The Poddyland News

I was taking a look at the Angels forum on the Lensmasters Lounge, and it seems that the Angels haven’t commented on any of the new requests for blessings in a while.   I have a few theories on that…  Just wondered what you all thought…

Maybe a blessing should remain a secret, and not open to the world.  Otherwise one person could say “you blessed their lens, how about mine”.

There are so many requests these days, lots of which are from lensmasters with their first lenses too.  I like to think that my lenses are good, but they didn’t instantly get that way.  Maybe the angels are getting miffed with the lack of quality in the lenses being put forward.

We just went through a monthend, actally quarter end, and Giant Squid induction.  Maybe at the end of the month the angels, like the rest of us, are busy with their own stuff, tarting up lenses, working on traffic and rankings, to have time for mere mortals and blessings.  In which case I would expect to see the traffic in the forum pick up at any time.

Any thoughts?

I finally became a Giant Squid - all my hard work paid off, and I’m so pleased to have reached the next level.

Congratulations to everyone who was awarded this status today.

I now have so many new great lenses to visit, so I might take a break from creating any new ones for a day or two, and catch up on maintenance of my existing ones, and very importantly work on building my traffic back up.  While focusing on creating new lenses it sure has dropped.

At least the next level - the 100 Club might be a bit easier.  Only 40 lenses to go and 3 months to do it in.

Enjoy the holiday wekend everyone.
Tony

And with a new month, a new quarter.

So, I wonder firstly, what are my earnings going to be for May?
Did the Glam ads pay off?  Are the rates per tier going to go up or down?
How many of my lenses qualified for the 1st and 2nd tiers?
And when are we going to find out, since it’s 4th July weekend coming up?
I am guessing we will have to wait until Monday next week, but I am hoping that the earnings went up again.

And secondly, I wonder who is going to get awarded Giant Squid status?
Will I make it with my 59 lenses, or do I have to keep plugging away and wait until September?

I’m just sitting here anticipating, and hoping, and it’s hard to type with my fingers crossed LOL

I am determined that if I still don’t make it to Giant Squid this time around, I will at least have 50 lenses by the end of the month.   That’s my goal, and despite the blow of realizing yesterday that the 49 lenses I thought I had were only 41, that just set me into higher gear.

Last night I completed 3 more lenses, and then researched and created the outlines for 5 more.  I hope to complete 3 of these tonight if I can, provided I cando some of the research today over lunch.  The research and putting the main description together is the hardest part, that requires a focused brain, the most time consuming part as always is to complete the Amazon modules etc.   I don’t like to let Amazon or Flickr etc pick for me, I believe that my lens should look as I want it to, so that in itself takes time, but I am more satisfied with the results, and hopefully my visitors will be too.

These new lenses are all Music Lyrics, but I am being careful not to tread on other people’s Song Lyrics lenses, so I have to come up with a list of songs, identify the ones that haven’t been covered, do the research, and Voila! a new lens.

The lenses as always have a little bit of me in them, if only a paragraph on the interesting things that I have found when doing my research on a band or artist.  I enjoy trivia, so it’s fun for me to find out something new.

As of yesterday I had no lenses in the Top 100, although I haven’t seen the updates for today and can’t until tonight.  I did have some new visitors leaving lovely comments on my My Claim To Fame lens yesterday, and I added it to Digg last night, so with a bit of luck it will be climbing back up in the charts again.  I did have 6 in the Top 2000, 6 or 7 has been a constant number for the last few weeks, although the actual lenses that make up that total has changed.  I just need to give the older lenses a nudge back up again, and the new ones a nice sharp kick into life.

Well that’s my news for the day, so far at least.

I was getting all confident about reaching 50 lenses by the end of the month so I might be able to qualify for Giant-Squid-dom, having got 49 created and just needing to finish the last 5 or 6 of them, until bedtime last night, when my Dashboard showed 41.   FOURTY-ONE! (expletives deleted).

I don’t know what happened, I can’t see any lenses missing, so I assume somehow my brain mis-fired and I dreamed it was 49.    Oh well….

I was so hopeful, but now I have 5 days to go until the end of the month and about 12 lenses to go.   I still might make it, but it’s going to be a struggle.   I set myself a goal of 1 per night and then maybe another 5 over the weekend, but I now need to complete 2 a night and maybe 7 or 8 over the weekend to make sure I have enough of them.

Sigh……….  I know what I’m going to be doing for the next week I guess…  No beach at the weekend, no walks or swims in the evening, just coming in from work, grabbing a quick bite to eat and sitting straight down for 3 hours to work on my lenses.

If I make it, I think next week I’m going to take it a bit easier…  I miss my walks, need the exercise, because I sit all day at work anyhow.  But I have that Libran determination in me, and if it’s at all possible I am going to do it!

Wish me luck…

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…