Squidoo's Rocket Moms

Session 3 of Squidoo’s Rocket Moms ended yesterday and, as far as I know, everybody managed to do the eight lenses to graduate and earn their Rocket Moms graduation badge.

The session lasted for eight weeks and the requirement for graduation was to make eight lenses that fitted the weekly assignment. The assignment was only disclosed on Sunday of each week so that gave us seven days to complete it. Of course, Squidoo is a part time activity for most people and things happen in their lives which sometimes mean they don’t have the time to finish a lens in a week but a member can still graduate as long as she has completed eight lenses by the end of the session.

I found most of the assignments challenging because they took me out of my comfort zone.  The very first assignment, to write about a favourite toy, nearly made me give up immediately. I couldn’t imagine writing about a toy. It took me several days to come up with an idea and the lens, Meccano – One of my Favourite Toys. I really did love playing with my brother’s Meccano set but it was a long time ago so I found it difficult to write.  I must have done OK, though, because it was given a Purple Star.

Crazy Quilts with a Difference

Another assignment that took me a while to decide upon a topic was Your Favourite Decade. The good news was it didn’t have to be a decade we had lived through so I did the 1940s concentrating on Make Do and Mend. That got a Purple Star too as did Crazy Quilts with a Difference in response to the Arts and Crafts assignment.

The funny thing is that these were all the assignments I found most difficult and least wanted to write. Perhaps the fact that I had to work harder on them is what made the difference. I also spent more time thinking about them before I wrote anything at all.

The Rocket Moms experience has been totally positive in spite of my occasional panics each time a new assignment was put in the RM forum. The tutorials put in the forum each week have been enormously helpful too by introducing me to ideas and ways of working I’d never come across before.

I would heartily recommend Rocket Moms to anybody who qualifies – the basic requirements are that you are a Mom (or Mum if you’re English like me) and you’re a member of Squidoo. If you want to learn more about building lenses (web pages) in a supportive environment with a great community, I’d suggest you check it out.

The Fun Side of Work

Almost anybody who writes has been there. You need to write something new, maybe because your blog need updating, you write for a site like Squidoo and you’re taking part in a challenge or perhaps you are lucky enough to have been invited to submit ideas. Some days, though, your mind just goes blank, you can’t think of a thing to write about.

This week’s Squidoo Senior Squids challenge was on Labor or Labor Day. I’m English and we don’t have Labor Day here so it doesn’t mean much to me. I knew that for the purposes of the challenge Labor meant anything job or work related. It didn’t need to be about Labor Day.

I didn’t want to write a lot on the topic because I had a Rocket Moms lens to do as well and this week it was a recipe. That meant cooking something and taking photographs of each stage. It was relatively easy to choose Quick and Easy Blueberry Cake because it’s quick and easy!

I still needed an idea for the Labor one. I came up with The Fun Side of Work. It contains a lot of humorous pictures from Allposters.com plus a couple of public domain ones from Wikipedia Commons.  I wrote a couple of anecdotes from my own experience at work.  Then I put in a few funny quotations about working like “Anyone can do any amount of provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.”

Sometimes you can use your own amusing or interesting memories in a lens or web page. Your readers aren’t going to be bored with them like friends and family. They haven’t heard you tell the same stories over and over again.

You can take one particular memory and weave an entire lens or web page around it. Perhaps you took a particularly interesting or exciting vacation, maybe you endured a trauma and writing about it might help you come to terms with it.

When you are suffering from writer’s block, think back through your favourite anecdotes and your experiences. Can you use any of them as the basis of your article?

The point is to take an idea that is very wide ranging and think of your own slant on it. There is no way that anybody could write a comprehensive lens or web page about the moon or time. Both subjects are too big.

When you are stuck for something to write about, make a list of subjects. This is a brainstorming exercise so don’t think hard about it and agonise about what you add to the list. Just put down anything that pops into your head. When you have ten or twenty topics, look at the first five items on your list and, one at a time, work through them thinking of all the angles you could write about on each subject.

Example: The Sky

1. Airplanes
2. Clouds
3. Storms
4. Hurricanes or tornadoes
5. Birds
6. Myths about the sun and/or moon
7. The night sky and prominent constellations
8. Why the sky appears blue
9. Parachuting
10. Earth’s atmosphere

Here are ten different ideas for lenses or web pages from the general topic of ‘The Sky’.

My Coaching Lens for Stazjia's Stars

Because I made the Giant 100 Club last time, Wiwon, the group I joined to help me, has made me one of the coaches for people hoping to make Giant or the Giant 100 Club next time, deadline September 30, 2009.

Stazjia’s Stars is one of the small coaching groups. I have six members, which is about average for each group. In SS we are still getting to know each other but have started reviewing each other’s lenses and that seems to be going well.

I think giving critiques on lenses helps the owner of the lens and the people doing the critique. Obviously, the owner gets suggestions for improvements but how does it help the other people?

They have to look at the lens with a critical eye. They need to assess it for attractiveness and how it reads. Does it encourage people to read it? Is the lens easy to read on a screen or are there great blocks of text that make it difficult? Are there enough illustrations to brighten it up, make it look attractive and help the meaning of the text. For example, a lens about a flower is always helped if the reader can see a picture of the plant in question.

The Wiwon Team

Sometimes the problem can be that the text doesn’t flow well from beginning to end. When writing about most things, there’s an optimum order to impart the information. If it’s written in the wrong order, it feels disjointed and jumbled. Sometimes we don’t always realize what’s wrong with the writing but we know there is something stopping us enjoying it.

When people write a critique, they have to assess all these things and others too, sometimes. They then have to formulate a way of writing their opinions of what’s wrong. Saying, “it reads funny” doesn’t help. You have to work out why before you can give the critique. Then the person doing the critique should make suggestions for improvements.

While they are doing all this, they are learning more about how to make good lenses.

Remember, lenses are just Squidoo’s name for web pages and so this method should apply to any page of content or even a sales page.

I’m so sad that these  compliments gave me a real lift even though they came from two elderly women and not two hunky guys. Oh well, when you reach 60, you have to take your compliments where you can find them. The sad truth is that at my age there are very few ’suitable’ men that are attractive. Who wants a man that has to take his teeth out to clean them or needs to clip the hair in his nose and ears more often than the little that remains on his head?

As part of the baby boomer generation, I don’t feel my age. I’m still 28 inside – probably the age I had most fun. I haven’t started putting a blue rinse on my hair but I do use ultra violet instead and a colour called Dragons Blood on my nails. I’ve always been outrageous and dressed in my own style and I continue to do that.

Thank goodness I lost the weight I put on in my 50s. If I was fat, I’d look really ridiculous! That was the only time I dressed like other people because I didn’t want to be noticed. I hated being overweight.

I can remember when I was a child and teenager and somebody of 60 seemed ancient. They dressed in old-fashioned ways and just behaved like old people. At least the ones I knew did. I guess being in our 60s has crept up on my generation. We never thought it would happen to us and now we reject the idea of being old.

A British Milk Chocolate Bar

Because of the growing epidemic of obesity in the UK, today a doctor in Scotland has called for the British Government to put a tax on chocolate. Dr David Walker argues that the tax would at least indicate to consumers that chocolate is an unhealthy food.

This has provoked considerable debate here, not least amongst doctors. The British Medical Association (BMA) at their conference taking place in Scotland right now, there was a vote on the motion which was rejected but only by two votes.

I don’t believe that a tax on chocolate would make any difference to sales and consumption. Increasing the price by pennies, which is all it could be on the most popular chocolate bars, would not make any difference, even in these hard times, to most people.

It would be far better to educate consumers so that they buy better chocolate that is high in cocoa solids and lower in sugar.

The most popular type in this country is the so-called milk chocolate – it is so unlike good chocolate that the EU (European Union) would like to stop it being sold as chocolate. Because this type contains 5% vegetable fat, some countries in the EU wanted it called ‘chocolate substitute’. However, the UK’s managed to stop this being implemented.

If people buy chocolate with at least 65% to 70% cocoa solids, only the remaining 30% to 35% is made up of sugar, making it somewhat healthier. It also has a much stronger chocolate flavour so arguably satisfying the palate and craving without eating so much.

Natasha Marsland of Diabetes UK said:

“We don’t believe that a ‘chocolate tax’ is the right approach to help diminish the number of people who are overweight or obese in the UK.”

There is no way that the British Government would implement a tax on the country’s favourite treat, especially when people are already very unhappy in the current poor economic climate.

If you like chocolate, check out the recipes on Easy Chocolate Recipes and All Info About Chocolate.

Bournemouth Gardens in the centre of the town.

I can’t believe I haven’t posted here for so long. My excuse is that I was still fed up with all the online politics but didn’t want to write about it anymore. On a happier note, I’ve also been away for a week staying with my best friend in Bournemouth, a popular seaside town on the south coast.

It was very cold there and it actually snowed one night and the snow hung around most of the following day. It is very unusual for Bournemouth to have snow because of the warming effect of the sea.

My friend lives in a house on the east side of the town about 10 minutes walk from the beach. Neither of us went down there, though, too wet, too cold and far too windy.

We did some shopping, more window shopping, saw friends and relatives and talked a lot.

Bournemouth Beach in August