October 2009. If you have any spare time I'd really suggest you stop by.

• Gatwick Avaiation Museum

Squidoo, Infolinks payments and annoyance

Well, they have paid. Unfortunately the infolinks are turned on on my hatching lenses (they were never turned off), and none of them received an infolinks payment. Similarly the money missing from last month's update did not arrive.

Given that my Googlesite just outperformed (in the last seven days), any single one of my lenses over the last two months, I am beginning to wonder if I should continue with Squidoo. Anyway, there's a bug report filed. Any response from them will be interesting since I estimate I'm out by $20-40.

e.g. http://www.squidoo.com/DragonHatchery
A Tier One lens which has never had infolinks removed. It has also never received an infolinks payment.

On the other hand, news elsewhere in life should hopefully make up for it. I'll blog more, hopefully with good news and photos, when I know more.

NaNoWriMo?

Anyone going to be doing NaNoWriMo?

I might not this year - three novels so far in 2009, lots of lenses and articles, reviews and more have left me with aching fingers, so I might actually take November off.

(Who am I kidding? If I get an idea, I'm in. Tirial's Profile)

• http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Photo as Featured content on redgage

One of my Biggin Hill photos of the Red Arrows just got featured on Redgage. As I'd been away from my computer for a while I did wonder where all the comments were coming from.

To answer one question, the colours and smoke are made by chemicals injected into the aircraft's exhaust. Apparently these are now designed to be environmentally friendly but if the wind is in the wrong direction, after a few passes they do build up, and can smell really bad for the spectators.

Red Arrows display with Smoke at Biggin Hill

Gatwick Aviation Museum lens

Gatwick Aviation Museum

My first new lens in a while, done for the museum I was at at the weekend. Its been reviewed by the Museum who don't object for the extra publicity and support. Hopefully it will get them a bit more attention from the general public: It has only been up for two days, isn't on google yet and is still getting visits, which is promising. I'm not sure if they use everyclick for online donations, but if so I'll have to hook it in to my lens.

Generally a bit knackered, but otherwise slowly getting back into the swing of things.

The travelling squid arrived this morning so I'll need to complete that and send it on when I get an address for the next person.

A day out - and in the cockpit

View Larger Map

Today was a busy day in Aviation. I missed:
- XH558 at SouthPort Airshow
- XL426 at SouthEnd Visit the Vulcan Day
- Croydon Airport 50th Anniversary flypast
and instead attended one of Gatwick Aviation Museum's few open days.

With not one, but two Avro Shackletons (including one of the only two running Mk3's in the world) and aircraft ranging from an English Electric Lightning to a Harrier Jumpjet, this small unique museum provides a fascinating day out.

Sited in an area of pictoresque countryside just outside Gatwick Airport, the museum's aircraft are housed outdoors, while the buildings contain models, engines and more. Most of the aircraft are either live or under restoration by volunteers. The museum provides extensive educational opportunities for students and has a number of independant volunteers working on the aircraft.

One of the treasures of the collection are indoors in the engine rooms - as well as the Conways, and Avon engines, there are two Bristol Olympus engines from the cancelled TSR2 programme.

As a day out, the day is very much what you make of it. With a little knowledge of aviation (or picking up a guidebook and being prepared to ask questions) the open day is a chance for anyone to learn about classic aircraft and have fun doing it.

So, while I may have missed seeing classic aircraft fly, I think I made the right choice. Besides, the opportunity to have a look inside an Avro Shackleton and get into the cockpit was not one I would pass up.

There is a lens and a full review on the way.

Meanwhile for anyone interested, the museum's official site is at http://www.gatwick-aviation-museum.co.uk/ and their next open day is on October 11th.

Dribs and Drabs

World War Two Bombers just got a bit of a makeover, with a few new images and details.#

Squidoo say that they should resolve the Infolinks issue this week, so that's one thing that I will be interested to see the outcome of.

Aside from that, I have an idea for a new blog, but I'm not honestly sure I have the time at the moment. I'm busy working on a new googlesite, and adding content to Tim and Tobias, so we'll have to see.

Lens reviews and writing

I'm a bit thrown since it seems my aviation lenses, which are mainly meant to introduce people to some really beautiful aircraft have been getting some expert attention.

Corrections are always welcome but after I took a weekend off, it was quite a surprise to find the English Electric Lightning lens had gained a personal anecdote.

More to the point, the Grace Spitfire lens also got an update. The 2nd Taf Spitfire book is now linked directly to the ML407 website as they sell it new, and have a deal on where you can buy it and the DVD as a bundle. (Click here for more details.) My own fault - I hadn't realised that they don't sell through Amazon themselves so purchasing the book from there does not go towards supporting the Spitfire.

Lenses and writing - so many words so little time!

Well, it's turned out something actually was off on the technical side with Squidoo, so they are looking into the bug now. Hopefully that will get sorted soon.

Meanwhile I'm torn between lenses and other work (about 20,000 words to go to finish novel #3). I've got two more lenses half done on historical topics but they just aren't at point I am happy with yet.

I am not sure whether to add an embedded forum to my aviation lenses. The test with Drag cave was sucessful, but I don't really have time to moderate two forums, so it might have to wait for a while.

Update on Infolinks payments & Squidoo

Ok, something is odd here:

I compared three lenses:
- the average lensrank put them solidly in Tier 2 for the month (high 3,000's, 5,000's and 6'000's)
- They had not had commercial clickouts, royalties or sales and had none owing (all three are informational)
- One had the infolinks turned off, the others had them left on.

Guess which one earned twice as much as the other two? Yeah. I'm left scratching my head and wondering what exactly is going on.

This is not a good incentive to keep infolinks turned on.

This may prove to be a bug, but right now I am baffled.

(Lenses in quesion: Great Western Railway, the Untouchables and Flying Scotsman.)

Squidoo payments - and glitches?

Something's not right here.

The blue box for this month has turned up. It's the first month's payments to include infolinks on Squidoo, and had a message stating "it's true lensmasters willing to give them a spin are seeing a boost in payments."

Except that I, along with a number of other lensmasters, found our revenues actually decreased. Some have stated they are down by $60-70 (More here). What is really odd is that the lenses where I left infolinks on earned less than the couple where I turned them off!

There are a few people saying that the blue boxes are glitchy, but since the money's come across that seems unlikely.

I'll update if more comes up, but at the moment I'm pretty glad that I've been writing elsewhere and not putting all my time on that one site!

In better news, Redgage also made one of my uploads featured content, (the video of the Bournemouth airshow) and the google sites I did are starting to get some visitors.

I might migrate my steam train content off Squidoo to its own site. I've been thinking about it for a while, and frankly it would probably make more sense right now.

Signing out for the moment, with some thinking to do about where I publish online content.

A Lotus Update

According to Lotus Central, 15th September 2009, it looks as though Team Lotus are in for the 2010 Forumla One Season (got to love Twitter for breaking news!). My Lotus lens has a link to the full story.

If they are in, then now they just need to live up to the name.

I am currently rather busy trying to finish a manuscript off, but once done I should have a bit more time to tweak some more of my lenses!

Run off my feet right now...

Well, novel number 3 is up to 30,000 words. On top of this, I've

• done some work on Google sites


• Found out how to embed script includes like stores in Google sites



• Worked out a way to revise a few of my lenses


• started working on the best way to publish my short stories online

And among all this I'm still finding the time to vote Jasper for cutest dog!

Kid's Books

It seems to be my day to work on Kids books. After I hooked up analytics I was quite surprised by the visits to timandtobias on google sites, especially since I haven't finished it (images, character lists, reviews etc. are still needed) so that's about to get some extra work done and a google sitemap.

And at the same time I'm updating the XH558 lens to include Vulcan Ventures, the children's book by Edmond Squibb about the Vulcan. In some ways this is good for reaching a new audience since it's actually listed on Amazon.com for US sales. However in other ways it is disappointing as it is shown as out of print on the US site, which may discourage customers. US Vulcan fans will need to pick it up from Amazon.co.uk at the moment.

Of course, if enough US customers add it to their wishlist on Amazon.com then maybe some sellers will start importing.

A Flickr problem

Right, well, it seems there is a small problem with FlickR on Squidoo.

A few weeks ago Squidoo changed the FlickR module to make sure all the images it pulls in are creative commons, or ones that you own the rights to. This should not have affected my lenses in the slightest (I own most and the rest are set to creative commons), so I didn't pay much attention.

And then I got the comment - a very polite one but nonetheless one pointing out that Flickr was pulling in the wrong images about Biggin Hill 2009. That it was in fact pulling in the commenter's images, which were not Biggin Hill 2009.

So I checked it. Yep, apparently the Flickr module now interprets a request to produce "Biggin Hill Airshow 2009" photos from my username, as one that should produce his (extremely good) photos of Eastbourne Airshow 2009. Headdesk.

Ater much frantic coding failed to fix the issue, I gave up and pulled the whole Flickr gallery. Since I don't know if the problem is FlickR or Squidoo (I suspect the change made a few weeks back) the images are now linked off Redgage: Click here to view.

This now means I have 200 lenses to run through and see what other deranged and highly embarrassing subsitutions have been made by the new Flickr module. Just what I need on a Monday morning, but at least I now know about the problem.

And once again, my most sincere apologies are offered to the person in question. Thanks for being so polite about it.

(And if anyone else notices something like that on a lens, please let me know.)

In other news, my newer project Tim and Tobias a google site is now live. I'm moving my freehosts site across to google sites as it's easier and quicker to integrate Google than build a site from scratch.

Lots of typing - just not many articles

20,000+ words fully typed edited in two days and several more thousand not typed up or edited. Therefore I have not been exactly active on Squidoo or anywhere else.

On the other hand, this project should hopefully be a quick one (before my fingers fall off from the typing).

Sleep would also be good.

More google sites & Widgets

Cooking with Madeira just got a fairly major hack around since I was trying to find out what I could do with Google sites.

The answer, it appears, is quite a lot. For example I'm probably going to start moving a few sites I built through free hosters onto Google sites - its easier to manage analytics, add Adsense and since all the ecommerce is third party anyway it's not a problem to integrate it.

The only thing I would say is that we will be building a few custom widgets - its range of eBay ones is not that good and mainly US only, which is not ideal.

I am currently waiting on Squidoo to publish user figures and royalties for this month. This should be the first month where infolinks are included, so its make or break time regarding whether I am going to turn them off, and possible migrate my content.

Google Analytics and new videos

Well, apart from updating the Google sites I'm setting up, I'm trying out the Analytics tool on my websites to see how well it works. It's easy to add to the google sites, as you'd expect, but I did end up doing a bit of a hack on the template for this blog to get the validation code in.

I haven't worked out how to integrate it with lenses yet, but if it runs for a few days it should give me a lot more detail on my visitors. Hopefully it will also provide information in enough detail to work out the best settings for trafficseeker. Best of all, of course, it's free!

Also, for anyone who hasn't seen them I've uploaded rough cuts of my Bournemouth Airshow and Eastbourne videos to redgage:

• Bournemouth
• Eastbourne

When I get decent editing software I will clean the clips up a bit more - Bournemouth for the sunlight and compression issue and Eastbourne because it was my first time with the camera.

Cooking with madeira - a google site

I spent a bit of time yesterday evening trying out Google sites. Here's my first:
Cooking with Madeira

There are advantages and disadvantages with it
The good:
- Free
- Pretty easy to use
- Monitisaton is easy, as Google ads are integrated

The bad:
- Its tricky to get started
- There are limits to where you can move pages once you have created them.
- Most of its power is in widgets, but these can run oddly.

There were also some odd integration issues with Amazon that I ended up going to the HTML to resolve. (The one with the Amazon Carousel was never fixed).

Overall I'm not too upset with the site, and will probably leave it up. I might even add more recipes as I find them, although I haven't yet settled on a format for the site.

Now I just need to find a madeira seller to link from it!

A quick note

Shetoldme has worked quite well. After putting a few links up on it and leaving them, the Adsense ads do actually appear to be being clicked on (a rarity!). I've added a few more articles this morning.

Don't be put off by the girly banner - most of my clicks and votes have been on heavy engineering, steam trains and warplanes, so it takes a real range of content. It's also my referral link so if you want to join or join through here, I'd be grateful.

Real life is gettin in the way right now (sick relatives, selling a house, moving a business, all the little things...) so my updates may be erratic. Sorry.

A quick update

Despite sunburn, I've added a few of my images and a rough cut of some of the video clips to Redgage:

• Video - a rough selection of clips
• Photos

Once I get my video editing software working, there should be something a bit better coming up.

I'm also currently adding my content to SheToldMe. Its an indexing site like redgage and if you have a Google adsense account you can link it directly to your content to get the ad revenue. This is a bit of a test, just to see if it works.

Bournemouth Airshow

Just got back from the Saturday. Despite the best efforts of British Rail when the train broke down halfway, we managed to mget there for part of the morning. I have the photographer's sunburn to prove it - through Factor 70, so if you are going take your sunscreen and long sleeves!

Sad news about the Sea Vixen, whose pilot suffered a stroke shortly before the airshow and is now recovering. This means unfortunately no Sea Vixen display, but hopefully the pilot will make a full recovery. Best Wishes to him and his family.

Other displays were the Vulcan, Team Guinot wingwalkers, the BBMF (sadly without spitfire) and several phenomenal acrobatic teams.

A very interesting show, although I have to say I prefered Eastbourne. The Bournemouth show had more on display but long gaps between the flights, and while Eastbourne had a range of stands and a funfair on the seafront, Bournemouth's facilities seemed pretty limited to food and WCs. That said, it's a nice location and a great show, so go early, take water, suntan lotion, and find somewhere to sit and enjoy it! If you know a local it helps, believe me.

I'm sure I should say something about the Eurofighter Typhoon, but it was at the end of the show, so it let us get away early. Can't argue with that.

Eastbourne Airshow

We went last weekend on the Sunday for a fantastic show. The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight did their usually stunning display, two Folland Gnats showed why they were the last fighter aircraft to be used in display by the Red Arrows (those things can move) and there was even a display by the Eurofighter right when I needed to get an ice cream!

Sadly no Vulcan, although that should be rectified at Bournemouth this weekend. I did however get a selection of videos clips with the new camera. The only thing we will probably be doing at the next airshow is using the new camera purely for video - small fast moving objects at great distances turned out to be too much for it.

A lot of my Eastbourne Photos are now on Redgage, as well as a roughcut of the BBMF display which I am using as a tech demo.

Endless Ocean

An embarrassingly late lens on my favourite Wii game.

http://www.squidoo.com/Endless_ocean

This has been a wip for a few months now, so I thought I'd better finish it - particularly when endless ocean two is on its way out!

Sumer School graduation

One quick note: I'm one of 47 entrants who managed to finish the Squidoo Summer School.

All the graduates are listed here:
Giant Squid Summer School Graduation

Congrats to everyone who completed it!

Another lens

Okami Sticker by Akuosa
More Okami Stickers

A new lens went live today:


http://www.squidoo.com/okami-game
Okami

About one of my favourite PS2 games, Okami by Capcom. It's been on the backburner for a while, so I thought I'd better finish it.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that another fan has done a range of excellent fan artwork on Zazzle, including a baby, growing and adult version of Ammy. An example of their designs for a range of merchandise is on the left.

What's been taking most of my time at the moment is a manuscript. With my second novel almost finished, most of the words I write are going towards that at present, so apologies if the updates slow down.

Squidoo Summer School complete

Eight lenses over eight weeks. Doesn't sound like much compared to target 200, but it's a lot harder when someone else is setting the rules. I just submitted my completed list for assessment.

1. http://www.squidoo.com/farthing-downs-tour
2. http://www.squidoo.com/most-prized-possession
3. http://www.squidoo.com/yo-sushi
4. http://www.squidoo.com/grace-spitfire
5. http://www.squidoo.com/zopa-lending
6. http://www.squidoo.com/the-highwayman
7. http://www.squidoo.com/633-squadron-operation-valkyrie
8. http://www.squidoo.com/chelsea-physic-garden

And over the course of it, I'd say it's given me a chance to try lenses outside my normal remit, a chance to play around with new ways to use modules (particularly the Week 6 challenge where you only had 5 modules to use in total) and some ideas for future lenses.

Time to see what credit these are worth towards the summer school. I suspect I washed out on Number 7; done in a flu-y haze I missed the fact it was meant to be a squidLit lens, but then I don't like that template much regardless.

Fotolia cancelled

Account closed and deleted. They failed to send the confirmation email twice, and then would not use our correspondence address. If it's good enough for the bank and HMRC, you'd think it would be good enough for Fotolia, but apparently not.

Of course the bank took a hint when they tried to deliver a card onsite to me when I was working at an airport, without telling me in advance. Airport security can be quite strict about unexpected deliveries. Hence correspondence address...

A quick update

I'm having fun with Fotolia, which doesn't seem to be able to get my account fully active (there are issues with our address). I have just added this site to blogexplosion, but I doubt I will be very active on there, as I am spending most of my time working on Squidoo and redgage. I am hoping to get to the Bournemouth and Eastbourne airshows, so hopefully there will be some good pictures coming back.

And I'm currently working on a new manuscript offline, which is taking a lot of my time away from Squidoo.

Which brings us back to the green links...

The good is that the double underline is back, so they can actually be told from normal links on the Gone Camping squidoo theme. The bad is that they are multiplying: one of my lenses had four in the intro and another further down. In more bad news, one of the other users had an ad that appeared to be selling 12-year-olds (fortunately it turned out not to be actual kids, but that was quite disturbing!)

I've left them on so far because its a test, and its al good money for the cuases I support. However it looks as though the extra money from them will be 24%, which may not make up for the drop in traffic and sales that I and a few others noticed.

I'm swinging towards just turning them off globally. I'd love to see them work, but right now there just seem to be too many drawbacks.

Fotalia - trying out stock footage

I've had a few people ask for copies of my photos - in fact more than a few. So to make things easier (and hopefully make me some money) I've signed up with Fotalia as a test. The new camera is just good enough to take photos at their entry level, so I've sent a few images across to see whether they will be accepted.

Of course, if this works, there will be a lens upcoming - particularly if I can work out how to use the affiliate links with Squidoo! (A new clearspring module possibly?)

Making Topaz Jewellery

Feeling slightly better this morning so I got this one off the backburner:

Making Topaz Jewellery
http://www.squidoo.com/topaz-jewellery-making

It covers making jewellery using backset pendants, (a type of prong setting) where to get supplies and Topaz stones and cabochons for practicing. It is part of a series fetauring my other jewellery making lenses on claw settings and snaptite. I have one more planned.

A new lens

Apologies for quality. I am still down with flu, still wishing it would go away, and still stuck with the deadline to get a book lens done by tomorrow or wash out on the Summer School Challenge.

http://www.squidoo.com/633-squadron-operation-valkyrie - one of the sequels to 633 Squadron.

At least the flu gives me an excuse to take time off and read.

Top 100 badge

A 20x20 set of pixels makes my day. The new Top 100 badge is up on all the Giant 100 Squid lenses.
http://www.squidoo.com/tirial-badge - what can I say, look on the top right under my bio picture.

Down with flu

Down with flu Taking a break from lens/articles/things in general until it clears. Sorry.

I'll leave you with this:
http://www.squidoo.com/support-a-day-of-hope
A lens I did last night, testing out ways to make supporting a charity by lenscrafting more appealing. And all its royalties go to A Day of Hope.

A new lens and update

I've added the "discovery module" to my hatching game lenses and jewellery lenses. Lets see if it works. Even if they restore the discovery module I might leave these up - it's definitely had an effect (my average lensrank jumped from 240K to 130K).

Two new lenses went live this morning, but I still have to tackle the Summer school Week 7 challenge - write a lens about the next book I'm going to read. Now I just finished the last book on my reading list, so I am really not sure of what to read next - particularly since the one I was going to tackle is a little controversial.

I may amend the Science of Discworld one to fulfil the criteria - after all I put it live this morning so it fulfills the time period, even if it has been on the back burner for a while.

I have another jewellery lens in mind, but I'm taking a brief break now.

Magistream - online hatching game
http://www.squidoo.com/magistream
A new hatching game I have started playing. I'm still working out the ins and outs, but this lens will pick up advice and tips as I learn more about the game - much the same way the Dragon Cave lens grew.

Make your own discovery Module

Hopefully this is soon to be redundant if Squidoo bring back their own official module. However this is how to produce the "Discovery Module" I have been using for my test. My Video games lenses have gained a box that looks like this:

Other Relevant Lenses:
Console Game Reviews, Suikoden IV, Ico - Ueda's classic game, Dark Cloud, Disgaea - turn-based strategy RPG, Dog's Life - Canine Capers

To create your own the code looks like this:
<p style="clear:both;margin-top:0px;padding-top:0px;padding:10px;background:#eeeeee; border:1px solid #cccccc;"><b style="#333333;font-size:1.2em;">Other Relevant Lenses:</b><br/><a href="/console-game-reviews" style="color:#333333;">Console Game Reviews</a>,<a href="/suikoden-iv" style="color:#333333;">Suikoden IV</a>, <a href="/Ico" style="color:#333333;">Ico - Ueda's classic game</a>, <a href="/DarkCloud" style="color:#333333;">Dark Cloud</a>, <a href="/Disgaea" style="color:#333333;">Disgaea - turn-based strategy RPG</a>, <a href="/dogs_life" style="color:#333333;">Dog's Life - Canine Capers</a></p>

To create the box:
<p style="clear:both;margin-top:0px;padding-top:0px;padding:10px;background:#eeeeee; border:1px solid #cccccc;"> ... </p>

To create the link:
<a href="/DarkCloud" style="color:#333333;">Dark Cloud</a>,
Change the words in Bold to the link for your lens, and the section in Italic to the name you want to show onscreen


This test has run for only three days, but the best places to put it seem to be at the end of the intro and at the top of a module below the Guestbook (if the guestbook is at the end). I have used six links since that rarely goes over two lines, and matches the original module. In practice, with some HTML skills you can add more links, make them open in new windows, or make the module's look match your lens.

I'll keep updating with test results as they come in, but it's getting tempting to add them to a few more!

Discovery module test update & new lens

Discovery Module
I couldn't resist so I added it to a few more lenses, and am waiting to see the results. However it looks like Squidoo might be bringing it back themselves (announced on Squidu today!) which will save a lot of time on trying to code the thing to automatically pull in the right lenses.

New Lens
Garnet Jewllery Making
http://www.squidoo.com/garnet-jewellery-making

Lens number I-really-don't-know-right-now is now live. It covers the basics of setting a garnet in a premade prong setting, as well as sources to get the settings and gems from (and suggestions to make it less expensive if you mess up the first few times). It's been a while since I made any jewellery, but I might fetch out my kit and do a few more like it covering different gemstones and techniques.

New lens: Topaz Jewellery

A new lens done - it's yet another jewellery one because I am not up to writing large pieces of original content at the moment (or I'd probably be doing bukisa articles instead of lenses!)

Zimbio seems to be working at rather well in terms of traffic, so I will have to sit down and write an article about each of my lenses and get them on there. Also, my Redgage traffic has gone up (did I mention Redgage was the only feed that worked in its default setting?).

I have made no changes to the discovery module. Although it's tempting to start tweaking, it won't be a valid test if I keep fiddling with it!

Projects updates

Discovery Module
My CSS box has been up on all the video lenses for one day, and already seems to be having an effect. The pages have had slightly more traffic than I expected, which seems to be cross-lens from the box itself. I've tried it in a range of places on different lenses and its interesting to see which ones it works on. At the end of the week I'll tally up my results.

Now I just need to figure out how to automate it.

Traffic seeker
Much pressure is being put on my finance department to approve a purchase of the software, since being able to automate search engine submissions completely would be ideal.

Zazzle
I have the new camera, which is great. I also have the blasted flu and can't go out of the house, which is not so great. This is why I am doing all the lens projects now, by the way...

Superbreak
That's right I'm now a superbreak afiliate, which means that tickets to the theatre shows (and hotels for the airshows) can be found on the lenses. At last.

Discovery Modules

The Mossie one was more successful than I thought, and I only rolled it out this morning. As a result, I'm doing a full test of a discovery-style module on the video games lenses.(e.g. Dark Cloud)

Since I haven't changed these lenses for a few months they are all fairly stable in traffic terms. This means that once the modules are in place and the initial boost from the amending has gone, I can compare before and after.

Currently I am trying this by adding a hand coded piece of CSS to each intro module. In a few cases it is elsewhere on the page to see what the effect is and whether I get more cross-lens traffic. All the links are currently to my own lenses, but then I don't have permission to use anyone else's for the test.

If this is a success I will see about creating something, possibly in clearspring, that will emulate the old discovery module properly. Doing it by hand is a real chore - and I'm not looking forward to trying to update links!

More musings about Green links and discovery modules

I am seriously considering turning them off. As I said before, if I want green advert links in my text I could create my own easily enough and not share revenue (Half the affiliates on commission junction offer that option). Looking at the pros and cons:

Leaving them on gives on big advantage - money. Apparently it should almost double what we receive.

However, on the downside, this comes at the cost of losing visitors and therefore potential sales. It places links I can't control in my content, which are rarely relevant. Also the links will remain able to place all three in the intro module, which looks dreadful.

It may even be lowering lensrank. You see, my visitors books are set up so any visitor can post (and fully moderated because of it!) Most of my comments were from non-squidoo members. Since the links came in, that has almost stopped. Since comments count towards lens-ranking, some of my higher rated lenses have dropped quite badly.

Of course, if I did turn them of the option would be following Squidoocool's lead to replace the cash loss. Might try it on a few of mine and see how it works...

Discovery Modules
Squidoo used to have a "discovery module" which displayed related links (three of yours, three of someone else's). These were a great traffic source, but they were turned off on the new templates.

de Havilland Mosquito is the site of a test - whether I turn this into a full module or not will depend on the results.

Zimbio

I had a suggestion that I should start adding my content to Zimbio, the wikizine article.

Zimbio works by users submitting articles which are then adding to various zines set up by other users. Each article can nly be submitted to one 'zine for obvious reasons (stops spamers)

It can take automated feed from blogs so you don't have to rewrite your article each time. Unfortunately, these feeds are of variable quality e.g. I just went through manually adjusting the articles for any squidoo links I uploaded. The bukisa feed is less than ideal as it only pulls in the ratings bar, so it you use it have a paragraph or two ready from your article to enter through the edit screen. The blog feed? I'm sure its great, but my blog content (being personal ramblings about marketing) isn't really suitable for 'zines. The Redgage feed works pretty much perfectly however.

Does it work? I started setting it up yesterday and I'm already getting traffic so I'd say yes. Its pretty obvious, but the trick seems to be taking the time to find the right wikizines.

The other new thing was adding blogrankings to my blog. This site assesses blogs based on visitors and updates and assigns a rank. I'm languishing in the three hundreds, although we have already found that some visits don't appear to register - we suspect that if multiple people are on the same IP or using IP masking it doesn't count them, but we haven't confirmed this.

The new buttons for Zimbio and Blogrankings are on the side of the blog.

#206 The Highwayman

#206 The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
http://www.squidoo.com/the-highwayman

This is another summer school lens. The challenge was to make a lens about something using only 5 modules. Pretty shortly afterwards this was relaxed to possibly not include the intro and Guestbook, but I went with the more restrictive version.

It proved tricky as it wasn't possible to add everything I wanted. For example, the musical versions are absent and I focused entirely on the poem. Usually I avoid extensive CSS on Lenses because they can be very unpredictable (Squidoo's code filter plus browser differences occassionally equals a right mess!) but with this one it was the only way to assemble it.

If you are on Squidoo why not try the challenge yourself? Even if you aren't in the summer school, it's well worth it just for the practice.

Two new lenses, and an approach change

Two new lenses in progress, but these are a change of direction.

http://www.squidoo.com/garnet-jewellery
http://www.squidoo.com/iolite-jewellery

If these looks very different for what I usually do, that would be because they are my first attempts at commercial marketing lenses, and because they are likely to leave my account fairly soon. If the first few prove successful, they will be off to a good home in a different account with a lensmaster who wants them.

I hadn't thought of doing lenses for money before, but strangely I find myself not at all upset at the idea. If this works out, I might throw up a lens offering the service and work out a ratecard. (Meanwhile, if you'd like me to do a lens for you drop a comment on the blog or through my lenses, and I'll let you know...)

A new camera - at last!

Crystal Palace Dinosaur Montage by tirial
View more Dinosaur Posters

I spent yesterday struggling with Photoshop, trying to get the resolution on the images to a decent level for Zazzle. The result was things like the poster on the left. It forced me to admit that mabe my old camera (which I have had for several years now) really wasn't up to scratch anymore. Since I had been keeping an eye out anyway, I took the plunge.

And I have a camera! It's Samsung, not Sony, and definitely not top of the range, but it's good enough for what I want and looks pretty durable - essential for long term use.

Since the resolution is higher, hopefully the quality of my Zazzle products will also go up, and with a larger memory card (and a lens that isn't completely wrecked) a lot more options are available. Also with access to video, even low quality and a bunch of freeware editing tools I might see about adding a few videos or my own to the aviation lenses.

I suspect I might attend the next airshow with a pocket full of memory cards. Who knows, if it works out there might even be a lens on it!

#206 Team Lotus

#206 Litespeed / Team lotus
http://www.squidoo.com/litespeed-team-lotus

A new lens, about the possible return of Team Lotus to Formula One. Admittedly it would in fact be the Litespeed Team F3 racing under than name Lotus, but the green and gold might be making a comeback. If they don't get a place this lens is likely to be short-lived, but it's certainly interesting to watch the news as it breaks.

To be honest, I was feeling rather neutral and not particularly impressed about it right up until I read about their weekend at Oulton Park. Summarised it goes: crash the car, sweep the pieces up from a 100M wide area, spend twenty-four hours sticking it back together and race it anyway. Considering some of the stories about the unconventional Colin Chapman (e.g. strapping a colleague to the bonnet to test airflows - at 100mph. Daily Telegraph), it just seems a rather appropriate.

Other than that, my update program rolls on. The lens with the most changes so far has been one of my more recent ones: Isabella, she-wolf of France.

Focusing on the Queen of England who was married to and overthrew Edward II, I noticed a few issues with the lens. My original concept had been to do it as an illustrated manuscript, but having done so I noticed a few flaws from the user's point of view: Lack of resources for further reading. I've added links to several of the better biographies. Too many typos, some really quite poor. And obviously all the problems caused by the changed layouts. Hopefully all are now fixed.

Just remember, if you read this lens and wonder why some of the well known bits of the history are missing, I'm trying to keep the fourteenth century PG rated. It's not easy!

Squidoo Charity Advice

Well, I just posted my first piece of advice to a Squidoo charity. It's difficult to know what level to pitch it at, so I'm hoping I haven't made it too basic or folksy. Now I just need to wait for feedback.

Although the guidelines say write 3 or so paragraphs and provide a link, there was a bit more to say, so I hope I am not too far outside what they are looking for. Fingers crossed.

To be honest, I haven't felt this nervous since I did my first consulting role!

#205 Zopa - Peer-to-peer lending

A new lens about Zopa, the peer-to-peer lending company. It works by allowing people to contribute money to a pool which borrowers can draw loans from, effectively cutting out banks and middlemen.

There are a few issues with it, but since it can be used in some provider's pensions (Sipps) and lenders can set their own rates it is becoming rather popular as an alternative to conventional loans.

#205 Zopa
http://www.squidoo.com/zopa-lending

(If my count seems out it is because I have one R-rated lens that is not always included in the total, depending on whether or not you are a squidoo member.)

I have also had it confirmed that I am one of the new charity advisors. It's a new scheme so we will have to see how it shakes out, but we've already had our first request in.

And the update goes on

This is taking some time. My apologies to anyone on twitter since I had not realised my update would be pulling in every page as I updated it (It's meant to show one an hour at most...)

On the other hand, the Avro Vulcan video showcase is now looking much better. Its still not my greatest lens, but it has links to the Amazon.co.uk DVDs and actually has some working videos on it. Then again, it was my first squidvids lens and it really was showing its age. Several of the others should look a bit fresher as well!

Might actually be getting involved with this new charity panel for Squidoo, so I'll fill in more details as I get them.

Also Squidoo are running a competition to give one squidoo charity $3000 - see here for details: win $3000. (I just wish a few of the ones I support would sign up. I'm getting tired of pulling the funds out of paypal and wandering across to their charity pot.)

Finally, for anyone interested, an update on Trafficseeker: Frankly it's been a godsend. Trying to manage 200 lenses and assorted sites on the search engines was a nightmare. I've had the entire lot automated for several weeks and it really has helped.

The automation tool is very powerful, but the cut down version with the Pro version which is limited to ten automated projects and 200,000 submissions at a time, really is too small for what we are working on. We are currently duscussing whether to upgrade to the Enterprise edition, which would allow me to set up everything as automated projects.

The Pro version would be fine if you have eight or ten websites (or groups of lenses) to submit. Once you get more or if you are doing this commercially, you are likely to need something larger. I'll give an update on what we decide.

A quick update

It's mainly lens updates at the moment, although with 200 lenses this is going to take a while. A few things lensmasters might want to watch out for:

The new templates, which were amended again this week for the advertising banners, have affected layout more seriously than I realised. For anyone who uses floats or complex layouts you might want to check yours.

More productively, after stumbling over a new trick with Zazzle that lets you embed zazzle products without using the Zazzle module (as long as you are an affiliate), I'm running back through my lenses updating them. The Halifax Bomber page has gained a cut-away design of the aircraft, and I'm looking for a few more for some of the other planes.

The lens that took the most work so far was The Untouchables. Not just a few poster problems but wikipedia refusing to pull in, the layout broken and worse. I've now fixed all of this, but it took a good few hours.

#202 The Grace Spitfire

Lens #202 The Grace Spitfire
http://www.squidoo.com/grace-spitfire

About the Grace Spitfire (ML407) and Carolyn Grace the only female spitfire pilot in the world. I'd been considering this for a while, but there's a distinct lack of material online outside the official site. Nonetheless, when the Squidoo summer school assignment for the week was someone you felt should be acknowledged this lens simply seemed appropriate.

I will hopefully add more to it as I find more display videos and resources, but for now there's enough there to start anyone off who is interested. The real problem is, as always, writing a lens about a living person, where the one thing you really don't want to do is get it wrong - or worse cause offence. Hopefully this tribute lens won't do either.

A new badge & Squid Squad updates

I just got this in my inbox. As you can imagine, I am rather chuffed particualrly since the award was by voting from other Squid Squad members!

The Squid Squad did very well:
Every member going for giant who got more than 50 lenses made it
The Top 100 Team won the challenge with 221 lenses

Squid Squad MVPs:
Giant: hlkljgk
Top 100: tirial

My lens progress since the challenge has slowed. I have a whole set of lenses building up in WIP at the moment, because with working full-time I have written the content, but haven't spent the time in front of a PC to select the right books, posters and affiliates for the lens. There might be a few upcoming this weekend.

And of course there's still the summer school challenge: write a lens about someone you respect. Too bad I can't submit the lenses on Brunel or Bazalgette!

The green ads on Squidoo - a good thing?

As a bit of background, Squidoo are trying out text adverts. Certain keywords in the text are highlighted and linked to adverts. They are trying it for one week, and have promised that there will only be three on each page to stop them being overwhelming, and that the green double underlined links will be discreet.

I wasn't going to blog until the week was over to give them a chance, but frankly my mind is made up at this point with one day to go. Despite a neutral outlook initially, a few issues that have occurred have decided me against. I'll cover the issues with an example of each below:

a) Lack of relevance Not just bad advertising but offensive. The Lancastria lens is about a war grave. Advertising diving holidays is in very poor taste.

b) Ads in the intro The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight lens had all three ads in the intro. Two timeshares and a broadband host. Clustered like that it takes people off the lens before they've had a chance to read it.

c) Overriding links Ads have replaced existing links in Amazon or eBay modules. On the TJX data theft case lens they overrode my links to the articles I was citing.

d) No back button Once someone has left your lens, that's it. They can't get back.

e) Opening in the same window This would not be such a problem if not for d. As it is, if someone clicks on the link they get a fullscreen ad with no way to go back.

I can see d and e irritating users as well as lensmasters. There is also the issue that lensmasters' content is being interfered with and isn't appearing as they intend.

Overall, I don't think the ads are a good thing, and will probably opt all my lenses out. This is a pity as at the start of the trial when three discreet ads appeared, well spaced, and even relevant, on the GWR lens I honestly thought they would work out.

ETA: I've just realised what they remind me of: CoolWebSearch, a rather nasty browser hi-jacker/malware program which I had to clean off a client's machine. CWShredder is probably the best way to get rid of it.

A Zazzle experiment

Since Squidoo has launched a co-brand for Zazzle, I am trying to set up a lens in there for my products. It's a bit tricky, since the auto pickup is working oddly and I'm probably going to end up with multiple modules which I populate manually. I haven't created anything in the Zazzle store recently, so I also need to work out what resolution to set my images at for new products.

Oh well, it's all good experimentation.

Also they are looking for citizen squids to mentor charities. I'm not sure if I'd be a good mentor, but particularly for US charities since the timezone could be a problem. Might apply anyway - it would make more sense to give something back by doing that and it only takes an hour a week.

Badges Update

I've been doing some updating and might take a break from new lenses for a while, while I go through and get my old ones up to scratch. It's surprising how poor some of my earlier lenses look to me now I've had a bit more practice.

Meanwhile I've added my Giant 100 badge to my badges page. An online trophy cabinet may be rather self-indulgent but it keeps me motivated.

What makes a good lens?

There was an interesting post on Squidu.com, that got me thinking:

[quote=interstellaryeller]I do not understand this. Anyone that has 100 or 200 lens in my eyes is a form of spam in itself. nobody can be a expert in that many fields and so I just sift over one or two of their top lens. I really think anything over 10 lens is just nonsence. But squidoo rewards this with lens rank and purple stars. But of course that my opinion.[/quote]

I find that an interesting opinion, but it got me thinking about why I make lenses and what I look for in a lens. I've written well over a thousand reviews. Technically I could turn each of them into lenses (although I prefer to write original content each time) but it would not change the fact that that would be one thousand lenses written from a position of knowledge.

It is certainly possible for one field to generate more than one lens. Astronomy for example has its history, photography, how to take the pictures, the best places to camp to avoid light pollution, observatories, famous figures, equipment etc. so someone who is an expert on those can do lenses on those fields where it's almost certain they know more than their visitors. That's seven fields with space for multiple lenses already. And to rebut the idea that people can't be an expert in more than one field, look up polymaths (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath). People like Leonardo da Vinci or Rupert Gould were experts in several. To a lesser extent it used to be expected of the upper classes.

Rather than an expert's guide I tend to see my lenses more as telling enough of the story to involve the visitor, more of a portal site or guide than a complete detailed view. An expert would write an entire book on some of these subjects, and lens don't have the word count to cover everything to that level - nor do most readers have the inclination to go into that depth on their first encounter with a topic (I certainly don't).

In general I'd say a lens is not spam if the user comes away knowing a bit more than they did, having enjoyed the read, and not feeling as though they wasted their time - ideally with more of an interest in the field.

That's just my view, other people may disagree. Any comments?

And now for the waiting

Well, it's now the 1st July 2009. The Target 200 Challenge is over, and successful :)

Aside from that entry to the other competitions:

The Top 100 Club entries
The Team Challenge

are now closed and awaiting lens reviews for the results to be announced, as are the smaller competitions like the MVP challenge. Why do I feel like I did back when I was waiting for my A-level results?

I spent most of yesterday beginning to go through and improve the lenses - working on tags, adding them to groups and more. At some point I need to lensroll (cross link) them all, which is going to be a big job with that many!

Still got to do the Summer school assignment which is a restaurant review - the problem is that if I do any of my actual favourites it neatly locates me. Might have to do a chain or a picnic suppliers instead! And there are always the small tea-shops I've stopped in while visiting various places - usually to do lenses.

#200 Touching the Void

It gets a special entry because I am too tired to list all the ones I just did. I'll go back and detail them here more once I've had a break.

I am currently squided out.

Going flat out

#190 http://www.squidoo.com/biggin-hill-airshow-2009-photo-tour

#191 http://www.squidoo.com/tolpuddle-martyrs
#192 http://www.squidoo.com/Summoner-games
#193 http://www.squidoo.com/skies-of-arcadia
#194 http://www.squidoo.com/beyond-good-and-evil
#195 http://www.squidoo.com/baldurs-gate

Five more. So very close!

I'm having to take a break because my eyes are going, but I might actually make it!

#189 Grace Darling

#189 Grace Darling
http://www.squidoo.com/grace-darling

About the heroine of Longford Light who, with her father, saved the survivors from the wrecked ship the SS Forfarshire.

#188 Celes Opera

#188 Celes Opera
http://www.squidoo.com/celes-opera

One of the best known pieces of music from a video game, Celes Opera was originally part of Final Fantasy VI, but its enduring popularity among fans meant that it was performed live and converted into a full opera.

Two more lenses

#186 The Lonely Sea - the Collected Stories of Alastair Maclean
http://www.squidoo.com/the-lonely-sea

#187 The Concorde Video Showcase
http://www.squidoo.com/concorde-video-showcase

One of my favourite books and one of my favourite planes.

#185 RMS Lancastria

#185 RMS Lancastria
http://www.squidoo.com/lancastria

About Britain's worst maritime tragedy, where four thousand people lost their lives, and the Lancastria Association's ongoing fight with the British Government for a memorial. It took a while because I wanted to get it right but I suspect that, like Jervis Bay, it is not a lens I will ever be truly happy with.

#180 The Lotus Carlton

#180 lotus Carlton
http://www.squidoo.com/lotus-carlton
My dream car, so I thought I'd do a lens on it. I couldn't find all the images I hoped which had permissions to share, so the lens is a bit text heavy until I source some more.

And I am now quite happy. I said when I started this that 180 by the 30th was a sane and reasonable target, and I've reached 180 with five actual days left. Unfortunately since I wasn't being sane or reasonable I then upped it to 200, which leaves me with another 20 to go. And my wrist is now working again.

Deep breath. Flex fingers. Back to work!

#178 The Box Tunnel (and #179)

#178 The Box tunnel
http://www.squidoo.com/box-tunnel

One more for the GWR series, about the longest railway tunnel of its time (until Brunel built a longer one...)

#179 Your most prized possession.
http://www.squidoo.com/most-prized-possession
Done for Squid Summer School, and a real problem because I could not get a handle on the topic. The problem is that my priorities are pretty much: life and integrity; Anything else is a bonus. And te only physical item I might have done had already been done by something else. So we have plexos for sarcastic answers about two of the ways to ask this questions, and you'll get more when I hear more variants.

Three more...

#174 http://www.squidoo.com/red-arrows
#175 http://www.squidoo.com/black-arrows
#176 http://www.squidoo.com/hms-belfast

So I've made #176. Wonder if I can get some more done this evening?

Edited to add:
#177 http://www.squidoo.com/farnborough-airshow-2008

And three more now ready to go live tomorrow morning, but I'm calling a halt for now. The 200 almost seems possible.

#172 Tales from the flat earth

#172 Tales from the flat earth
http://www.squidoo.com/tales-from-the-flat-earth

About Tanith Lee's flat earth series, which I read and loved as a teenager.

Problem is that that is 65 lenses for the group, and I am beginning to run out of ideas - well those that can be turned into lenses quickly. The historical lenses take hours or days of research, even when I have several on the go at once, and there simply isn't time.

My other reason for doing the 200 was because it was just enough to put Kab's team ahead. This is no longer true, so I may rethink it. Working full time I just don't have the energy.

Still, time to keep plugging on! 28 to go, 5 days, tough job.

Two more

#170 Queen Isabella of England, She-wolf of France

#171 PCI DSS an introduction

Two very diferent lenses but they are now up. 29 to go and six days.

I suspect sleep will be lacking.

Three new lenses

#167 The TJX Data Theft case
http://www.squidoo.com/tjx-data-loss

#168 The Mallard - the fastest steam engine in the world
http://www.squidoo.com/the-mallard

#169 Badbury Rings - an ancient British Hill fort
http://www.squidoo.com/badbury-rings

I have a few more half-built, so the challenge isn't lost yet. At the moment it's effectively marking time until both hands are usuable and I can do the typing I need to finish them off.

And I'm still stuck on what to do for squid summer school - what is the most important item to you, and the one you would carry out of your house in a fire. Um, isn't that a bit personal? And my SO is a bit heavy to carry...

The problem is that my instinctive reaction is "I get out." In a fire nothing else matters compared to getting out alive and staying out. Material possessions are insured and replaceable. You only get one life.

#166 The Medievil Murderers

http://www.squidoo.com/medieval-murderers
The Medievil Murderers

A new lens, about Micheal Jecks' group of historical crime authors, and the anthologies they publish. One of the few I managed to get out of WIP and complete enough to go live. The real problem is that setting up the framework and adding pregen'd content is easy. Typing up my original stuff one-handed to finish the lens off is hard.

A small set-back

This weekend I needed to get ten lenses done to get myself back on track.

Instead with typical, terrible, Tirial, timing I am sitting here with my wrist in a brace.

Typing one handed is a lot slower. I now have six lenses in WIP that just need finishing touches, but I am simply not able to do it at the moment. The result might be a lot of lenses getting set up as WIP and then a rush to get them live at the end. We'll have to see.

Sorry about the slowdown. From now on I promise not to garden when I have a lens challenge on!

#165 The Royal Observatory

#165 The Royal Observatory
http://www.squidoo.com/royal-observatory

I'll say this: target 200 is certainly getting my Work-in-Progress lenses down! This lens, about the Royal Observatory in London, has been on the back burner for a while, (largely due to the stinking cold they gave me when I went across London to visit the site) so I thought I'd bite the bullet and finish it.

I'm not that unhappy with how it turned out - careful cropping and camera angles hides the scaffolding in most cases and allposters supplied enough images to fill the gaps.

To be honest though, the Observatory disappointed me. Last time I was there, it was independant and the staff loved to talk astronomy and science with anyone who would listen. Now it just seems to be more of a tourist show. As an aside, I do wish museums would realise that all the interactive computer light shows in the world can't make a subject as interesting as someone who can talk about it with passion and bring it to life.

#164 Right hand modules

http://www.squidoo.com/right-hand-module

A place for my test notes on right hand modules. Currently the module has my flat text links in it (after finding out that half the browser problems were caused by the Google translate module I'd used to test, which was typical.)

Hopefully (hint) someone with a bit more time and coding skill will produce something useable by anyone - my method is clunky and takes HTML knowledge to exploit fully.

Wasn't sure whether or not to count it towards to 200, but since it's taken most of my evening, I might as well. If it gets scrapped because someone has something better I think I'd actually be happy.

#163 Pitlochry Fish ladder

#163 Pitlchry Hydroelectric Dam and Fish Ladder
http://www.squidoo.com/pitlochry-dam

About the hydroelectric dam in Scotland and its famous fish ladder. Designed to allow salmon to bypass the dam, the fish ladder sees more than 5,000 salmon trvel up it annually. Not quite finished since it won't get a lens image or videos until this evening, but live so that by this evening I can add a few custom modules and Amazon UK links.

TARGET 200 STATUS: 10 days to do 37 lens.

I'm already behind schedule. This is going to be close.

I spent a large chunk of last night working on my older lenses (E.g. Medievil) to get them up to closer to Top 100 standard. One problem with this challenge, which I will be honest about is that my traffic is dropping because I'm not taking the time to promote each. I have an idea how to fix this with Traffic seeker and a batch file, but that takes time to set up. Might just leave it and do the promo work after the 30th June!

Two more live

Not entirely sure what numbers these are, but:

#161 The Brunel Museum
http://www.squidoo.com/brunel-museum

#162 Console Game reviews
http://www.squidoo.com/console-game-reviews

The Brunel Museum was done because they are a small friendly group, who gave me a lot of information for the Thames Tunnel lens, so I felt that spreading the word was a good way to return a favour.

The Console games lens was a chore I had been putting off. I have a lot of video review lenses, and kept telling myself I had to do a lensography. It wasn't a lens I particularly liked writing, and I think it shows. It might get a total rewrite if I get some ideas.

#160 and a half!

Last night Squidoo issued a policy change - no more X-rated lenses. This meant that the Domebo lens would be shut.

I created an entirely new lens for it at http://www.squidoo.com/Domebo-forum which is R-rated and I have done everything I can to make sure it stays that way. A lot of the content here will look familiar to viewers.

http://www.squidoo.com/Domebo is effectively a new lens. The Domebo Canyon Mammoth Kill site was a find of special scientific interest, so the lens now contains a wealth of information about that, mammoths and a bit on the Clovis people, the hunters who killed it.

#159 Prehistoric Park

#159 Prehistoric Park
http://www.squidoo.com/prehistoric-park

A fan lens about Impossible Pictures' Prehistoric Park series. Starring Nigel Marven and a lot of dinosaurs (and scarily believable special effects) this was a children's series but is easily enjoyable as light entertainment by people of any age.

This lens isn't actually complete, so you are getting a sneak preview. I need to complete a couple of custom lenses for it. Thanks to region coding the US DVDs won't play in the UK and vice versa, so its getting a few widgets to insure international availability.

It should be fully complete and live tonight.

41 to go!

#158 Sir Bernard Spilsbury

#158 Sir Bernard Spilsbury
http://www.squidoo.com/SirBernardSpilsbury

Another SquidWho Lens, this time about the famous pathologist. I'm not a huge fan of the template, but I find the Father of Modern Pathology's work fascinating, andits a natural meet for a lens. This is one for the CSI fans.

I'm torn between adding more details to the lens and spinning off a series.

#157 Willard price non-fiction

#157 Willard Price Travel Books
http://www.squidoo.com/willard-price-books
I've had this one kicking around for a while, but thought that it was time to finish it off. It's been tricky because none of his Bibliographies agree with each other - I ended up cross referenceing Amazon and I'm still not sure its right (or complete).

One of his books has a decidedly offensive title, but it was written in 1925. I have decided to leave it intact as airbrushing history rarely accomplishes anything other than people repeating those same actions.

#156 The Farthing Downs Tour

#156 The Farthing Downs Photo tour
http://www.squidoo.com/farthing-downs-tour

I actually managed to come up with something for the Caption Competition for Squido Summer School. It might not be the best lens ever, but it uses the Caption module to create a bit of interaction. Basically I was already working on a photobook of the Downs to go with my lens, and ran into problems that the countryside can only be photographed in so many ways - tree, tree, shrub, sky, grass and pages of this in a book can get very very dull.

So the photos got recycled, I got a lens for the summer school, and another one towards the 200!

Lens #155 Target 200

#155 Target 200
http://www.squidoo.com/target-200

I needed a way to track progress so I set this up (and got a lens towards my total at the same time). Expect the lens to grow as I work towards my goal.

Lens #154 (Hamleys) and a time extension

#154 is now up, which is about Hamleys toy shop, the oldest toy store in Britain and probably the best. It has long been a guilty pleasure of mine, so I thought I'd share it!

The Squid Squad challenge has an extension on the deadline to the 30th June, which is great - gives us more time to make lenses. I'm not sure whether to reset my target to 200 or if that is frankly a bit ambitious, particularly given the other problem...

...Squidoo summer school. With great embarrassment I admit I suspect I am about to fall at the first. The challenge is to find a way to use their new Caption Contest Module. I'm useless at caption contests. I avoid them like a plague. Writing one myself is currently resulting in a very blank mind. Ideas welcomed here!

Edited to add: Why not? I made the 150 by the 13th June.

New Target: 200 lenses New deadline: June 30th.

Can I do it? Probably not, but I'm certainly going to try. And since I'm now on Twitter (Tirial_A) you can follow my progress there as well.

A small update

Domebo - the person responsible was a mod. She won't apologise despite the problems she caused the board, and costing me most of yesterday dealing with the fallout. It looks like she might actually be staying on as a mod - despite not knowing what timezones are and apparently believes there's an after hours on a global messageboard. When I checked the chat last night her attitude was basically "I'm not going to apologise." After all, I am a mere user, she is (in her own mind) a godlike mod. I didn't bother to comment.

And now it looks like one of the other mods was supporting and encouraging it. Guess I'm done with them, depending on the owner's actions.

Sometimes "I am sorry, I was wrong" goes a hell of a long way.

On a more cheerful note my first articlesbase article just went live, and I am slowly dropping my links into Redgage, a system that is supposed to aggregate all your online content. I say "supposed" because the blog, video and document uploads seem to be broken at present - the joys of being an early adopter!

The Squid Challenge closes today, so we will have to see now many lenses in each group qualify as giant/top-100-worthy. Unless someone's been holding back a load of lenses and adds them today I don't think Kab's going to win, but it's been fun.

Bukisa and more

Well, since Squidoo went down while I was halfway through a lens I thought I'd post quickly.

Since yesterday I have
1) Found out how to put content in the right hand side bar of squidoo My test lens is Chocolate Rabbits - an Easter treat - Scroll down and look below the advert at the "More of my lenses" box. That's mine. Until Squidoo say Yay or nay I'm not rolling this out as a module though. I used Chocolate Rabbits because the traffic is strictly seasonal, and its dead at the moment.

2) Deleted and republished the Bukisa article with the drugs comment. I lost my earnings but it's worth it to keep the content clean, and Bukisa had not replied to my request to delete the comment.

3) Locked the Domebo lens to X-rated. They had an incident with a few individuals being stupid in chat, that resulted in some really nasty content being sent out. The lens is staying that way until they have a chance to clean the board up.

Twitter, bit.ly and two articles on PCI DSS

Well, I've thrown a couple of articles onto Bukisa about the PCI DSS standard. Since I don't have any lenses on the subject it's a good chance to see how well my content does as a stand-alone article.

An Introduction to PCI-DSS A brief introduction to the standard for securing credit card details for e-commerce.
The TJX data-breach case A brief chronology and background to one of the largest data breaches in recent years, compromising 45M credit cards.

Twitter is proving interesting - I have hooked most of my content (and this blog) into it as feeds, and actually sold somethig through Zazzle which I was not expecting. Unfortunately Twitterfeed, which sends the RSS from each site to Twitter is proving rather erratic and instead of updating once an hour is waiting until about six and dumping everything up at once. The joys of teething problems...

The other thing I will say is that if it wasn't for twitter I wouldn't have found Bit.ly which I am now using to shorten URLs rather than tinyURL. The tracking and visit records are very useful.

Good news and bad news

Well, Morecambe and Wise got a purple star (YAY!)

However at the same time someone not smart thought it appropriate to link a page about a children's book, aimed at 8 year olds, to an article about drug paraphanalia and Aids. I am not happy and will probably wipe the article - if reporting her spam does not result in it being removed.

The new squidoo

Well, they've put the new Squidoo live.

My first impressions are mixed. The shorter bios mean I have 150 lenses to rework, but aside from that and some HTML tweaks there's not too much to do on that front. From a useability standard point it is much much better with easier bookmark links, a smaller titlebar, and larger text.

The problem is I don't like it. I'll wait a day and hope it grows on me. But frankly, I'm not that fond of it, mainly because I find the grey text hard to read and the large areas of white are frankly painful to look at on a large screen.

Hopefully once they've fixed the remaining bugs (and yes Wikipedia and Feed my search are STILL broken) I'll get used to it. But there might a be lot of CSS hacks and font overrides going on on my lenses if I don't.

The other problem is that five articles on bukisa for two weeks have earned the same as most of my lenses earn in a month.