Squidoo Miscellany

Wow! It’s been so long since I’ve posted here that when I came to read one of AJ’s posts, and comment on it, I didn’t remember my password!

Anyway. While I’m here, complete with a new password, and catching up, I figure I should do an update of my lensmasterly and internet happenings.

I’ve teamed up with ten folks into a group called Tenfinity — ten without end. We wrote a free guidebook, Squidoo Step By Step, and we opened a Ning group called Professional Squids.

That group will now soon be moving to our own website. We knew the day would come when we would have to build our own place online, and with Ning forcing our hand, and us not wanting to pay “rent” or trust another business with our work, we’ll soon be announcing our new website.

The image here is from our header image at the site; it’s the infinity symbol, known in mathematics and philosophy as the lemniscate, a Latin word meaning “unboundedness.”

Look for our site launch in the coming weeks. :)

A couple of days ago, I got a purple star for one of my first lenses, Children: Building Character. I had been planning on making some improvements there. It was obviously built when I was, let’s say, a little less skilled. :D However, content is still king!

And my latest lens is Said On. I just finished building this one as a charity lens for OhMe’s Friends Of The Park. If you like it, give us a vote for it by emailing the URL (http://www.squidoo.com/Said-On) to sunshine(at)squidoo.com. Nancy and I sure would appreciate it.

Well, that’s all I can think of right now. My knees are giving me a fit! It’s hard to think when tired and in joint pain!

What a week! So grateful! I went from publishing on Sunday, to a Purple Star on Tuesday, to Lens of the Day today.

Homeless In America features photographs by Tom Stone from his American Poverty set at Flickr. A week or so ago, I wrote Tom to ask for (and received) permission to profile some of his images on a lens.

My emotions have been going all over the place ever since. I even ended up literally bawling while reading the lens to my husband. It seems that the act of saying the words out loud left me incapable of fighting the feelings it evokes.

AlishaV wrote a comment on the lens about Tom’s greatest gift — “acknowledging their existence.” Don’t you know that’s the truth!

The accolades are great, but what are we left with? …What can we do?

Getting more personal is always hard for me. Living the life I led as a child, there was always something to “keep under my belt.” There was a lot of shame. So, I learned to be non-forthcoming.

I also learned that if my mom and dad were fighting, and I ran screaming in terror for an adult to stop them, that adult might try to “cop a feel” enroute to the “rescue.” I learned, in more ways than one, to stay “out of reach.”

Then, as an adult, I learned that anything I did or said could be held in stock, taken out of context, and be used against me at the opportune moment.

So, re-inforcements galore in my little journey.

That is why all of my offline friends are practically vetted before acceptance into my small world!

That is why I composed a quote that I sell at CafePress on a magnet (above). Yes, it has resonated with quite a few of my customers.

We are what we experience. What’s yours?

It was a slow start, but I’m a Giant Squid, now!!

My original intention was to build just a few lenses during the Giant Squid Challenge June 2009. I had started the competition with 27 lenses. I just couldn’t see my way clear to do anything more than add maybe four or five — well, maybe six or seven — to my team’s roster.

When a couple of my other Squid friends, AJ2008 and OhMe, made their commitments to go for Giant, well, I put it in third gear so that I could meet them at the finish line!

Hey, Nancy and AJ! We made it!

In the end, we didn’t win the challenge title, but we gained so much more than that — the new skills, the memories, the new friends, the thrill of surpassing expectations for oneself — a new self-awareness. Plus, that beautiful purple badge!

Congratulations to a_willow and her team for winning the Giant Squids portion of the challenge, and to kab and her team for winning the 100 Club challenge. A special shout-out, as well, to the other team leaders, rajays and justbon for their tireless leadership.

An extra-special thank you to Joan4 — the ever-positive team leader who saw us, Joan’s Jolly Judicious Jetsetters, through to the end.

RocketMoms was a great help in motivating me to push myself harder. Thank you, RocketMoms. Special thanks to Bonnie (bdkz) for leading us.

There are so many people who encouraged me along the way; I couldn’t possibly list you all. I want you all to know, though, that I thank you so very much.

I am paying it forward by leading a challenge team myself this quarter. If you haven’t yet, but would like to challenge yourself to become a Giant Squid or a Giant 100, my team — Team One — will be accepting members shortly. I’ll post more ASAP. Update: Link to Team One

This has been a whirlwind ride!

When I published my 50th, it was still a little incomplete — needed a section filled in for a guest poster, and the intro artwork was not finished or attributed. In fact, the artwork and attribution, I am still not sure about. Well, I know I have it attributed, but the image is Squidoo’s logo, in a way. We aren’t supposed to use it, I don’t think, unless we make it not look like the logo? Not sure, but I thought I had disguised it enough to make it usable. Well, I think I may ask Janusz to do one or go see if he has something already done…I don’t like ambiguity.

Anyway, my 50th lens is a “call to Squidoo” for potential new Squids. Proud that #50 is about Squidoo: Why Join Squidoo?

A big thank-you to AJ2008 for inspiring me to do a lens that had been on my mind but that I had done nothing about. The final inspiration for my 50th was her 50th lens, the warm and wonderful Squidoo Community.

Go, potential Giants!!

Another week of computer problems…feeling soooo behind!

Here, before I crash again, are the three I did get done this past week:

• Write-A-Caption Contest Winners — Ready for announcing winners for next six months. Will do a new one for 2010 if the contest goes that long. I hope so. :)
• A Grandparent’s Possession — Did this one for the RocketMoms Group challenge. Not sure I am going to keep it once I have 55 lenses or so…don’t want to link it.
• Babyboomers And Technology — This one is a Senior Squids Group challenge. Do a lens about a babyboomer subject, and this is what came of that.

Well, off to see what else I can get done…

Last week’s post bemoaned the fact that I didn’t get too many lenses done. This week is the same! All week, and even continuing into today, I don’t know what my computer is going to do next.

It has been a real hassle — more time spent crashing and rebooting than anything, it seems. Even right this minute, it could go out on me. I am beginning to think it won’t make it until Christmas. Have spent almost a hundred dollars on it this week and it’s still not fixed. Will just have to see. Sigh.

By my calulations, I have at least eight more lenses to go. At this rate, I won’t have any time to tweak, and that has me very worried…

This week’s production is:

• Best Of TinyBuddha On Twitter
• Women’s Overalls
• Write-A-Caption Contest

Coding in HTML would cause less mistakes and save time if you had something quick and easy to look at to see and tweak your work.

That’s why I like the side-by-side Tryit Editor v1.4 at W3Schools.com. There’s nothing to download — just open the link in the browser. On the right-hand side of the screen, you see a finished HTML table. Look on the left side of the screen to see the HTML code for that table.

What makes this so neat is that even if you’ve never done HTML, all you have to do is study the code, and you will begin to see what’s making the right-hand side of the screen to render.

You might find it very handy to create your HTML table at W3Schools.com, and make sure it’s the way you want, then copy and paste the code over to Fluff’s Table Generator for Squidoo Lenses. (The table generator is in beta, so you may have to do some tweaking to your table there as well.)

Seems like there should be more lenses to add since my last update, but this is all I could find for the last week. By this record, I should have at least one more to list. Feels like it’s all I’ve been doing, so am pretty disappointed.

• Reflective Paint This tells a little story about my reflective-paint adventure and the resulting project how-to
• Pink Gardening Tools For Women The sister lens to Pink Tool Kits For Women. It doesn’t have as much love as its sis, but I’ll get to it.
• Brainstorming New Lens Ideas This is a TwttrStrm that was given to me by LM a_willow. Thank you again, Michelle!
• The Best From Motivational Gurus On Twitter A TwttrList featuring Wayne Dyer, Marianne Williamson, Tony Robbins, and others — their best Tweets.

Although I did a lot of editing on Michelle’s gift lens, I still feel like I only did three lenses this week. I don’t know where all of the time went! Definitely not happy with my output. Oh, well. Something to be more mindful of this week. Glad there is still time. :)

Have a great week, fellow Squids!

Latest lenses are below. Pardon me if I’ve posted some of these before. Trying to get more organized so as not to do that.

• Tulips: Artwork And Photos Did this because I love tulips and wanted to show off some of the beautiful artwork to be found.
• The Family Today Wanted to get the conversation started about what folks feel that having both parents work outside the home is doing to the family.
• Font And Type Design Even the most artistically challenged could learn how to use typography in a way that adds the unique touch to a lens. This lens shows some ideas and my recommendation for an excellent free software to use.
• Color Schemes For Your Web Pages Well, I’m sure you have run across some lenses that could do with some color help. I have, too. This lens gives a great way to choose better color combos and schemes.
• Best Of Lensmaster Shout-Outs Thought it would be nice to have a record of these Tweets with the RTs and such filtered out.
• Announce New Lenses On Twitter Wanted a way for us to have at least one Tweet we could make about our new lenses and not feel the least bit like a spammer. Also wanted a place where we could find the latest “new and cool.” …I’ve started a TwttrList for “best of,” but it’s on the back burner waiting to see how this one goes.
• Giant Squids Interviews II This one is to get ready for the incoming Squids. It was such fun the other times, and the lens just got out of control, so I decided to make a new one for the next group. I may do a new one each quarter depending upon how it goes this time. Not doing the interviews right now as there are no new Squids yet. But, do stop in and cheer the aspirants on in the guestbook when and if you can — it’ll help it get out of WIP, too, I imagine.

Still working toward my goal. Still feeling that it’s do-able. The lenses I am producing now, though, are not really as good as they could be as far as I’m concerned. I hope to have enough time left before June 30 to give them some more love. :)

Thank you for listening.