Moby's Soundings

It was probably back in the '70s when I was looking at The Next Whole Earth Catalog. That was the one that made the title of The Last Whole Earth Catalog a bit inaccurate, sort of like Douglas Adams did to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy when he expanded it to four, then five, books. Anyway, what I saw in The Next Whole Earth Catalog was a story called "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut," written in something called Anguish Languish. This "language" was the invention of Professor Howard L. Chace, who used it to illustrate to his French language students that intonation is an important part of understanding another language. The story looks strange in written form, but makes more sense when read aloud.

In the early '90s I had some time on my hands, and I must've read Ladle Rat Rotten Hut again because I got the idea of translating Clement C. Moore's classic Christmas poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas into Anguish Languish.

When I got a website through an ISP, I made a couple of pages for the Anguish Languish and English versions of the poem. I found some nice graphics to use as a border and background, plus some Thomas Nast illustrations. Moore's poem and Nast's illustration have a lot to do with the way Americans think about Santa Claus. Both are in the public domain, and I think the pages I made then look pretty nice.

I was on Squidoo last year at this time, but I didn't make a lens for my Anguish Languish version. It's probably just as well. I've learned a whole lot more about making lenses look good, and I incorporated them into the lens I made today (Thursday). Hay Visage form Sane Ticklish on Squidoo doesn't have graphics quite as fancy as the earlier web pages, but I did find more Nast illustrations. I uploaded them to Flickr, and found that they fit nicely with either eight or twelve lines of the poem without breaking any lines. I had to adjust the size of the text a bit after the lens was first published because the editing window is a little wider than the published lens window. There were enough illustrations to allow for some to be used in the Anguish Languish version, and different ones to be used in the English version.

One line in the Anguish Languish version mentions "Sane Tick." You'll have to take a look at the lens to see how I incorporated that idea into it. Da-da! Da-da-da dwee dow!

In other activity on Squidoo, I put five additional videos into my Celtic Music: Alasdair Fraser lens and deleted the Alasdair Fraser video showcase. Alasdair is an incredible fiddler in the Scottish tradition who has teamed up in the past few years with one of his former students, Natalie Haas. The fiddle and cello go back a long way in Scottish music where they were frequently used to provide music for Scottish dancing. Under Natalie's bow, the cello really comes alive.

Tomorrow morning I get to do my first update for the recently made over Best Sellers lens. It'll be interesting to see how that works out.

I've made some changes to my Best Sellers - Fiction - Hardcover lens on Squidoo that should be big improvements. It started out small with the decision to add one line just above each book blurb that would give the book's previous position on the list and the number of weeks on the list. Fairly easy, but then I had another idea.

The Amazon Spotlight module has a much bigger image, so I added 15 of them and transferred all the information into each one, then deleted the three Amazon module that had listed five books each. That meant adding each book's current position on the list. Also, the Spotlight module allows the use of italics in the blurbs, so where I mentioned an author's other books, I italicized them.

Also, I decided I would add a paragraph in the introduction module about the changes for the week, something I'd been doing all along, but only in SquidCasts, which are brief notes sent out to people who have marked the lens a favorite and people who have joined my fan club. I wanted to put most of the text in the intro module into a box with a colored background. It looked OK on the edit page, but when the lens was published, the photo (the one you see here) intruded into the box. So I found a free image, cropped it and replaced the other one.

I don't know if this will result in any more visitors, but I think it makes the lens a bit more useful and it looks a whole lot better.

Last night after I'd signed off, LindaJo Martin, one of the Squidoo people on Twitter, sent me a tweet asking if I'd done a lens for Scottish singer/songwriter and fiddler Dougie MacLean. When I saw the tweet this morning, I wondered how I'd manage to miss doing one for him so long. So I got started.

MacLean is probably best known for his fiddle tune "The Gael" which was featured in the movie The Last of the Mohicans, and his song "Caledonia" which is regarded by many as Scotland's unofficial national anthem.

It took a while longer than usual because also this morning I got an email forwarded through Squidoo from Maggie Sansone, hammered dulcimer player and founder of the record label Maggie's Music, which is the label Bonnie Rideout records for, mostly. The forwarding indicated she'd seen my Spoonerisms lens, although her actual message referenced my Celtic Music: Christmas lens. She was interested in the possibility of using Squidoo to promote Maggie's Music and wondered if it might be too commercial. So I emailed back and let her know a little about Squidoo and no, it certainly wouldn't be too commercial.

After taking time out to watch Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow, I got back to the Dougie MacLean lens. Sometimes I leave the biographical stuff at the top of a lens to last, but this time I'd gotten it done earlier and mostly just had to add in the links to Amazon for his CDs that are available there. Not all of the stuff available through his website is also on Amazon. I got a video of "The Gael" from his 2007 Perthshire Amber Festival performance added. Almost there.

Then when I went to add what links I could for CDs available from Amazon.co.uk, Squidoo crashed. After I'd finally determined that yes, it was Squidoo and not anything I was doing, I spent some time reading posts on Delphi, then started this post. I figured unless something was really wrong, it wouldn't be too long before Squidoo came up and I could finish. And just a minute ago, a tweet from Chef Keem indicated it's back.

So my Dougie MacLean lens should be ready to publish soon. If it's Friday or later as you read this, no problem.