The Poddyland News

I haven’t posted for several weeks because I have been too busy catching up on things since Debbie went back home to England after her 9 1/2 week stay with me, and although I had made several postings in the last month, when I came to clone the format for this post I realized that it’s a month today since my last Daily entry. WOW!

As expected with the closing of October the nights started to get darker ealier here in South Florida, and of course the clocks changed last weekend, so now it’s REALLY dark soon after I get home from work.

The weather has also cooled off somewhat, and we had a few days in the last 2 weeks where the temperature dropped to below 50 degrees overnight, reducing the temptation to take a dip in the pool after work even more. I’m not that fond of taking a dip in the pool at night - well not on my own at least, but if I don’t have the sun shining down on me to counter the cold water, I really have to be in the mood.

However with it being cooler and me living on the 7th floor of a condo block, it’s been possible to turn the air conditioning off and to leave the balcony door open all day and night, which lets a nice cool breeze blow through, so much nicer than having the air artificially cooled. Although you never know what’s going to happen overnight! You might wake up to find the temperature plummeted and you are freezing, then again you might find the breeze has dropped and you wake up in a sweat.

Football season here is winding down, and although my team Notre Dame has done better than last season, last Saturday saw them lose narrowly to Pittsburgh after 4 overtimes. All 3 games they have lost, they should not have done, such a shame. There is always next year though…

Well my earnings with Squidoo are expected to be down for September and even worse for November, but my Adsense revenue shot up to over $80 in October which is a new record. This was partly due to the seasonal traffic on my Halloween Jokes pages, and as a result so far in November my earnings are down. All more incentive to work on completing the revamps to my Christmas Jokes pages to update the format and to include Adsense links.

Thanks very much to AJ2008 for giving sending me some excellent funny dog pictures that I was able to use in my Daily Jokes For October lens, and thanks also to Just Bon for cross linking with my Song Lyric lenses and my Music And The Arts page on The Poddys Directory. As a result I have a great new jokes lens for october, and my Song Lyrics lenses are showing increased traffic.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 3
Top 10,000: 8
Lenses: 69

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke October 2008
New York City Break

MY TOP 5 LENSES
My Pet Peeves
The Daily Joke October 2008
The Daily Joke Lensography
Bournemouth
My Claim To Fame

I mentioned in my blog yesterday that I am looking to create a lens about what people do while they are waiting for the lensrank to update, since it’s taking longer and longer, and yesterday it was mid-afternoon (in the Eastern USA) when the updates finally occurred.

I initially thought that it would be great if people could send in a candid photo of themselves (or just a funny photo) plus a short caption describing what they did while waiting for the lensrank to update.

A am now going to add a second section to the lens - Song Lyrics!  Rock The Ice said in the forum yesterday that he hoped the rankings didn’t update, because last time it updated late on a Wednesday his rankings plumetted.   That got me humming the song I Don’t Like Mondays by The Boomtown Rats and changing the lyrics to I Don’t Like Wednesdays.   Rock is going to work on some new lyrics to fit his mood.  So please - think about what you do while waiting for the lens rankings to update, come up with a song to go with it, and post the lyrics to ohtheagony@poddys.com

The pictures and song lyrics will be added to the lens for everyone to vote on, and I will add links for each of the lensmasters that contribute back to their profile on Squidoo, so everyone wins - me hopefully for creating a popular fun lens and all the contributors for the additional publicity.

So come on - get creative - take some funny photos - think up some good lyrics - and let’s get this lens rolling…

My song lyrics lenses have been doing really poorly, especially my Madness ones, and I have been wondering how to promote them better.   So yesterday evening I was trying to catch up on my email with the television on, and I suddenly heard “Our House, In The Middle Of Our Street“.  

I looked up, and they were advertising a new game show called Opportunity Knocks that is going to be showing on ABC starting 30th September.  And guess what they are using for the theme song?  Our House by Madness!

The show brings one family together each week to play the game of a lifetime, and tests how well they really know each other.   Sounds like it could be a good show, and if nothing else maybe some recognition for a great Ska band and a great song.   If you are in the mood for a wacky music video and some lively crazy music, please drop by my lens Song Lyrics - Our House by Madness and watch the original music video. 

Just read this from the show web site……

What would you do if there was a knock at your door and you opened it to find an entire game show in front of you, along with an audience made up of your neighbors and friends? And what if you were given the opportunity to have a family game night where you could win hundreds of thousands of dollars and amazing prizes that could change your life?

Sounds like it should be interesting… better make sure you keep the place clean!

I thought it was about time to catalog my growing collection of Song Lyric lenses.

These not only have the Lyrics for some great songs, they also have a brief Biography on the band / artist, Video Clips of the song from You Tube with both the original Music Video as well as various Live Performances where available. Each lens also has lists of CD’s and DVD’s by the artist and other Memorabilia available from eBay.

You can also find links to this collection on The Poddys Directory at Music And The Arts

BILLY JOEL

Song Lyrics - Billy Joel - Piano Man

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

Song Lyrics - Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run
Song Lyrics - Bruce Springsteen - Dancing In The Dark
Song Lyrics - Bruce Springsteen - Hungry Heart

DIRE STRAITS

Song Lyrics - Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms
Song Lyrics - Dire Straits - Money For Nothing
Song Lyrics - Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing
Song Lyrics - Dire Straits - Wild West End

DONNA SUMMER

Song Lyrics - Donna Summer - Bad Girls

MADNESS

Song Lyrics - Madness - Baggy Trousers
Song Lyrics - Madness - My Girl
Song Lyrics - Madness - Our House

ROD STEWART

Song Lyrics - Rod Stewart - Maggie May

PETER GABRIEL

Song Lyrics - Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer

ROBERT PALMER

Song Lyrics - Robert Palmer - Addicted To Love

THE CLASH

Song Lyrics - The Clash - London Calling

THE JAM

Song Lyrics - The Jam - Eton Rifles
Song Lyrics - The Jam - Going Underground
Song Lyrics - The Jam - News Of The World
Song Lyrics - The Jam - Town Called Malice

THE KINKS

Song Lyrics - The Kinks - Lola

THE POLICE

Song Lyrics - The Police - Walking On The Moon

THE VILLAGE PEOPLE

Song Lyrics - The Village People - Y-M-C-A

WAR

Song Lyrics - War - Low Rider

ZZ TOP

Song Lyrics - ZZ Top - Cheap Sunglasses

I hope you will drop by and view some of these - either ones that you like, or maybe some of those that you are not familiar with.  
If you like fun and energetic songs and music videos, I definitely recommend Madness. For some songs with energy and drive, I recommend The Jam.

Happy listening…

Saturday night, about to go to bed, and 57 lenses now created (7 in WIP though).
So hopefully I will be able to complete enough by Monday night to have more than 50 good ones.

I learned a lot about duplicating processes the last week, with my Song Lyrics lenses all having different content, but having basically the same layout.

I found that if you are in the situation where you are creating multiple similar lenses (which is probably not that common normally), that it pays to create a number in outline, add the modules and anything else common that defines them, and then the bottom of your dashboard is basically a WIP list.

I also learned about duplicating Amazon modules, since if I have 2 lenses for the same band and the CD’s or DVD’s that I want to add are the same for both lenses, rather than searching again, which can be time consuming for some bands, it’s faster to open another lens and to copy/paste the links into the new Amazon module.

Also with Amazon, some bands have names which make selecting using the Amazon module rather difficult.  The Jam for example kept pulling anything to do with Jam , despite my using double quotes.  I found it was easier to open up another browser tab with Amazon, and to use their advanced search.  Then copy/paste the link for the items you want into the Amazon module.

I have another 5 or 6 that I would like to complete by Monday night, so the rest of the weekend is going to be rather busy too,  but it’s a fun experience, not only the research of the artists but finding and listening to the videos on You Tube.

If you would like to see some of my Song Lyrics lenses, please CLICK HERE.

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.