Month: July 2005

An unfortunately stereotype I’ve started to make while reviewing weblogs is that a good number of blogs hosted by Blog*spot aren’t really ones that can stand out from a crowd or draw in more new visitors on a daily basis. I was so glad Gizmo’s (Non)sense didn’t wind up in that category. Without so many stories involving his pants somehow getting torn or mysteriously removed, I was entertained the entire time I read.

As I always do with a site using Blogger, I clicked on the author’s profile. Pete, who refers to himself as _gizmo, is a 27 year old IT professional living and working in Dublin, Ireland. Reading a blog by someone my age halfway around the world sounded like it was right up my alley.

Oh, Pete’s a geek. I mean that in the sincerest way possible, but it was just blatantly obvious from the start. Being a closet-geek, I was able to easily proceed from one of his entries to the next. He writes about new technology and their pros and cons, links to specific programs Pete finds useful, and even his experience attending the launch of new software.

To off-balance his geekiness, Pete recounts numerous stories of how he’s so prone to absolute embarrassing disasters. As I read these posts, I could empathize with the level of embarrassment he would have had to felt as he’s running out of an office building with nothing put a t-shirt wrapped around his waste to hide the fact that his pants have completely been ripped off. On the other hand, I could also do nothing but laugh hysterically at the thought of Pete and his boss half racing and half hobbling out of a server room with blood dripping from both of their backsides.

I hate ending a review on an uncouth note, but that’s what happens when Blogger templates are used. For some reason that I couldn’t figure out, the content of the sidebar doesn’t actually start showing up on the sidebar until the posts that fill the main portion of the site are complete. For readers, it makes it hard to locate things like the archive links or the author’s Blogger profile. It only distracts from the site when readers need to access the archives. Other than that, the colors are fine and don’t wreak havoc on my eyes like some of the templates I’ve seen.

While I hope Pete won’t run into a problem of locking lips with an Irish Army General again, I would certainly visit this site again to indulge in some of this author’s self-depreciating humor. After all, if you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at? Well… in this case, you can always laugh at Pete.

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I first get to this site and I realize it’s not a regular written blog, it’s a photoblog. Usually I don’t mind photoblogs but I just can’t seem to wrap my head around this one. Perhaps this is because it’s aimed for adult men and I’m a teenage girl… but I’ll do my best to judge fairly.

There are a TON of ads on this site. There are ads above the header, between posts, in the sidebar, and a huge chunk below all the posts. There’s also a Google search bar. Other than that, there isn’t much for the template. It’s simple, white and grey. What else can I say?

The entries are all pictures of Indian women… that’s all there is. The site says “adult” but all of the women are clothed, so it doesn’t matter. If you don’t have a fetish with Indian women, you can at least look at their beauty I suppose, since many of the women are quite pretty. There are over 500 posts of pictures… usually one picture per post… over and over again.

There isn’t anything wrong with this site, but there’s not much of a reason for it. The ads really distract from the posts, not that there’s too much to distract from. I won’t even suggest subscribing to the feed, since most feed readers don’t show images and that’s all you’re going to get. You’d be better off doing a Google image search for any pictures that you want to get… most likely that’s how this blog acquired them, anyway.NULL

At first, I didn’t think this blog was one I’d like. It had a very basic title, and usually I tend to go for the blogs that have really off-the-wall title. However, I’m willing to give it a chance because any blogger that notices spelling and grammar as much as I do does catch my attention.

This blog has a very basic design, but that’s just fine. There are Google ads, as so many blogs seem to have lately, but I didn’t even notice them at first. Steph is a member of a few blogrings, which I suppose are great if you’re into those sorts of things. I personally am not, but I don’t mind seeing them so much.

The entries really are something else. I enjoyed reading the humorous accounts of Steph’s children, and I can’t help but smile as I read through them. There are many different instances when this “Blogging Mommy” references her kids in a comedic way, and I love every one.

There aren’t too many extras. The sidebar has got some links and stuff, some of which in the form of graphic buttons, but other than that (and the hiding Google ads) there isn’t too much to clutter the site. This is great, since cramped and cluttered blogs can often distract from the writing, and we wouldn’t want to distract from the posts on this site.

All in all, this is a very good blog, and I’ve already added it to my list of feeds I read. There’s just so much I like about this blog, and so little I dislike. Take the time to check it out for yourself… you won’t be disappointed.NULL

I click the link to get to mooncolors and I notice that this isn’t a regular word blog… it’s a photoblog. A quite nice one, however. There was only one post that I saw up, but with a little scrolling I find the archives area where I can view one other photo at a time.

The pictures are beautiful. They’re taken and edited to look like they were painted (at least that’s what I gathered; there wasn’t much description to them) and done quite well. There aren’t very many posts, and there’s practically nothing to read except for the rare comment or two on pictures, and most of the pictures aren’t explained at all other than the title given to them.

The layout is very simple, black and purple, and the only extras there are to speak of are links, either internal or links to the photographer’s Cafe Press site for the most part. There’s a blog band in the top for Make Poverty History… I guess the blogger is somewhat of an activist.

Basically, there isn’t really enough content on this site to discern it as being good or bad. It’s definitely just starting out and could potentially become a wonderful photoblog if it stays up, but for now there really isn’t enough to keep anyone hooked.NULL

When I first arrived at this blog, I was slightly confused. The first post is in Swedish… the rest of the posts on the page are in English, but the fact that the first one wasn’t caught me off guard and started the review off on a bad foot.

We get to the second post, since I lack the ability to read the first, and it’s skewed over to the right so I have to scroll to read it. This could by chance be just my browser and resolution (since I’m in Opera, which isn’t a commonly used browser, and I don’t have my resolution set at what most people do), but it made it slightly irritating. Then he starts the entry by telling us what he’s going to be blogging about in that entry. Bad… don’t start with summaries.

The design isn’t very aesthetically pleasing. The entries aren’t lined up at all, and there are three separate instances of Google ads. There’s a floating-like banner ad at the top of the page, part of which is covered by Google ads and another part is covering up what I’m assuming is the navigation.

There are way too many extras on this blog, too. There’s no reason to have clusters of 80×15 banners mixed in with links (that’s right… clusters. Not groups; random clusters at the bottom of the page…) Along with the Google ads and various javascript links, this blog is way too busy.

In conclusion, I really wanted to like this blog, since it seems I’ve been really harsh on blogs lately (many low scores coming out, it seems), but I just couldn’t. I may be being too nice by giving this blog a 1 out of 5.NULL