The Poddyland News

It seems so long ago now (although it was only 10 days) that I found out that my Bournemouth lens had earned the coveted Purple Star award on Squidoo.

I was so excited, since this award is not given out lightly, and although my lens had already won the Lens Of The Day award last year, this just gave me renewed confidence in my ability to create quality lenses.

I was all set to publish a new blog  post about this, when I got busy with other tasks for a few days, and then my laptop decided to crash on me.   The Hard Drive got horribly corrupted, and having realised that it wasn’t going to be possible to get the system restored, I decided to buy a new 500gb Hard Drive to replace the 120gb one that came with the laptop.  The existing drive was already 90% full, despite my offloading my Music and Movies, so getting a larger drive was the best solution.  Since it only cost $90, it was well worth it.

The problem is that any system restore like this takes time, and in my case 4 days!  It’s nt just restoring Windows, it’s downloading and installing all the programs, remembering your logins and settings etc.  Lots to do.

I was very fortunate in that I took a backup 4 days before, and since I keep 7 days of mail on the server, I only lost updates to a couple of documents, and any emails that I had sent out in the last few days, but nothing else.   PHEW!  I am so relieved to have the system back…

And now it’s time to play catch up, and work on creating another lens that might get an award…

MY SQUIDOO ANNIVERSARY

Today (15th January) is the first
anniversary of my joining Squidoo. 

It seems amazing that it’s been a whole year since I created my first lens, Religious Jokes, and many more lenses have followed since then, my first still performing well, but right now none of my lenses are in the Top 2,000, although traffic is still good.  

July 2008 saw my recognition as a Giant Squid, and my catalog of 50 lenses at the time was complemented by a number of Song Lyric lenses, which is deemed to be a cookie-cutter format lens and not enough original content, but I like to think that the format I created for my Song Lyric lenses is a little different to those that some lensmasters put together.  They might not always perform too well, since there is a lot of competition for this topic, but I think they look good nevertheless.

One year on from joining Squidoo, what are my plans?

Well, I would like to join the Giant Squid 100 Club by having 100 quality lenses, but having only 70 so far and 25 of them Song Lyric lenses, this is not a priority of mine.  I don’t have the time to devote all my energy to creating lenses right now, so the best I can manage is 1 or 2 lenses a month.

My main plans with Squidoo this year are to firstly keep up with my goal of creating a Daily Jokes lens for each month, the first of these being February 2008, so another anniversary is coming up once I get the January 2009 lens completed.  My second goal is to try to create some lenses that earn money, rather than just getting traffic to my lenses.  My third and final goal is to complete the lenses on my home area in England.  The only one that is complete so far is Bournemouth, and although this won the much coveted Lens Of The Day award and is still one of my top lenses, the effort and research it took to create such a lens is hard to repeat.   I do have a number of other shell lenses for my home area, and really look forward to seeing these all complete and with plenty of visitors.  It is after all a beautiful and unique part of England and indeed the world.  Actually I do have a fourth goal, and that is to complete the biography part of my lensography.  I have covered the period from my birth up to 1988, but from there it will need to get really detailed, and I may have to split it into two lenses – or more…  I really would like to do this though, and also add many photographs from along the way.  I still think it makes a fascinating read if you would like to learn more about me.

THE NEW BLOG IS COMING ALONG

The new blog that Debnet and I are working on together is coming along really well right now.

We are managing to create posts on a number of various areas, and although the blog is only 2 weeks old, we are getting about 100 visitors a day, which is a good start I think.   I am hoping to get more like 1,000 visitors a day soon, but obviously it takes time for the readership to grow, and for the content to mature.   I do have plans for new pages on the blog, to cover seasonal product promotions, and also a list of other blogs, including Squidoo related blogs and blogs by Squidoo lensmasters.

Anyhow, if you haven’t seen our blog yet, or if you haven’t paid a visit lately, please find time to drop by, and if you like it, please feel free to leaveus a comment.   You can also subscribe to our posts. 

My SQUIDOO LENSES

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS

Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 0
Top 10,000: 9
Lenses: 73

NEW LENSES

The Daily Joke December 2008

MY TOP 5 LENSES

Zecharia Sitchin
Bournemouth
My Pet Peeves
The Lion Of Judah
The Daily Joke December 2008

LENSES IN NEED OF LOVE – I AM LONELY – PLEASE VISIT ME

Song Lyrics – Madness – Baggy Trousers 
Song Lyrics – Madness – Our House
Super Heroes Gone Wrong

September 11th is an odd day for me these days. It’s often a quiet one, reflecting back on the events of 7 years ago, for not only was this a very emotional day for the whole world, it was my son’s 21st birthday. So now every year the opportunity for him to celebrate his special day gets dampened by the remembrance of that awful day.

I was lucky this morning and managed to find him at home in England when I called on the way to work here in Florida. We had a long chat which was nice. He is usually impossible to get hold of, since he works shifts and when he is not working he is usually either out or sleeping.

My girlfriend started on our new venture yesterday, a joint lens on New York, and I am looking forward to adding my sections to this. We had such a wonderful time there, I can’t wait to see our commentary together in the same lens. Since she has the same crazy sense of humour that I do, I hope it will be a really popular lens. For a change it should be a popular subject compared with some of the lenses that we have both created.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 7
Top 10,000: 7
Lenses: 66

MY TOP 5 LENSES

My Pet Peeves had some more modules added to it yesterday, plus a Squdcast, and although this was late yesterday evening I guess it did the trick, moving the lens from 6th place to #1 as far as my lenses. Bournemouth also rose slightly due to imoroved traffic and more backlinks. I’m waiting for other changes to kick in still and have more lenses to update and promote on Stumbleupon.

My Pet Peeves
Poddys Lensography
Bournemouth
My Claim To Fame
The Daily Joke – April 2008

As many of you know this has not been a good week, with my girlfriend’s visa to come stay with me in the USA for a year having been rejected, and as a result she now faces being turned back at Miami when she comes over on Friday night. So both of us have been highly stressed and the lenses have suffered. We hoped to be living together as from Friday night, having been seeing each other for over a year, but now even if she does get into the country, she is only here for 8 weeks, and then her chances of getting in again depend on applying for a visa again. It’s a big mess, and it now might be another year before we can start our lives together, the only time we can be together in the meantime being when one of us can travel between England and Florida. Well you can be sure I will keep you updated… My fingers are crossed, as she has given up her apartment, taken a year sabbatical from her job, and now will have to sort things out when she goes back in October. What is certain is that our hopes to spend a year in the sunshine are dashed, since she can’t ask for another year off now, the company she works for jumped through a lot of hoops to arrange it this time. WIsh us luck on Friday night when she arrives in Miami…

Well apart from that, I have been trying to do some work on my lenses, despite my mind being on other things…

Over the weekend I added a new lens, Daily Jokes For August which features instead of the usual jokes, funny baby pictures. I selected only the funniest baby pictures for this lens, and although some of you might have already looked at it, tonight I changed a couple of pictures, and also added a voting module. So please come take a look, or come back and vote. I guarantee you will find at least one of the pictures funny.

Tonight I also updated my Bournemouth lens, adding links for AFC Bournemouth, the local football team.

LENS STATUS
Top     100       0
Top  2,000       9
Top 10,000    15

This is an extract today from the local newspaper in my home town of Bournemouth which I thought was pretty funny.

IT’S not the usual fish and chips, but one aquatic business in East Dorset has gone to great lengths to stop its goods being turned into a takeaway.

Greenmann Aquatics at Three Legged Cross has decided to microchip its prized Koi carp after an overnight raid in July, which saw 10 examples worth £1,000 stolen.

Staff at the centre chip the fish onsite at a cost of around £15 each – small fry when they are worth £200-£500 a time.

You can read the whole article and some funny comments at The Bournemouth Echo - a great local newspaper covering the news for the Bournemouth area.

This would make a good article to add to the Fish & Chips lens that was Lens Of The Day last week.

As many of you who have seen my lens on Bournemouth know, this is where I grew up, and so I have a fondness for the area and check the local news every week to see what is happening.

Without having time to create a physical picture, I am going to try to do this in words, so please relax, and let me try to paint a mental picture of the Bournemouth sea-front for you…

Imagine that you are about 1/2 a mile off the coast in a helicopter.  

In front of you are tall yellow cliffs to the East and West, topped with Hotels.  

Between them, 1/4 mile wide, the ground drops to sea level, where the Bourne Stream meets the sea.   

In the middle of this is Bournemouth Pier, majestically stretching out into the sea, with it’s Theatre and other attractions, and maybe a pleasure boat tied up waiting for passengers.

Inland. beyond the Pier, are the Bournemouth Pleasure Gardens, peaceful walks alongside the Bourne Stream that lead the visitor to Bournemouth Square, which is the centre of the old town.

However, blocking your view of the Pleasure Gardens from the Pier, or the Pier from the Pleasure Gardens, is a flyover, an ugly concrete road, that connects the East and West sections of Bournemouth close to the sea.

Either side of Bournemouth Pier as the land rises are two ugly and much hated buildings that were constructed in the last 20 years.  To the West (your left) is the Bournemouth International Centre, or BIC as it is known, a major conference centre.   To the East (your right) is the IMAX Theatre, a real monstrosity that has never really proved to be popular, and that blocks the sea view as you come down to the Pier.

The city is proposing to improve the sea front by demolishing the flyover, however in doing this, there is no easy way to connect the East Cliff and West Cliff in Bournemouth, and which would create a traffic nightmare.  

Bournemouth Square used to the be the centre of the town, and had a roundabout where the main roads through the town converged.  This is now pedestrianised, and if they re-opened it to traffic, the jams would be horrendous, since the roads that lead out of the Square to the East and West are only 2-lane roads, and have been jammed with traffic even in the 1960’s.

The other alternative is to divert traffic another mile inland to Richmond Hill and the Wessex Way, the main road that bypasses the town centre, and which was adequate when it was built in the 1960’s, but which only having 2 lanes in each direction is very overcrowded.  Also, from both the East Cliff and West Cliff there is no good way to drive to this, so for anyone attending either a conference at the BIC or a show at the Theatre on the Pier, the drive in and out woudl be a nightmare.

Well this is the story, the city proposing demolishing the flyover.  I should add that until the 1960’s the road was at ground level, and the traffic jams were terrible even back then, with pedestrians having to cross a busy road to get from the Pleasure Gardens to the Pier.

This thread on the Bournemouth Echo site, the local newspaper, has people up in arms practically.  I have never seen so many comments, some really funny, proposing all sorts of solutions like demolishing the IMAX Theatre and the Bournemouth International Centre… 

I suppose I digressed a lot – hope you are still with me… But the whole point was to direct you to the many hilarious comments on the Bournemouth Echo site

Since I lost Sunday in a tizz with my lens rankings having plummetted so much, I decided last night to try and catch up with some updates to my lenses before the monthend.  I hope it’s enough and not too late to try and pull back some of my losses.  I’m still hurting from the ranking drops, as between yesterday and Saturday only 1 of my top 26 lenses went up in ranking, the other 25 went down, 12 of them by more than 2,000 places.  I’m hoping that today sees more levelling out, as all 26 did go up somewhat yesterday.

So last night as I said, I set myself a couple of goals, and I think I achieved most of them.

Firstly, I added a Plexo list to one of my Song Lyrics lenses, with links to all of them.  I then grabbed this and added it to the rest of the lyrics lenses.  This alone took quite a time for each lens to load and to publish.

Secondly, I went and added some new jokes to my Religious Jokes lens, and dug through my collection of funny pictures, adding some of the best to the lens.  Easier said than done, since although some of the pictures are really funny, they aren’t exactly “G” rated, so I had to dig out the clean ones only from over 3,000 pictures.

Next I did the same for my Baby Boomer Jokes lens, adding several new jokes and also some pictures.  Again I have more dirty pictures than clean ones, must split them up one of these days to make it easier to search through.

And then I went back through my July Jokes, June Jokes and even my February Jokes lenses as well as the Daily Joke Lensography (I still have to update the other months) and added more pictures.

Getting really tired by this time, but I went on to revamp parts of the introduction to my Bournemouth lens, since Google didn’t seem to like it these days.  Hopefully I did something right this time and the traffic will come flooding back.

Lastly, before crashing into bed at 12:30am, I added some pictures to my Biography and Lensography.  I think one of them will raise a chuckle or two.

For some reason I am tired this morning, but also optimistic that the tweaks and updates will pay off.

I have an idea for a new lens that will have plenty of opportunity for people to click out, but I still have to find that special topic where I can attract hundreds or thousands of people to a lens in a single day.  I think that’s the only way to have a chance to earn some decent money and to get really good rankings.

Well good luck to all of us today when the lens rankings are updated, and good fortune in your earnings this month.

Since the weather was pretty wet this weekend – we have had the daily South Florida summer of afternoon thunderstorms every day now for almost two weeks – I decided it was time to work on some new lenses.

Since Music Lyrics lenses seem to be fashionable, I thought that I would hop on the bandwagon, both to increase the number of lenses that I have, and also to add my input to what I think is a great idea for lenses, one that I think lensmasters can collaborate on to make a wonderful collection of tributes to various artists.

So, I set to and picked a number of great songs, made sure that nobody else had covered them already, and I was surprised just how many music trbute lenses there are, some of them really good.  I do love looking at good lenses as many of you know, so Friday evening was spent researching the lenses to work on.

Having selected my starting package of lenses, I then created them in WIP, decided on a standard format for them, which modules to add etc, and then got to work.  Between Saturday afternoon and evening and Sunday I managed 8 lenses, plus another last night, making 9 in all.  I still have 3 from my initial list of 12 to complete, and then I think I will work on another set as I enjoy doing these.

I love working on my “epic” lenses, like my Bournemouth lens or my Lensography, but each one takes a tremendous amount of time, and the subject matter also doesn’t lend itself to any great opportunities for earning income.

I also am now up to 49 lenses, so close to Giant Squid entry level… and although 5 or 6 of my epic lenses are still under construction, I now hope to break through the 50 barrier before the end of the month, which I didn’t think possible a weeke ago.   Wish me luck – and the time to do it…   I still can’t just slap a lens together – I’m too much of a perfectionist for that, and I really would like to add so much more to my lyrics lenses, but having got them published, there is always time to improve them.

If you would like to take a look at them, they are listed in my Lensography under the Music Lenses section.  I hope you enjoy them.

One thing I did enjoy if learning more about some of the artists.  For instance, Rod Stewart sang with The Kinks in the early days, but they didn’t get on and didn’t like his voice.  It’s amazing the little things that you find out when doing your research.  Maybe I should write a Music Trivia lens – might be interesting…

I have been working on my latest lens for a few weeks, and it’s taken a full week of man-hours to complete, but finally it’s time to unveil it….

TA-DAH….

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you…

BOURNEMOUTH – ENGLAND’S FINEST SEASIDE RESORT

I am passionate about this place – because I was born there and lived there until I was 18. It has miles of golden sands and so much more, making it a fantastic place to vacation.

I hope you will visit and leave your comments.
Tony