Duplicate Content resolved, but...

Well its not so hot now - we have had a nice cool wind all day, which is wonderful.

My Acadian Ancestry lens has finally been green-lighted but not before I removed the long list of surnames I had listed. I think it was the list of surnames that was causing the problems.Because this list was duplicated all over the web.

My son picked up a cough over the weekend and stayed home from Camp both yesterday (monday) and today. He is still sneezing and sniffing (he has a blocked nose) but not as often as he was yesterday. I am hoping to send him back to camp tomorrow.

Hot Summer and Duplicate Content

Temperatures are high today  32 degrees Celcius around lunch time, with a humidex of 40 - which means it felt like 40 degrees. Sure did.


I had planned out today like clockwork, but from the time I opened my email this morning, NOTHING has gone right.

My son had complained yesterday of red & pink and swollen and itchy eyes. My first thought was pinkeye which is contagious. He still had symptoms when he woke up this morning. I had an appointment I had to attend and my son was supposed to be going to camp. Now I would have to cancel my appointment and take my son to the doctor.

When I opened my email - I found an email from Squidoo accusing me of writing  Duplicate content on a lens I had made yesterday. I spent hours yesterday writing all the content for that lens myself. This was done  for a challenge and now the lens is under threat and may be deleted due to duplicate content.

When I checked the lens myself, it turns out that every line I wrote was duplicated elsewhere - but each line was duplicated on a different  webpage - as if Squidoo now says that I spent hours surfing the net looking for common phrases to copy. Why would I do that?

 It's not my fault that my style of writing is similar to other people's. And when filters are set to just 5 words - yes FIVE WORDS - that is not even a full phrase, let alone a complete sentence!!!

This is the second lens that I have been warned for Duplicate content. The first one was locked and eventually deleted because NOONE at Squidoo would tell me exactly what the problem was. These filters  are automatic (computer algorithms), not done manually.

It all has to do with Google. If Google sees duplicate content then Google punishes the copies and indexes only the original. At least that is what is supposed to happen.

And if the filters claim that 5 words in a row means you copied someone else, well then, every single english language page on the web must have duplicate content at some point, because there are only so many words in the english language and only so many ways to put them together. There is BOUND to be some repetition

If more than one person happens to use the same exact common English phrase, then only the first usage gets indexed on Google, everyone else gets slapped with Duplicate Content.

If this is what happened on the first lens that was deleted because I used common english phrases that were seen elsewhere, then Squidoo is going way overboard in its filtering - and NOT responding either is very UNPROFESSIONAL.

If this new lens gets locked and deleted because NOONE responds to my emails, then I will be closing my account with Squidoo. It's been fun, but this duplicate content nonsense is just going too far.


I wont bother to move my content to anywhere else either - apparently this same duplicate content nonsense is happening all over the web. So I will just stop writing online. There's no point any more.

Google has taken all the fun out of writing.

Devil's Gate - Book Review

Devil's Gate
A novel from the NUMA Files
By Clive Cussler
Published by Putnam Books 2011
Reviews of Devil's Gate

There is not a lot of history in this book. It's mostly about Technology, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the like.

South of the Azore islands is a graveyard where many ships and planes have foundered and gone down in the ocean, and noone quite knows why.

Kurt is on board a NUMA boat heading the Azores in order to particpate in a special race with high stakes for the winner. The object of this race is to test out a new submarine. 

Kurt spots some smoke on the horizon - usually a sign of a ship going down - and the NUMA boat races to the rescue. Once at the boat, he and some NUMA sailors must use guns to chase off some pirate and Kurt rescues the only survivor of the cargo ship that went down. The woman he rescued was the Captains wife. The captain and most of the crew died by being burnt from the inside out. Kurt wonders how that happened, and more importantly, why did it happen. The rest of the crew were killed by the pirates. Kurt recognizes the leader of the Pirates - a man named Andras - a man whom he had defeated about 10 to 12 years ago.

During the submarine race Joe and Kurt hear from another submarine that gets into trouble - it is being pulled towards a large cliff by unknown forces (Later found to be magnetism). The NUMA men go to the rescue and in doing so, they discover the underwater graveyard of ships and planes.  They also find a cliff of stone with some very unusual properties.

When news of this magnetic anamoly gets out, the scientific world comes flooding in - as do the scientists. 

NUMA takes charge of this science mission, but squabbles start breaking out between countries.

Kurt meets a new scientist - Katarina from Russia. They go on a date in the Azores, and while they are away, the are chased and shot at. They have to send their car over a cliff to get away from whomever is chasing them. while Kurt and Katarina are evading their wannabe killers, the scientists over the graveyard are kidnapped and abducted. Katarina is also eventually capturedby the pirates.

The NUMA ship sails to the Azores to find Kurt. Once Kurt is back on board the NUMA vessel,  he discovers that his team members, Paul and Gamay Trout, were underwater in a submersible investigating the cargo ship that went down back at the beginning of the book. The one where the crew were cooked from the inside out. Their submersible is shot at by torpedos and the submersible is damaged. Paul and Gamay do eventually escape from the submersible but Paul has trouble and is found unconcious and when he is rescued, he is in a coma for several days. Someone does not want Anyone to discover why the cargo ship was destroyed and sunk.

Kurt and Gamay and Dirk Pitt eventually come up with the idea of a laser of some kind that cooks humans from the inside out - someone is using a laser of enormous power. The cargo from the cargo ships was stolen but Dirk discovers from the ships owners that the cargo was something called YCBO - a man-made superconductor technology used in for lasers and atom colliders (like the large one at CERN).

The YCBO was loaded into the Cargo ship at Freetown in Sierra Leone. Perhaps a place to start looking.

Djemma Garand the current dictator of Sierra Leone (one of the poorest nations in Africa and the world) decides that his country can no longer afford to keep paying the insurmountable debt that his country owes to the IMF, so he arbitrarily stops paying it.

He has hired a pirate named Andras. Andras arranges for  36 scientists to be gathered at a particular spot and then abducts them and takes them to Sierra Leone where they are put to work to help make the new weapon work. They are threatened with death if they do not do what they are told. One man who does resist is summarily shot and executed - just to prove the point.

Kurt and Joe are then now on a deadline to find Andras before this new weapon/laser can be brought online. They eventually track Andras down to a ship called the Onyx (registered in Liberia - right next door to Sierra Leone).

The one thing about these new lasers is that they only work on line of sight and cannot follow the curve of the Earth. The higher up the emitter is, the longer the event horizon is.

BUT there is one way to bend a laser beam - by having another superconductor and magnets located exactly halfway between the emitter and the target. These magnets can pull the laser beam back down, so that it effectively turns a corner.

The race is then on to stop the weapons discharge before it hits its first target. The message leaks out that the first target will be Washington DC.

The ONYX ship (registered in Liberia) was found dead centre in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean - and away from all the major shipping routes. This ship can bend the Laser beam and DC can be burned and the people in DC can be burned and cooked from the inside out.

Kurt Austin has just a few hours to sneak aboard the ONYX  and stop the magnet from bending the beam. 

The US Navy is sent to Sierra Leone to try and bring down the weapon. Under the guise of  ships and navy planes attacking on the surface, Paul and Gamay Trout are sent under water in their submersible to lay a bomb at the foot of the of the huge (and fake) oil rigs that holds up the emitter.

Their mission is successful - as is Kurt's mission to the Onyx -  and this laser weapon is destroyed with just minutes to spare.


Despite all the techno-babble (as Jack O'Neill - from Stargate) calls it, I really enjoyed this novel.

The next book after this one, is The Storm, but I have already read and reviewed that novel.

Summer vacation has begun!!!

Let the onslaught begin. School has finished and the kids are now on vacation for the next 9 weeks!!

I am enrolling my son in a camp for 7 of those 9 weeks and quite naturally he is not very happy about it.

But it was that or allow him to do what he did last year. which was to stay in doors all day every day on the computer for 12 hours every day and that is just not good. It is very unhealthy.

About the Diabetes, he is doing good with that. His numbers are fairly stable right now. He takes his insulin jabs every morning and evening. They won't interfere with camp. Provided he doesn't overdo the exercise (sports) he should be OK.

This camp is run by an outfit called Toronto Youth Development and they cater to the kids who are at risk for joining gangs and doing violence on the streets and who come from low income families.This camp is for kids in grades 5 through 8 - and my son will be entering grade 5 in September.

There are 3 hours of academics - language arts and maths - every day, but it will be from the grade 5 curriculum so this gives the kids a bit of a head start when they go back to school in September.

After lunch they do sports, crafts and activities related to science, technology and engineering and they will also go on excursions and trips around Toronto.

My son says this is like Summer School - and maybe he is right - but they don't call it summer school. They call it summer camp.

My son is a Type 1 Diabetic

I had to take my son to the Hospital ER last week after he was so lethargic, he could not get out of bed, and he vomited up the half apple he was given to eat. He has also been drinking a lot of water and going to the washroom a lot too.

He spent one night in Hospital while the staff worked on getting his Blood Glucose back down into the normal (healthy) range. He was discharged the next day with a diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes.

The family has just spent 2 days undergoing the basics of diabetic education, including how to poke fingers and inject insulin.

So now he begins the rest of his life being poked at least 8 times a day - 4 finger pokes (minimum) per day, and 4 insulin injections per day.

I have started a new blog, called Diabetic Maths, (because I hate maths) and now I am going to have to calculate carbs for each and every bite of food and liquid that goes into my son's mouth.

The Storm - Book Review

The Storm (from the NUMA Files)
By Clive Cussler with Graham Brown
G P Putnam and Sons 2012
Image source

This is a new Clive Cussler book starring my new favourite team - Kurt Austin (Dirk Pitt's protege) and his side kick - Joe Zavala. Their team also has Paul and Gamay Trout.

This adventure takes place almost solely within the Indian Ocean.

During World War 2, a ship called the John Bury went missing into a storm cloud while being attacked by Japanese bombers. It was never seen again.

In 1967, several generations of a powerful bedouin family in Yemen were slaughtered by a jealous competitor because the family controlled one of the best oases in the region. That is how they were powerful. The only survivors of this family were the patriarch (the grandfather) and the youngest grandson - who was aged 4 at the time. The grandfather then raised his grandson (whose name was Jinn) to hate anyone else, to use anyone else and to control everyone else.

In the Present time, a NUMA research vessel is in the Indian ocean measuring water temperatures. The water of the Ocean is several degrees colder than usual for this time of the year and already the monsoons are late. The previous two years the monsoon rains were not as strong as usual, and this year - if the monsoon did not show up - there would be a huge famine in India.

The NUMA scientists discover a cloudy substance in the water and attempt to take samples. but the cloud turns on them and begins to flow all over the boat, consuming everything in sight.They show every intent of consuming the humans as well. One of the scientists sets off a fire in the hopes that this kills the mysterious cloud off but that does not work. The humans are devoured by the cloud and the burnt boat is left to float on the ocean.

It takes a few hours for NUMA to start investigating when all communication with the ship stops abruptly. The boat is eventually discovered and towed to MALE (the capital city)  in the Maldive Islands.

Kurt and Joe and the Gamays are called in and sent to Male to find out what happened.

The cloud turns out to be millions upon millions of "microbots" (like the sci fi nano-technoogy of star trek fame - but slightly bigger - since we havent quite gotten to nanotechnology capability yet)

These microbots are being controlled by someone in order to change the weather,. But first Kurt and Joe need to find out who made them. This leads them to a billionaire named Elwood Marchetti and his artificial island called Aqua Terra. It turns out that original design for these microbots came from Marchetti and his programmer named Otero. But these new bots (the ones who trashed the NUMA boat) have been reprogrammed. The question is - by whom - since Marchetti denies it was him.

Eventually Kurt and Joe are led to Otero as the traitor. He gave control of the bots to a Yemeni man named Jinn. Jinn is using them to change the weather so that instead of the rains falling on India, they fall instead on Pakistan, Central Asia and western China. His financial backers are from various countries including China, Pakistan and for some reason - Egypt.

Jinn eventually wants to use these bits to control the weather for the entire planet.

Kurt and Joe sneak into Yemen and find Jinn's base where they discover that Jinn plans to use these bots to destroy the Aswan high dam because the Egyptian backer is refusing to pay any more money into the scheme. While they are in Yemen, some of Jinn's men tale over the Aqua Terra island and Marchetti, and the Gamays are imprisoned. So Kurt and Joe are forced to split up. Kurt attempt to get to Terra Aqua to rescue the Gamay's while Joe follows the planes filled with barrels of bots just to see where they are going.

Joe ends up in Egypt where he eventually manages to spread a warning about the Aswan dam - which has already been breached. Joe is instrumental in saving the Dam and destroying the bots but not before several thousand people died with the first floods.

Kurt ends up on an unmarked island with what is called a cargo cult - a group of people who were heavily influenced by WW2 soldiers and continue to live life as if the war was still ongoing. It turns out that the ship John Bury ended up on this island. It was carrying a weapon that was supposed to defend against Japanese invaders. The surviving crew of the John Bury taught the local people much about American life, history, and culture at that time (1942) and then when they died they were buried. The locals have been waiting for more American visitors ever since. Once Kurt is able to reassure the people that he is indeed American, he asks them for their help. They send 5 boats of men plus the weapon (from the John Bury) and use it to defeat Jinn and his men on the Aqua Terra.

I enjoyed this story very much. The science behind how storms form, and other meteorological phenomena was fascinating.

Anne of Green Gables - REMAKE

For those of us who remember the epic and iconic 1980's miniseries about Anne Shirley starring Megan Follows, Jonathan Crombie and Colleen Dewhurst, well you need not wait any more. It's been 27 years since that first miniseries was aired on TV, and it has been decided that it is time for a REMAKE to be made.

I still remember that miniseries. Gosh am I really that old?
In 1985 I would have been 21 years old. So 21 plus 27 is 48.
Yep I am really that old already. *sigh*.

This photo is the first time we all remember seeing Megan Follows as Anne of Green Gables in 1985.

This next photo is Anne Shirley in a movie made in 2008 - based on the Book - Before Green Gables - published in 2008 to celebrate the centenary of the original book - Anne of Green Gables. This young actress's name is Hannah Endicott-Douglas

Anne of Green Gables will be remade as a 13 part TV series by Breakthrough Entertainment. They have been hired by the heirs of L M Montgomery. The series is slated to be made in the summer of 2013.

I wonder who the next Anne of Green Gables will be?

Below are some posts I wrote on this blog back in 2008 about the books and the centenary.

Before Green Gables Book Review


Anne of Green Gables - A New Beginning - the 2008 movie based on Before Green Gables


Anne of Green Gables celebrates its Centenary in 2008


4 of the AOGG books I read and reviewed in 2008