Strange week

It has been rather strange and Rob and I have certainly been feeling a little strange coping with the flu. 

I had a new pupil this week. A farmer, who had lessons with Rob when we first came to France. I met him and his wife when I was expecting Christian. He asked me how my little boy was these days, expecting him to be 10 or eleven. Christian was 26 on Thursday! We had a lovely long phone call to celebrate. He’s now as old as Rob was when he was born.

Something else that is strange, though I don’t expect to feel the impact until next week, is that ExposeYourBlog! is closing down this weekend. I’ve just sent out my last newsletter (twice as usual – I never did get that right). Friar Don and I are sad to be letting it go, but we both have busy lives elsewhere now. Don needs to devote more time to his spiritual life and I wish him well for the future.

 Me? I’m busy with my postcards and hopefully more blogging and writing.

BlogExplosion: Death of a Giant?

Anyone who’s tried to log into Blog Explosion recently will have discovered – nothing, just a 503 message. Not even the forums are functioning now. It seems to have gone down the same road as BlogCrowd, Blogmad and Blog Soldiers.

I joined BE back in 2004/5. Looking back at my older posts I found some good friends there. Then I discovered that there was a backload of blogs waiting to be approved, which I did for two solid years. We managed to get them up to date twice during this period. Due to lack of administration the forums were inundated with all forms of very nasty spam. A dedicated team of members and I spent a lot of time posting to push the spam back; it was the only tool we had. Some people were writing on the forums that they weren’t receiving credits they had paid for. What to do?

In February 2009 we organized the writing of (real) letters to the company which owned BE. This eventually led to a new administrator being appointed. A volunteer who worked all over the site and dealt with support tickets as well as cleaning out the spam from the forums. His access was limited, but he did his best and for a little while everything was going well. Then he disappeared. I’m sure that he was banned from accessing the site for some reason.

A year later we were back to square one and the owners could not be contacted. I discovered that they weren’t paying some of their employees either. At this point some members came forward and said they would be interested in buying BE, but from who? Throughout this period surfing was difficult as the system wasn’t running properly. Someone tried to fix it but afterwards, credits weren’t allocated for surfing, the numbers to click on weren’t always there and I think this was when logging in became very touch and go too.

 In May 2010 a few of us got together and set up a new blog exchange: ExposeYourBlog!. However, I was still trying to approve the never ending backlog of blogs and keeping an eye on the forum on BE. As EYB! grew I spent less and less time trying to keep something going on BE.

A lot of our members migrated from BE. Thank you to everyone who supported BE in the past and those who support EYB! today.

 My posts on the story up until the end of 2010

Stop Press

There are extra credits and cash bonuses when you surf on ExposeYourBlog! Come and check us out if you’re looking for new visitors for your blog, or new blogs to read.

ExposeYourBlog !: Contests !

I’m going to be boring and post this on all of my blogs. As we approach the second birthday of ExposeYourblog!, we’ve re-launched both the surfing and referral contests. All you need to do to win credits surfing is to be amongst the top five surfers of the day. Credits awarded are based on the percentage of blogs surfed, so the more you surf the more you can win – daily and weekly! The referral contest means that you can win credits for referring more members than anyone else daily and weekly. New members must activate their account by surfing and adding their blog. To get links, go to your “Tools” page and click on “My Downline”, scroll down and you’ll find banners and links that you can use to promote ExposeYourBlog!. Or you could write a post about why you enjoy surfing on EYB! and include a link in your post – just like I have.

Don and I are really proud of the blogs on EYB! There are blogs to suit all tastes and you’ll find excellent writing, art and pictures as well as members who interact with each other. We’re building a very special blogging community and hopefully members feel as it EYB! Is being run by real people who care about their members – which is true.

As always Don and I can be contacted via a PM in the forums (don = “Admin”, to contact me “Anji”), via a support ticket or email; forumadmin@exposeyourblog.com . We’d love to hear from you, feedback and ideas are always useful.

Another weeks floats its way across the skies of life

Dom and JM came to stay for a few days last weekend as it was a holiday on the Friday too.  It was good to spend time with them and catch up with their news.  We even managed a walk in the sunshine and J-M mended a heater for us and cut most of the hedge.  Dom made her famous carrot cake.  J-M had never tasted it before, I don't understand how they managed that. While they were here, Dom received an email about a scientific paper she has submitted for publication.  It hasn't been accepted yet, but needs polishing up.  Can you imagine how pleased she was?  Can you imagine how proud I am?   Next stop Christmas!

It's still pretty mild here, we don't really need the heating on yet - despite J-M's repairs.  We've had sunshine almost all week.

This week I sent out a newsletter to ExposeYourBlog! members -  my first! I hope that if you're a member and you're reading this that you did read it.  Don has handled the newsletters up to now.  I didn't realise how difficult it is to find things to say....

Learnt a bit about how to be happy too.  Not a bad week all in all.

In which I sit and talk

I finally got round to making a video of myself. I’m sorry about the quality of the image and the sound. Any tips on how to improve it will be gratefully accepted.

Perhaps you could help too?

Today I’m writing about two very important blogs created by a blogging friend, Dirty Butter. We met up because of the chat box on ExposeYourBlog!. We discovered that we have a lot in common, though we live across the world from each other. We sell old stuff online (DB antiques and collectables – me vintage postcards) and we both used to teach.

Can you help? Every parent knows the agony of their child losing his/her favourite soft toy. Here is an amazing blog to put searchers and toys together. Anyone can help, anywhere in the world… spread a little happiness!

A second idea from DB: As everyone knows in April and May this year a lot of people in parts of the U.S. lost everything because of the tornados. In April and May a lot of young couples are busy preparing for their weddings. Imagine losing the wedding dress you’d dreamt of and saved up for. A special site created to help would be brides have their wedding after all. There have been many generous donations of dresses. Now the problem is to find the brides to fit them. If you know anyone who lost their dress or needs help with preparations because of the tornados, please tell them about this site.

As if there wasn't enough to do already, DB also has a couple of other blogs, Yesterday’s Memories and Day to Day with a Movement Disorder in which she talks about coping with Essential Myoclonus and some of the medication she has to take

Everso Slightly Drunk

I recommend you read his posts about his slightly strange family based somewhere in Canada. Not only that, he writes well.



I’m only doing this for the ExposeYourBlog! credits…

April 1st

Twenty five years ago today, we moved into this house.

Four years ago I officially started up my own business.


This morning I discovered that my name is the second sexually active female name in the US - How’s that for a claim to fame? Though I think I’m getting a little old now….

ExposeYourBlog! is 10 months old today and still growing.

Radio ExposeYourBlog! needs you

Did you know that ExposeYourBlog! Had it’s own radio station? Did you know that you don’t even have to be logged in to EYB! In order to listen? All you need to do is click on the link of your choice.

WinAmp/iTunes
Windows Media
Real Player
All others

If you have any requests or ideas about the type of music you’d like to listen to, if you’d like to be interviewed or if you are looking for a lost blogger, pop along to the forums and leave a message in the Radio ExposeYourBlog! section.

ExposeYourBlog

For the past week I’ve been working on a little project with some of my friends from BlogExplosion. We have been so disappointed by the lack of response from the owners, LiveUniverse, that we decided to create our own blog exchange ExposeYourBlog! I’m hoping that you’ll see this and if you’re interested come and see what we have to offer. The big launch is tomorrow 1st June. Remember we really are at the beginning of this. I’ve been testing the system along with the other members of the team and we’ve ironed out the lumps and bumps to bring you the best we can. If not, I can assure you that any support tickets will be dealt with.

We have a brand new forum ready to go and we’d love to have feed back and suggestions from you – see you over at ExposeYourBlog!