Month: January 1970

I found myself enjoying this blog the more I read it. The blog itself is on a nice easy template, white background with black text and the comic sketches that were found around the blog itself, I found them fascinating and very cute. I really like the way Ellen has drawn up sketches of all her blog friends instead of just having the basic blog roll, it makes you want to have a look at what the other blogs are like & if the sketches relate.

My expectation of this blog was that it was going to be another personal blog about day to day life. Further reading though pleasantly surprised me. Ellen has given lots of thought to her blog and has “cards” that she uses to interact with her readers, which I think is a wonderful idea. Her posts are mostly personal entries, well written and quite easy to comprehend. She’s drawn some cartoons that she posts up every so often. I really enjoyed Ellen’s about me section written by her husband, it really gives a greater insight into the author from someone else’s perspective and again, I thought it was something that was different and interesting.

I found all the links to be working in the blog, the design does compliment that blog, the author’s writing more than makes up for having a white background and less clutter as I found the blog to be more than enough, as in, I believe that Ellen’s writing & entries are enjoyable enough that it doesn’t need to have a complex & brightly coloured background to detract.

I believe that this blog is something that Ellen might be writing for her own benefit. I found the link to her own “depression manual” an eye-opener. She’s a new mum, who is staying at home and dealing with life as it comes day by day and reporting it with humour. I found Ellen’s blog an interesting read, whether that is because I found her struggles and daily gripes and humorous entries perked my interest or if it was just because of those cute cartoon drawings. It is definitely worth a look at. So what are you waiting for? Go look!
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I can’t tell you how pleased I was to see this blog on the list of ones to review. I’ve been reading this blog for a few weeks now (it’s even in my RSS feeds list, and it takes a lot for a blog to make it to that). I love this blog… of course this posed for my first impression.

The layout looks very simple at first glance, but it isn’t really. It’s simple enough to not draw attention away from the writing, but it’s got images sprinkled in it so that it’s not the same old everyday template we see ten million times. I don’t like how there are so many posts on the front page, but I’m willing to live with this.

The entries are great, and vary widely on the topic at hand. There are posts about Ellen’s daughter Anna, her husband, herself, and other bloggers as well. There’s quite a bit of content to make almost anyone happy.

As far as extras go, I am quite happy to inform you that there are NO Google Ads. This is great. There also aren’t ten million things in the sidebar, which is also good. If we go all the way to the bottom we see where the extras are hidden. There are 80×15 buttons galore, as well as what appears to be a broken Amber Alert ticker. Other extras are more for statistical or just user-friendliness reasons, such as the ability to subscribe or see how many people are online at a particular time.

All in all, this is a good blog. It’s a bit cluttered for my taste, but it’s the perfect blog for reading in an RSS reader. The content is interesting and Ellen is obviously someone who takes time when writing her posts, in order to make them enjoyable rather than the plain and usual jumble that most people churn out. I’ll give The Reign of Ellen a 4.5 out of 5… Definitely worth reading, and most likely bookmarking as well.NULL

If by now you don’t know, the first thing I do when I go to review a site is think of how the blog will be based on the name. A name of American Drifter to me says that there is someone (male or female, though probably male) who is off traveling the world for whatever reason and now we get the chance to see what its like. I was kind of right, but mostly wrong.

I am a creature of habit and I always take a quick glance at an entire page before reading anything just to get a feel for what is there. This site is a two column layout with all the important non-blog-post stuff on the right. As I went down the column I found out more about the author, his links, and of course his archives which were interesting. Then I noticed something I rarely see on a blog a lot of advertisements other than Google. There are thirteen of them to be exact if you just count the spots and not the ads (Google and eBay have multiple listings). This threw me for a loop.

So with this quandary, I decided to start reading. The author immediately tells us that he isn’t a really a drifter, but he travels around the world for his job. In this year alone he has been in two different states and two different countries; all because of his job. We then quickly learn that his job is at a construction and engineering firm who helps pharmaceutical companies bring new drugs to the market. Of course this isn’t in his blog, this is all in his sidebar.

The blog itself has posts about different aspects of his life. Some are related to his job (about coming home) or the friendships he makes at each location. Other posts are more about him. An interesting post in July of 05 really came out to me. His site was reviewed and they said his site was “Dribble”. This site is hardly anything close to dribble.

It was in this post that I learned the true meaning of all the advertising. He makes a boat load of money off of it. He apparently has good rankings with certain keywords in Google for stuff that you can only find on eBay. And thus he found that eBay has an affiliate program and bam, affiliate programs galore on his site. Since they don’t really take away from the blog itself, and that he is making good money off of them, who am I to say they shouldn’t be there?

One thing that really disappointed me was the infrequency of posting. His archives go July 04, Sept 04, March 05 and then to the present (each month has posts from then on). The author writes well, and writes long posts. This isn’t a “I need something to read in the next minute while I finish my break” type of site. It is in fact a “I need something to read during my entire break” type of site. This site is good and has some gems to it. Take the time and sit down with this blog because I am sure you will find it worth your time.
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Hooah Wife is an interesting name for this blog. I wasn’t quiet sure what to make of the name other than I knew I would be reading about a wife. Then I thought about the word Hooah some more and the only thing I could think of was that chant that people in the military say and then yell back “Hooah”. I was right – she is a wife of someone in the military.

Most blogs should be read starting with today and moving backwards to get the story then you read forwards again to keep up with this blog. While reading this blog I was a little confused but I kept telling myself I would get around this. After 2 months worth of surfing, I decided that this wasn’t really going to happen so I decided to read it from the very first post onward.

Before I get into the details, I must say that Greta’s story really moved me. It has been a while since I thought about the war in Iraq, other than I wish it was over. I am like most Americans (and people all over the world) in thinking that it is done, time to bring the troops home. With that said, this is a story of one wife and how she deals with being a spouse of someone in the army.

The very first post on the site sets the tone. She talks about how her husband is set to go to Iraq in two weeks for at least 6 months. She mentions that he has also just handed her his last will and testament and that they have 3 kids. Right there all the emotions I had about the war came back. Not knowing anyone personally who went over, my feelings cannot compare to what she must have been going through. Oh one more thing, this all took place about 3 weeks prior to the 2004 election so there was that thrown into the mix.

The next couple of months are mostly political updates with some funny stuff thrown in. Every now and then she gives a self interview and posts stuff about her husband. I was just started to get over the emotional hump from the first month when she posted how she was in charge of a program at the school called “Adopt a platoon” and due to certain rules, she had to read every letter that was going to be sent. These letters were written by kids in the school and she said how most of them said they were proud of what they were doing. Again, I started to get choked up.

I finally hit my breaking point with this blog in April. I read a post that said Hubby is home and I was overjoyed for Greta. Having her husband home after 6 months was such a relief. Then a couple of posts later there was the video of his arriving home and surprising her. I honestly cried.

I could go into all the things that have happened since then, but I don’t want to ruin the story for you. I truly enjoyed this blog and will be keeping tabs on it to see where it goes to now. My only complaint about this site has to do with the layout and how long it takes to load due to all of the included content from other sites. Other than that, this is one heck of a blog. I can’t encourage you enough to go read this blog, even if you only read from October 2004-April of 2005. This has been one journey that I will not forget, and I am glad that there are people like Greta posting about the things that really matter: family.
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To be up front with this review, I don’t do very well reviewing weblogs of teenagers. I have nothing in common with the majority of them, and their lack of care for punctuation and spelling is enough to drive me crazy. Unfortunately, this weblog, called “Southern Comfort”, was no different.

The layout of the site is very nice. It’s hosted by WordPress, and I believe the template was one that is features on WordPress’s site as one of their contest entrants. I only know this because I look at them constantly for ideas on my own site. The light green background surrounding the white box that’s used for all the text is a very nice color, and matches well with the watermelon graphics used throughout the site. The author does a nice job of not cluttering up the sidebar with a bunch of links to every single site she’s ever visited, and that’s much appreciated by reviewers and random visitors to the site.

This is the author’s second go around with a weblog. In the first post of Southern Comfort, she mentions this, along with some brief autobiographical information. I enjoyed getting to know more about the person who runs this weblog. The background specifics always helps give readers an idea about the author that they may not gather on their own from just reading through entries.

The author, who is going through her mid-teenage years, shares her day-to-day experiences with her audience. She writes typical teen fodder: dreams and nightmares she has or forgetting her book at home and being unable to do that night’s homework. From time to time, she also fills is on her favorites in the music industry by celebrating an artist’s return or letting us know about her current favorite music album.

The apostrophe key seemed to be missing in action for a good part of this site, and I often had trouble translating a sentence or two that was full of spelling errors or slang I didn’t quite understand. These two things can really distract from the content of a weblog.

I’m less than ten years out of my own teenage years, but that doesn’t seem to matter. It’s still too large of an age gap for me to enjoy a site that is written in the same manner Southern Comfort.

This is a site that will probably only be enjoyed by those people that know more about the author of the site than a random reader does.

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