Month: February 2002

I thought, since I put in the new back end, I should be the first person to write a review with the new back end. So here it goes.

Our love was comfortable is the definition of a personal weblog. Gretchen is a student in college, who decided she needed a weblog to let us in about her. She actually started it so she could comment in other people’s live journal weblogs, but then grew to posting in her own.

The good points of her weblog are the posts about thoughts she is having at that moment. These bring you closer to figuring out who she is and what she wants. I also enjoy the chat snippets, as I find those, in general, to be some of the funniest posts around.

However, I did find something extremely annoying for me: 60% plus of the posts are “What kind of ______” test result. She has to be one of the few people who have taken this many, and I am sure she is probably in the top 10. So if you want to find a new personality test to take, here is a blog for you.

But more about this site. The design is easy. It likes to sit on the right hand side of your browser instead of the left, which is a nice change of pace. But other than that, nothing major about it. One thing I do not like, but it is out of her control is that the about page is a standard livejournal page. Yeah there is a lot more information than what someone would make, but I want it in the same design as the site to give it that much more feeling behind it.

Overall the entire site is a general site. You can figure out who Gretchen is by all of her test results. There is a good portion that deals with her thoughts which I enjoyed, but the number of “What kind of _______” tests is very overwhelming. I think if she added a second column of all of the tests she has taken and her results linked on different pages that would be better. Overall it is a personal weblog, which has some depth to it.
our love was comfortable

Y’know, when in the very first post of a weblog you find quotes from the author like this: “you can learn so much from the people around you. and i just want to see the world in a different perspective”, you know you’re in for some pleasant reading.




Scattered throughout the weblog, Josh makes mention of God’s importance in his life or how he may be struggling to keep on the path of following God. While there are some people that choose to take religion too far, Josh does a nice job of not pushing his relgion or his beliefs out in an obvious or annoying way.




Before you steer clear from this site to avoid any Bible thumping, rest assured, there’s more than that here. I can still vividly picture Josh’s description of a fellow bus rider, which just happened to be female, reading a Playboy on the bus. His thoughts on music and recent events, for instance, are very well thought out, wonderfully written, and easy to understand.




Josh’s design is a simple one, the colors he’s chosen all look great together, and the layout makes each weblog entry easy to read.




Overall, Josh has done a very good job with every aspect of this weblog, and it’s worth the time to at least check it out.plume

From the start, it’s clear the creator of this site knows the value of

clear presentation. Pandagon, with it’s blue and white colour scheme,

and the visual Morse code theme (which reminds me of genetic

fingerprinting), instantly gave me an optimistic desire to get

reading.

Having read everything there is to read of the blog, I am left with

much the same, somewhat unfulfilled desire to read. With only three

entries on the current page, and two in the archives (both dated 29th

November, 2001), it seems this is a blog that has to be followed as it

is written. I don’t feel it’s enough to really give this blog the

review it may well deserve.

From what little there is at this time, it appears that Jesse, the

author, is doing a pretty good job. There is an entry that comes

across as a piece of creative writing, but other than that, the blog

strikes me as being Jesse’s reflections on things in and around

his life. From some of the writing, I get the impression that he is

quite an imaginative, perhaps even creative, individual. Comics seem

to feature quite strongly, but they are not what this blog is about.

To the right of the blog itself can be found the conventional sidebar

of links to other sites, archives, information about the author and

the site, and an email link. It’s quite clear what each section is

for, and there’s no clutter.

As well as giving a little information about himself, Jesse provides a

summary of the history of his websites. And, along with the blog,

that’s about all there is to this site. Having said that, Jesse also

links to his old university pages, and also his online diary, which

I found quite entertaining and humorous.

Pandagon certainly seems to be a good blog, well presented and

interestingly written, but I do wish Jesse kept archives! This is a

blog worth visiting, and I will be visiting again. With my optimism

still holding, I shall give this a four.

pandagon

My first impression of DJblog was to smile at the way DJ’s email address was written out in words on the front page. The random quote box also provided me with amusement, as the quotes where irreverent but thought-provoking.

The main domain encompasses a blog, art, links, and archives, and while his blog will be the focus of this review, his art section is worth visiting (if you’re over eighteen that is).

DJ’s blog showcases his dark, wry, sometimes caustic sense of humor. Some entries are short, offering only links and one sentence blurbs, but his commentary and observations on daily life in other posts are well-written and entertaining. DJ has a gift for turning the mundane humorous, but it would be nice to have more depth every now and then. While everyday life can provide good material for blogs, I think it would be worthwhile to have more serious discussions about topics that interest the blogger, in DJ’s case art and drawing.

His archives are probably the most fascinating aspect of this site. Old layouts have been saved for prosperity along with old entries, and from a design perspective, clicking through the evolution of this site is an interesting tour of a virtual museum of web development.

Employing a minimalist black and white color scheme highlighted by thin lines and bold fonts, the structure and layout of DJblog is simple and clean, such a breath of fresh air from the templates that have the uniform of the blogging community. It is this effective design combined with interesting if somewhat typical content that will entice most people to visit at least once or twice.DJblog

“BLOG” seems to be, quite unmistakably, the current title of this blog. There it is, at the top of a plainly grey page, with the content starting immediately beneath. A minimalist approach, and one which suggests a deliberate expression of solid, uninteresting dreariness. But just a bit too deliberate, too solid, too plain, and too grey, to be mistaken for a sign that this will be a boring blog. Yet that is exactly what it is.

Anna, the author of the blog, doesn’t seem to have much to say. Most of the entries on the current page are just short comments on things like school work and web stuff. The very few, longer entries don’t do enough to improve matters. She doesn’t tell her readers about things. All she does is state and comment. For a month’s worth of writing, this is really quite disappointing.

The design of the page, however, is pretty good. The layout is pleasingly simple and clear. The grey background is, perhaps, a little dark for the black text, but I did not find this a problem. There are no archives, though, and really nothing on the page but the blog. The only links (apart from a very few in the entries) are some links for contacting the author at the bottom of each entry. It is, indeed, a nicely minimalist design.

There doesn’t, at first, seem to be much more to the rest of the site, other than a guestbook. But that is not so. Or, at least, Anna has a lot of work in progress. What I did manage to find was a temporary home page (stating that the relaunch date for the site is 12th May, 2002), and a page of (sometimes broken) links. The links page does suffer the rather obvious problem of having grey text on a grey background, though. Fortunately, almost all of the links are graphical.

Overall, I would say this blog is not worth visiting. The lack of content is what lets Anna’s efforts down. Even those with a particular interest in online teenage diaries will find it disappointing. Perhaps Anna’s blog has a small role to play in her online social life, but that’s about it. A lot more effort in the writing is needed.

b r e a t h l e s s