The Weblog Review

I knew going in that Hydroponics – Soil-less Gardening was probably not going to be an entertaining site. I have heard of hydroponics and I have read about it before. Just didn’t think it was a topic worthy of a blog.

The site loads with a modified blogger template. The template is shades of greens which I find fitting considering this is about plants. Other than the customizing of the template, there isn’t much else to say about the design of this standard two-column layout site.

The blog is, as I predicted, about growing plants in a soil-less environment. The site covers everything that you can think of and more. This includes proper mesh, ph levels, and more. I was amazed at how much work went into growing things this way.

My biggest gripe is that this site seems like it was only set up to earn money. It doesn’t read like the author enjoys his work, rather the posts are detailed and straight to the point. The site is littered with advertising which is kind of distracting. The fact that it is hosted on blogspot doesn’t help either. The site really needs a regular domain and could use a message board.

Overall this site is only good if you have an interest in hydroponics. I don’t think the author is trying to make the site a place for other people to share their ideas which I think the site could greatly benefit from. The site does what it does well, but because of the lost potential I have to give it a 2.5NULL

I wish there was a hybrid category for this site. It is a personal site as well as kind of a computer site. I guess that makes it a multiverse.

Shadowmyth writes from Seattle, WA, but it appears she will not be there much longer. Looks like she’s southbound to Portland Oregon. I started with her June 2007 archives. The bottom of the page says there are 15 pages of archives, but the first two pages are the only ones with content. The other pages (using http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/shadowmyth/2007/06/page/3/ and beyond) appear to be portally content through lockergnome. So I apologize if I miss any relevant entries.

The content of the blog is really random… In the month of June, we move from Firefox Extensions to Insomnia help to our author leaving home at 15 to find The Meaning of Life, to Open Source and Fashion, to tips on how to be a real friend, and a really fun sounding apple to oranges practical joke.

I like this kind of blog — the one where the author just writes what is on his or her mind… almost like magazine articles. Sitting down and reading at any point, you’re not sure what to expect. Some of the content reads like a pay-per-blog (ie: the one on bone and joint problems, the insomnia help entry, and some others) but there is no demarcation on the site stating she has been paid to write this entry, so, it could just be that random.

My favorite Shadowmyth entries are the very personal ones, like all the creeps who hit on her when she’s dancing, the how to be a friend lesson, how she has no morals, what she thinks of her kids’ experience in the public schools, and glimpses into her past. “Life has branded me with a wandering soul,” she writes. And it seems that for the past several years she has wandered, adventured, seen, existed, and now has settled down to writing about it and the tools she uses to interface with the rest of the sphere in this stage of her multiverse.

I found the writing to be really interesting but didn’t like the navigation of the archives. Overall the look and feel to the site is incredibly simple. The main pages are a gradient purple with two column layout, and clicking on an entry title opens it up in a paler blue setting. It would be nice to walk through the entries in a link to “next” or “previous” fashion, but for the most part getting back to the main page is easy.

I give this blog a 3.75 rating and change the category to personal. There is more content, and far BETTER content, within the pages that is personal instead of the computer category. And I wish her luck with her move and in her new city.NULL

Pointlessbanter.net is an interesting blog. The author takes on many different topics. The blog has been around since August of 2004 and I feel will be around for a long time to come. After reading through many of his blogs, I found the one on pay per review almost humorous considering what I was doing.

Who am I to review this blog? Will someone pay me to review something? Obviously so! Anyways I don’t know him (I am guessing him based on his about me section, but I could not find a name or anything definitive so if I am wrong I am sorry), but here I am reviewing what he has written.

The blog is laid out in a simple manner. The main part of the blog has a white background with black or dark grey letters. It has a simple red bar separating the different posts with a dark grey background. Simple, but it is actually a nice presentation. It doesn’t have distracting advertisements like so many are doing today. I hate advertisements on blogs; I don’t think Google pays that well, luckily this site just has a couple at the top.

The posts are interesting. They take on many different topics/categories: celebrities, love, drunken mistakes, hate mail, pop culture… the list goes on and on. A blog should be about many different topics so I think the author hits that on the money. The posts themselves keep the reader interested. I find his evaluations on many things a good read. It has something for everyone. Even though cheesy crackers with peanut butter got ripped in his March 27, 2007 post, I still cannot bring myself to reaching through my screen and pushing the “scrlk” button on his keyboard.

Keep in mind that this blog does have some fowl language, but it is kept to a minimum and helps to express his feelings.

I would recommend this blog to others. It appears to be thorough in topics and interestingly discussed. I give this blogger a 4 on our scale, but as he puts it who am I to review something. Keep blogging, you got my interest. My only problem is deciding what category to suggest the blog be posted under. I think I will leave it at Humor even though he talks about so many different things.

NULL

Pointless Banter is a site that I have heard of before, but never visited. I know I have seen links to it on other sites, and I have actually heard people talking about it. Well maybe they just said the words Pointless and Banter, but that has to count for something right?

The site opens to a nice custom design. It has a fluid rounded thing going for it for the logo and the navigation at the top which frames the advertisements nicely. I like it when blogs integrate the ads into their site rather than make them painful to stare at. The site has a 3 column layout but the 2 right hand columns are for additional information rather than have a left column and a right column. This works well for the site.

The blog is about pretty much whatever the author wants it to be. The topics range from funny items to interviews to thoughts on what happened that day. All the posts are very well written and you can see the funny side that the author is getting at.

This blog has been around for a long time. Thankfully the author has multiple ways of displaying the archives. One of the nice touches is that he has the “previous entries” style at the bottom of each page, and when clicked it tells you what page of how many.

One of the nice bonuses of the site is that the author wrote a book. The book is two years worth of his blog posts, with new introductions.

Overall I enjoyed this site a lot. The writing is great and the content is very funny. I am half tempted to buy the book as I think it would be a good read. I can’t stress how much I enjoyed this site. You should add it to your RSS reader now.NULL

The first look at the Bsketti blog confuses me. It is just Bsketti (whatever it may mean) in the title, a less mysterious subtitle – ‘I am not Spartacus’, and a paper crane in a header picture. What the hell is this about? Well, these were my initial thoughts.

However, there are other things I noticed immediately. This is a standard wordpress blog – from the address, to the design. We can even see a ‘Meta’ list at the bottom of the page (login, wordpress.com and stuff).

This leads us to the topic of design. Well, it is clear, easy-to-read, has a nice header picture and an ‘About Me’ page. These were all of the good points. The rest is just terrible. There are no archives and no categories! In return we have a lot of ‘WordPress Snapshot’ links which makes it difficult to surf the blog and irritates me. Generally, The design is neat, simple, boring, typical, and lacks elemental features.

Well, let’s take a closer look at the content of the blog: ‘What is it about?’. In the ‘About Me’ section we can read that the author is Rebecca and probably lives in Germany. Nice. She likes nature and some minstrel stories. Cool. So, what is so interesting about it to make us read?

Not much. I admit I am not a fan of ‘personal’ blogs and that is what Bsketti is. It tries to be a travel blog, but it is not. Of course, this does not have to mean it will not be interesting. We can read about her work, travels, flat, thoughts, observations and other typical stuff. Some of her thoughts are more interesting and original while others are not.
But, there is one thing that I do not like: the style of writing. Rebecca tends to write long sentences (like 50+ words) and use plenty of adjectives. Some people will like it for sure, but I don’t.

So, what have we got here for now? A not very attractive design and a bit difficult style of writing. Time to find some advantage for the balance.

And there is one. Some of the photos Rebecca adds to her post are ugly and not very well taken. But some of them are just brilliant. I don’t know if she had taken them herself or simply copied, but some of pictures of nature are beautiful. I recommend putting one of them as a header image.

Despite my great sympathy for Rebecca, her blog at the current state is not worth visiting. If I were her, I would work on the design and concentrate at her travels, nature, the minstrel stories, because it seems that is what she likes most, and there is not enough of this. Because of this, I give the blog a 2.NULL