Six years of blogging - and a favour to ask

In all the excitement in all the past few weeks, I actually forgot that on 21st July it was the anniversary of six years since I wrote my very first blog post ! That one was about a broken swan skull, that I wrote about here. A lot has changed since then, as you can see from the photos above, but I still get excited every week to share something new with you here.

As it's my blog birthday (sort of), I would like to ask you a special favour. I have never entered any blog awards before, because the people that make up the categories seem to forget about wildlife and natural history. But these ones are different, because they are organised by BBC Wildlife Magazine (which listed me as one of the top 50 conservation heroes in the UK a few months ago).

You can nominate any blog which appears here. There are eight categories, but the one most appropriate to me is "Best Young Blogger.  If you think I deserve the award - and I hope you do ! - all you need to do is email wildlifemagazine@immediate.co.uk, with the subject line "BBC Wildlife Blogger Awards nomination". In the email you'll need to name this blog ("Jake's Bones by Jake McGowan-Lowe") and the category ("Best young blogger") and that's it ! Thank you !

Handling abuse as a child blogger

If you saw last week's post about The Weird and Wonderful shop raffling off a human skull, you'll see it generated an interesting reaction, with over 100 published comments, another seven that were deleted, plus a lot of email messages about it, mostly supportive, with some quite offensive. (In the end, The Weird and Wonderful gave away a different prize, but I don't know whether that was human or animal, since they didn't answer my Tweet)

It was quite an experience, and not always a pleasant one, but I want to take a negative and turn it into a positive so it will hopefully help someone else in the future. Unlike what a lot of parents expect, I have been extremely lucky with all my time blogging, so I'm not exactly an expert on getting abusing messages, but I thought I'd share what I do when I'm responding like things to this for other young bloggers who might end up in the same position.

Five years of blogging !

It is now EXACTLY five years ago today when I wrote my very first blog post, which was about the broken swan skull I found in my local wood. I never, ever expected what would happen in the next five years !

Since then I have written over 322 posts and I have had 1,658 comments, but I'm still writing more or less the same way, about once a week, about bones I find, wildlife I see or places I have visited. But I have also been on the TV, radio, in newspapers, met some of my heroes, and even got my first book deal ! So for my fifth anniversary I have written my blog post early in the week and answered your questions about my blogging journey !

So..... what would you like to ask me ?

On 21st July will be five years since my very first post here which seems quite amazing. I don't often celebrate blog birthdays, but I thought five years would be worth a special post.

So here's my plan: on the 21st July I will do a special Q&A post where I answer any questions you have. I'm thinking the questions would be more about the blogging side and my book, rather than specific scientific questions on bones, but if you have any good other questions I'll try to answer them as well.

Add your questions as a comment here, email them to me at jakesbones@gmail.com, add them to my Facebook page or tweet them to @jakesbones, and I look forward to answering them on the 21st !

My favourite way to spend a sunny day outside...

#3205380 / gettyimages.com

This week's blog post is a bit different. There are hardly any blogging competitions for child or young adult bloggers, so when the MAD awards added a category, I was quite excited. Then I read the rules, which say bloggers are judged on one post only, and it has to begin with the words "My FAVOURITE way to spend a sunny day outside is...". So here is my entry.

My FAVOURITE way to spend a sunny day outside is to sit down and imagine a world in which all bloggers are taken seriously, regardlessly of their age, a world where child bloggers are not given simplistic tasks in a single blog post to complete in order to win a prize.

Wait, I've done that wrong, haven't I ? That's not what's expected of me. I'll have another go....

11 museum blogger questions for #museumweek

I wasn't planning to do an extra post this week, but Paolo Viscardi, the curator at the Horniman Museum, nominated me to answer some extra questions for #museumweek. You can read his answers here.

If you know my blog, you'll know I often write about museums, from massive ones like the Natural History Museum, to small specialist museums like the Grant Museum, the D'Arcy Thompson Museum or the Bell Pettigrew Museum. So here are my answers ! 

I started blogging four years ago today !

Today is my fourth blogiversary ! I wrote my very first post on 21st July 2009, and since then I have written 257 posts, which is just over one a week. Since then a lot of things have happened (like my book !), and my blog posts now are longer and more detailed than they used to be, but I still do things just the same as when I started, and I am glad so many other people enjoy what I write.

One of the first things I did when I set up the website was to add a bit of code (from Statcounter) that tells you about people that visit, and how they got to my website. Sometimes the things people are searching for are weird or funny. So here as a special extra post on my blogiversary are some of the ones I thought were the funniest !

Seven things that Zygoma taught me about blogging

Today is the 200th "Friday Mystery Object" on the Zygoma blog, written by Paolo Viscardi. Paolo works as a natural history curator at the Horniman museum in London,and he began blogging about the same time as I did (he began in April 2009 and I began in July 2009) and every week since then he has been mainly posting about objects from his museum (mostly bones and skulls) and asking people to identify them. He's been posting every week, but after this week he's going to slow down and post less often.

Paolo first helped me when I posted about finding an unusually shaped red deer antler in August 2009, and since then I've been following his blog every week. I think doing 200 Friday Mystery Objects is a big achievement, and because I can't do a surprise party, I'm going to do this post instead about what I've learned from his blog.

My top ten tips for other child bloggers

This is an unusual post for me because it's about blogging, not about bones. It was because I was thinking about the Times article which was yesterday, and thinking about what I would say to another kid about starting a blog.

These are just my tips. The other bloggers in the Times article might do things differently, but these are the ten things that really help me write my blog:

My 100th post, and how this blog started

Today is my 100th blog post ! I never thought I would get this far, but it feels awesome to have written 100 stories about all the bones I've collected.

Writing my blog has helped me a lot with my bone collecting. I've had emails from people all over the world, which is really great. Everybody had been really nice who has emailed, and people who work with bones all the time have emailed me to help me with things I didn't understand.

101 countries, and other new things

Here are lots of little things and updates that have happened recently that I've put together: