Religion and Spirituality lenses (and more)

Weblog from Katinka Hesselink on any lenses she may decide to make :)

Bras, skincare, make-up and body types -women shopping

It’s time for the top lenses on my Women and Girls Shopping group to be featured here. We had a real contest in the plexo this time around. The top lens had 7 votes :)

It’s the Itty Bitty Bra by cjsysreform.

Second up: Green Skin Care: skin care that’s ecologically sound. Also by… cjsysreform

Then a topic people would rather avoid talking about: Mooncup - Reusable menstrual cup by our brave inkserotica.

Next up a more conventional female topic: make-up: Natural Lip Color for Luscious Beauty! by Cjsysreform again (she had her friends vote in the plexo: smart :)

Then a topic that I think everybody can sympathize with: Women’s Body Types and How to Dress Them by ChrysW

My 200th lens - about jewelry, planners and spirituality

I just made my 200th lens :) It’s not a celebration lens (I could not think of anything along those lines). Just another lens in my calendars and planners niche: Family Planners for moms. I’ve also recently made a lens about planners for students, and a lensography uniting all sorts of unique calendars and date books.

Then spiritual jewelry - I haven’t made as many lenses about that topic yet, but I did make a lensography for the few I do have. The latest in that set is First Communion Jewelry for boys and girls.

I’ve also continued my series of lenses dedicated to spiritual and religious books. I’ve made lenses dedicated to the best of Edgar Cayce, Henk Spierenburg (my theosophical mentor) and fractal books. As I’m reading ‘Creative Evolution’, by quantum spiritual teacher Amit Goswami, I’m writing a review on that book as well. It’s been a long time since I’ve tried my hand at squidlit.

Last but not least - I’ve just published as my 199th lens fun and inspiring quotes about being vegan or vegetarian.

Post script: I just published my first Picture Caption Lens as part of the Giant Squid summerschool: Spiritual pictures - caption them!

Religious gifts and spiritual products

My religious gifts and spiritual products group also has a plexo. These were the best lenses in the plexo according to those who voted:

Amulets and Symbols of Protection, by Monarch13

The Art and Magic of Hex Signs, also by Monarch13 (not as occult as it sounds)

Best Dalai Lama Books, by yours truly.

Milagros (Miracle) Healing Charms, by Monarch13 again.

And last but not least my own Salvador Dali - religiously themed surrealistic art.

This may seem like a very partial list, but in fact that group is dominated by my lenses (more than half). ALL Monarch13’s lenses are featured here - to the extent that she submitted them to this group.

Personal development and spiritual growth inspiration June

In my Spiritual Growth, Healing, Awareness and Self Help group the plexo had enough votes this month to choose 5 best lenses on the topic. As usual the winning lenses have been deleted from the plexo. If you want to enter them again, please do so. They do get another shot at the top, any time they get enough votes.

Lucid Dreaming Information was the winning lens.

How to Set Goals with Pictures is Joan4’s way of helping us achieve our goals.

Then there’s my own: Wisdom Quotes: Inspirational Spiritual Sayings and What is Spiritual Growth? What is Wisdom?

Last but not least an account of being an alcoholic, yet living sobriety: Date Of Sobriety, 02/02/2002

Great Christian Lenses

The Christianity Group had just enough votes in the plexo for it to be used to decide which lenses to feature here. Two are my own, the rest are by other lensmasters:

The Ultimate Questions - religion and spirituality a debate

Christian Spiritual Quotes and Inspirational Sayings

Why Jesus Came


Resurrection Cookies for Easter

Tip Is…I Believe in Angels

Please don’t forget to vote for next months contest.

What the new google rel-nofollow policy means for squidoo

There’s a new rel-nofollow policy out. Where it used to be that pagerank got distributed around all the followed links on a page, now it gets distributed around all the links on the page and what’s on rel-nofollow links just ‘evaporates’ as Matt Cuts puts it in the interview I linked to above. Matt Cuts is THE google SEO spokesperson, so what he says is generally to be taken seriously.

My first thought on hearing this was that it would have no effect on squidoo. But I looked at my squidoo profile page just now and what I see is: 700 something links (rel nofollowed but still) to all my fans. That’s 700 links where the pagerank evaporates! Not good. I can’t be too worried, because traffic to my squidoo pages is growing so fast right now I can hardly keep up (close to 10000 a week now).

But what I AM concluding from this is simple: don’t rely on your profile for link juice. Make and promote lensographies. Don’t bother promoting your profile page if you can help it. Of course I was already doing that, but with this new interpretation of rel nofollow, it becomes more important than ever.

I can’t think of other squidoo consequences right now. The advice is still to put rel-nofollow on payed links, and I interpret that to include affiliate links (after all - you want to rank, you don’t want amazon to rank above you if you can help it).

Sites using rel-nofollow on external links or internally do need to reconsider. After all - if the pagerank is evaporating instead of benefiting your other pages, what are you doing if for? With squidoo blogs for instance: if there’s rel-nofollow on links to squidoo lenses mentioned, that means that there is:
1) pagerank lost
2) the squidoo community as a whole gets less pagerank, which then doesn’t flow back to the blog we started out with either.

More about SEO for squidoo.

Funny lenses: yearbooks, Indian videos, uncool cool and driving instruction

In this months installment of the best lenses in my Humor and Hilarity group… The following five lenses got the most votes in the plexo on that page. You can vote for the remaining lenses, and if one of the winning ones is yours - enter it again to see if you can get it to win again.

Yearbook Yourself: See How You’d Look in 1950s-1990s Yearbooks - a classic lens by Kim Giancaterino.

Spoonerisms: Toungled Tangs, Wixed-up Murds - by giant squid MobyD

Funny Indian Videos - by yours truly, showcasing funny subtitles to Indian music videos.

Uncool-Cool-People by MikeMoore.

Then last but not least: The Funny Side Of Being A Driving Instructor! by CDT.

… and PLEASE don’t forget to vote for your favorite funny lenses this month :)

Got an early birthday present from the giant squid community organisers :)

Well, that’s how I’m interpreting my purple star anyhow :) Yes, tomorrow is my birthday - not sure I’ll be able to log in preparing for family gatherings on Sunday and Monday. First family sleepover in my ‘new’ apartment and I’m rather nervous too. One of the downsides to being single (aside from not qualifying for rocket mom status) is that cooking for others is actually something I need to think about. And cleaning the house is too (yes, I’m a bit of a slob). I’m on target for today, but still a lot needs to be done tomorrow, and shops aren’t open on Sunday in The Netherlands.

Oh well, I’m totally rambling ain’t I? The upshot of it is that my lens about how to become popular on squidoo has received a purple star - and unlike the LOTD program, there’s a guaranteed link to the lens included. As you all know I appreciate links more than blessings, so I’m especially thankful to the Giant Squid community organizers for this honor.

I shared the story of the lens on the Valley of the Giants blog, so I won’t go into that here.

What else can I say about this? I’ve decided to limit the two plexo’s on the lens to a hundred lenses max. So if you’ve got very popular lenses that fit my criteria, submit them soon: that plexo is nearing the limit. And if you’ve got a lens dedicated to lenses by others, there’s lots of room left in the second plexo - so why not get that link?

Great religious and spiritual lenses - blessed by a squidangel :)

Time for me to bless some great lenses with more than a squidangel blessing, but with a link as well. These are in my favorite niche: religion and spirituality. It’s quite a collection - I guess there are many great lenses made about this topic.

Let’s start with the lens that started this post in a sense. Mystic Mama has been making a few great spiritual lenses, starting with Metaphysical Mystic Mama, which got so many votes that it’s ranking no. 1 in religion and spirituality right now. I’m afraid it will soon plummet unless we give it some link love, so here goes.

Staying for now in the New Age realm, Chicandsavvy asks and answers the question: what’s an energy vortex? J_mac explains the basics of Western astrology signs, going into more detail than you usually see on this subject. But perhaps you want to learn about Lucid Dreaming, or minor pagan holidays? I love this lens about Edgar Cayce, a most inspiring medium.

Moving slightly into the area of interfaith initiatives - check out these lenses about the faces of death, praying for peace, blessings, or faith over religion

Getting into traditional religion a bit more - this lens about the Biblical Book of Job goes into one of the most important topics of that challenging book: how to deal with adversity - in our friends. It’s part of a whole series about that Bible book, and I’m very curious what else ShireenJ will take out of it.

Only one Buddhist lens made the cut today: about Kuan Yin, the male/female goddess of Buddhism.

I’ll end this post with some of my own low ranking spiritual lenses - they can use the promotion :)

About yoga and the history of yoga philosophy. One of my favorite current day spiritual teachers: Karen Armstrong. Another important spiritual teacher of today: Ken Wilber. Both are interested in interfaith dialog. Like me - as I share on my spiritual blog All Considering, following the example of first generation theosophists like H.P. Blavatsky and W.Q. Judge.

How to stay Organised? A rant about planners!

I have to say, ever since I started making lenses about planners, I’ve been amazed at how hard it is to find good ones. That is: planners that are dated, that start at the beginning of the calendar year or academic year and have a horizontal writing style.

For some reason organizers often have square boxes to write in. I mean, who prefers writing like that? And all those columns… This is probably partly a culture thing. Dutch planners are ALWAYS dated. They go on sale in January, so the few people who are late buying them, get a bargain. But they’re the minority. I guess Dutch people are generally an organized set, compared to the US? Dutch agenda books usually have horizontal writing and hardly ever have columns. I do remember one planner I used for several years that did have columns. But the columns were wider, because the planner was horizontal.

I’m also stunned at the quality - or lack thereof. I remember that when I went to Middle School in the US (I lived in Austin TX one year) we all got a planner that had boxes, was printed on flimsy paper and fell apart very quickly. My fellow students were amazed at me trying to use it at all… Now I realize that one reason it was so flimsy is that it had to be cheap. But being so flimsy, nobody used it. It was testimony to my teacher’s wish to have us all become organized. But it was also enduring proof (well, it didn’t last VERY long) of their inability to actually get us to that point.

The year after that I went to a Dutch Middle School and the planners I used there (and we all had one, it was mandatory) were much more like the college planners I put up on my student planner page. The usually had a hard cover, always had space for writing down our schedule and contacts - and notes too of course. There was a wide variety of planners: funky ones, girly ones, planners based on popular cartoons etc. Horse planners for girls, the boys went for their favorite music group I think. No spiritual ones though - I guess that’s for adults. Student planners go by the academic year of course, but our Dutch planners had the full year as a matter of course. No missing months for us - maybe a week lost in the summer holidays. Most Dutch planners even have a few weeks overlap - so you can plan in advance. And year planners for the coming year of course.

In contrast one student planner publisher says proudly on his amazon page: Now 308 pages to cover the full school year! - I wonder since when are there 308 days in a year?

While I’m ranting, the lack of consensus on how to call these things seems like a symptom to me. I mean, they can be called planners, organizers (both of which can also be people), engagement calendars, date books, appointment books and pocket calendars. Have I missed any? Then the planners for students can be called: academic planners, student organizers, student agendas, student day planners, school agendas, kid planners, student planners etc. And that’s without mixing in phrases like ‘High school’, ‘Middle school’, ‘Elementary School’ or any of that. In the Netherlands we have two terms: agenda for any planner book and organizer for the loose leaf variety (always dated of course). Much easier to keep track of.

All in all the thing that puzzles me most is professional organizer sets not being dated. I mean really, what manager has the time to fill in dates? No wonder the advice is to set apart 15 minutes each day to fill in your date book… You may need that if you want to keep up with office holidays and and so on. Can’t they add the dates in a starter set that costs over 50 or even 100 dollars? I mean really!

Am I just being picky and European about this, or have I stumbled on a real problem with the US planner market?