Comments (2)

By Les Scammell, March 31, 2008 1:49 pm

I have kept my link with BlogRush alive despite reading many of the negative comments from different blogs. I agree with what has been written by the masses, namely, that BlogRush has been a huge disappointment when it comes to delivering traffic.

My main reason for keeping it was simply because it provided another set of quick statistics. I like graphs and BlogRush’ statistical graphs appealed to me.

In recent weeks I have started to notice an increase in traffic. It is only small although a statistician would have a field day. I went from having two or three his per post to currently receiving anything up to ten hits.

Now I know that in the big picture, ten hits is nothing. But then if you are only getting 100 hits per day, 10 hits represents 10% (like a said, a statistician would have a field day). The obvious result could be, seven post per week, an extra 70 visitors. Not quite. I think I would be lucky to get 40.

However, given that all I have to do is have the widget on my sidebar, an extra 40 visitors per week for no work is not something I am going to quickly reject. As I said earlier, the traffic is slowly growing.

I am not sure why traffic is improving. I know they have a new feed system in place which I am sure is helping. It could also be that with many dropping out there is less competition so my posts are appearing more often. It may be, that like a fine wine, BlogRush is just maturing slowly. Whatever the reason, I am happy to accept the extra traffic. I think if you were able to filter out some posts then the service would be far better.

If you have rejected BlogRush in the past, it may be time to revisit. Then again, that means more competition for the post spots. On second thoughts, if you have rejected it, or you are not really interested in it, then don’t bother. Leave the ad spots available for me. If you are interested, click on the BlogRush widget and check it out – yes they do have an affiliate program – you get paid in traffic credits not cash.

In the meantime, I feel my header could use a slight work over again. It seems having my ugly mug up there is driving people away. Strange it should be driving them wild with excitement, well my lady visitors at least. Perhaps I should get a fine piece of art work placed there. Perhaps I should ask the art trustee George Lindemann jr for some advice.

Comments (10)

By Les Scammell, March 30, 2008 3:02 pm

I have ventured into the latest WordPress 2.5 upgrade with a little trepidation. There is always this underlying fear of losing all that has been done on my sites. I have a distrust of backups particularly when it comes to upgrades.

However I decided it had to be done at some stage and putting it off would not get the job done so I selected one of my lesser sights, one that I have only just started in the last month, and gave it the upgrade. The end result. It was very easy. A breeze in fact.

My first piece of advice is to use a good FTP client. They make the transfer files easy and quick. Here is a basic summary of what you need to do to upgrade. The information is also available from WordPress.org.

1. deactivate all plugins,
2. download the upgrade package and extract it on your desktop,
3. delete the admin and includes folders from your sites – this is where a good FTP client comes in handy,
4. upload the new admin and includes folders to your site,
5. leave the content folder intact – just copy the new files from the wp-content folder on your desktop to the wp-content folder on your site,
6. if you need them – copy the classic and default themes across – I always keep the default theme in place in case of emergency,
7. copy the files from the root directory of the upgrade folder to the WP root directory on your site,
8. you can manually find the upgrade file and run that, or simply load your site and upgrade the database from there,
9. reactivate your plugins – try one at time testing the site after each has been activated,
10. done.

It couldn’t be easier. It took me about 30 minutes to complete the upgrade, but then again I have a very slow broadband connection.

What do I like about the new WordPress

It looks sleek and looks new. It seems to be a little quicker as well. The plugins can be updated through the plugins menu so for me that will probably mean I can remove the onestep install plugin – one less plugin to stress the system.

What don’t I like – I will get back to you on that. The look and feel is fairly good but with all change comes a little settling period. If there is one I don’t like straight away it would have to be the widget interface. To me, the important area is the current widget installation area. For some reason that has been shunted off to the right with the center of the screen devoted to the widgets available. To me that is a little back to front – I want to see clearly what is currently installed, particularly if I am going in to edit a text box.

Otherwise, installation is quick and smooth. The new interface feels good and it is certainly a little faster. From the end users point of view, there is no change (which is how it should be), a visitor would not know if you had upgraded or not. If I comes across any major issues you will be the first to know. If you have been holding back, don’t – it is pretty drama free.

In the mean time, my installation went smoothly, no loss of hair or turning gray (too late), no bleary eyes or cranky tantrums but plenty of relief from skin redness – don’t ask.

Comments (2)

By Les Scammell, March 29, 2008 11:38 pm

As a general rule I enjoy shopping but today was an absolute nightmare. We went out to one of the larger chain stores and did a mass of birthday shopping. That was fine – my girls will all be very happy with their birthday presents (3 birthdays in 15 days is no joke). Once we had collected all our goods it was off to the checkout and that is where the rot began.

All the checkouts were busy so I, being the clever dick that I am, decided we should try the new ’self checkout’ facility that they have installed. Talk about a crazy worthless system – no wonder there was no one waiting to use it.

First, you scan the item yourself – not a big problem except the very first item wouldn’t scan – when it did it scanned twice. That’s cool – don’t stress – just hit the cancel button – all along there is this sickly sweet female computer voice giving you advice. We hit the cancel button – ‘please wait for an attendant to verify’ – there goes the ‘self checkout’.

The attendant arrives, swipes her card and toddles off again. ‘please place your item in the bag’. Hello, I don’t want a damn bag, this item wont fit any bag any way – its too big. ‘please wait for an attendant’. Back she comes, waves her card, all cool again. We keep going. Except the damn machine doesn’t recognize when you do place your item in the checkout bag. I am sure I put things in and took them out again half a dozen times before it was happy.

Half an hour later we finally get everything scanned and its time to pay. ‘please wait for an attendant, an irregularity has been detected’ – by now I was getting a little sick of hearing the voice and was not in a good mood. ( photo credit: msmail)

The attendant arrives, ‘have you got any DVD’s or CD’s’ – yes three or four. That’s fine she does her thing and clears the machine ‘irregularity’ – I’ll give it ‘irregularity’ all right. After finally getting to pay and thinking all was fine, we start to head off out of the store only to be stopped again by ‘the attendant’.

‘BTW – you need to take your receipt and the DVD’s back to the entertainment section so they can put the DVD’s into their boxes’.

You have got to be joking.
After two hours of actually finding what we wanted to buy, it took another hour to use the ’self checkout’ facility before we could head off to the pet care center to buy a few other odds and ends. ( photo credit: beneneuman)

This has to be one of the worst cases of technology making life easier for the consumer. You can bet we will see more of this into the future as well. One ‘attendant’ can look after 6 of these machines. That is five young check out operators who wont get jobs – often first or after school jobs.

I want a human or I am not going to shop there – plain and simple.

Comments (3)

By Les Scammell, March 29, 2008 12:19 am

Spam has once again become one of my little nightmares both here at the radical blogger and at my Just 4 Families parenting blog. It seem that when I write a post that draws a decent commentary it also seems to flag the spammers to have a go.

Andy Beard wrote a little blurb on Akismet and the frustrations it creates. I have used Akismet on both sites since Christmas. It has been great at stopping the spam, nothing is getting through although I often have to go in and extract non-spam comments. I would much rather be de spamming some comments than having to manually delete 10-15 spam comments each day – and that is on a good day.

My Just 4 Families site has been badly hit lately to the point that I turned comments off. That site is a Drupal powered site rather than WordPress. I have now installed a Captcha module (simple maths) and since then I have had no spam at all. I am assuming that all this spam has been bot driven.

My question now is what do you think about Captcha? I often find the word or character based captcha to be a pain in the butt, these blurry old eyes find it hard to distinguish the characters. The math based ones are not a problem.

Do you get turned off commenting because there is a captcha installed? From my experience, the captcha has worked well to kill the spam and certainly saved me a lot of time in going in and reviewing all the spammed comments before deleting them.

In the mean time – I am going to spam myself off to the San Diego sweetwater saloon at Hard Rock for a bit of time out after this last spate of spam and consider finding a simple captcha plugin for this site. (in case you are wondering – don’t ask).

Comments (7)

By Les Scammell, March 27, 2008 5:19 pm

My last post -Bloggers Can Be Very Self Centered – Are You? seems to have created a small wave of comments and some of them were very well thought through and raised some good points – good enough for me to take some excerpts and comment on.

Will from Will Taft .com – Healthy Living For People and Planet Earth made several good points including the following large chunk:

Blogging overall is not what people think. The big success stories are often those who stared early. Some have tremendously valuable content, others have content not different than thousands of other blogs, they were just early to the party, so to speak. If you want a daily site to read that makes you laugh, and you have one in your reader that works, why would you be interested in the thousands of other funny sites that came along after. There are now so many blogs that if a person was to subscribe to even 5% of what they find interesting and of quality, they would soon overload their reader. Even most of what is subscribed to does not get read. I talked to someone recently who subscribes to about 20 feeds. One of them is the Simple Dollar feed, a very successful site. That site usually puts out multiple posts per day. So over the course of a year would send thousands of posts to this person’s reader. I asked how many of the posts from The Simple Dollar he had read over the past year, and he said maybe 10.

You have to start to wonder. I have between 70 and 80 subscriptions and so I wonder I how many actually receive the posts and how many actually read them. If you do subscribe and read please take a moment to leave a comment – just out interest.

I must admit I only subscribe to around a dozen blogs now and only by email. I scan the title and if it interests me I then scan the content. It then gets either binned or put aside for further reading at a later date. I do eventually get back to them all. The other thing that I notice is that when I receive a post via email I very rarely actually go and visit the site – it is only when I feel I have something to add through the comments section.

So subscriptions not only reduce visitor numbers they also reduce interaction. It is far easier to comment while you are passing through a site. If you are not on site it is easier to ‘leave it until later’.

Wil’s overall thrust is that there are just so many blogs out there that not only are we suffering from information overload, it is almost impossible to write about anything new unless you take a personal view of things. In the bigger picture not many people are actually interested in my opinions (not that this is going to stop me giving them). Those blogs that have been around for years have the reader base and it is going to be very hard to take any readers away from them – or share them anyway. There is one interesting point though when it comes to subscribers and reading the feeds. I guess in four or five years I could have several hundred subscribers, not because they are reading my feeds, but because they have never unsubscribed.

When the bloggers who have been around for five plus years talk about having several thousand subscribers, I wonder how many are active and how many have just never unsubscribed with the feed actually ending up in the ether somewhere. I could quit blogging tomorrow but I would still receive the email subscriptions for the next hundred years. Perhaps their should be an annual flush of all subscribers. Now that would be interesting.

Flo from Flo’s Place Online also added an interesting point:

…..by the time I get to read blogs the ‘discussion’ has been going on for hours and someone’s probably said whatever I was going to say. As far as contests, I have just never been a contest person, just not my thing. But your post got me to thinking. I’m going to make it a habit of commenting on every blog I stop at, even if it’s only to say HI

I must admit that is a problem of mine. Blogging from the sunny shores of Australia I am at least 12 hours out of pace with the rest of the world. By the time I get to read a post the comments on some blogs are twenty plus deep. Personally, if someone drops by and just says hi in the comments, while some consider it spam, if it is from a fellow blogger I consider a polite gesture and a compliment in that they thought I was worth talking too. I guess every one has their own take on that – I like the personal touch – call me a softy.

Dan from The Way of the Web added:

I think it’s a case of familiarity. I’m far more likely to sign up for a cause that is recommended by someone I already have a relationship, than one of the 100s I can come across on random blogs and websites.

..and I again it is a good point. It becomes an issue of trust. Even Will mentioned the same theme at the end of his comment – I received half a dozen sign-ups on my petition through his site and they would most likely only arrived because they took his link as a form of recommendation. Few of us would jump in to an issue from a complete stranger unless it really dig strike a chord with us.

Tommy from one quart low made an interesting point about some bloggers being business people and that being self centered goes hand in hand with that role. I am not sure if I agree or not. I think as a business person you have to look after your own interests, but sometimes that means going that little further.

Fragile heart I think summed one point up nicely when stating “I’m the type that will comment on what I read – if I have something useful to say ” which is fair enough – I go back to my point earlier – sometimes a simple ‘hi, enjoyed your post today’ or ‘hi, didn’t think much of today’s post’ are a nice touch (yup, even the negative one).

I hope you all didn’t mind me taking excerpts from your comments. They all made interesting reading. If I keep going I am going to need an extended holiday to Little Italy San Diego – thanks.

Comments (13)

By Les Scammell, March 23, 2008 11:58 pm

After six months of blogging, one of the things that has started to dawn on me is that bloggers and the blogging community are a very self centered group of individuals.

I know from several little campaigns that I have run and from seeing some of the campaigns run by others, there does not appear to be a high participation level from bloggers. I have been running my 1000 blogs against whaling campaign and I am struggling to get to 100 – forget the 1000.

I have also conducted several competitions with very little response. One competition I ran only got two responses – figure that out!

Bloggers want visitors, they want people to leave comments and they want subscribers to their feeds. I have got news for everyone, it is a two way street. You participate and others will reciprocate. What really strikes me as odd is that often a competition or campaign, such as my whale campaign only require a comment on a post. For that you get a link back to your blog, you also get exposure. I don’t know how many times I have read a comment on a blog and followed the link to see what else that person has to offer.

I can understand why some of the big name bloggers don’t respond to every campaign – they are often inundated with requests. I have a lot of respect for bloggers like Andy Beard, he at least does respond, even if it is just a flying visit to leave a comment and move on. I am sure he visits many blogs each day. Other ‘big name’  bloggers do not even answer emails or respond to comments – unless your ‘in’.

Are you self centered? Do you visit a blog, have a quick read and say yeah yeah yeah and move on? Or do you comment, do you sign up for campaigns? Do you follow links to other blogs? Or do you drop an entre card and run off to the next site?

Bloggers are self centered. Some really get into the spirit of blogging. I have met some really nice bloggers who comment, communicate and even exchange emails. There are some great blogs and some very passionate bloggers out there. Collin from feedflare is one such blogger who is trying hard to get his new blog up and running and has a great competition going – check him out if you have the time.

What are your thoughts – are bloggers self centered or do I just have a poor perception? What is your experience when it comes to competitions or campaigns – do bloggers participate or is it a hard struggle? I would really like some feedback on this issue.

Comments (4)

By Les Scammell, March 18, 2008 11:49 am

Over the months that I have been writing this blog I have either put together numerous lists or referred to them. Today I have brought all these lists under the one roof for easy reference. Let me know if you still find any of this info useful.

First is one of my favorite sites when it comes to WordPress Themes. Kate’s Theme Viewer is one of the best sites to see some of the latest themes around.

In late January I listed 100+ Bookmarking Sites. This is still a great little list to reference.

That post was closely followed by the  140 Adsense Alternatives post. Sick of Adsense. Struggling to get to that $100 mark to get your pay check.  Try some of these.

In February there were the 10 Pay Per Post sites listed. If you are looking to get  into Pay Per Post then check out some of those listed.

That post was followed by the 12 Text Link Sites listing. Again, if you are looking to monetize your blog then text link ads are for you.

And my previous post had links to over 150 plugins for your WordPress blog.

My ultimate list of lists is growing and I am sure I will add to it as time goes by.

Comments (27)

By Les Scammell, March 16, 2008 11:33 pm

Plugins, plugins, plugins. Everywhere you look there is another list of plugins. Today’s post is not a list of plugins. Rather, it is a list of lists. Someone else has done the job for me, however, I don’t think they will mind me linking into them from here.

50+ WordPress Admin Tools: A-Z list of more than 50 plugins to help you streamline everything you need to do out back.


30+ WordPress Plugins to Help Get More Readers: Gaining blog readers is hard; WordPress makes it much easier. Here are 30+ WordPress plugins to help you garner some of that attention, and then retain readers once they visit.

30+ WordPress Plugins to Turn Your Blog Into A Hub: With more of our lives being lived online, it’s nice to centralize our media as much as possible. New aggregated social networks are springing up, but did you know you can do much of this already from your blog?

30+ WordPress Plugins for Comments: When working on a WordPress blog, posts often take center stage. However, the comments are often just as important – they create valuable discussion. And yet the default WordPress comment box is simplistic and uninspiring so check out these for some inspiration.

17 WordPress Plugins for Adsense: Implementing and tweaking AdSense ads on a WordPress blog can be tedious. We’ve gathered 17 WordPress plugins which help you implement, control and overview AdSense ads on your blog.

Many thanks to Mashable for putting these lists together.

Comments (5)

By Les Scammell, March 13, 2008 11:15 pm

I know that a lot of people do not think much of Alexa however I have grown quite attached to the Alexa Toolbar and the little graph it produces. I have grown a little attached to the numbers as well, watching them come down. Those numbers came down pretty quickly to start with but just lately they have been only little drops, the last being only a drop of around 5000, but a drop is a drop.

As I write this my Alexa rate is just over 90k,  90661 to be exact.  Four months ago it was around two million so the drop has been fairly rapid. The question I get asked occasionally is how have I managed to get it so low so quickly. The truth is, I really don’t know. However I will reveal what I have been doing and perhaps it will help to shed some light on it.

There are many articles around that describe how to get your Alexa rank down. I saw one that suggested you advertise your blog for sale. Another method is to use a redirect through Alexa for your links. I am not sure how that works but it is meant to add visitors who do not have the toolbar installed. If there is a problem with using Alexa as a measuring tool it is the non inclusion of visitors who don’t have the toolbar.

For those who are unaware, Alexa tracks visitors to sites, all sites whether they be blogs, website, forums or any other web entity. The tracking is done through a toolbar installed into browsers. As mentioned, this distorts the results as it doesn’t measure visitors who do not have that toolbar. Certain types of web entities, like blogs, attract visitors who are more likely to have the toolbar installed. Casual internet users are less likely to use the toolbar.

The general consensus seems to be that users who have a strong Digg leaning don’t tend to have the toolbar while those who prefer StumbleUpon will most likely use it. In a way, I guess that answers my posts title question. The traffic I get tends to come from Stumblers and from social sites like BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog.  The real surprise to me is the traffic I am starting to get from BlogRush.

BlogRush has been maligned a lot in  the past and I was one of them. However the new BlogRush seems to be starting to deliver traffic. Not in huge numbers, but I am now getting between 10 and 50 visitors per day depending on which post appeared on the widget. If BlogRush could make one change, it would be to allow me to select which posts were allowed to appear in the widget.

So how did I get under 100K?  First, I have cheated just a little. I have written some fairly good post titles – for example, ‘How I Quadrupled My Blog Income‘ (16 comments) which have helped to drive extra traffic. I have also been blogging to a campaign – the Anti Whaling Campaign (90 comments and still growing) which again has helped drive traffic.  I also ran my 10,000 Entre Card credits contest (25 comments) along with a couple of lists which were popular; 140 Adsense alternatives and 100+ Bookmarking Sites (15 comments each).

Those posts all did reasonably well in the stumble game – none have done much good with Digg. Given that Stumblers are more likely to use the Alexa toolbar, it seems that is way you want it. Just to finish off with StumbleUpon, as I mentioned I have ‘cheated’  just a little in that I have ‘bought’ traffic from SU. You can buy 100 stumble visitors from StumbleUpon for the princely sum of $5. I find these are ideal ways to give my traffic figures a good boost. Whilst you may be paying for the 100 visitors, it only takes a few to give the post a thumbs up and the number grows just like any normal stumble. I don’t see how buying traffic in this manner is any different to buying traffic through Google or any other advertising.

The other traffic generator has been Entre Card although whilst it started with a bang it has dropped off considerably. Over a period of a month I probably received 1000 visitors just from Entre Card. This last month has only seen about 500 visitors. Again, Entre Card users are more likely to have the Alexa toolbar.

My biggest traffic generator on a regular basis where the blog reviews that I undertook last year. These provided a very steady flow of visitors (the reviews will most like be back again soon). I ran out of steam at the end of 2007 when it came to these reviews and I noticed a significant drop in traffic once the reviews stopped. The traffic has picked up due other activity but it has not been as steady. (If the reviews where helpful, let me know).

Conclusion. To get your Alexa down to need to attract traffic. How you do that is up to you. You can buy it, you can attract it or you can bribe it – just be sure it is the type of traffic that will be using the Alexa toolbar.

Is it important? In a single word – No! It is however a nice boost to the ego to see your rank come down to this level. I look at other factors. I am in Australia, and, whilst it is again not complete list of Australian blogs, I am now ranked in the top 30 here. With Problogger in number 1 and Skellie at number 7, I am quite happy to be ranked number 26.

They are all numbers, a bit like PR which I have seen here at 4 before dropping to zero (paid reviews – slap my wrists Mr Google – ooh – do it again). Are they a reliable measure of your popularity? I think not.  The most reliable measure of your popularity is through the number of RSS subscribers you have and the number of regular comments you receive. I know I have a regular group of readers (and I do thank them for their visits and comments). Whilst they are just numbers – they can be good for the ego. Every blogger has their own opinion as to what is important – and that is the joy of blogging – viva la difference.

How do you gauge the success of your blog? Do you bother to measure it at all?

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By Les Scammell, March 13, 2008 11:33 am

Do you ever refer to Google Trends to see what is hot on the search engines.  At present, Hidden Kingdom and Eve Of Destruction are running hot. Other search

terms that are running hot include Incredible Hulk trailer, lil wayne lollipop lyrics and longyearbyen. Hula is also one of the top search terms at present.

So what you may ask? You can check out the top 100 search terms at any given moment. If your blog, or more particularly, your current article relates to any of these top search terms then it would make sense to include them. If people are searching for those terms then, with a bit of luck, your site may appear close to the front page for those results.

If the traffic is there then you really need to capitalize on it. If the visitor doesn’t find what they are looking for they will either go back to the search results and try another link, or click on one of your ads. If your ads are content related such as adsense then one or more of the ads may be just what they are looking for.

My recommnedation is to check out Google trends and look for any keywords that you may be able to use. Better yet, check out those keywords that are heading up in the graphs. One of the things I have noticed is that many keywords have a sharp rise and fall when it comes to popularity. If you could predict that rise and fall you would certainly be there to capitalize on the extra traffic.

Comments (7)

By Les Scammell, March 9, 2008 10:41 pm

SEO for blogs is highly over rated. Sure, if you are simply blogging for the dollars then SEO is important and perhaps getting a professional in is worth the dollars. If you are blogging because you enjoy blogging and any income is just pocket money, then SEO is not worth the money – and neither are all the so called ‘get rich’ offers that are out there.

I absolutely love the offers that I frequently see. You have seen them. Give $100 and I will have your blog on the front page of Google within 24 hours. Hello – if your blog is already alive then I can get it onto the front page of Google in 24 seconds – for free – just take a moment – goto to Google and type your URL into the search box – are you there on the front page? Yes – did I say free – blow it – give us the $100 go on.

You can do some basic SEO work on your blog each and every day. Write articles in your genre. Use keywords and make sure your title is good – with one of the keywords. Keep your sitemap up to date – and thats it – another $100 please.

If you blog because you enjoy blogging then SEO is only a side aspect. My suggestion – worry about the content. Worry about satisfying the readers. Don’t bother with the get rich schemes – you know the saying – if is sounds to good then it is – stay away from it.

From my perspective, if one of these programs was really good – they would offer it to you for free and collect after it starting returning you an income. The reality, they take your money and run.

SEO is not worth the money spent. SEO is often not worth the extra time. If blog for fun – keep it as fun. If you blog for money – then run your blog as a business. Become a business person. Assess everything on the basis of will it help me to earn income. If it doesn’t – give it a miss.

Comments (3)

By Les Scammell, March 7, 2008 10:57 pm

Mankind has been hunting whales for centuries, probably several thousand years. In fact there is no denying that for some humans, whaling, whale meat and whale products have been a part of their culture for equally as long. I have to wonder if that argument alone is enough to allow whaling to continue.

Is there any such thing as sustainable whaling? It is often difficult to know and even harder to find accurate information. The reality is that both sides of the argument are so extreme that it is hard to believe either of them.

Japan has long argued for example, that minke whales in the southern oceans number in excess of 350000. Greenpeace argues that these numbers are wrong and there are less than half that number. Likewise Greenpeace estimate that humpback whales once numbered 1.5 million prior to the start of commercial whaling in the 1800’s. Current numbers  are said to be around 20,000. That is a huge drop in numbers.
If Greenpeace is correct in their numbers, the various species of whales will soon be suffering from the effects of lack of DNA diversity. This alone could have devastating effects.

From my perspective, the real concern when it comes to whaling is not the number of each species that has been argued. The oceans are changing. We are steadily polluting the waters. We are also having a huge effect on the bio diversity of the ocean due to heavy commercial fishing. Add to this the effects of climate change and you have the potential for disaster across all species. ( photo credit: cmiper )

You may be able to argue that whaling is sustainable and  given the number of whales that may be present this could be true. However if you add the other components that are severly impacting on whales and sustainable hunting may not be an option.
The whole whaling argument is wrong. What is now needed is a comprehensive review of all fishing practices across all species and in all oceans. There is a distinct possibility that in the not to distant future, there will little or no financially viable fishing areas left in the world. The only commercial fish available will be those that have been farmed.

We need to demand wide ranging marine reserves be set aside with strict no fishing policies in place. Rogue fishing nations need to be made to toe the line. A broad range of species, the whale included, need to be protected and their numbers allowed to grow.

Ultimately, we need to return our oceans to their former glory. We need to stop pumping waste into these waters. We need to stop taking from the oceans and start putting back.

Another 7 sites have joined the 1000 Blogs Against Whaling campaign bringing the total now to 87. The sites to join this week are:

(1)31 Days Later

(2)Me On Neon

(3)Mad About Kids

(4)Ringtailed Squelers

(5)Valley Girl Musings

(6)Newz Around Us

(7)Brood

If you wish to join the 1000 Blogs Against Whaling then please do your leave your URL details in the comments section here.

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By Les Scammell, March 2, 2008 11:59 pm

The 1000 Blogs Protest Against Whaling has risen to 79 with the addition of the latest group of blogs to join. I wonder, what do you call a group of blogs. A group of cows is called a herd. A group of fish is called a school. Perhaps a group of blogs should be called a party. What about a parliament of blogs – just like a parliament of wise owls. I digress as usual.

I am please to say that the blog protest is slowly growing and will soon hit 100 – please do spread the word. The latest additions to the blog roll are:

• Look Whats Hot
• When Things Get Dark
• Japanese Paradise
• Bebo Social
• Daphoenus
• Carpe Diem, Tempus Fugit
• Pandi Nurdiansyah
• Learning SEO Basics
• Yicrosoft Directory Girl
• SEO by the SEA
• Down Under
• Birthing Your Life Dream
• Lycobus
• Designer’s Depot
• A Changing Life
• Superficial Gallery

Feel free to add your blog to this post if you would like to be included.

Comments (6)

By Les Scammell, March 1, 2008 11:45 pm

And the winners are: Drumroll please. Oh – no one can hear me. I wish I had a live video camera feed about now – how cool would that be.

Okay enough of the drivel – I know you would all like to hear who the big winners are for my Entre Card contest. I will start by saying that this contest has been one huge disappointment for me.  I thought that with 10000 entre card credits up for grabs I would get more than 15 entries. Well those 15 entries are very much appreciated.

This weeks 500 EC prize goes to my mate Collin at FeedFlare.ca – congratulations

Third prize and 1000 EC goes to Brenda from contestwhiz.com

Second prize and 2000 EC goes to Marco from ruelicke.net
First prize and 5000 EC goes to Vickie from look-whats-hot.com 

Congratulations to all.