Dressing Up List Modules

In an effort to push up the lensrank of my holiday lenses, I've been trying to find ways to update them everyday. Ideally, this means adding new content, but the ideas don't always flow, so sometimes a tweak here and there is all I can make. A new lens photo, tag, or Amazon description is usually where I start.

I was looking over That's Creative: Unique Gift Baskets, trying to think of ways to improve the exsiting content. The entire lens is made up mostly of list modules, and I thought it was time to give them a little more pizzaz. The logical choice is, of course, pictures. Visual content is essential for a great lens, even when the information is already in easy-to-read point form.

Because Unique Gift Baskets has so many examples where a photo would fit, it would be pretty overwhelming to take dozens of photos of candy and gift items. That's where Allposters comes in. The difficult part is getting the posters to fit into the list modules in a neat and tidy way. But I did it, and now I'd like to pass on the method to other Squids.

Step 1 - Find your picture.
Once you've added your lens to your list of Allposters websites, and located an appropriate poster, highlight the HTML for a thumbnail with no printing or framing links.

Step 2 - Edit the HTML
Remove all of the code up to the first img tag. You will be left with something like this:

a class="APCTitleAnchor" href=allposters url target="_blank" title="Close View of a Reddish Colored Giant Or Humboldt Squid at Night"
img src= allposters url Close View of a Reddish Colored Giant Or Humboldt Squid at Night" border="0" height="86" width="115"

Step 3 - Set Alignment
To place the picture to the left of your list text, replace
border="o" height="86" width="115"
with
style="float: left; margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px;"/

Step 4 - Add Text
You need at least 6 lines of text and/or spaces to make sure that your list items all line up evenly. Use a BR tag in the seventh line to break up the list items and add a little space.

And that's it. You'll end up with list items that look something like this:


The Humboldt Squid at Night
This reddish colored squid photo was taken by Brian J. Skerry.
Isn't it neat?

The more text you have in each list item, the better it will look. It's a great way to dress up tired list modules, and add some color to your lens.

Easy Blogging with Results

Many lens masters swear by blogging - it’s one of the easiest ways to promote your work on Squidoo, and can even help improve your search engine ranks. It can be a little time consuming though, and you don’t always get the readership that you would hope for.

One of the easiest ways to get started with blogging is to use forums and other social sites which offer blog space as part of your membership. You don’t get the benefit of ad space or other sidebar content, but your posts are more likely to be viewed by others, especially if the forum you use has a lot of active members.

MySpace is a good example of one of these mini-blogs, but your posts will only be seen by your MySpace friends - or people who find it in keyword searches if you’re lucky. If you really want to get your thoughts (and lenses) seen, you’ve got to try Ning.

Ning networks are a lens master’s dream. Every administrator runs their forum a bit differently, but some of the cool features include an easy to use blog, a photo gallery, and a main page where you can display links to websites, photo slideshows and post updates about your activities. When you add a blog post, it will usually be displayed on the front page of the network, where members and visitors can see your update. Because you can add tags to your posts and other content, it can easily be found through searches of the forum, too.

I’m a member of several exceptional Ning forums, all with different topics, and a good portion of my lens visits each month come from curious members who view my pages and blog posts. Most, if not all, of the members are fun to interact with, and genuinely want to exchange ideas and insights about the forum topics.

Like any online activity - including Squidoo - you get back what you put into it. If you want people to get to know you, and be interested in what you have to say, then you’ve got to be an active member and pay it forward. There are a lot of easy ways to get involved in a Ning network, such as participating in forum discussions, rating and commenting on members’ photos and blogs, and joining groups that interest you.

You can search for networks from the Ning website - there are thousands to choose from, all on different topics. There’s even a few about Squidoo. The key is to find an active forum that focuses on your specific interests. If many of your lenses are about recycling and green living, you would probably benefit from joining and eco-friendly network and chatting with the members about cool ways to save energy. There’s no limit to the number of networks that you can join, and you use the same login for each one. Once you’ve joined your first network, you never have to upload another avatar again.

If you’ve ever had trouble finding a place to discuss your interests online, chances are there’s a Ning out there that will fit you, and your lenses.

Squid Stockings

I have started yet another group, and this one is the most exclusive yet. Anyone is welcome to join, of course, but the focus is on About Me lenses for the holidays.

I don’t remember how or when the idea came to me, but I decided that my contribution to the Month of Hope challenge would be to create a list of all the things I would love to receive for Christmas this year. Perhaps that sounds a little greedy, but I always say that if no one liked getting gifts, then there wouldn’t be so much fuss about giving. So let’s all just admit that we like getting presents just as much as we like to give them. And one of the best things about giving is knowing that the person is getting exactly what they wanted.

In any case, I wanted my lens to be autobiographical. Many lens masters indicate that they love to read about their fellow Squids. It’s true that bio lenses are fun to read, and anyone with a lensography knows that the more of You you put into it, the better. So I picked 10 of the things I’m wishing for most this year, and described what it is that I love about them.

It occurred to me that anyone and everyone could do a Christmas wish list lens, and so I created the My Christmas Wish List group. I’ve had no new bites so far, except for an hilarious lens by kab, which I stumbled across shortly after publishing the group. It’s actually a list of things that no-one - especially kab - would want for Christmas. Actually, I would like a couple of things on the list, but I’m not as normal as the average bear, so to speak.

Although the idea behind My Christmas Wish List is to make a lens devoted to charity, I thought it would be a fun way for lens masters to let their friends and family know what they’d like to find under the tree. I’ve even thought of posting my own list on Facebook. Either way, I think that Santa will appreciate getting a letter that has so many visual aids.

It's Good To Be Bad

So, ironically, The Worst Lens Ever Made is actually one of my best lenses. For the last few days it has been sitting at #5 on my dashboard, just hovering under my holiday lenses. It's been ascending in the overall rankings, and even broke the top 100 Squidoo Tips lenses. Who knew?

I found it interesting how difficult it actually was to create a slapped together lens. I began simply enough, by selecting one of every keyword driven module I could find. But once I had thrown those keywords in, there was so much more to do.

I wanted to pinpoint not only the faults of using these modules carelessly, but also other issues that many of us have with rushed lenses, such as poor language, lack of module titles, and a zero layout planning. When writing each module description, I tried to get inside the head of your average spammer-type, and figure out what they hope to accomplish when they add each module. I wonder if I was close? Sadly, we may never know.

Some things proved more diffcult than others. The New Delicious Bookmarks kept coming up blank. Apparently not a lot of people are using the tag 'Squid". So I logged in to Delicious, Googled "squid", and saved a few bookmarks of my own. For the Twitter module, I decided that it would be better to use "Squidoo" as the keyword, so that all of the Tweets showing would point back to lensmasters.

Even though the entire purpose of the lens is to parody pages that have no effort, it still needs touching up now and then. But I guess that's what separates the good lensmasters from the not-so-good ones. We just can't stop improving.

Take that Spammers!

I've had it up to here with poorly made lenses! And here's why...

Whenever one of my new lenses sheds it's Work in Progress status, the first thing I do is start searching related keywords and topics so that I can create a nice, juicy lensroll. I love the lensroll tool a lot. Most of the lensmasters that I recognize and interact with regularily I've met by finding their lenses on one of my keyword hunts. I think one of the things that makes a lens great is how many other lenses are in that little sidebar, and how many of them would be of direct interest to anyone who is reading that lens.

For instance, when I made my Top Ten Movie Vampires lens, I went looking for other content related to the films and characters that I had highlighted. I was really pleased to find a bunch of great lenses about "The Lost Boys" that were fun and interesting to read.

Sadly, I would say that at least 65% of the lenses that I look at for possible 'rolling are not even worth the bandwidth they're written with. The introduction draws me in, hoping that I'll find some thoughtful content that teaches me something new about the topic. But once I scroll down, all I find is a variety of non-written modules showing different things related to the topic. It's as if people start up the workshop and just add one of every keyword driven module possible - give or take an Amazon or two.

For example, when I made a lens about Christmas movies, I wanted to find a lens that was just about "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". I looked at about 10 lenses, and most of them were just a bunch of Amazon and eBay modules of Grinch movies, books and toys. Eventually I got so fed up that I didn't even want to search for any of the other movies I had written about on my lens.

It reminded me of The Best Squidoo Lens NOT To Do. This parody is about lenses that are just landing pages for webstores, a place where tasteless people try to get you to buy their stuff. While these pages are annoying, at least they're trying to hock their own products, and not cash in on hapless Google searchers. I've seen so many of these keyword sales lenses, I've started making a note of checking out the makers' bios - they're so identical that I'd swear it's one person making them!

I decided it was time to shine a spotlight on the stupidity of these Giant Squid wannabes. They churn out worthless lenses, hoping to get some recognition and cash, meanwhile wasting the time and patience of those lensmasters who actually take their Squid responsibilities seriously.

So I made this: The Worst Lens Ever Made

Enjoy!

Amazon Facelift

While browsing through lenses yesterday, I was thrilled to see that the regular Amazon module has been touched up. Now the pictures of products actually lines up with the text, instead of being slightly askew. Finally! This small detail was one of the reasons that I always used the thumbnail view in Amazon modules. I found that the abundance of empty space made not having prices and other details available worthwhile. As I touch up lenses, I've been switching all of my Amazon modules, and I couldn't be happier with how it's improved the over all look of my lenses.

Now that it's November, there are so many little bits of catching up to do. I've been examining the Christmas lenses that I've already made, looking for ways to improve them, as well as turning my Hallowe'en lenses into regular year-round lenses as well as I can without deleting too much. Just a few tweaks here and there, and they still have some non-seasonal appeal.

This month the charity drive theme is "Family Stories". I'm glad that I was able to contribute a ready-made lens this time around. I just couldn't come up with a computer themed lens in time for last month's contest. I chose Oxfam, and added my lens to a quickly growing list of great family lenses.

Well, only 50 days left until Christmas. It's time to get to work!

Playing Catch Up

Because Hallowe'en is just around the corner, I've recently elected to put a hold on all new lenses, and focus on keeping my Hallowe'en content fresh and relevant. For the month of October, I've been preening and polishing many of my current lenses, as well as visiting some of the lensmasters in my fan club. I think it's important to keep in touch with the people who have taken the time to review your work. Not only does it help them - every view, star rating, favorite or comment helps! - but it also keeps your own face fresh, too!

I'm so happy that the Halloween Lens Tree on SquidU was a success. Not only did plenty of people post, but many of them left lenses by other lensmasters, and visited every lens in the tree, not just the two before them! It just proves that there are some excellent, community-minded lensmasters out there! We need more people like that on Squidoo, and in real life! Thanks again to everyone who participated!

Naughty Squids

Life is so full of ironies, and Squidoo is no different. When I created my first group, I was eager to get started and build a community. I decided not to put any criteria up, so that no one would be discouraged. If I honestly didn't like something, I would send a polite message to the lensmaster saying why their join request was declined. I really didn't see any terrible lenses, and that was fine by me. So, when I created a second group, The Armchair Critics, I decided I would post up some criteria. Of course, not even twelve hours later, I had two emails saying that there had been a lens request for each of the groups. One of them had nothing to do with the group topic, and the other one was just bad. It's funny. I'm almost certain that the only people who would stop to read the guidelines are the ones who already know what a good lens looks like!

Whenever I receive a request for a lens that hasn't quite gelled into greatness, I always direct them to the HQ page. I keep a running list of some of the great Squidoo tips lenses out there. I know that when I first became a Squid, I had no idea that there were so many tutorials around. I wonder if the people I message ever get around to reading them? From now on I might also send them this link: Joining Groups (from aj2008's Squid Etiquette Lens).

I'm such a ninny, and I hate telling people what to do, but if I didn't I would post my top five yucky lens pet peeves in my group guidelines. I can still remember what it was like when I was first figuring out what Squidoo was all about, and what it can do, so I try to be sympathetic when I view an awful lens. If I wasn't so nice, these Squid-Don'ts would send me running every time!

Mortira's Top Five Worst Lens Traits

5) No bio filled out, no 'Contact Me' enabled, no picture!
This is the sort of thing you should do as soon as you create your account! That's like showing up for work without your nametag and uniform.

4) No Guestbook module.
This is only forgiveable if the rest of the lens is really polished, and 'Contact Me' is enabled. Sometimes leaving out a guestbook makes a lens look more professional, but anonymity does not.

3) No original content.
If all of the written content is just copied from Wikipedia, I won't even bother reading it. I came to read a lens, not a wiki. If you're not passionate enough about something to write from the heart, then it's probably not something you should be writing about at all.

2) Poor writing.
I appreciate non-anglo writers who try - I don't even know two languages, so kudos for them! What I don't like is text with all caps, or no caps, or no punctuation, or all slang. We're talking about creating websites, not texting our friends!

1) No unique module titles.
This drives me totally bonkers. When I see a module called something like "Great Fishing Stuff on eBay" I actually twitch a little. The word "Stuff" doesn't belong in a heading unless it's part of a cliche. Such as"Does Obama have the Right Stuff?". When I read a lens, I don't want to feel like I just walked into a high pressure retail store, either.

Well! I feel better now. I'd rather point someone in the right direction than tell them that they suck. Sadly, some people don't even care if they're going in the right direction.

Good News All Around

There's so many great things to report, I don't even know where to begin!
Let's start with one of my favorite Lensmasters, Bradshaw, who was super awesome for blogging about one of my lenses. He's got a great Squid blog going called Squidoo Land, and a Facebook Group for lensmasters, among other great projects. He's got the Squidoo bug bad, and it's all good for lensmasters everywhere!

I've had my first sale...it's still pending, and it's only 48 cents, but that's 48 cents more than zero! Someone was poking around on Beading and Beyond, browsing for beads, and I got lucky! So far it's the most successful of all my lenses, though it is soon to be surpassed by my most popular holiday page. Still, it will probably remain the most popular beading lens on my list, though I would love to see it hit a triple digit lensrank.

I also must give many thanks to fabulous lensmaster spirituality for including my beading group in her Great Squidoo Groups Lensography. There are some awesome bead artists showcased in the group, and I hope they'll get plenty of exposure! I highly recommend adding Great Squidoo Groups to your favorites. It's the perfect place to shop for your newest lens' first group.

Horror Movies Galore

Lately I've been writing about horror movies, in a way to compliment my Hallowe'en Marathon lens. After spotlighting one of my favorites - A Nightmare on Elm Street - I decided to do my top ten list of the best vampire characters in movies. It came out of WIP late last night, so I started browsing through some of the groups I had joined recently, on the hunt for some good lensroll content. Again and again, I kept coming across great movies lenses by Orthia.

She has some really fantastic top ten lists, where she features movies that you wouldn't normally think of, but that really do deserve to be on somebody's best list. My favorite was the "Apocalyptic Top Ten", but I of course had to add "Horrific Top Ten" to my lensrolls.

I liked her top ten vampire movie list so much, that I featured it right on Top Ten Movie Vampires. While I stuck mostly to new titles, she's got all the classic favorites. I really enjoyed reading all of this Giant Squid's top tens. If you like movies, or lists, I highly recommend them.

Meanwhile, I've been doing a lot of lens polishing. A good habit I suppose, but it's really my way of putting off writing the text portions of my next lens to be. In school friends and teachers always told me that I should go to college to be a writer. It wasn't until I was ready leave high school that I realized how much I actually hate writing. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you enjoy it, I guess. Too bad nobody told me to go to culinary school. I love to cook. I could have been running a restaurant by now. I should sue my guidance councillor. Maybe I'll just add more recipes to the Mommy Menu.

15 Lenses and Counting!

I've just created my personal lensography. I'd been putting it off, then decided to put it together because I wanted to link to it in my latest lens The Top Ten Move Vampires. I didn't realize how many lenses I had under my belt until I viewed them all together that way. The list seems rather small compared to the number of lenses I have planned on my To-Do list. I have another Top Ten lens in the works, and when it's complete, I will add them both to my lensography.
As soon as it's no longer a Work in Progress, the first thing I'm going to lensroll is the Great Squidoo Groups Lensography. It's a great spotlight on some of the best groups on Squidoo, and my new destination when I'm looking for groups to join. Running a group efficiently and making it useful is just as important as creating good lenses. Far too few people take it as seriously as they should. But, like lensmaster rwoman says, the cream rises to the top.

Parodies are Fun!

So awhile ago I decided to write an entire lens about A Nightmare on Elm Street, as a complimentary page to my Hallowe'en Marathon. I had originally intended on making it a Squidflix lens, but I couldn't figure out how to get into the workshop, so I gave up and just started a regular old lens.

After writing and picking images and action figures and links, I poked around looking for good content to add to my Discovery Tool. When I searched keyword Freddy Krueger, I found the most hilarious lens! Freddy Krueger & Jason Voorhees: Best Friends Forever is a clever back story about horror films' greatest villains. It's a bit silly in places, but all around it's a good laugh and a nice tribute. I particularly like the chapter about the Crystal Lake high school prom - it's priceless. I was a little surprised to discover that the author was a self proclaimed QueenOfTheGeeks. I would have guessed a guy for sure! Not that I believe in gender stereotypes. After all, who just wrote a guide to Freddy Krueger films?

A One Sided Debate

I was browsing around on Squidom, and I came across a HeyMonkeyBrain lens by lensmaster sarahjjac, about parents getting away with letting kids die in hot cars. I'd been waiting to come across a lens to put in the "Lens that made me cry" section of my profile, and finally found it. Although I didn't truly cry, I did cringe - a lot - and hugged my baby fiercly after I read it. Apparently, in the US, being stupid isn't a crime. Even when being stupid results in the death of a child. People who leave their kids in the car on hot days don't get charged when they die, because they claim they 'forgot' that the child was even in the car with them. Who does that?? That's the kind of lapse that should last 30 seconds, at best, not long enough for a kid to bake in the sun.

Leaving a kid in a hot car to die IS neglect!! is such an important debate - although how anyone can side with the offending parents is beyond me. As soon as I was done participating in the Duels, I immediately lensrolled it to my Professor Baby series. I'm a big believer in criminal stupidity. People seem to forget that just because someone is charged with a crime, doesn't mean that they will go to jail. People tend to sympathize with negligent people whose stupidity and disregard for others results in harm and death, because they could see themselves getting into such a mess, and would hate to go to prison for it. I think that everyone who 'accidentally' harms someone should have to go through the legal system. A judge decides whether what they did - and how sorry they are for it - is terrible enough to warrant a prison sentence. That way, everyone has to be responsible for their own actions.

"I forgot I had my baby with me" my arse! If the baby sitter did it, you bet your left eye they'd be rotting in a cell, because the parents would see to it. So who's responsible for getting justice for a child when it's the parents who screw up? Apparently nobody! If you think this is an outrage, I highly recommend heading over to sarahjjac's lens and putting in your 2 cents. She's provided a lot of angles and queries to really drive home her side of the scale. It's my favorite HeyMonkeyBrain to date.

A Match Made in Heaven

So I was reading a lens by Susan52 called Why Not Turn a Blog Post into a Squidoo Lens! and little light came on. One of my other blogs is about beadwork and the creative process - something I started to showcase my work and talk about beading and artists that I admire. I started thinking about it, and discovered that I could, infact, turn it into a lens! I spent some time taking new photos of my most inspired pieces, and put a together a lens called Inspirational Beading. It's image heavy, which is good in a way. If it was a really wordy lens, I might still be working on it and not the other lenses I want to do by the end of the month! It was really fun though, and I got to take a look back at some of my older beadwork, remembering where I was when I made it. Now I can share it with other beaders.

On a sadder note, my first lensography, from my Recycle It! series got a 3 star rating. I guess it really wasn't wordy enough? I had meant to add some more text and recycling tips, but I didn't think it was that bad. Perhaps I'll read up a little more on lensographies!

Playing Catch Up

The last few days have mostly been about catching up on tasks that I've been neglecting. I've finally finished adding the backlog of bookmards to Delicous, and have move on to Stumbling things I've been meaning to StumbleUpon.

I did manage to get started on the Recycling Lensography I had been meaning to make. Although it needs work, I published it anyway. It's pretty simple and straightfoward, so there's not a lot missing if anyone visits it. I would just like to add some text about recycling in general, when I get the chance.

Well, back to work...

Out with the Ebay

Today I put together a new lens, but since I can't join any groups, add lensrolls, or do anything fun with it until it's no longer a Work In Progress, I decided to tidy up some of my other lenses. My Professor Baby series gets the least traffic - only 2 or 3 visits a day. It's a hard topic to promote, since I'm not yet a member on any parenting forums, it's not a very searchable topic, and there aren't that many other lenses about it. At least not that I've found.

I'm always looking for other baby and parenting lenses to add to my 'rolls, but most of them are about selling baby products, and have very little readable content. I did come across a really great lens today, though, called Breastfeeding Guru. It's a very long lens, and most of the product modules are nicely squeezed in between helpful content. It has no spamminess at all!

As I was looking over my Professor Baby Prenatal Calendar lens, I decided it was time to get rid of the sloppy eBay modules once and for all. I've come to find that they are totally useless for providing examples of items related to the lens content. Do a search for digital cameras, and you'll end up with cords and other junk that is most definately not cameras.

I'm sticking with Amazon from now on for my non-beading lenses. I liked Amazon modules better anyway, because you can select the thumbnail view, which places a nice row of 5 products that are centered on the page and take up hardly any room. And they (almost) never expire - a definite bonus if you don't have time to scan every single lens you make, everyday.

The Best Lens Ever

Fellow lensmaster Susan52 posted this lens on Twitter: The Best Squidoo Lens NOT To Do. It's a pretty clever example of the worst kind of lenses, a way to show lensmasters that their Etsy (or CafePress, etc) showcase needs some work. Since I love sarcasm, and hate bad lenses, I have dubbed this 'The Best Lens I Have Ever Read'.

It's really quite brilliant, especially to those of us who do put a lot of effort in, and can't make good lensrolls because we can't find anyone who actually has anything to say about relevant topics. GrowWear really hit it on the head with this one, and I hope a lot of shabby lensmasters find it and get the point.

Sadly, there really is no teaching those types, most of the time. The kind of people who have been ruining the internet since the beginning are just multiplying today. No matter how strongly you suggest that "NE 1 4 cyber?" is not a sentence, or a realistic way to greet someone, they just keep doing it. Don't these people have parents?

SquidU - School or Cafe?

Well, I took Party Animal's advice, and stopped by SquidU for the first time in a while. I browsed through the Critique Me section for a bit. A lot of the lenses looking for input were quite religious, and I don't trust myself to give a proper review of them. I had to pass those by, but I did find a few gems.
My favorite was "How to Set Up a Snake Cage", something I wish I had read when I was snake-sitting for a friend a few years back. The lensmaster, RoundTrip, has written a lot of great tips and advice for snake owners. I was very impressed with the way he presented his Amazon modules. Instead of feeling like I was being sold something, I felt like I was being shown my options, should I ever decide to keep a pet snake.
A badly put together lens can feel like a high pressure retail shop. You can just tell that the staff are desperate to make a sale, and you can't enjoy shopping while they pester you with suggestions. I couldn't stand trying to sell things to people when I worked in retail, because I like to assume that people are generally smart, and I always felt like they were on to me. This feeling has followed me to Squidoo - I don't even list prices on my Amazon/eBay modules. So when I read something that seems to use Amazon like an image picker, not a sales pitch, I really appreciate it. RoundTrip did a great job of this - I learned something from every part of the lens.

On another note, I was pleased to discover that my latest lens Movie Classics: Hallowe'en Marathon was accepted into the group Horror Movies Central. I came across this excellent film group while looking for a home for Hallowe'en Marathon, but I hesitated to join. It's a pretty serious horror fan group, and I wasn't sure if my review of The Great Pumpkin would be a turn off. It turns out that not only did the group master like my lens, but thought it should be featured as the group lens of the week! It just goes to show that taking a chance can certainly pay off! After all, it's just the internet. Getting denied for a group request isn't nearly as terrible as bombing at karaoke or a job interview, is it? As a huge zombie lover, I'm thrilled to be a member of HMC - there's a lot of great lenses there for fright fans.

Mind Your Manners

Today I was reading a new Squidoo blog - Squidoo Land - and found some great links to lens sharing places online. So I went to check out Lensroll.com and saw a lens entitled "Be a Good Squid". I thought that sounded pretty interesting, and so it was. The lensmaster - The_Party_Animal - has some pretty good tips on being an active member of the Squidoo community. Party Animal discusses the importance of responding to positive Guestbook feedback by visiting posters' lenses, and nominating things you like for Lens of the Day. I think I found my next pick, anyway!

The most ingenious part is the "One Hand Washes the Other" plexo, where lensmasters can leave their most visit-needy lens, assuming they will visit the last posted link as well. Naturally, I had to jump on board for that. Even before joining Squidoo, I was quite fond of 'telephone' or relay style games via web forums. It's interesting to see what happens when people participate in a chain-link activity. It's like chain letters, but without all the guilt and postage.

Well, I'm happy to say that I already do 99% of the "Squid Manners" - I guess it is about time I stopped by SquidU. I do love stumbling across Squidoo gems.