Month: June 2002

Green. Simple. Pleasant. A small piece of introductory blurb at the top introduces Diana, the author, as “a literally little un-lady.” She goes on to state that she’s soon to be a “college chick”, and that she is “sick of highschool and men!” It’s a very useful introduction, I find, as it quickly gives me a good, initial idea of who the author is, and what kind of blog she has.

It is a blog of the personal kind, and what I would tend to classify as an online teenage diary. There is the usual stuff about school, prom dates, friends, and so on. Diana, I gather, is involved in productions of stage musicals, and sings in a choir. It sounds like she attends a school of performing arts, though I have not been able to confirm this from her blog.

Looking at the archives, I found only two entries, both dating from March, 2001. But, from what I’ve read, I don’t feel I’m missing much. What I’ve read is just what I would expect to read in this kind of blog.

Diana also has a home page, but it does rather suffer from poor presentation. It’s the sort of thing that gives rise to the use of ‘homepage’ as a derogatory term. Some unfortunate colour choices when it comes to readability, combined with some cutesy animated graphics, say it all.

Back to the blog, to sum up, I really can’t say that there’s anything special here. There’s nothing particularly bad about it, either. The presentation is good, and the introduction was not misleading. In the end, it just is what it is: just another teenage blog.

Diana

Meet Tim, he’s bald and lives in Texas … but we love him anyway.



TimBrat.com is a site dedicated entirely to Tim and his daily adventures. I liked Tim’s writing, it’s structurally well developed with relatively good content.



This web log seems to have a nice fan base and gets plenty of comments and things of that sort. It’s always nice to see a web log that’s well read and deserves to be. Not always does popularity = quality (Britney Spears for example), but this web log surely does prove that there are still people out there who appreciate quality and that’s a good thing.



I didn’t particularly like the design of TimBrat.com … I’m not much for stars and neon. But it’s okay overall and navigates well.



I can’t say I didn’t enjoy this web log because indeed, I did. It’s everything that a 4 should be … in fact, it set’s the bar for 4’s everywhere … >=) Enjoy.Tim’s Lounge

Drifting Castles is a weblog written by Kara, a 16 year-old girl attending high school. As she states, “God only knows what I’m going to study when I go off to college.” This is her own personal weblog where she in general just plainly rambles about her life and the world in general. There is this oil pastel drawing as a banner at the top of the page, and it looks vaguely like a castle. One cannot help but wondering what this has to do with her site, whether or not she made it herself.



Kara describes herself as “I’m a golfer and competetive [sic] swimmer, a slight perfectionist, I love to read, and clothes are my passion.” While she has just recently begun writing in this weblog, she keeps it up-to-date, mostly with short to medium-sized entries, but when she gets going she can produce quite a flood of words. Kara writes a lot, has much to say. Tons of activities keep her busy, and it is a wonder she has any time left over at all to write her daily entries. They are mostly about her and the events center on her own thoughts, from highlighting hair, golf lessons, feeling frustrated and confused, that kind of thing.



Often enough, girl problems pop up. One especially entertaining entry is about how her bra strap snaps off, just before classes, and she has to search all over the place for a safety pin, or having her cell phone go off accidentally at school where they are banned and she risks grave punishment (it rings in the middle of her chemistry class during an experiment).



Another example: “…have been doing mock trial work. The freaky thing is that I get such a high off this stuff – having to work fast and being under stress and just having fun… it’s awesome.”



One point requiring attention is the small font size that makes it difficult reading at times, especially for the longer entries. However, the overall design is pleasing enough, with overlapping windows for links, bio, archives and even a so-called tagboard where one can enter messages directly. (I tried it with a simple “Nice site you have” but for some got the message “Error: no vulgarity”). In her archives there are a couple of missing graphics (placeholders show up).



This weblog is not a bad start and building up the momentum as it has this year should lead to quite a collection of stories by Kara. This is worth the read, especially for other teenagers of that age. Perhaps she can enlighten us on why she chose the title of Drifting Castles.Drifting Castles

My first impression when I arrived at “Who Knows?” was; ‘standard’, and I really didn’t expect a lot. I could not have been more wrong. At first it didn’t look any different than many of the personal weblogs out there, than I started to read.


I count myself very lucky to have “Who Knows” as my first review. This site is what I would call a ‘true journal’. The author writes passionately about many of the things she cares deeply about. In one entry she describes a night she spent at Hogar Infantil (an orphanage in Southern Mexico, the author spent a couple weeks there) that was so descriptive I felt like I was there. I started reading at the arhives and worked my way through to the last entry like it was a book I couldn’t set down. There is no ‘about’ section but after reading the first month you know the author very well, she writes a lot and writes well, there are entries for almost everyday since the site was started.


The site design is nice and pleasing to the eye, nothing fancy or flashy. This site is definatly about content.


There is a photo section that in itself is almost an ‘about’ section, and a links site that helps you understand what the author believes in, not just a bunch of ‘shout outs’ to friends.


In summation, when I was done reading, I felt like I knew the author and at times during the reading, I felt both happy and sad, because her writing takes you along with her. Go to this site if you want to see a ‘true journal’, I’ll go because I want to see what happens tomorrow. Who Knows???

A nice bright blue caught my eye first, and then the silloete, and I wondered if it was Topknot or not! A lighter blue broke up the vivid blu and white background, with nice, easy and large font to read. I expected a personal blog with personal insite into the Topknot way of life.



I loved the humour in this blog as it was dry but funny! I actually laughed out aloud at the story of his dads computer dying! This was very written and appealed to my sense of humour. It is the story of this mans life with pictures thrown in for good measure. There is a comment system to add you feelings and time stamp as to when the post was updated, which I liked. The links are to external sites and some of them are bizarre, such as the sports post which leads you to a cheese racing link!!



The design is nice with the added feature of letting you see what others have commented. The links are selective, but cover other blogs and links to places of interests to the author. The site also boasts translations into other languages, so this can and does appeal to all nationalities. this made this weblog stick out as I have not previously seen that before. I felt that thesefeatures were a plus to the weblog, though I was distracted by the translator service!!!



If you like to have a titter at anothers persons life, then take a visit here. It is humourous and well written. The links take you to some strange places, but they are equally as intersting! this gets a big thumbs up from me, and I will certainly visit here again, but that is just me!



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