Monday 29 June 2009

#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.

Sunday 28 June 2009

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.

Saturday 27 June 2009

#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.

Friday 26 June 2009

#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.

Thursday 25 June 2009

#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.

Wednesday 24 June 2009

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.

Tuesday 23 June 2009

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.

Monday 22 June 2009

#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.

Sunday 21 June 2009

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!

Saturday 20 June 2009

#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.

Friday 19 June 2009

#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!

Thursday 18 June 2009

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.

Wednesday 17 June 2009

#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.

Tuesday 16 June 2009

#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.

Monday 15 June 2009

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.

Sunday 14 June 2009

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.

Saturday 13 June 2009

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.

Friday 12 June 2009

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.

Thursday 11 June 2009

A new challenge!

The Squid Team Challenge doesn't end until the 15th, and my team is lagging, so I might be turning out a few more lenses before then. And I won't know if I got Top 100 until June 30th. So rather than be bored or nervous, I am taking on a new challenge!

Squidoo have now started a summer school - the challenge? To make eight lenses in eight weeks on preset topics.

More here: Squid Summer School

I don't get on as well when I can't pick my own topic, so this should be a bit harder!

Wednesday 10 June 2009

Lens 150 - The A1 Tornado

#150 The A1 Steam Tornado
http://www.squidoo.com/A1-tornado


The A1 Steam Trust's Tornado is the first steam engine built in Britain for forty years, and is currently in mainline operation. A Peppercorn class she is capable of great speed pulling a nine coach train - and looks absolutely stunning in motion.

I had been debating what to do for 150, as I wanted to do something special for my target lens. The A1 Tornado is definitely something special. Besides, as I like steam engines and jet planes, a steam engine named after a fighter jet is the best of both worlds.

Twitter?

Not a new lens, but I am hopefully now signed up to twitter. This blog post, I freely admit, is just a test and I am busy hooking in my squidcasts and bukisa feeds to twitter just to see if anyone's interested - and its all good backlinks even if they aren't!

On the squidoo front, Dragon fans might want to check out http://www.squidoo.com/DragonHatchery - it just gained a way to display your own dragons by an embedding forum. If it gets spammed or abused, I'll remove it, but for the moment feel free to add your dragons!

Tuesday 9 June 2009

#149 The Iron Railway Vineyard

(Did I mention the three extra articles I've just added to Bukisa? No? Well I just did, and they'll appear inthe widget in the sidebard shortly.)

My 149th lens takes me back to alcohol, like the madeira lenses.

A small vineyard that I stumbled across at Coulsdon Market while I was researching the Farthing Downs lens. I'm not a wine drinker, and my friend was definitely more interested in their cider range, but I think there's enough there for a lens!

I'll be seeing if I can get more info on it to bulk the lens out a bit more. Meanwhile lens 150 is in the works, and hopefully will be going up very very soon...

...and then I'll get some sleep.

Sunday 7 June 2009

#148 The Flying Scotsman

Not really complete - it still needs a lens image and more details on the engine, but since I hit publish automatically it is live.

Officially that puts me on 148, so I didn't make the 150 before I started work, but I have a few others in the pipeline and now I am aiming for the end of the week.

I've got until June 15th to complete the 150 for the challenge. Fingers crossed!

Friday 5 June 2009

#147 Lens Companions

#147 Lens Companions
http://www.squidoo.com/tirials-lens-book

Since I was turning out these print and download versions of my lenses anyway I thought, why not make a lens about them? I will add a few self publishing resources later when I have a chance, but it seems reasonable to put them all in one place (if anyone can stand reading that much at once).

And a big Oh dear!

I've been so busy with lenses and jobs I forgot my dragons, and the dcfansite seems to be down. I promise not to do this again, but:
Adopt one today!Adopt one today!Adopt one today!Adopt one today! Please click my dragons! (even just viewing helps)

And I currently have six articles on Bukisa awaiting publication, and three lens books on lulu. Rather than adding lenses at my past rate I'm trying to publicise the ones I've got a bit.

Thursday 4 June 2009

The Thames Tunnel

Lens #146 The Thames Tunnel
http://www.squidoo.com/thames-tunnel


And back to Brunel. I've had this one half finished for a while so I thought I'd throw it up and hope.

Another project I am trying is converting some of my lens content into pocket books through lulu. I had a few people request I format lenses for print, so I've laid out my content from the lenses in print versions at £2.99 (sorry, but lulu charges me if it gets printed, and that's the cheapest I can make it) or a free download. It also gives me another module that's not just text which I can add to my lenses!

Brunel's Three Great Ships and Brunel's Western Railway are now both available in beta, but I'm still waiting for my test copies to turn up so I can perfect the layout.

Wednesday 3 June 2009

A quick update

Click here to view posters!
Click here to view posters!



Visit Art.com


I have had someone ask about where I found the images for my lenses. The answer is very simple - several affiliate schemes. The two I use most often are linked to the left: as you might expect allposters provides poster style artwork more frequently, while art.com is slightly more sophisticated. However, there is a large crossover between them.

On a different note, it seems I'm going back into work fulltime. So while I have a job (which is great!) I'll have less time for lenses and my production rate is likely to slow down.

I am hoping to get to the 150 before I start work, but this is unlikely. Fingers crossed though!

And you might notice a new gadget on the right side for bukisa. This is an article creation site open to users outside the US, so I'm throwing a few articles up on it for my lenses. While text blocks don't work on a lens, they look fine on an article site. I'm also throwing a lot of the content there open for syndication - with the caveat that you leave my links intact of course!

Tuesday 2 June 2009

HMS Glowworm

HMS Glowworm
http://www.squidoo.com/hms-glowworm


In 1940 a British Destroyer, HMS Glowworm, found herself in an unequal fight against a german battleship, Admiral Hipper, which was seven times her size. The story is one of gallantry at sea, and unusually it reflects well on both sides.

Monday 1 June 2009

Morecambe and Wise

Four new lenses, all about one of my favourite comedy duos.

Morecambe and Wise
SquidooWho: Ernie Wise
SquidooWho: Eric Morecambe
Morecambe and Wise Video Showcase

The SquidWho lenses on each of them I am really not happy with, but then I dislike the template intensely. On the other hand, the main one turned out well enough to make it worth it (and gave me an excuse to watch their DVDs again!)

So that's now 144 lenses in total - closing on the 150 mark!