Month: January 1970

“Rant”. It seems to be the buzz word in the blogging community at present! Nearly every second blog I come across these days has the word “Rant” embedded into it somewhere only to dissapoint with posts that don’t resemble a rant at all! This was my main concern while I was waiting for this site to load which it took a long time to do!

Once the page started displaying I could see quickly see why it took so long! The scrollbar on the right of my browser window was rapidly shrinking – almost to the point where I couldn’t see it anymore! This blog is big! After a quick scroll down a pre-installed blogger template page, I counted only eight different posts, three of which were extremely brief leaving five incredibly long posts.

On the sidebar we learn that the author is one Scott Hudson who lives in South Dakota. I apologise that that state doesn’t mean much to me because this humble reviewer resides in Ireland. Not having any local knowledge slightly hindered my ability to understand what was going on in some of the posts in this blog but thankfully it didn’t prevent me from enjoying it because the posts are clearly well thought out and they accurately convey the author’s strong feelings towards certain issues. As I said earlier, this blog is big and I suppose this is a suitable time to question the blogs title which is “Rant-a-BIT”. I think “Rant-a-LOT” would have been much more fitting title!

Staying on the subject of the content, I was happy to see that the blog isn’t all about serious issues and Scott often offers his own spin on light hearted and humorous issues which is just as well because I don’t think I could handle rant after rant after rant! If there’s one bad thing that can be said about the blog it’s that once you’ve finished reading one page, there is no “Next” or “Previous” link. Instead you have to scroll all the way back up to the top of the page and click a suitable link in the archive section of the sidebar which can be incredibly annoying for anyone who wants to read back through the archives which span all the way back to March of 2003 where the posts were just as vast as they are today!

Overall I can say that this blog is well worth the read especially if you like long posts which offer a great insight into the life and personality of the author. If you prefer short and snappy blogs then this blog just isn’t for you! Personally, I enjoyed reading it and will probably add it to my growing list of quality blogs in my bookmarks!NULL

TWI or (T)ech and (W)eirdness of the (I)nternet for short is (according to the blogs “about” section) a blog that was started in October of this year with the soul aim of filtering the best of tech news from around the net and displaying it in an opinionated format (i.e not just copy and paste) by it’s author, “Maxx”.

The layout of the blog is very well and the fact that the blog is running off WordPress is really well concealed and until I hovered over a link in one of the posts, I was convinced that the system may have been coded from scratch! There are loads of RSS feed’s available and quite some thought has gone into the naming of catagories and tag’s that feature on the site.

As I already said, this site is all about the author delivering his own interpretation of the latest and greatest technology news around. Usually I would turn my nose up at a site like this for the simple reason that I like my technology news to be factual and with an opinionated blog like this, there is always going to be room for bias towards one company/organisation in particular stories. It appears however, that this blog is an exceptional case. There may very well be some bias here and there, but because the author always derives his opinion from supplied quotations you can often understand how they managed to form this opinion and for me, figuring this out is almost as interesting as the news within the posts themselves!

Overall I found the blog to be both informative and interesting to read and even though I read a lot of Tech news sites, I still learned a lot. The blog is also a joy to navigate around and obviously, a lot of time was spent in figuring out exactly how to display the content to the visitors. Lately the author has been encouraging community contributions to the site due to a lack of available time to work on the blog. It will be interesting to see if this idea gets off the ground and if it does, it begs the question, will the style of the content change too dramatically? Only time will tell but for now this is certainly a very entertaining blog and I heartily recommend it to any self-respecting tech savvy person out there!NULL

“A Shout in the Dark” is a re-launch of a blog that has been reviewed last month – new URL, new content management system, and a new design. I was anxious to see the author’s new beginning would bring a weblog I could not stop reading. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite accomplish that.

Since this revamped site only hosts less than two months of archives, it did not take long for me to read them each individually. Charles, the author, keeps the entries short and to the point. He’s a working man, and also going to school, and, speaking from personal experience, that doesn’t leave much time for unnecessary weblog rambling.

The way I like to rate weblogs is easy. If a personal site, such as this one, can keep my interest and teach me something, whether it be about the author or just about something the author is interested in, I feel like I’ve just read a good site. The only thing I could remember from this site after reading it is that Sean Paul and Shaggy are both up for Grammy nominations in the reggae field this year.

WordPress is the content management system of choice on this site. It is a nice change from the standard Blogger templates that are so popular. Charles has done his own tweaking to the layout, adding his picture, some additional links, and pictures in the header image. The author has also done some work in adding additional pages to the site – a biography page, some news links, and his resume, for example. Along the sidebar of this two-column layout, he also includes links to his favorite website and some pictures he has uploaded onto his Flickr site.

This site is still new and still growing. Charles is doing his best to find time in his schedule to update somewhat frequently. As time goes on, this site has the absolute potential to grow. Until then, though, I can only give it the average 3 as its score.
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The brain is like a muscle. If you don’t use it for extended period it will deteriorate, much like the strength of astronaughts who in their weightlessness grow weaker and come back from space sore and limp. Henry Baum’s brain gets a literary workout in his regularly updated blog – Ash Tree when it isn’t busy authoring novels or composing contemporary music. Ahh when it rains it pours and Mr Baum is one of those annoying people that got a smack with the talent stick as a kid and seems to have a natural ability for all things creative.

If his books and music are anything like his blog, then we will probably be in good hands as H.Baum writes naturally about his life as a writer, dropping names that even I know of. Having gone to school with Jack Black and his new girlfriend he tells us about her (“the prettiest girl from my high school class”) with an accompanying photo. Most of the posts are presented this way which makes the site very visual and easy to view. In fact, the whole site is very well presented with good navigation, colors, and layout.

Henry Baum is altogether a really interesting guy so naturally his blog is a great read. Whether he is reviewing books he has read, telling (or showing) us the latest music he has composed, photos he has taken, people he has met or things he is doing he does it in style and as a writer executes all this perfectly. His wife has an interesting blog too but it is outside the scope of this review.

Ash Tree isn’t for everyone but for those of you with literary tendencies and general interest in the culture of writers or artists, Henry Baum’s blog is a rare gem in an anarchic sea of crap. Highly Recommend. NULL

The Beauty Addict Blog – not exactly my cup of tea, but sometimes blogs that aren’t down my alley end up being the best ones to review. They lead me to open my eyes and give new things a chance. I was hoping for that as I opened up The Beauty Addict Blog, but my hopes were quickly dashed as I started to read this “daily fix of news, reviews, and more”.

The leopard print background, while a nice color for interior of Tarzan’s car, doesn’t really do a lot for the site visually. Perhaps it’s something that’s incredibly popular in the fashion industry, but the colors the owner of this site uses become distracting when seen against this pattern. Thankfully, the entries show black text on a white background – a classic combination that never goes out of style.

November 30th is the first post on The Beauty Addict Blog, beginning with a post on shopping at H&M and explaining a few of the ins and outs of the clothing designer that sell their clothes there. Other review-type entries follow on almost a daily basis, ranging on topics from lip gloss to reality TV and from aerobic striptease DVDs to the resurgence of black on the runway.

The typical post is only about a paragraph long and doesn’t contain that much information. People following the fashion or makeup industry may recognize some of the names and brands that are mentioned, but for a neophyte to this topic, I found myself becoming lost as soon as proper nouns started to pop up.

There are a handful of different authors that post on a consistent basis, and each of their writing styles all seem to flow somewhat similarly. It’s clearly a site where the appropriate research has been done and the amount of knowledge the writers have is well explained. It’s just not a site for someone that doesn’t have the appropriate background information and/or interest in the world of a beauty addict.
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