Month: February 2002

With a name like saucyspot I wasn’t sure what I was going to get into. It could be a number of different things, most of which I left to the imagination.

What I found was a pretty standard blog. The color scheme was original (whites, blacks, grays, and oranges) however it seems to be the start of the new fad in colors. The layout is your standard two column layout with the content being on the left side and navigation on the right. While looking at the content in the columns, I noticed that the site was valid xhtml and css as per w3 and then it hit me; this site looked like all the other sites that validate their code through the w3. Don’t get me wrong, I think valid code is great, but why do most of these sites look alike?

The weblog itself is nothing new. It is your same old stuff of posting random things that are thought of. The writing is of good quality with no spelling or grammatical errors that I noticed. I was hoping for something to strike me as a must read entry, but like the design of the site, I found it reading much like a lot of weblogs today.

So after looking over the weblog for some golden nugget, I went to the about page. Of course, the about page lead me to a FAQ page, which was a little confusing. Of course, when I went to the FAQ page, it read more like an about page.

Over all you have a fairly standard and average weblog. I am sure that it will just jump right out and scream read me to some people, while others will not be interested. I recommend at least taking a look at it to see if it is a weblog of interest for you.
saucyspot

My first impressions were good. A nice look using oranges and yellows, very warm, very welcoming. I expected a site that was easy to read and easy to navigate. Not too many different sections to the site, so perhaps a “no thrills,” type of site?

I began by looking at the bio section, to see if I could form an understanding of the writer. This I found impressive, with a number of different headings and extensive detail, though it was easy to read as much or as little as you wanted. However the next section I went to, was the daily section, assuming that it was where the writer keeps her entries, I was wrong. However, the daily section had some rather nice elements such as routine, which gave you an insight into her daily schedule in the gym and to her body mass index. So where are the entries?

The entries were only accessible from the front page and this was where the archive was also found. Once finally in the archive, I chose to read a couple of randomly selected months. The posts varied in length, the longer ones were fairly interesting, and I found that the actual entries were easy to read, though having the archive ever so slightly hidden with only the ability to chose a month, made it hard to find different entries, especially as there are entries as far back as march 2001.

The photo album and writings were the extra sections that could be viewed. Both made a worthwhile visit and the photographs were not all the typical “me and my friends” type. Though this was true, the template on the other parts of the site wasn’t used and instead a dullish grey background became the back drop to the written work, in other words, very hard to read, though this was only apparent in the writings section as the rest of the site was easy on the eyes.

The site has a lot of potential, with some fairly interesting entries and nice extras. If the navigation was restructured so that the archive was more accessible and it was clearer what each section was, with the same template used throughout, the reader would find the site a much more enjoyable experience. Having said this, the reasons for visiting should not be over looked and once the navigation is mastered, it becomes less of a problem.
diva geneva

Foolmaker [aka: Foolzone] is a Blogspot site, so the first thing I noticed is the advertising on the Blogspot banner across the top of the site. As much as I’d love to win a Mini Cooper, I don’t think it has anything to do with Foolmaker. The site itself doesn’t really strike an immediate impression – there are no graphics [other than the Blogspot banner] and the colors are dark. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the writing since there were no visual clues.

This is not a journal for the masses. Foolmaker really isn’t a journal that lends itself to casual reading. A lot of the entries are written in poetic form and don’t come with the accompanying story to explain the emotions and incidents behind the poetry. Many non-poetic entries are either very disjointed or written in stream-of-consciousness style, and won’t make any sense to anyone except the writer. There’s good sentiment and good writing in some of the entries, but none of it is very fleshed out. Because I found it hard to follow, it just wasn’t that interesting for me.

One of my biggest pet peeves in writing is lack of capitalization. The author of Foolmaker does not use capitalization at the beginning of her sentences on a consistent basis. The biggest problem is that a month’s worth of entries are on each page and they are in order from newest to oldest – this makes it difficult to read with any sort of continuity. After reading the journal, the design doesn’t seem to fit the writing. The writing is, for lack of a better word, pretty, but the design is just kind of blah. In addition, some of the linked pages that are part of the site have an alternative design.

Foolmaker has links to other sites she likes, commenting, wishlist, and a link to a page that has some of her poetry. Nothing out of the ordinary. Foolmaker does have a small section on her template about herself, but it isn’t very informative. The site could definitely benefit from a good About page.

If you like to read poetry, Foolmaker might be for you. I doubt I would come back for another visit – I just couldn’t get a good feel for who the author is.

foolzone

My first impression when I followed the link to the site was that all the colored squares was a splash page that would lead me to the main site, but all the squares were individual links to different areas of the site.

It took me way too long to find the blog, er, journal really because it’s a Live Journal. I thought for a while that the site didn’t have one, but I found it eventually by clicking on the red box and then in another box under the “more” section.

According to her bio, “Corie.doublethinker.com” is created and maintained by a 19-year-old girl named Corie going to a local junior college in Bakersfield, California. She writes mostly about what any other student in college would; classes, friends, incidents that happen along the way, etc. I think you can get a decent idea of her personality from her writing, which is good. Though, nothing really stood out to me in the writing and read like other sites by teenagers who seem to have a lot of energy; very “oh, i wanna post this really quick!” type of style.

On the rest of the site, you’ll find a links to music, cliques, pictures, art and drawings and other things of interest to Corie.

The site overall is so-so and I can’t find anything to rave about.
corie.doublethinker.com

For starters, this isn’t a site you can look at in a work environment or with small children around – not unless you want your coworkers and impressionable youngsters to get a few shots of some naked women to last them for the day. I feel better about myself now that I’ve warned random readers of the links they could encounter at Gratiot Blog.

Aside from never knowing what I was finding as I clicked on links throughout the weblog entries, I had a hard time following this weblog.

Sure, I found the links to alternative meats to be quite interesting, as I never knew there were so many alternatives to eating a hamburger. But alternatively, I can’t help but feel QUITE disgusted after reading the first two lines of “Confessions of an Anal Addict”. Not to blame the author for subjecting myself to such information, but just an example to show prospective readers the wide range of external links they’ll find scattered throughout the typical weblog entry.

It’s hard to tell which content actually relates to the author, and which is just made up on the fly to throw out some entertaining links. I’ve never heard strawberry shortcake compared to what the author’s compared it to in the latest weblog entry as of July 2.

I couldn’t make heads or tails of the archive format. They aren’t exactly grouped according to their proper date. Since the author does use plenty of links on a regular basis, some of the hyperlinks included in the archived entries are broken, which leads you to wonder what type of surprise the author may have planted for you to find.

Is this a BAD weblog? Not at all. Is it a GREAT weblog? I couldn’t find anything that made it stand out from the rest. Gratiot Blog