In my earlier post, I mentioned how my son David enjoyed fly fishing with me. Another thing he has enjoyed is tying his own flies. At first, I was a bit hesitant when David was very young and expressed an interest in fly tying. I certainly didn't want him fumbling with his fingers and having the pointy edge of a fishing hook going through. But he did very well! Over the years, we have done some fly tying together, and one of the things I did was to make sure I put the very first flies we tied together into an envelope, never to be actually used.
That envelope sits in my desk drawer and I've marked the date on the front. We've had a lot of fun.
If you want to teach kids to tie flies, you do need to have some patience. They are not going to get it right the first time, all by themselves. In fact, the first several times David tied flies, he actually helped me instead of tying his own at his own vice. When he was three years old, "helping Dad" gave him a sense of pride and pleasure and I let him think he was doing most of the work. If you can start them off at an early age, there is a good chance it will be a hobby they might always enjoy!
When we first started off, there were too many fingers in the way for any hope of tying flies quickly, but I expected that. Instead, you anticipate the fun you'll have with your child, and make the time to absolutely enjoy it! Production fly tying is not what it is about when your teaching your children but forming great memories and having some special collectibles for later in their age.
Today, David has his own fly box with a variety of flies that he has tied either on his own or with my help. What a moment it was the day he opened his fly box up and said, "I just love my flies!" And looked at me with pride in his eyes.
Chironomids are actually good patterns to start with when teaching children to fly fish as they are usually fairly simple and don't use a lot of variety of materials. But of course, they may not be as "pretty" as some other more complicated patterns. But that's ok - whatever they tie up, either on their own or by themselves, it will be a joy when they catch a fish with one or more.
Here's the video of David, wanting to teach other kids how to tie up a Wooley Bugger. It was done when he was 7 years old, and there is a bit of coaching by me that you will probably hear in the background, but nonetheless, we had a good time together making it:
Sunday 12 August 2012
Happy Birthday, David!
We made a list together of some of his hobbies and interests, and started to work on it, but alas we have not done much more. His interests, hobbies and just being a great fellow all round have meant little time for learning more HTML. Perhaps when the summer is over and the weather is less conducive to outdoor activities, we'll get back to the website and update it and get rid of the dead links.
The photo here was taken on David's birthday when he and I just went out together (after all the kid's had left his birthday party) to kick a soccer ball around at a local park (yes I know, for all my relatives in N. Ireland, it's a football, but that would confuse my North American visitors).
We spent a couple of hours after cycling to the park together, just having fun together. At this point in his young life, he's accomplished quite a bit and I'm very proud of him. He took an interest in Karate about 2 1/2 years ago, and since then has gone up through the belt ranks and is now on his Blue (or is it purple?) Belt and in addition, he attends other classes with the sole purpose of coaching others. His next belt graduation will be the last one where the ceremony is public. Once he receives his brown belt (likely by the end of the year), all the graduations are done after a private grading session with his Sensei.
David is home schooled (mostly by his mom). Due to his interest in Karate, he also developed a strong interest in learning Japanese, so that is part of his home schooling curriculum. It's fun to hear him teach me new Japanese words and phrases every so often. But, I can say I was glad I was born in Northern Ireland and not Japan! I enjoy writing the odd poem but Haiku is not my thing.
Some of David's other activities include Lego building. Ever since he's been about three years old, he's been a Lego monster! I am not sure how many sets he has, but a few hundred at least wouldn't be too far off in my estimation.
Although we haven't been able to get out much this year, David also enjoys fly fishing with me and has tied up his flies as well. That is part of his home schooling - learning about bugs and stuff, although we don't call it "Entomology Class." That is the nice thing about home schooling - kids get to learn about all kinds of things in an environment when they are interested - and with David that's been most of his waking time.
He also enjoys earning money and has a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit, so I think he's well set for life. I purchased a book for him and he did a book review, with all proceeds of the sales as a result of the book review going to him. It was about a fly fishing fly named "Olive" who is is a Wooley Bugger. You can read David's book review here:
http://about-flyfishing.com/library/weekly/olive-the-little-woolly-bugger.html
Anyhow, I love to talk and write about my son, David. He's an awesome wee man that I'm very proud of and very happy he is in my life! Welcome to being double digit in age, David! I look forward to many more to come with you!
Ian Scott On Ross Goldberg's Latest
Ian Scott recently had an interesting conversation going in comment form with Ross Goldberg. It was in regard to a review Ian had written on a Warrior Forum product (they call them WSO's - short for Warrior Special Offer) that Ross had been involved in producing.
Interestingly, Ian couldn't recommend the product outright although he did write that if you wanted to buy it, you should do some research before implementing some of the methods that are in the course.
Not everything in the course is controversial, of course - but SEO these days has changed considerably since Google introduced their Penguin update. The Panda update also had some major effects on rankings for some websites, but Penguin really pushed things along where even high quality websites were, in some cases, obliterated from Google's SERP's.
The jury is still out on what might be the most effective way to get rankings back for sites that were Penguin slapped. There are some in the business who believe this update was all about back link profiles while others are just as adamant that it has all to do with onsite quality issues. Personally, I've seen a combination of factors, and I wouldn't even be surprised if Google added some "randomization" to their algorithmic update just to keep people guessing.
I'm still seeing some pretty crappy websites being ranked with low quality content (although some of these have been weeded out, but not all), while others that have excellent back link profiles and are quite aged (we're talking ten plus years old) get hit by the Penguin. I've also seen some recovery with looking at and removing on-site over optimization - and that's all we did. In some cases, diversifying back links including anchor text has helped with other sites.
And then there are some sites where nothing seems to help a site rank for anything important, at least going by what some of the website owners claim in a variety of forums where such discussions take place.
Some folk are claiming that SEO is dead after Penguin. I chuckle at that - some people have been claiming that for over a decade! Search Engine Optimization in some for or other will always be important, and as Ross advises, testing all the time is important. If you're interested to know about the course he was involved in, you can read about it here (and no, that is not an affiliate link).
Was your site affected by Google's Penguin update? If so, what have you tried to do if anything to get it back or are you looking at other ways to generate traffic?
Interestingly, Ian couldn't recommend the product outright although he did write that if you wanted to buy it, you should do some research before implementing some of the methods that are in the course.
Not everything in the course is controversial, of course - but SEO these days has changed considerably since Google introduced their Penguin update. The Panda update also had some major effects on rankings for some websites, but Penguin really pushed things along where even high quality websites were, in some cases, obliterated from Google's SERP's.
The jury is still out on what might be the most effective way to get rankings back for sites that were Penguin slapped. There are some in the business who believe this update was all about back link profiles while others are just as adamant that it has all to do with onsite quality issues. Personally, I've seen a combination of factors, and I wouldn't even be surprised if Google added some "randomization" to their algorithmic update just to keep people guessing.
I'm still seeing some pretty crappy websites being ranked with low quality content (although some of these have been weeded out, but not all), while others that have excellent back link profiles and are quite aged (we're talking ten plus years old) get hit by the Penguin. I've also seen some recovery with looking at and removing on-site over optimization - and that's all we did. In some cases, diversifying back links including anchor text has helped with other sites.
And then there are some sites where nothing seems to help a site rank for anything important, at least going by what some of the website owners claim in a variety of forums where such discussions take place.
Some folk are claiming that SEO is dead after Penguin. I chuckle at that - some people have been claiming that for over a decade! Search Engine Optimization in some for or other will always be important, and as Ross advises, testing all the time is important. If you're interested to know about the course he was involved in, you can read about it here (and no, that is not an affiliate link).
Was your site affected by Google's Penguin update? If so, what have you tried to do if anything to get it back or are you looking at other ways to generate traffic?
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