Friday 29 May 2009

A purple star

I got another purple star, this time for The Untouchables, to make a total of four. I'm nowhere near the top ranks in terms of number of stars, but I think I'm doing pretty well.

What's really funny is that immediately afterwards, two squidoo users visited the lens and rated it one star! Must be Al Capone fans...

#140 Eliot Ness
http://www.squidoo.com/EliotNess

An unfinished Squidwho lens on Eliot Ness - it's trying to find a lens image I am happy with.

Thursday 28 May 2009

#139 Spitfire Video Showcase

Argh! My lens count is still out - I completely forgot I had done a lens. I blame the cold.

#139 Spitfire Video Showcase
http://www.squidoo.com/spitfirevideoshowcase


I can't believe I forgot it, but at least now the count is correct. (I might stop publishing for a day and let everything roll over and update so I can be sure.)

#138 The Untouchables

#138 Eliot Ness and the Untouchables
http://www.squidoo.com/the-untouchables


About Prohibition, focusing on Chicago in the 1920's but also covering some of the myths that grew up around it, and Ness' later career. I'm also working on a Squidwho lens about Eliot Ness to go with it. Al Capone already has several good lenses, so I'm not working on him.

If you've been wondering why my count has been out, I hit publish on this early, and have only just got it to a point I am happy with.

Wednesday 27 May 2009

New lens: Two lumps webcomic

#137 http://www.squidoo.com/two-lumps
Two lumps webcomic


Down with a heavy cold so updates may be erratic (never really kicked it after the obeservatory visit, and its back with a vengeance). Finally got up this evening, had a brief look at a web comic I follow and figured why not do a lens on it?

Also quite surprised as Great Western just broke into the top ten on Squidoo, and has been changing ranks between 9 and eight. It's even reached number two in its section.

Tuesday 26 May 2009

Lens #136 and Trafficseeker report part 2 or 3?

#136 English Electric Canberra / Martin B57 Canberra Video Showcase
http://www.squidoo.com/canberravideoshowcase

To go with the Canberra lens, since I found a lot more videos of the plane than anything else. And because it's a really nice looking aircraft in all its variations. I don't usually do video showcase lenses, but this fitted.

Traffic seekerRight, since I started it there have been a few effects.

1) Traffic - no significant extra traffic has registered on any of my test sites, although there's been a minor increase: literally one or two visitors per site.
2) Backlinks - the number of backlinks has significantly increased
3) Search engines - the lenses' presence on search engines has increased (position and which ones it's actually shown on)
4) Due to a combination of the above, lensrank has increased on those lenses.

I am expanding my test, but meanwhile I'm using the tool simply to keep the major search engines updated with my new lenses - it's worth it just for that ability. Would you want to manually submit over 100 urls to each major engine each month? No, nor do I!

Saturday 23 May 2009

New lens #135 Sir Daniel Gooch

#135 Sir Daniel Gooch
http://www.squidoo.com/danielgooch


Admittedly this is mainly to fill a gap in Great Western, since its difficult to do the Great Western Railway without covering Sir Daniel Gooch. Fortunately he is also a fascinating person in his own ight, locomotive engineer turned businessman turned transatlantic cable layer.

Still it's another lens. Hopefully the new ideas will come back soon.

Friday 22 May 2009

A Purple star for Jervis Bay

Jervis Bay and Convoy HX84 just got a purple star!

The story of possibly the best known Atlantic convoy in World War Two, and the heroism of the merchant navy sailors when they were ambushed by the Admiral Scheer was a tricky one to write. A lot of the sources contradict each other, e.g. Wikipedia says there were 37 ships in the convoy while the manifest says thirty eight and their escort. A trip to the Imperial War museum was necessary to resolve some of the differences.


Also, here's my halfbuilt site about Tim and the Hidden People. Please ignore the background photo - after a complete systems crash it's only there until I can recover the real one.

A traffic seeker report and Out of ideas...

Running a bit out of ideas, so I am taking a short break from lenses and turning one of my lenses into a full website (handicapped by my complete lack of artistic talent...). I might have another lens up by the end of today, I don't know.

The initial results from trafficseeker have been good, and my test site has increased its exposure to visitors and backlinks. Unfortunately the lens I used it on wasn't that well ranked, so an increase from two to four visitors a day might be co-incidence. Nonetheless, there's cautious optimism going on here, so I'm trying it on something a bit higher ranked.

Now if I could just get some more ideas...

Thursday 21 May 2009

New lens and tweaks to an old one!

#134 New lens Hannibal the Hamster
http://www.squidoo.com/hannibal-the-hamster

About the Hannibal the Hamster Ladybird books. My original plan was to get a few pictures of an actual hamster, but getting next-doors hamster to pose (and there's a phrase I never thought I'd use!) proved rather tricky. The least blurred is the lens image, and I've resorted to allposters for the rest.

I've just edited the Gavin Lyall lenses to correct a few typos, fix a few broken links and add gratutitous "Love the Lens" and "Bookmark" widgets to it - hopefully these older lenses will be a little less dead.
http://www.squidoo.com/GavinLyall_FlightBooks - the lensography that links to the revised lenses.

Also the TSR2 lens now has links to the flightsim add-ons for it.

Wednesday 20 May 2009

Two news lenses and a new LOTD

#132 Rupert Gould
http://www.squidoo.com/rupertgould

#133 John Harrison
http://www.squidoo.com/johnharrison


Done as tie-ins to my Longitude lens, these are both SquidWho lenses about the people concerned. I don't really get on with the squidowho layout so there's not as much detail as I'd normally put. Still trying to do lens images since there aren't any royal free ones I can use.

And Great Western has been replaced as Lens of the Day by Party_Animal's lens on the new first dog in the US. Congratulations to the new lens of the day!

** Bo, The first dog **

New Lens, & Traffic seeker

#131 British Aviation
http://www.squidoo.com/british-aviation

Stuck with a case of writer's block I thought I'd get down to the rather dull project of creating a lensography for my aviation lenses. They are getting a little out of hand since I've made quite a few...

And on to TrafficSeeker.

Right, I was happy enough to register it. First impressons of the registered version were mixed.
1) It shows all the search engines you get with Platinum, so you have to manually cull these to a level that your Pro version will submit to. However having seen what the extra engines are (e.g. a Russian specific search engine and FFA networks) I will not be buying Platinum.

2) If you submit to all the ones you can (about 200,000) it takes a lot of time. The scheduler and Bulk Submit are likely to be vital.

3) Spidering your site produces A LOT of extraneous links. With my site, which has content across multiple domains, it was better to set it up manually.

The first test is still running. However my reason for registering it was simple - a mild boost in lensrank for the site I used it against, and even if I only use it for search engines and not all the extras it wil save a lot of time.

Overall so far I'd give it a tentative four/five. Hopefully once I get the scheduler set up that will increase.

Tuesday 19 May 2009

Slowdown on lenses

Thanks to the long trip I mentioned yesterday, and the rain I didn't mention, I have a wonderful cold.

Sorry, no new lenses. Just beechams and a warm fire.(And submitting my lenses to lensrolls and Squoogle and adding badges and general tweaking, but then every little helps.)

I'm also running a trial of TrafficSeeker - managing resubmitting my sites to all the search engines each time I update them is getting tricky now there are over a hundred lenses and multiple websites. Hopefully this will take on some of the load and give me more time to write lenses!

So far its been very easy to set up and use for the trial version. I've got four projects set up, and installation was a snap, and submission very easy. However, perhaps because it was a trial I have found that it can lock you out if you have the scheduler running in the background. As I find out more, I'll report further.

Monday 18 May 2009

#130 Medievil the video game

New lens: #130 Medievil
http://www.squidoo.com/medievil


A few of my older reviews, dusted off, and re-written to form a lens about one of my favorite platformers.

Sorry about the slowdown in lens production. Basically I lost half the day to an observatory who was due to be the #130 lens. I phoned ahead (a little bit of background, my ankles are currently bruised and I don't enjoy walking right now). After they confirmed that photography was allowed and said that there were no restrictions, I headed across with my camera. It's a two hour journey, but I thought I'd have a chance to look round.

Two vital bits of info their contact person missed out:
a) photography is allowed, but only outside (I'd call that a restriction, don't know about you)
b) The outside's under scaffold right now.

Seating? Chance to not stand? None. So, rather than write what I currently think of them on a lens, I am taking a break and calming down before I tackle that one.




I think I'll move the Brunel museum up my list instead - they were a lot smaller but a lot more helpful and pleasant to deal with.

I'm also trying a new idea on my existing lenses - a custom bio. The Great Western, Madeira and Willard Price lenses, now all have custom bios for the series, as well as a badge that links back to the main site. It could be interesting to see if this affects lensrank or traffic flows between the lenses. I'll update here if I think it was a success.

Great Western Work

I've been at work on the Great Western lenses I did.

At the moment there's Great Western Railway, the overview of the railway itself.

Now the three linked lenses are live and tell the story of the rolling stock and railway's early days in more detail.
The Star Class The first engines to run on the GWR, the North Star pulled the inaugural train.
The Firefly class Designed from the Star Class with a larger boiler, the Firefly class were the workhorse of the Great Western. This also covers the Ixion's race with two narrow gauge engines during the gauge wars.
The Iron Duke class Based on the Firefly, with two extra wheels, the Iron Dukes served until the end of broad gauge and pulled the fastest express train in the world.

Hoepfully this extra detail will fill in a few of the blanks the GWR lens may have left.

New lens
#129 Primal
http://www.squidoo.com/Primal

About the video game Primal for the PS2 - a guilty pleasure of mine. There isn't much content on this, but since I'm heading out to find some resources for another lens it might have to wait for an update.

Sunday 17 May 2009

Two new lenses

Well, I'm not quite happy with either of them, but since its been tipping it all morning, I thought I might as well put them live.

#127 GWR Star class Steam Engines
http://www.squidoo.com/star-class-steam-engines

About the Star Class, the first steam engines created for the Great Western Railway after their initial issues with the engines built to Brunel's specifications. These engines gave rise to the successful Firefly class.

English Electric Canberra Prototype
The BAC prototype

#128 English Electric Canberra (the B57)
http://www.squidoo.com/english-electric-canberra

Done at the suggestion of Spook, another lensmaster, this one was tricky. The Canberra is still in service with airforces around the world, while most of the aircraft I write about have been long retired. Also, it has a very long service history, 57 years. Rather than try to cover this in detail - it's been done better elsewhere by people more familiar with the plane - I've tried to create the lens as an intro with links to the relevant sites and resources.

Saturday 16 May 2009

#126 Maximo

#126 Maximo
http://www.squidoo.com/Maximo


As with many of the video game lenses, I dug up my old review for my website, dusted it off, added new content and put it into a lens. I prefer the reviews that way as they get more views, and it's easier to embed links to videos and other content that people find useful.

And Great Western Railways just got a really nice write up at the Lens of the Day blog.

Friday 15 May 2009

Lens of the day

Great Western Railway lens of the day



Having missed the extremely, extremely obvious - the little box on the side of the control bar that says Lens of the Day - I can confirm that Great Western Railways actually is Lens of the Day.

I can also confirm I am currently rather shocked, stunned, happy, and going to get a drink since I wasn't sure whether it was the web or me that had gone insane.

ETA: In my defense, I had my head down for a couple of hours working on the Canberra lens and when I popped up to check comments there were more than a few...

Ahem, excuse me for shouting but - I GOT LENS OF THE DAY!!!

Normal, calmer, service resumes shortly.

New bookseller and tweaks

Well, today will probably be mostly tweaking. Biblio and Abe both accepted my application, and there ranges are different enough that some of the books I could not find through Amazon can now be made available.

Tim and Tobias now has a biblio link for international sales.

My fingers are crossed however, since I've had a couple of odd comments on Great Western Railway suggesting it got lens of the day. However, there's nothing in my inbox, the forum or the blog, so I'll update here as I find out what is going on!

ETA: OK, now its a lot of comments. Is the usual reaction to a possible lens of the day to stare blankly at your PC screen and wonder what is going on? And it looks like my next lens will be on the English Electric Canberra (that's the B-57 to the USAF). Thanks for the suggestion by lensmaster Spook.

Thursday 14 May 2009

#125 HX84 and the Jervis Bay

#125 HX84 and the Jervis Bay
http://www.squidoo.com/Jervis-Bay


This is a lens I have been considering literally since I joined Squidoo. I have written and deleted it more times than I can count. Issues such as massively conflicting resources, the scale of the project and the odd lack of public resources on certain areas (e.g. pictures of the Jervis Bay itself) all caused issues.

So after writing it this time, I decided to take the plunge, and make it live anyway. It's not perfect - needs a guestbook, possibly a few more tweaks, some pictures... but it is live.

The real dilemma is what to do with royalties. Usually I take these as cash, but for this lens that does not feel right. Hopefully one of the charities I have suggested will join squidoo so I can send it to them directly - but until then it will be going in the local RNLI charity box.

Wednesday 13 May 2009

#124 Brunel Lensography

#124 Brunel Lensography
http://www.squidoo.com/brunel


This is live but unfortunately still a work in progress. The same thing delaying my Thames tunnel lens is affecting the lens image for this - the requirement to get to the Brunel Museum with a camera...

Unfortunately this is largely down to the recent rainfall, and the effect on British Rail. You'd think British trains would be used to the weather but apparently not. f course, I'm not keen on going out myself in this weather either.

Anyway, I've put it up as it's a quick reference to the Brunel lenses - and to be honest there are already quite a few of them. Its also up becase I am tackling a difficult project as a new lens, I don't want to get distracted and I'm not sure I can do it justice.

The new one's going to be toughter than GWR to write. Fingers crossed it's as well received.

Tuesday 12 May 2009

#123 Tim and Tobias


New Lens #123 Tim and Tobias
http://www.squidoo.com/Tim-and-tobias


All about the Tim and the Hidden people books by Sheila K. McCullagh. I grew up with these, and they were one of the best ways to get into reading I know of. Judging by the number of 5 star reviews, I'm not the only person to think that. As rare books that were only briefly reprinted, there is a lot of interest in them.

However, the information about the books is scattered around, so I thought I'd pull it all into one location. Amazon.co.uk links are already available for the books, but I am still waiting on a few international books sites to get back to me with link permissions.

I might turn this one into a website. It depends on how much time I have.

And Farthing Downs just gained a few items on Zazzle.

#122 Farthing Downs

Farthing Downs on Zazzle

#122 http://www.squidoo.com/farthing-downs

A lens about the Corporation of London open land inside London. This was an interesting one, because when I first started I could find very little. However when I changed tack to bulk out the lens, looking at ramblers and archeology I was suddenly flooded. As a result it feels a bit scrappy, and I will be adding more content once I have the images to go with it.

It was also tricky since when you are standing at the top of Farthing Downs with your camera is not when you want a) to have the batteries go flat and b) for it to start raining. I can take a hint, so new images can wait until I've dried off!

Monday 11 May 2009

#121 Ragged Angel Games Showcase

New Lens #121 Ragged Angel Games Showcase
http://www.squidoo.com/raggedangelsgamesshowcase

My first Squidbids lens, so a bit of a test. Done for the local games shop, the functionality is a bit limited until they get signed up for the developers API so I can add useful bits like search boxes.

And #122 just went live, but if you heard a scream in South London it's because I hit publish on my large Brunel bio lens before it was ready. Guess what I am going to be spending the rest of the day frantically tidying.

Saturday 9 May 2009

#120 The Iron Duke GWR steam engines

New lens: #120 The Iron Duke
http://www.squidoo.com/iron-duke-steam-engine


About the Iron Duke class of GWR Broad gauge steam engines, which pulled the Flying Dutchman fast express. This was a spin off from my GWR lens, but I had enough material (just) to make doing this one worthwhile.

The other lens that got a tweak was the one that is now http://www.willardprice.co.uk. A surprising number of visitors aren't familiar with lenses, and didn't realise each book as its own page. A new link by each description should make this more obvious.

Friday 8 May 2009

A second purple star!

Madeira Wine just earned my second purple star!

And Longitude just got made Lens of the Month at the British Literature group!

#118 and #119 and a change of charity

#118 Etiquette Hell
http://www.squidoo.com/etiquette-hell

What can I say, I have loved the e-hell site for years, and setting up a small fan homage seemed apropriate, even if it's not quite in keeping with the Brunel theme recently.

#119 How NOT to fundraise online
http://www.squidoo.com/bad-fundraising

How NOT to raise funds and profile online for not for profits. Inspired by some of the classics I've seen while developing fundraising strategies, and by a recent comment from a charity rep who just lost my support for his cause permanently. Don't ever beg me for £2 a month, when you already turned down a lot more!

New charity required! I am looking for a new charity to support through squidoo. If you are a UK-based aviation-focused charity and you want to register for my aviation lens income let me know. You will need a Paypal account and to register for Squidoo (which requires proof of charitable status).

Do email them. The site says US only but I have confimation from Squidoo that as long as you can prove you are a charity they will consider your application.

Thursday 7 May 2009

#116 Great Western Railway

Lens #116 The Great Western Railway
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/new_workshop/Great-Western-Railway


This is the one that I was stuck on. Too much information - and I mean that literally. Even pared down to the basic points its one of my longer lenses. The story of the GWR is one of business expediency or technological advice, massive engineering achievements, and one of the most famous Railways the world ever new, built by its greatest engineer.

Still it's up, I think I got everything vital in, and frankly I rather like the look of it.

It also comes with a rather shorter spin-off:

New Lens: #117 http://www.squidoo.com/firefly-steam-engine

Since I'd got so much material about the engines, I thought I'd use it rather than let it go to waste.

Crystal Palace Park Dinosaurs eBook

Since the weather improved I finally got to Crystal Palace Park with a camera. I got photos of most of the dinosaurs, although the Pterodactyls are tricky to spot with all the foliage in bloom. Since I took a few too many photos for the lens (what can I say, I got carried away), there is now a free ebook available to download or preview from the lens. The hardback option produced to get a printing proof for the ebook is also on there

A few of the excess images are going into a zazzle store for fans of giant monsters that look "Like nothing that ever walked the earth."

Of course, all this means that there have been a few changes to the lens

Visit the Crystal Palace Dinosaur lens to have a look.

Tuesday 5 May 2009

Updating lenses and notes

Right, spent a few days on updates.

The Dragon Cave lenses (Dragon Cave, Dragon Breeding, Dragon Catalogue) have been updated with the seven new dragons, and more than a few rule breaking comments have been deleted (Guys, do you really want to lose your DC accounts?)

I'm still looking for good madeira recipes for the individual types of madeira, but otherwise those lenses are good to go.

I might be about to move hosts for my own websites - I've got quite a few on different hosts so it makes sense to combine them on a larger platform and standardise, not least since I'm looking for a way to turn my lenses into websites.

And finally I've started a zazzle store. Currently it just has one product, but hopefully there will be a few more coming soon.

New lens Tirial's Badges #115
Ok, this one is a bit of a cheat. My lensography at Tirial is getting rather long, so I'm hiving off the badges to their own lens.

Friday 1 May 2009

A Purple Star Award!

Buy at Art.com
Harrison's Number 4 Timekeeper or
Chronometer for Finding Longitude

Buy From Art.com



A very quick update: my lens Longitude just got a purple star award! Six purple stars are awarded each week for lens quality - there's more about the award on squidoo.

My first purple star, and I am absolutely delighted!

(and since I've got the basic framework for the madeira lenses up, I'm now on 114 lenses towards my target of 150.)

110 lenses and a group

It seems with the lensrank delay I lost track: I actually have 110 lenses live! I am busy continuing to strip out clearspring modules and replace them with handcrafted links - frankly they may not have the functionality, but they look better in most cases.

To keep my interest up however, I am turning my new Madeira lens into a series, with four new lenses about the four types:

Sercial
Verdelho
Bual
Malmsey

These are tests, so they will gain new content (particularly once I find a few more suppliers with product feeds), but the basic framework is up.

I'm also revamping the British Aviation group, which has gained a few extra modules, and a snazzy English Electric Lightning as a lens image. Unfortunately there aren't a lot of people covering this topic on the largely US-based Squidoo, so I am having trouble recruiting more lensmasters. If you have a lens and want to submit it, please do!