When first reviewing background noise, I was daunted by the fact that the blog’s archives went back for over two years. In hindsight, blogspot’s system of archiving posts on a monthly basis, coupled with the author’s knack for keeping his entries short, meant that reading two and a half years of Richard’s random musings was surprisingly effortless.
Background Noise is definitely one of the more eclectic personal weblogs out there – the brevity of most entries probably exacerbates this a little; one entry details Richard’s aversion for razors, while the next details his difficulties learning mandarin. Some days, even the entries seem fairly haphazardly put together, as seen in this entry about Dolly the Sheep and how people should pronounce the word ‘issues’. Nonetheless, the entries are consistently concise and well-written, however, which is always a plus. I particularly liked his entry on pandas.
While the site layout is by no means breath-taking, it doesn’t offend any aesthetic sensibilities either. Here again, we see the benefit of short entries – the front page to this blog seems a lot less cluttered than other blogs, if only because of the fact that it simply holds less content. I must emphasize, however, that this is by no means a bad thing, since brevity is really an undervalued commodity in blogging. Richard’s extensive archives also provide for a depth of additional reading material.
All in all, while this site is eclectic in its content, it’s also consistent in its output – Richard is a fairly frequent blogger, and he seems to churn out his entries at a fairly constant rate. The links featured on this site are similarly eclectic, but most manage to be reasonably entertaining. Thus, all in all, background noise is probably worth a visit. Or maybe even two.
Background Noise