Lycra

During my daily commute on my Bianchi bike today, I was dodging buses and police cars in Oxford Street. At the traffic lights next to Marble Arch, a Cav lookalike pulled up next to me.
"Got to respect a lady in heels and Lycra," he said.
I looked him up and down, from his lightweight helmet to his cleats.
"Guess what," I said, "I shave my legs too!"

Blogspot’s country specific domain change and the auto-mutilating Panda

You may have noticed recently that Blogger has started redirecting you to country-specific URLs of all blogspot blogs. So you may now see debbiedoeslondon.blogspot.co.uk in your address bar, or debbiedoeslondon.blogspot.com.au, or debbiedoeslondon.blogpspot.in, depending on where in the world you are.

If you’ve seen this happen to your own blog as well: don’t worry, the original domain name (and its page rank) still exist and won’t be removed. You can still see it by adding /ncr to the end of the URL, which stands for “no country redirect”. For example, you may want to go to http://japingape.blogspot.com/ncr.

Blogger, which is one of Google’s products, have done this so they can take certain posts down in certain countries – if those posts are breaking any laws.

Many Blogspot users have spent quite a lot of time optimizing their sites for search engines (SEO), including producing plenty of unique content and getting other sites to link to that content. The result of their efforts is that their blog appears sooner when people search relevant topics in Google – and a higher pagerank.

If you Google the regionalisation of blogspot, you’ll see that many bloggers are upset because they think they have lost their pagerank. Calm down, Google is not that evil. They didn’t intend all of their little monsters to suffer from this migration. But…

Every country specific versions of your blog will have the exact same content, and sites with duplicate content tend to get punished by Google Panda. So over time, your lovely page ranks might drop like autumn leaves after all.

Oh, how I love it when a company reaches the size where one department has no idea what another department is doing. If I could draw, I would draw a big panda poking its own eyes out with bamboo sticks while trying to bite of his own feet, and it would make everybody laugh because everybody would understand the feet are a metaphor for Blogger. Such a shame I can't draw.

Oh all right then:

Good times!

Hurah! I've got a job! In March I'll start as a copywriter at BLM Quantum!

Last year, they spotted my blog and thought it was great. In reply to their request to cooperate with them, I sent them my CV, and the next day I was invited to visit their office on Tottenham Court Road!

Over Christmas, I had to write three articles to prove that I could do the job - about Flights to Antayla, office supplies and car insurances. (I bet you all know what my next post will be about...)

They were pleased with what I wrote, and last Tuesday they offered me the job! I want to finish my internship at Elwin Street before I start at BLM, though.

Also, I got great news about Shut Up and Eat... a major Dutch publishing house has let me know they were very pleased to read it, and I'm going to Holland in a couple of weeks to discuss the practical details with them!

Blogliday

I admire all those bloggers who can resist the once in a lifetime opportunity to sunbathe in London without being on acid. Real life, these days, is too good to pause and blog about it. The only excuse I have to stop getting high on real city smog, is my dissertation.


A short summary, then, as an apology.

The course: I got an A for my essay on blogging for authors! Thanks, everyone!

The dissertation: I finished my first draft!

Real life: From night swimming in Wales to getting scouted for a Dove commercial to seeing my friends from Bloomsbury again at the blook launch of BabyBarista and successfully pitching my novel to an agent!


I'll be back with short stories when the summer and my dissertation are over, I promise!

Let the nude poet be quiet and bitter!

I keep trying, don't I?
I blame Golublog for pointing Twitter Magnets out to me.

(Though, actually, I don't think the site works properly... I entered my twitter account details, but it doesn't publish my poem. I wonder if they're going to do nasty things with my account now...)

Top 5 Inspiration Triggers

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What we really want...

And there I was, all smug and self-satisfied that I turned out to have a talent for writing horror.
All I had to do, I thought, was please my audience more by improving my website. The new layout temporarily worked wonders, so my hopes were high when I decided to increase the interactivity options of my blog.

1) A little widget showing who's following my website quickly filled up with... yes! Seven followers!

2) Little buttons underneath each post which people can click if they don't feel like thinking up a comment, but still wish to show their appreciation.

Because I promised to be funny once in a while,the first button is rofl (Rolling On The Floor Laughing).

With my talent for horror I had to add a button pukealicious, which pretty much speaks for itself.

And last but not least, the button to tell me I really need to try harder: dilligaf? (Do I Look Like I Give A ....)

3) Promoting every new post on Twitter and Facebook.

4) And yes... the poll. Turns out my readers don't want explicit sex and horror. You want well-crafted pieces of literature, beautiful sentences and deeper meanings! And if I refuse to live up to that (I thought I took a sabbatical: no philosophy this year!), you'd much prefer some nice characters and witty dialogues over my real talent.

This surprised me, for people always told me 'sex sells'. But I suppose it would be a really stupid idea of mine, trying to compete with www.tube8.com. Even if I were willing to post some interesting author pics.

But, according to BlogPulse's trendwatch, sex isn't really what's on blogger's minds anyway. Money is about four times as interesting as sex. What we really want, apparently, is love.