Regular Readers will know that minimalism isn’t my middle name. It’s Neil: after Neil Armstrong, who walked on the moon a few weeks before I was introduced to Earth in the master bedroom of a dormer bungalow.
Why Buy a Topeak BarXTender?
I was struggling to mount my phone mount a couple of weeks ago. I blogged about it here. As a result, Jon came up with the idea of me getting the BarXtender. You should buy one of these (at about £15 online) if:
- You’ve already got too much schizzle on your handlebars; or
- Your handlbars have too much girth for your lights and mounts.
How Do I Fit The Topeak BarXTender?
The unit is a clever bit of engineering. It’s built to fit up the biggest handlebar or headset, and can be rotated so it will fit front-facing or left/right-facing tubes. It also has a bar that be moved around it’s axis for finer adjustment once you’ve got the unit clamped to your bike.
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- 1. My unsafely bodged phone mount.
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- 2. Dismantled BarXTender showing the Belt strip
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- 3. Clamp Attachment
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- 4. Fixing the Bar Position
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- The completed job, with Big Light and Phone GPS Mount.
The clamp part of the BarXtender contains a “belt” type metal strip which is held by an allen bolt. You just adjust the belt strip to slightly larger than the diameter of your tube, then insert the obligatory rubber strip to stop your tube being scratched and tighten the allen bolt. The belt is drawn upwards into the clamp housing and feels nice & strong when attached.
Next, simply screw the top half of the unit onto the clamp part, then adjust the rotation of the actual bar to suit yourself.
How Does It Look?
I much prefer my cockpit now that the BarXTender’s on. One person (mentioning no names) commented that I’m just missing a kettle on my bike now, but I think it makes the handlebars a lot tidier, and safer, than they were before.
The completed job, with Big Light and Phone GPS Mount.
What do you think?
Tags: Cycling, GPS, HTC HD2, Mobile Phone
Yesterday, I published a blog article asking for advice on how to get more interaction and readership. I can honestly admit that I was shocked (but very happy) with the response!
Your Response To Yesterday's Readership Appeal
I’ll share with what I learned:
Illustrate Your Point
People seemed to love the Wordle I’d done. I’d seen it in a presentation by a marketing agency to me at work on Monday and thought “I’ll nick that idea” and, quite rightly, it’s been nicked since by Jon, for one. It’s a good thing, so why not? It’s what the internet is for.. Well, that and naughty pictures.
Address Your Audience
I posted the article because I thought it might be close to readers’ hearts, as well as my own. It seemed to strike a chord and as a result lots of people gave feedback, even people who had previously been silent readers, hiding in the closet of internet anonymity. I don’t expect them to suddenly become vociferous advocates, but it’s been nice to see them pipe up. Howdy!
Act On Advice
I asked for ideas. You gave me ideas. As a result, I put a “Subscribe By Email” widget on here last night. Already some of you have used it and I thank you.
There has been other advice which I will consider. My writing style probably won’t change much on this site, but if I ever get myself together and focus on a specific niche blog, I will make sure my brevity, focus and thought leadership issues are carefully managed. Basically, I’ll talk less crap on more useful sites. This particular site is my mouthpiece and, as such, I’m sorry but the drivel will continue for the foreseeable future.
Self Pity Sells
If you ever want something, ask for it. I wanted advice and more readers, so I got on my knees and asked for them. You delivered: good advice and harsh truth, but I did get more subscribers and a lot interaction.
What’s the worst that can happen? Somebody might take the mickey a little (Joby). If you’re flaky, you might be left feeling insecure. What the heck, if you don’t ask, you don’t get.
Visitors Stats
Feedburner Figures
Now What?
This kind of jump can’t be expected to be sustainable, but I’m delighted there’s been a step change in response to a direct appeal. As a marketeer, it can be recorded as a very successful niche marketing campaign. I suppose all I have to do next is start adding some actual value before I lose all my new customers!
I’ll get my thinking cap on.
Recently, I’ve suffered the ignominy of not receiving a single comment on a couple of my blog posts. The first time it happened, I shamelessly canvassed friends to put it right. I was not proud of myself, but it made me feel a little bit better. The second time, I took a more considered approach and decided to try and find out why.
Here is what I found:
I Talk Some Crap
I love words. Words are great. But I use too many. When ten words would do, you often see fifty or a hundred. Must do better. I find rambling fun (not the walking kind. See? There I go again) but you don’t have enough time to read all my rambling and that of all the other blogs you follow.
Here’s a Wordle of my blog content. As you can see, it’s very random indeed. Maybe I need some more direction, or to split my blog up a bit…?
What Gets Written About
I Post At The Wrong Time
Google Analytics and Google Reader tell me the hard truth: I post most of my blog entries at about 1pm. You read blogs between 12 noon and 1pm. So my post is a day old if you read it. Also, the automatic thingummydoofer that posts my new blog entry to twitter does it after your lunch hour has finished.
There’s not much I can do about this. I get a lunch break, during which I write my posts. By the time I’ve written them, attached and edited photos, corrected my spelling and rubbish html, etc., you’re all back at work. I just hope you don’t mind reading them late – I need to work out how to remind you to do that at the beginning of your lunch breaks, though.
I Need Help To Get More Subscribers
From the stats I’ve got my hands on, there are 15 subscribers to this blog via Feedburner, 3 from Google Reader and 8 Google Friends. Now that you’ve realised you’re in such a select group, rather than a crowd of Papal Mass proportions, there are probably even fewer 
I need better ways to get my blog in front of people, automatically (but carefully and ethically)and via the people I know. Or failing that, just tell your friends to read my bloody blog! … please. 
I downloaded the Arkayne plugin recently, with the intention of finding other blogs I could link to automatically and broaden my exposure to other blogs. This would help me read from a wider pool of writers, but also send my links to other people. The sad truth though, is that Arkayne doesn’t seem to have enough members who like what I like. I’m going to stick with it though, for a while at least, to see if I get any interesting new knowledge or visitors.
Can any of you recommend plugins or tools that will be handy?
![Recommend [phillconnell]](http://s3.amazonaws.com/arkayne-media/img/badge/02me.png){kind=icon}
What You Talkin’ About?