Thursday 17 December 2009

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.

Wednesday 9 December 2009

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!

Monday 7 December 2009

Why vote? A new lens

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.