Just to bookmark this – I’ve downloaded the examples, but I’ve not got around to reading them yet, so I want to be able to find where I got to them from.

Using PigPog like a little del.icio.us of my own.

• Lifehacker: O’Reilly’s Mind Performance Hacks.

I’m still kind of intending to jump to Linux at some point, through the wonder of Ubuntu, so a Lifehacker ‘Ask the Readers’ feature is a handy thing.

Since the only app I’m actually running right now is Firefox, switching shouldn’t be all that hard, either. As long as I can get everything working hardware-wise.

Rotring have recently been taken over by Sanford, and there’s some concern over their future. We’ve heard stories from ‘no change’ to ‘all products are finished, and the company has gone’. Whilst quite a few products do seem to have vanished, the brand does appear to be living on with a few products at least.

The Skynn is one of their freakier looking products, though it’s probably still in second place to the Core in that respect. I know the Core is reputed to be a very good fountain pen, though, if you can tolerate the looks, so I was keen to give the Skynn a try.

Looks

OK, let’s get the looks out of the way first, because it’s the most striking feature of this pen.

Unusually, the nib sits at the bottom, with the clip at the top, and a small cap over the nib. The reason this is never normally done is that fountain pens should be stored and carried with the nibs up. Rotring say they’ve worked out how to avoid that, so the clip can go where it normally is on ballpoints. The main body is dark grey – the top half is fairly simple grey plastic with a metal section wrapped around. The whole of the bottom half is clad in a strange gel substance.

The gel gives it a very odd feel, and a very odd look. If you can’t get over the looks, you should probably give up now. They might grow on you if you don’t mind them to start with, but if you really hate it, it won’t change for you.

If you don’t hate it, I think you have to give Rotring some respect for not sticking to the same traditional designs that everybody else is making. That said, Lamy manage to make pens that are different without making them so weird.

Feel

I’ve heard it described as such, but I certainly wouldn’t call it light. It’s not heavy, but it’s quite a bit heavier than the Lamy Safari, for example.

The small cap is a bit odd, and I’ve heard of a few people losing them, so be careful. It does post on the top in use, and doesn’t hurt the balance when it does (I prefer my pens unposted usually, but it doesn’t matter with this one).

That Grip

It’s the main selling point of the pen, so let’s get to the grip. Is it good?

Yes. I rather like it. If you like a thinner section to grip, you probably won’t like it, and if you’re not keen on rubber grips, you probably won’t be keen. If you like a good wide section to hold, though, and you like it soft and non-slip, this is great. I find it very comfortable, and it makes this an easy pen for a lot of writing. The gentle curved shape of it gives you plenty of options for where exactly to grip, too. I prefer gripping fairly low, and find the Safari’s shaped grip a little too far back from the nib, but this works fine – if I start to grip a bit low down, it still works just as well, and if you like to hold further up, even up to almost half way up the body, you should be fine.

In Use

Writing

The writing and drawing experience really comes down to the nib, and this is a good one. I’ve only found one problem with it so far, actually. It makes the Lamy Safari nib feel a bit scratchy. It’s very smooth, and whilst it’s marked up as XL, it’s only slightly thicker than Lamy’s Medium, and it’s still usable in my pocket Filofax.

Whilst the nib isn’t flexible, it gives a little more variation than the Safari.

Filling

Cartridges should be as easy as with any other pen. I never even tried – just put a converter straight in there and filled it with Noodler’s ink. This hit one small problem – the converter we had around was a rather loose fit. Pushed into place, it could easily be shaken loose.

After a bit of experimenting, I found that the top fit closely enough down onto the converter that it had no room to move anyway, and seemed to make a good enough seal to work fine, so it didn’t seem to be a problem. No leaks so far anyway. It might not matter with a new converter, but this one had been used in another pen, so the converter could have been stretched by an oversized pen, or the Skynn might have a narrow nozzle where it connects to the converter.

Oh, and if you want to use it with a converter, it’s a standard International sized converter you want.

Unlike other pens I’ve used, the Skynn seems to work better when filling the converter first, then putting it into the pen. The loose fit meant that fitting the converter and then trying to suck ink in through the nib left the converter half filled with ink and half with air. This means you need a bit of time to get the flow going properly the first time you fill it. If you refill reasonably early in future, it shouldn’t be a problem again.

One other point for the grip – when I tried filling, at one point the grip ended up soaked with ink. I can definitely say it cleans up well. The outer layer is supposed to be a protective layer to make it easy to clean, so it should do. How well it will stand up to years of use may be another matter. The last product I used with this sort of construction was a gel wrist rest, and that didn’t do too well – a lot of time has passed since then, though, and that wasn’t made by Rotring.

Compared with the Lamy Safari

They’re quite different pens, but they’re both fountain pens, both around £12 – £13 ($20), and both are known for having good nibs, so I don’t suppose I’m the only one trying to choose between them.

Despite them being very different pens, I’ve not quite managed to choose between them yet.

• Looks: The Rotring is strange, the Lamy is understated and simple. I like minimalist styling, so the Lamy appeals to me much more.
• Feel: They feel very different. The Lamy is light and precise, slim and solid. The Rotring is big and round and soft and rubbery. The nib on the Rotring feels smoother, but the rubbery grip makes you feel a little less connected to the line.
• Use: The Lamy feels lower maintenance. The converter not only pushes firmly into place, but has two little retaining lugs to keep it right where it should be, so it can’t even twist. The ink window lets you see inside so you can tell how much ink is left. With the Rotring, filling is a bit awkward, and the converter sits so low down in the rubber section that you can only just see the top of the ink chamber when you open the pen. The Lamy gives you a better view than that without opening it. Although the clip on the Rotring is big, it’s not as easy to manipulate onto things as the Lamy clip.

So, it’s a choice between simple, stylish, usable precision; and smooth, soft, strange-looking comfort. The Lamy Safari is a Mazda MX-5; the Rotring is a Cadillac Escalade. And since I’m not even slightly Gangsta, that probably tells me which I should be using.

Related

• Pens
• Lamy Safari Fountain Pen Review

I noticed today that I’ve been in a Flickr group called “Stacks” for quite a while, but I’ve not got around to making and posting a stack. So I stacked a few of our pens, and managed to grab a couple of shots before it all collapsed…

Click the pic to see it in Flickr, bigger, and with notes saying what all the pens and pencils are.

Why should Moleskine users have all the fun? Filofaxes can be drawn in too…

• Nan’s First Filofax Sketch.

I gather ATCs are kind of like business cards for artists – each person makes their own personal cards, and the idea is to swap yours for other artists when you meet (or by mail). Pretty much the same as business cards, but the important part is the art on the card, not the contact information.

• Here’s a set by emberlexi.

Kevin Rosenjack has announced that his company, BrightPool, is kindly providing free hosting of the Ruby on Rails GTD app Tracks. I probably wouldn’t want all of my stuff on someone else’s hosting like that, but it’s a great chance to try out Tracks without having to set up Ruby, Rails, etc first.

I’ve just had my first play with it, and it’s quite impressive. Simple, but nothing gets in the way – it’s just an exact implementation of GTD, with everything made responsive through the use of AJAX.

Even if you wouldn’t use a GTD app online, it’s much easier to try Tracks this way than installing everything it needs locally – at least that way you can decide if it’s worth the effort.

The last time I had anything much to do with DJs, records were just starting to become difficult to get hold of, and the DJs were all upset about it. They didn’t like CDs, and the Technics SL1200 and SL1210 ruled. Still, they probably got over it. Parts of the lighting rig were what the manufacturers liked to call “semi-intelligent”, and they were smarter than most of the DJs.

Anyway, a lot of DJs never did get over it, and now CDs are being replaced by iPods and USB drives full of MP3s, and they would still prefer an SL1210. Numark are trying to change that, and they’re starting to get quite impressive in their attempts.

This one has a USB port at the back for your iPod or USB hard drive, which it will grab your music from, and even two USB ports at the front. you can plug a keyboard into it to make searching for tracks faster, and it’ll draw nice little waveforms on the screen for you to do your beat mixing or whatever it is that DJs do.

Attempting to beat mix Metallica can get you injured, as some DJs I’ve known have learned the hard way.

Latest Update: Added a link to AdSense’s own Optimization Tips to the Resources section.

If you’ve got a web site of your own for sharing your creative stuff (or other reasons), even if it’s just a blog using Blogger, you can potentially make a bit of money whilst doing it.

If you’re thinking of setting up a site just to make money, it’s probably not going to work, but if you have a site, and want to get a little income from it, you might be able to do it.

What Can You Expect?

Not a lot, honestly. PigPog is a reasonably successful site, with (at the time of writing) around two thousand visits a day, and serving over 500,000 pages a month, and it doesn’t make enough for us to live on. With Sam’s income, though, it adds just enough that I’ve been able to stay out of work for quite some time now, and although we’re just scraping by at the moment, it keeps growing slowly.

Upsetting Visitors

If that’s all you’re going to get out of it, it’s certainly not worth upsetting any visitors for – so you need to implement any ads you’re going to add in a respectful way. Upsetting your regular visitors is a fast way to lose traffic, which will hurt you in the long run.

What Do We Use?

We’ve only actually used three advertising schemes, so we can’t really comment on any others. We have used…

• Google’s AdSense – mainly text, with ads relevant to your site’s content automatically displayed.
• Chitika‘s eMiniMalls – interactive tabbed ads, responding to keywords you supply in the code.
• Amazon Associates – US and UK – link to books, get commission for any sales.

All of these have worked for us to the extent that we’re still using them.

Google AdSense

The best part about AdSense is that they give you the code, you copy it to your site, and they look after making sure the ads displayed are relevant to the contents of the page. Google actually ‘read’ the page automatically, and assign ads based on what you’re writing about at the time.

Google are quite secretive about what sort of percentages they pay, but the payments seem reasonable. The amount you get each time a visitor clicks on an ad will vary quite a lot, depending on various factors.

• Some subjects are worth more than others – talking about mortgages will make for more valuable clicks than talking about pens and pencils, but if we started talking finance here, people would soon twig that we weren’t really interested in it ourselves, and we’d lose readership fast.
• Conversion rates from your site – if lots of your readers click on ads, but don’t actually go on to buy anything from the advertiser’s site, Google will start to mark you down for it, and pay you less – they have to charge the advertisers less for clicks that don’t make them anything.

That said, we make more from Google AdSense than anything else, so we’re happy.

Tips

Ads that are blended with your site’s colour scheme work much better. Something as simple as removing the border (changing it to the background colour) can make for a big increase in click-through rates.

Signing Up

If you want to sign up for AdSense, and you use this link…

…we’ll get a bonus when you earn your first $100, and we’ll be very grateful.

Two people have actually done this so far, and one of them reached their $100, which was a very nice bonus for us one month – thanks, Ricky!

Chitika eMiniMalls

Chitika are relatively new, but they’re generating quite a bit of buzz.

• Their ads are very interactive – they have tabs, which change as your visitors mouse-over them. They can attract a bit more attention because of this.
• Fairly high payments per click – although it varies a lot depending on what you’re advertising with them.
• Openness – they’re being a bit more up-front about how things are being done than Google, which some people find important.

Our experience is mixed, but we’re keeping them on. They’re not making us quite as much as AdSense does, but it’s not far off, and the amount per click is usually higher. The number of clicks, though, is usually lower.

After a bit of testing, we weren’t making much by having Chitika ads on every page, so removed them for a while. After a rest, we put them back, but only on the ‘Finder’ pages (the pages linked you get to from those green links we put in every so often – like Chitika. With these pages, the keyword you clicked on is actually passed to Chitika to display the ad, and these convert reasonably well. We’re making almost as much just from these as we made from having them on every page before. My feeling is that Chitika ads only work when they’re really well targetted.

Mistakes

When we first tried Chitika, we slotted them in places where we didn’t want AdSense ads, which didn’t really give them a fair trial. The result was that we made hardly anything from them. If you’re going to give them a go, give them a fair try – put them in a decent spot for a while to try out.

Tips

• Chitika’s ads still look their best on a white background, so if you can give them a white background, it’s probably best to do so. You can change the colour of link text to match your site – PigPog uses a slightly lighter shade of blue than the default, so this is the only thing we’ve changed.
• They move on mouse-over – so if possible, put them somewhere your visitors are likely to scroll their mouse past – a banner across the screen works well for us. As the user scrolls, their mouse touches a tab, the tab changes, and their eyes are drawn to the change.
• If you have AdSense, you can’t use Chitika ads in ‘contextual’ mode, so you have to pass them keywords. If you can do it, try passing them the title of the currant article.

Signing Up

If you fancy giving Chitika a try, you can use this link to find out more and sign up…

…and we’ll get a percentage of what you make for the first year – it comes out of their cut, not yours, so it doesn’t cost you, and it makes us love you. Even more than we already to, if that’s possible.

Amazon Associates

We’ve never made much from Amazon, but if you’re sometimes going to link to products they sell anyway, you might as well get a little cut whilst doing it. If you deal with a lot of products they sell, you could stand to make quite a bit out of it…

• Amazon US
• Amazon UK

General Tips

You only make anything from ads if your users click on them – they’ll only click on them if they see them. People are getting good and not seeing ads at all. See the problem?

You will earn a lot more from ads that your users’ eyes will settle on for a moment, than from ads they ignore. A banner at the top of the page is easily ignored. Skyscraper style ads on the sides can be useful if people glance at them when looking for your site’s navigation.

The most effective ads we’ve used, though, are those that interrupt the flow of reading. You need to be careful with this, though, as it’s easy to make the content too difficult to read, and people won’t bother. A square ad floating to the left where your content begins is good. Combine the same thing with navigation on one side, and more ads on the other, though, and you might just overload people.

At the time of writing, we only have ads on actual content pages – not on navigation pages. The front page has no ads, and general section pages have no ads. People can navigate around the site without being bothered by ads, and only hit ads when they get to some real content to read. This appears to work pretty well. We get less ads shown, but hardly any drop in clicks. People who arrive through a Google search will probably arrive straight at a content page, so they get ads.

• We save time for our server – it’s not serving as many chunks of ad code.
• We save time for the advertisers – Google and Chitika don’t waste time sending ads that would hardly ever get a click.
• We save time for the users – their browsers aren’t held up waiting to get ads to display whilst they’re trying to get to the content they want to read.

Wins all round.

We also output less ads when users are logged in – people who come back regularly are less likely to click ads anyway, so we might as well bother them less.

If you have a reasonable amount of traffic, adding some advertising can certainly be worth doing, but don’t over-do it and lose your readers.

Resources

• AdSense’s own Optimization Tips – they should know best. Quite a good selection of tips and tricks.
• How to Make Money From Your Blog from Steve Pavlina. Steve writes mainly about personal development, but he’s making over $200 a day now from his blog, so he’s well worth listening to. The post is over 7000 words, though, so set aside a bit of time for it.
• ProBlogger is a good blog for keeping you up to date with anything related to blogging for money.
• ProBlogger on ‘How Bloggers Make Money’ – a nice article on ways to bring in money – not just through advertising.
• Google’s Heat Map – a map of where the best places are to put ads. Left good, right bad. In the content better.

I’m not sure what to do with my Hello Kitty fixation right now. I set up a separate blog for it a while ago, but it’s been sadly neglected in recent times. Maybe we should move it over to PigPog, and just put it in a nice little subfolder, or maybe I should just blog the occasional Hello Kitty stuff here.

Anyway, for now, here’s a visit to Sanrio Puroland – it’s a video, and I’ve not actually attempted to watch it – it will have to wait until I have a bit more bandwidth at my disposal.