Month: August 2005

So I click on through to Jalapeno Burns, which in case you hadn’t already guessed is the name of the weblog I’m about to begin talking about, and the first thought that struggles to the surface of my partially-functional brain is “wow, cartooney.” My spell-checker complains immediately about the word cartooney, but I say “Damn the spellchecker!”

The author’s name is Jesse Gersten, and he writes funny things, so I am immediately jealous and defensive and determined to give him a lousy review. I read some of the first posts, which are in September 2004, and some of his recent ones, and the next thing I notice is Mr Gersten writes about stuff that happens in his own life. This makes me feel all superior and cheerful because I hate personal weblogs with a vengeance and should have no problem at all giving him the big thumbs-down. Then I notice that he writes gooder than me, and is funnier, and he has this clever “a very random blog excerpt” on each post, and draws neat little cartoons to go along with the stories, and now I’m really starting to get jealous but what can you do? He’s damn near perfect, curse him.

Ok, it’s all about him, and I hate that, but it is funny, and it works, dammit. And then I’m reading some more and I can see that he also does some humorous commentary on stories in the news, so it is not just about him, which doesn’t improve my mood any.

The design is cartoonish, as previously mentioned, and bright and suits the tone of the content admirably. The weblog is powered by WordPress.

Mr Gersten also includes a funny biography and a cartoon gallery, and these are pretty good, if you like that kind of thing, and are not looking for an excuse to say bad things about him.

Yeah, so, I am totally dejected at this point, having failed utterly to find any fault with Jalapeno Burns. It’s funny. It has cartoons. It’s worth a read, or two.NULL

The Sixth Tool is a blog written by an anonymous baseball scout in the US whose job it is to scout out young talent that will one day make it big-time! According to the author “Cutter”, the weblog was only created as way to get some issues off his chest as recommended by a sports psychologist!

As a refreshing change from the norm, this site uses a custom layout which features a baseball pitch as it’s logo and a nice colour scheme of a gray background, green text and lilac links. I think it works very well and it makes this blog very easy to read!

The posts, I found, were very entertaining to read as the author presents his “rolling commentary that takes you on the road from city to city in a high stakes search for talent that will one day make it to the Big Show.” His most recent post was about attending a game to watch an unknown player, a player he wanted all to himself. However, he would have to sit right in the area of two rival scouts who were intending on watching a totally different player but on the sight of the authors radar gun and after catching a glimpse of the prospects pitch, they literally were falling over themselves trying to get out into the parking lot so they could get their own radar guns! As the author says, gone are the days when top talent goes unnoticed until draft day!

While not being a fan of baseball, I found this blog to be highly entertaining and I appreciated the fact that it’s from a unique perspective that we rarely get to see in any sport for that matter! The blog manages to effectively get across the highs and lows of scouting in an addictive writing style that will leave a smile on your face! I can safely say that this is one of the best sports related blogs that I have ever come across and even if you’re not interested in baseball, I can assure you that you’ll enjoy it!

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Things didn’t really get off to a good start when I first visited this site. It was a basic blogger template and an anomaly somewhere in the code resulted in me having to side scroll across the screen to fully see the navigation bar which contains varying amounts of addons that don’t really fit in with the colour scheme being used in the template.

The author, “PHDMONKEY” is a PHD Student studying Neuroscience and living in the UK. From reading his first blog entry though, we learn that he was originally from Scotland, but now lives in England which probably results in a “dodgy” accent! Reading up through the blog, we see that the author has many pet hates, one of which being people he bumps into as it results in him having to apologise, something he doesn’t seem to like doing!

The authors most recent post at the time of writing this review was a very interesting one. It started out rather innocently with the author suggesting a new religion called “soapism”. “Soapism?” I hear you cry, yes, soapism! Soapism isn’t like other “complex, monotheistic, dogmatic religions” and doesn’t really warrant any rules except the fact that if you’re good in life you get to Hollyoaks when you die and hang out with all the cast members for all eternity, however if you’re bad, you’ll go straight onto the set of Eastenders where you’ll have the opportunity to speak to actors and actresses who have gone past their sell by date!

From that post, it’s clear to see that the author has a rather dark sense of humour… my sense of humour. For that reason, I found this blog to be very interesting content wise and the posts never failed to entertain me. It’s only a shame that the blog doesn’t appear to be very popular!

To bring a close to this review, I would like to emphasise the quality of the posts! They really are excellently structured and well worth the read. If you didn’t have to look at some out of place plug ins then the blog would be surely capable of a solid 5/5!NULL

When I first got to this blog, I was afraid it wouldn’t be in English (the title didn’t quite sound English to me). How glad I was that it is, indeed, in English and therefore I can review it.

This is the blog of Shirin Adl, who lives in Oxford, England. She used to live in Iran, as we learn from her profile, and she is married to a man she refers to as being beautiful. The writing in the blog is slightly humorous and shows a bit of a personal side of Shirin that you might not have guessed if you just saw her on the street.

There are entries ranging from those about condoms (the most recent), humorous quotes from people Shirin knows (a few posts down), Write Club (where people participate in each writing part of a story; Shirin supplies us with the rules as well as the story), and even about Shirin’s comic (the last two posts on the first page). They’re interesting enough to keep you reading throughout the whole thing, but not quite interesting enough to make you want to pass along the word.

The design for this blog is the plain Minima template for Blogger, probably the most popular one there is. I’ve been trying not to judge Blogger blogs as harshly as I’d like to, but when you see so many of them that are exactly the same, it gets hard not to. At least people could get a unique template for the blog so it’s not as similar to the other Blogger blogs out there. But… enough about the template.

There aren’t really any extras on this blog, unless you count the links (which don’t count!). This isn’t bad… in fact, the simpler blogs are sometimes better when it comes down to it. I’ve got to give her points for not having the urge to put every single thing into the layout.

All in all, there’s nothing bad about this blog, but there isn’t anything remarkable about it either. There were some parts that captivated me and other parts that weren’t all too great (and I’m not just talking about the template here), but most of the blog was pretty average. Therefore, I must give this blog a 3. It’s not far off from being a great blog, it’s just not quite there yet.NULL

To find out what this site was all about, I didn’t have to look far! Not only does the URL give it away but on the front page we are greeted to the message “This is a cell phone reviews site with the latest reviews on the most popular cell phones”. I like these kind of sites, the ones that tell you what they’re all about to save you digging! The site was completely devoid of any info about the author who just goes by the name of “Admin”.

The layout is nice and simple and there doesn’t appear to be any bugs apart from the Google Search Engine box being slightly larger then the other boxes in the navigation bar. Ad’s do seem to be a small problem in my opinion though as I counted no less than 20 Ad’s on the first page! If you’re someone who visits blogs as a break from being barraged by ad’s on more mainstream sites then you probably won’t appreciate the ad’s!

With my attention now focused on the content, I realised that his style is to read reviews on other sites and then make his own comment about it in the blog which is a lot easier (and cheaper!) than buying every phone to test them! His content is extremely informative and to the point which is a requirement for a review site! He gets his news from a variety of different sites as well and adds his own opinion to the latest announcements which makes the visit an entirely different experience then visiting one of his sources!

Overall, this site does exactly as it states it would! It offers reviews of all the latest phones and industry news and when the time comes to replace my “building block” of a phone, I will almost certainly check out this site before buying!

To conclude my review, I’ll focus on the key areas of the blog. First the layout is nice and simple and it works well with the theme of the site. The content is relevant to the blog so you know that by visiting the site your only going to get what you came for. One thing that does bring down my opinion of this site is the amount of ad’s although if these were downscaled then the site could easily score a 4.5 or maybe even more!
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