Month: January 2005

I liked Paper Sack Lifetime immediately for its humor. Humor is hard to do right, but Mr. Kyle has it going on. The tagline is “Think of it like a photoblog with no pictures.” Funny stuff.

Visually the site could use a little work. The type is black on a dark grey background, so its hard to read. The blog is in a table that stretches past the edge of the browser window, requiring left to right scrolling. It could use some margins on the left, since the text butts up next to the left edge.

It looks like the blog has only been in existence since January of this year, but there are copious entries. Most of the postings are semi news stories. True bizarre and stupid events.

It’s worth a visit, and it will make you smile.Paper Sack Lifetime

The purported purpose of the site is evident from the title: “Busy Moms Online”: provide helpful information for busy moms, online!

About 40% of the front page is devoted to “non-content” material: ads. My major question about this site: was it actually an attempt to provide useful information for “busy moms” or was it trying to sell me something?

The design is pleasant and not too busy. There is an annoying bead board background that appears while the page is loading, but it recedes to the border of the page eventually. The colors are muted shades of green and gray and the text sits on an off-white background that makes it easy to read.

I am not in the target audience for this site, and I neither scrapbook nor do arts and crafts projects. I do cook, I occasionally babysit, and went to daycare, so I looked in sections where I might be able to judge the usefulness of the information. I’m sorry to say that there was nothing particularly useful or insightful in the places I checked. There were recipes, none inspired, and the list of questions for daycare providers was simply common sense. In fact, everything on this site is simply common sense or a repackaging of information easily available elsewhere.

The technical quality of writing was quite good. This is especially impressive given that the author is a non-native speaker of English. Credit her for an excellent job of copy-editing. There was nothing particularly humorous or meaningful in this site, however. The author claims to care about what she’s doing, but it really doesn’t show through in the writing. The style is bland and distant.

There are no bonus features on the site. There is a short “about me” section that neatly explains the purpose of the site. There is a band of google ads across the top and a list of “sponsors” in the right hand column. I didn’t click through on the ads or the sponsors. The contents of the site are listed by category, which is handy. All the substantive links are operable.

I cannot recommend visiting the site. I found it boring and cliché. It aimed for the lowest common denominator of the stereotypical “busy mom.” It is packed with ads that distract from the actual content, and that content is not very useful. I give it a 2, mostly because the spelling and grammar is correct and the design is pretty. Busy Moms Online

Maybe it’s just me, but it took a few minutes to figure out what “animusmeansmind” read or said – but I finally got it – “Animus means Mind” in case anyone else was stumped by this blog name.

But moving on … this blog is by Jade, who is a high school student. I say this because I myself passed through high school quite sometime ago and so I am not very interested in things that high schoolers usually write about. But this young lady has excellent writing skills! She does not update very often, about once every 10 days, but her posts are usually detailed, long but not too long, and interesting. She stills write about the usual things that happen during high school life, like almost getting into trouble with the almost cops (i.e. school ‘police’), getting into it with fast food employees and such, but it’s the kind of reading which instead of making you think, “God I hate reading about this high school, teenager crap” instead leaves you reminiscing with a smile, taking you back to when you actually did that sort of thing, and thinking, “Oh yes, that was fun then, but what the hell was I thinking?” and then you want to read a few more of the archived entries.

Jade even managed to make a cute blogdrive template with a cartoon female vixen. The blog is very easy to navigate, but there is not much more content other than the blog. There is a link to fiction written by Jade. This was ‘interesting’ reading, and as she points out at the other site, the stories are RATED R (or as I would like to point out, rated XXX).

Overall, this blog makes for a good read. What I liked most was it was a fun read and a look into the mind of a high school student. I think it could be improved by updating a bit more often.Looking for My Animus

Glancing at the title to this blog I thought that it would be a lifestyle slanted blog. And you are not much far off the mark. It’s a blog written by Fiona, who is an author over in cold cold England. Her blog is about her musing in regards to her work, her thoughts and questions that the above combined result in.

The blog is another of those basic blogger templates. It’s white, with green breaking up the white as well as the entry’s. There isn’t much clutter, at all actually. She has her links to other pages as well as some other miscellaneous links at the bottom of her side bar. A link to her own website, which gives you a broader view of the author herself as well as links to Amazon and her book that she’s written. Outwardly I don’t see anything wrong with this blog at all, unfortunately, I’m just not interested in the whole “self help” kind of blog.

I am not sure why this blog is listed under the creative writing category, as I think it falls more into a personal category. It speaks about self help issues, mainly taken from the author’s day to day happenings that she might write about and turned into little questions or as she calls them Coaching Exploration’s, how to solve certain things about yourself, how to find other ways of dealing with things that you may not be dealing with.

Basically it’s another self help weblog.

Which is why I gave it a 2. It doesn’t have anything really wrong with it, it might get better, it might not, but it just doesn’t interest me either.
creative living

When first looking at this blog, the reader is struck with the simplicity of the author’s style of writing. Not only is the blog simple in the deliverance of some complex concepts, so is the style of writing which is flowing and straight to the point. Reading one post may not be enough for the reader to understand what sorts of topics are dealt with in this blog. However, as one goes through the other entries the “musings” are quite clear. Putting your point across to the multitude of readers who come from different backgrounds, as most bloggers are, is not a moot point and the author puts her point quite easily across in her posts.

“Creative Living” as the blog title says, gives you a good idea on what this blog is all about. On reading through the posts one would find instances and ideas that give thought for improving one’s outlook of life and personal notions. All these ideas are interlaced with thought-provoking instances which bring a smile to one’s face as well as food for thought. This blog is good reading for anyone interested in knowing another point of view and take on common personal and individual self exploration thoughts.

The design is simple and pleasant. There aren’t any bright colors that could distract the eye from the context of the blog to the design itself. The links on the right side of the blog need to be more organized as they seem a little haywire without proper arrangement.

All in all it is a good site for people who love to enjoy reading about self exploration and an occasional poem. The blog is quite interactive and can entrap the reader.
creative living