Month: July 2002

If you are into the wonderful world of Anime (pronounced AH-nee-may, meaning a style of Japanese comic book and video cartoon animation in which the main characters have large doe-like eyes) then this is the place for you to be. If you are not into these characters, then don’t worry because you are still more than welcome to drop by.



At the main entrance of ‘Afterhorizon’ [today is always tomorrow], you are welcomed by a reclining figure bent over a pendant that illuminates the night in a mysterious way. Hmmm, this is interesting. You have the choice of either going directly to the blog via a link or clicking on one of two other digits (1 and 2). I feel daring and go for the less obvious route.



Number one leads to a Dutch poem entitled ‘Nacht’ which means night. “Laat me dromen, Laat me gaan, Voor altijd hier, blijven staan.” Let me dream, let me go, for always here, standing still.



Alright, now let’s try number two. This link leads to another short poem, but this time in good old English, so no need to translate. The title is ‘Small’ and it goes like this: “soft music, unable to hear, I will hold my breath, try to taste and feed my pain, lie awake and stay insane.”



Already a lot of impressions and I haven’t even seen the blog yet. I like this, I like it alot. It has put me in the appropriate mood, perked my curiosity. Not quite knowing what to expect, I click the link to let myself go into the after horizon, for always here, standing still.



Corona is 19 years old and speaks a combination of Dutch, English and other self-made words (as she describes them). She has two cats, a mouse, and don’t forget her mother now. And of course she is really into Animes.



Many Web sites are devoted to Animes, often to an obscene extreme. However, this site has a nice design, and the use of anime figures is tastefully used to provide a balanced site, unlike the usual anime website which plaster these figurines all over the place. She has regular updates, not long entries, but consistent, to the point and sharp, often expressing herself with poetry or references to Animes or fairy tales. There are even occasional pictures one can click on to enlarge (a bit boring for me though). You don’t have to be into Animes to enjoy this site, though if you are you will definitely find this world Corona is starting to create and elaborate a very interesting one.



One area of attention would be the small print which makes difficult reading (seems everyone is hooked to this small font-size) and the regular spelling errors can be distracting for those more demanding readers like myself.



There are not a whole lot of comments to her entries, but just enough to keep things going and making it interactive enough with short and choppy exchange of ideas.



Looking through the archives, I came across the following entry: “There’s something nagging me about this log, It’s not that personal and at the same time maybe it is. Because I dont think i’m that different in real life. What you read is what you get. I’ll change conversation subjects while your not looking. I’ll ignore when I don’t want to hear something and I always have to do the dishes. In a step to make this log more personal I added poetry to the main page.” Pretty neat idea, I thought as I went back and reread the poems with this in mind. Makes sense.



If you like Animes then come to this world after the horizon, and even if you are not familiar with these creatures drop by anyway for inspiration. Let me dream, let me go.afterhorizon.com

When you first arrive at ‘Twisted Soul’ you are confronted by this bizarre splash screen showing I am not quite sure what. One quick click gets you past this scary person-thing and you are on your way. Okay Noel aka “Lady Chinita” come on and show us your stuff. Here is the essence of this weblog. Noel was born on Christmas day and is living in New York. His best advice to you is: “Life Sux but we need to move on and strive for the better life next time” he writes.



First impressions are a lot of cars, beautiful babes in bikinis on the beach, and a bunch of other random pictures scattered all over the place. There is a blend of various subjects that include articles about killing whales, the Winter Olympics, ALOT of cover girls and ALOT of sports cars. Each entry includes short and not very deep comments. The words seem hastily written as if this blogger was in a hurry to get somewhere. It is obvious that he has a busy life and not that much time to sit down and write. (Too) much space is quickly filled up with lines and lines of what appears to be some kind of poetry and/or music lyrics.



There is a clever use of webcam links, where if so inclined you can also add your own webcam link by sending him an email request.



The general design is not optimal for reading the blog entries. Bright red for a background is not easy on the eyes. The banner at the top of the page is enticing and nice to look at, but it leaves little room over for the rest of the page that is sectioned into frames. Now, the scrollbar on the LEFT-hand side of the daily entries really got me confused at first, but perhaps this has to do with his Asian background. Okay, I get it.



The navigation bar smack down the middle is not that intuitive at first, but you get used to it. Actually it is an interesting way to get around. There is a reference list with lots of links, some of which unfortunately lead to nowhere land. There are his daily reads, friendly sites, dot-coms, gay, etc. If you just want to get somewhere else, then there are enough links to do that, only a click away. Yeah, you could say with perfect honesty that this weblog is pretty twisted, in more ways than one. An okay read.Twisted

“The Obvious?” I think not. You’re typical blog on the web? Probably not. This is a great site. At first I wasn’t really turned on to the layout since it’s a typical Blogger layout. But once I got into read the site, I really liked it.



This site is mainly composed of excerpts from other sites ranging from other blogs, to online magazines to personal stories by the author. It’s almost like a “food for thought” type-site.



The posts are not random excerpts of silly, meaningless ideas and thoughts, but are thought-provoking writings on philosophy, poems, everyday thoughts and everything in between. They are funny, serious and sometimes plain weird such as the writing on the Pope being Catholic that might confuse you. However they’ll make you scratch your head for a while which is what writing should make you do once in a while.



If you’d like a feel of the web from a more, thought-provoking perspective, or even looking for a taste of writings by other bloggers, then I’m sure you’ll find something on this site to your liking. This is a definite must visit.

The Obvious?

When I saw the title of this website, I instantly thought it’d probably be by a teenage girl, revolve around the pop music genre. I was right on the nose.



My favorite part of the site was the CD player navigation menu at the top of the site. Great idea, and very easy to use, in my opinion.



In the journal entires, the links are the same color as the text. You don’t know where to click or what to click on unless you’re moving your mouse over the text. The text itself was a bit difficult to read on the graphic that’s been chosen for the background.



The weblog itself was a very quick read. Alyssa started the weblog on Dec 10, and has faithfully updated it quite regularly. The entries are very short, however, and usually just talk about the happenings of the actual site, or some other event with another personal website.



Overall, the site itself is quite extensive, and there’s obviously been a lot of work and research done for certain parts of it. Alyssa has some real talent here, and it should be interesting to see how it shows over time.Pop-Sanity.com

This is the first camgirl site that I am aware of that has submitted themselves to be reviewed here at TWR. Normally I would have put her under personal, but the phrase, camgirl just seemed more appropriate.



So the first thing I notice about this site is the sweet design she has going for her site. She is very good at Photoshop and she shows off her skills. This design (and all previous designs) has a music theme to them, which is a good thing considering the name.



Now unlike the stereotypical camgirl, Alyssa does not completely sell herself out. Most of her posts are pretty standard camgirl stuff, but there are noticeable differences about her posts and theirs’. For starters, she doesn’t have “buy me stuff” at the bottom of each of her posts. Second off, she doesn’t use too many “aim” words other than lol. Third, she doesn’t make those stupid smilie faces in her weblog like 🙂 or ;P or any number of them… All of those stupid things that deter me from reading the typical camgirl sites are not in this one.



So I start to delve deeper into the site and I realize this girl has one huge site that she must maintain. She has a section called “Music” that has 16 “pop” stars all with a music page about them. Some of them have more info, while others just have a background section, but that is impressive.



Even the parts where she tries to make a little extra money are well done. I am not going to tell you how, that you have to find for yourself. Just know that her site doesn’t have all those stupid fake links to parts of her site to porn sites for her to make money from.



Over all I was quiet pleased with this site. I found a camgirl that actually knows how to be different and honest, without selling oneself out to the crowds.Pop-Sanity.com