A word whose function is purely to attract traffic to a website; a gratuitously used keyword whose presence is aimed at attracting the search engines attention and improving the website’s placement in search results.

Example:

“Good morning, that’s a nice tnetennba”

- Related forms

tnetennbarise, verb
tnetennbarisely, adverb

Ysgol Cwrtnewydd Living Willow Play Area

We’ve managed to go out with a bang again this year with the largest structure so far: a large tunnel enclosing a 5m area with three off-shoot tunnels and domes using 1100 rods.

‘I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them,’ demanded the rep.

‘Well,’ replied the farmer, ‘there’s my farm hand who’s been with me for 3 years. I pay him £200 a week, plus free room and board.’

‘The cook has been here for 18 months, and I pay her £150 per week plus free room and board.’

‘Then there’s the half-wit. He works about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of all the work around here. He makes about £10 per week, pays his own room and board, and I buy him a bottle of whiskey every Saturday night. He also sleeps with my wife occasionally.’

‘That’s the guy I want to talk to…the half-wit,’ says the agent.

‘That would be me,’ replied the farmer…

 I’ve also been working on some dried willow sculptures – this willow heart is made from “brown” Flander’s Red willow rods.

Andrew’s timekeeping tips:

1. Five minute rule or JiFDI. Record it all when you think of it and either do it now if it’s a five minute job or
2. Give it a slot. Don’t just stick it on some bottomless, “get round to it one day, but hopefully yesterday” list. If you actually want to get it done it doesn’t have to be done NOW. Assign it a realistic, if not pessimistic, time slot some time in the near future; you’ve got an awful lot of it to spare – hopefully time and near future.
3. Under promise and over deliver. Something I try and always use with customers is not to be over optimistic about what you can achieve and when you can achieve it by. Hopefully you’ll always come in ahead of schedule with more than expected and always have a happy customer. Try and use this on yourself as well: over optimistic deadlines for yourself are only ever going to end in tears.
4. Does it REALLY matter if you don’t get it done? Another biggy for me: over attachment to deadlines and getting things done that I’ve decided I have to. When if I really sat down, and gave myself a bit of slack, would realise don’t matter that much and the world ain’t going to stop spinning if I don’t get to them today, or ever.
5. If it ain’t play give it away. Delegation. This is another hard one for me; surely no-one can do a good a job as I can! Well mate you’ve only got one life, if it ain’t play give it away and let someone else take the strain.

Now, what else did I have to do today …

The willow will be dormant soon, so I’ve put together a list of maintenance tasks to keep your structure looking tip-top and not reverting to becoming a small grove of willow trees!

You can download the list as a word document or PDF by clicking on the appropriate link:

• Living Willow Maintenance – Task List – Word 2003 Doc
• Living Willow Maintenance – Task List – PDF

This post is also on the Living Willow Wales website.

1. make sure customer’s computers are all working OK before the leave the shop and I’ve finished playing with them and
2. to use when I check over any computers I have maintenance contracts for.

So if you are feeling really keen, you could run through this list on your own computer every six months or so to head off any problems and keep me away!

Click on this link to download a Word version of the list: PC Health Checklist

• Posting blogs
• Import the present site into The Journal
• Try posting with embedded images (hmm, wonder how it will cope with that)

Living Willow Wales stall at Lampeter Apple Day Oct 10th 2009

Living Willow Wales (me and Lisa) did our first willow stall back on Oct 10th 2009 at the Lampeter Apple Day, and lots of fun it was too! Getting everything together was hard work but it seemed to be appreciated. And we even had enough space to put up all of the willow letters we had made.  I was a little worried about this as although planned to be smaller our letters ended up each being about a foot high. We put on a little mini workshop for the children by bringing along a couple of Rose’s small table and chairs and providing paper, charcoal pencils (willow of course), willow rods and various willow shapes to copy. Rose did get a little territorial at one point and excluded all other children from the stall by building a barricade of chairs – she’s such a sales women! Several children where running around with willow wands (a simple willow star shape) by the end of the day. We also brought along samples of eachof the different kind of willow that we grow. We’re mainly using and selling the fast-growing structural willow (Viminalis and a viminalis x triandra) at the moment but are building up our stocks of various ornamental and basketery willow. The Salix Ethroflexuosa being the most visually impressive, being corkscrewed and bright red. We had lots of interest in the photos we’ve got of some of the amazing things people have done with willow especially Marcel Kalberer. I wouldn’t say we’ve done anything truly amazing yet, but I’m quite excited about the 40ft space ship we’ve got planned this winter!

As well as us, and apart from the appley things going on (people could bring there apples for pressing), Gary was there with his Maesyffin Mushrooms - loved the pate; a local shoe maker; a miller with flour created using one of the few genuine water mills still in operation; Transistion Lambed; and a couple of other stalls I didn’t get chance to look at.

So with the great weather, all in all a great day out.