Month: January 1970

It’s not often that I get to review a blog and I don’t feel the need to click on in and every external link I can find to get the hell away from what I’m reading. While browsing the short-lived archives at InsanityChyld, I only found myself wanting to do one thing (in relation to this blog) and that was to find some more archives to read.

As I do with any site I end up reviewing, I want to read an “About” section to find more about the author, or in this case authors, why this site exists, or what I can expect by reading through their entries. This section didn’t let me down and filled all of those informational voids that you usually have the first time you start reading a new site.

There’s a warning featured on the “about” section letting readers know that the site isn’t intended for people under the age of 18 or anyone that’s close-minded. I like these authors already. This is also where I found that InsanityChyld is actually a group blog with five authors listed, all with anonymous personas.

Many of the posts are very personal in nature – an interaction between the boss of one of the authors discussing the growth of facial hair, for instance. While others turn a picture of Paris Hilton into a “Guess What’s Wrong” game that only ends in a not-so-pleasant discovery once you figure out what it is you’re looking for.

It only takes reading through just a few entries to realize that the author(s) don’t hold back when posting about their personal lives. While they may post pictures of themselves, nobody ever knows their real names, making them pretty tough to wind up on a random Google search by their boss (been there, done that).

InsanityChyld falls into the personal blog category very easily. People either like this type of blog, or they don’t. I found it enjoyable and have added it to my RSS reader. Will others feel the same way? Just reading two or three of the past two months of archives will help them easily make that decision.
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With a name of Tessellar > Blog I wasn’t quiet sure what to expect. Did this guy think he was better than a blog? If so what is his blog about? The only thing I did expect was that it would be a personal blog.

The first thing I noticed was that it was hosted by blogspot. Now I am not knocking them, but for a name of “I am greater than blog” maybe your own domain name would be slightly better. To top it off the blog has a slightly modified blogspot template that I have seen many times before. Unfortunately the template does nothing for the blog.

I quickly browsed the main page of the site for any indication of what I might actually be reading. I found a small blurb about the author and a couple of his sites. He is an architect in Malaysia and likes to talk about people and the houses and what not.

Now going through the blog I quickly discovered that I was very bored with it. The information provided is written as if it is for a history book. I was quickly reminded of all the boring little detailed things I was forced to memorize in high school just to pass a class. That isn’t to say the information is not well written, it is just not written to entertain.

The blog is about different houses and families and that sort of thing all through out the world. I must give the author some points for a unique blog, because I don’t think anyone else has quite done this before. The highlights of the blog were the personal stories about where he grew up. While these still read more like a history lesson than a blog, these at least had some grasp of outside readers’ attention spans.

Overall this is not a blog I would recommend. The topic is very narrow in who it will entertain. The author tries which is of course a big part of the blog. I do not wish this review to discourage the author from continuing his work. Merely I hope that this review helps him focus his attention towards the specific group of readers that would enjoy his site.
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Dave’s Guide to the Best of the Web is a pretty straight forward title and fits perfectly to his very straight forward blog of sharing some of the best websites he’s found. Easy enough, right? Let’s see if I agree.

I immediately noticed that Dave’s Guide to the Best of the Web has only just started on July 8th of this year, making this site extremely new.

The first few entries were sites I’ve been familiar with for a long time – Skype, Google Maps, Wikipedia, Napster, etc. These are all tools and URLs that have been around the web several times and don’t really have anything new and improved to offer. With these links, the author just gives readers information on what the program/tool/etc. actually is and what it actually does.

I don’t really understand the point of this site. Is it just to have any popular technology, like the links to Apple or ASP.net, linked in one general location? Dave doesn’t make much of attempt to give a review of any product, but instead chooses to be very neutral in its descriptions. Since the site is called Dave’s Guide to the Best of the Web, we automatically assume that these are the best links ever. And maybe they were a few years ago.

The layout is simple and easy to click through by various categories or date. The “about the author” section reveals very little about the site. Readers also have the option to recommend a website to Dave.

I don’t get the site or how it’s a new revelation to the blogging world, but the author does write very well in his descriptions. Punctuation, grammar, spelling, etc. all seems right on the money, and for me, that’s the biggest redeeming quality I could find
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Shucking oysters, shelling peas – I seriously had no idea what I was going to be reading; I only knew I have a strong distaste for both oysters and peas, so this could be a horrifying time of reading a blog.

The first thing I had to do was start at the beginning of this blog and see why it all started and where it’s gone since then. March of this past year is when the site first started, but the only other two months listed within the archives along the sidebar are June and July. There were 61 posts written on March 7th according to the archives, so it sounds like maybe this blog had a home elsewhere before finding itself on Blogspot.

Being hosted on the infamous Blogspot usually means the layout will be one of their templates that have been provided, and this site was no exception to that rule. It’s an easy to navigate layout, though, so finding the things you need is simple.

Quite simply put, this blog is about food. There are a few various other topics thrown in from time to time – a U.S./Italy soccer game or a cute tale of the author’s parents’ dogs and their distaste for American rawhides – but overall, this is going to be a site for those folks we refer to around here as foodies.

It’s hard for me to relate to a blog that goes into great detail about either recipes or the quality of food that the writers have sampled in various restaurants. I’m a creature of habit when it comes to ordering things in any restaurant, and I find Velveeta Shells & Cheese an acceptable meal from time to time.

The author does manage to make an effort in keeping the attention of people not as into such fine food as myself. There’s a post that’s full of YouTube videos, including a link to The Geeky Gourmet, which is definitely on my line of kitchen-work. My friends are going to be so impressed when I serve sake in a cup made out of a cucumber. Maybe more scared than impressed actually…

Overall, this site won’t appeal to every random blog surfer. However, if a random blog surfer happens to have suggestions on how to bake quail in champagne or has an interest in whipping up an authentic Italian stewed squid recipe coming straight from the author’s mother-in-law, this will be a place they can add to their bookmarks. The site is very good at what it’s meant to be good at – food.
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I had no idea what this blog would be about upon reading the title, and even after the initial page loaded, I still wasn’t 100% sure what the point or the main subject of this blog would be. I did the best thing I know how to do with something like this – I dove in head first.

The layout is a bit cumbersome. My screen resolution is set at 1440 x 900, and even with that much room, my screen still looked cluttered as I scrolled through the last two months or archives. It looks to be one of the infamous standard Blogger templates with more information added into the sidebar then it was designed to hold.

There were seven different links across the top of the design that I thought would lead me to different areas of the site, where I could find out more information, since this topic is something I’ve never done any reading about. When I realized that all seven of those links were different Blogspot hosted URLs, I didn’t even bother clicking on them. It seemed like a pretty lazy way to let people work their way through learning about the site at hand.

According to some information the author’s placed in the sidebar, the idea of this particular blog is as follows: “My plan is to each day try to find out something new to research – a place, a person, a house, an idea – anything that interests me.” With the self-description, it becomes obvious that this site has been created for the author’s own personal use, rather than to involve any regular readers he might have.

The author, I found from the sidebar once again, is a an architect in a Malaysian private practice. Learning his occupation explains why this topic is so fascinating to him to some degree, and my engage readers who have similar background to his.

Overall, I can’t say I’d visit this blog again. Having not one ounce of knowledge on the architectural subjects the author mentions, I wanted to find a post that would excite me about the topic and pull me into want to learn more. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. For those in a related industry, maybe that doesn’t need to happen, and this site will be just fine the way it is.NULL