Month: March 2001

I really found nothing redeeming about this weblog. I clicked and clicked looking for any form of substantive writing and came up empty handed.



Naming the weblog “My Thoughts”, I believe is misleading. There is little (if any) original thought here.



The specifics: I might care about someone who I don’t know’s relationship / philosophical / political / family issues, but I have a REALLY REALLY hard time having my heart-strings plucked reading about someone who I don’t know’s COMPUTER problems.



Aesthetically, the site is cookie-cutter. The links are of sub-par quality.



Overall, the site is very boring. On no level does it engage me. And I’m a big computer geek too.



I think the author would do good to consider his audience and ask “what do people care about? why would someone want to read this?”.



fin.My Thoughts

Edgy. This weblog is edgy and genuine. The author is a troubled youth in a really bad situation.



Her parents beat her. It makes for good reading.



Reading her weblog made me extremely angry. It made me want to take a baseball bat and do some damage.



Aesthetically the layout is really lean and clean and arty. Low-fi. Messy. Raw. I like it. There could be more room between the lines of text – it seems like that was an artistic decision though. So whatever. I can deal.



The gray background too closely matched the default scrollbar gray. I’m really tired of that gray.



The language isin’t very articulate, but the uninhibited nature of her entries more than make up for it. She thinks, and she is very honest about her thoughts.



This one is a keeper.



fun.











Killer Typos

The weblog turned out to be the most normal part of the site. There wasn’t too much to set it apart from the bulk of weblogs I have read. You would have to know the author to appreciate or understand much of what was going on. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, if your intended audience is people you know.



Other portions of the site were more interesting, including the anime artwork on each page, which I assume the author created. There was a “Words” section which contained some interesting prose and poetry. The “Quotes” section was interesting as well, and the photos rounded it all out.



Overall, the site was designed well enough and the navigation made sense, but I still don’t like my cursor being changed to something other than the arrow/hand combination I am used to seeing. Again, nothing set this weblog out from the crowd, but there wasn’t much that held it back either.soul-refrain.nu

After reading through the weblog entries, I learned that this site is in it’s youth, with the author still learning HTML and other web design techniques in general. That explains some of the basic design no-no’s, such as the dark green text on the black background and the request that you install “comet cursors” when loading the page.



The weblog entries themselves were far more entertaining, giving the site something worth visiting. Rarely does a weblog actually make me laugh out loud, as this one did when I read such lines as, “my ass is expanding. not in an i’ve-been-wearing-a-butt-plug kind of way, mind you. more the someone’s-been-injecting-it-with-silicone variety.” Few weblog authors are willing to put it out there like that and make fun of themselves for the benefit of others. Thank you, enchanting_devil.



Reading further into the archives, I found more nuggets of humor, and grew to end up liking the weblog author for her spunky personality and wit. When a dismal design can be redeemed by a clever author’s weblog entries, you know you have found a site with promise. Given some time and persistance, this fledgling site will certainly be one for the bookmarks; it just needs to get ripe first.



enchanted, i’m sure

I had to review this site because for a long time it was a regular read of mine. Then some time later I lost interest in the site and only periodically checked it out.



Design:

I like layouts that can give the feeling that there was some work done to make it look good, without the gawdy ‘artsy type sites’ that take a month to download even with high speed access. This site achieves that. She’s got a good use of colors and icons and the layout is easy to follow. From what I recall re-designs are plentiful so by the time you read this the big funny cat may be gone.


Content:

Like so many blogs it’s really more of a means to communicate with people she knows than to provide any definable content. I don’t say this as a bad thing but to find something that interests me (being an oustider) was hard to come by. That said, I like her style of writing all the same. Be warned that she wasnt kidding when she warned The Weblog Review that she’s a potty mouth.


Extras:

There are plenty of links to rings and cliques if you you’re into that sort of thing. But I found her gallery to be the best extra on the site. She complains ‘its a peice of..’ wait, I cant post that here. But whether she likes it or not it adds value to the site for sure.



One thing that was missing for sure was an ‘about me’ type page or section. I realize that there’s a cam shot and you can tell a lot about a person that way but I want more details. I need to be involved with the person I’m reading if I’m going to read often.



Overall:

A good site for casual viewing. Myself I check back almost exclusively for the photos, but I’m wacky like that, I like to see other peoples pictures 🙂



Take a look for yourself at the site, depending if you’re in her age group (which I’m clearly not) will have some bearing on if you consider it one of your regular reads.



cozmik.gerl