Month: April 2006

It didn’t take me any time at all to finish reading the archives of “Life As I Know It”. Here I sit a few hours after reading it all, though, and can’t really recall any of the information I read from the author’s posts.

The author is John. He’s a Christian bachelor living in the St. Louis area, according to his Blogger profile. Before I began reading, I thought I would be able to relate on a few levels – single and living in a metropolitan area. I’m also very familiar with the St. Louis area, hopefully giving me another avenue where I could connect with the writer. Unfortunately, I was zero for three in the “connection” field.

John does tech support for a local newspaper. He sometimes writes about his day at work. Church, his family, and music are other topics of interest that John focuses at in his posts.

The posts are very straightforward and there’s nothing really below the surface of his posts. They don’t require readers to think or formulate opinions or questions about what they’ve just read. They’re just vague. It almost seems as if John walks on egg shells to make sure he doesn’t go against what any of his readers would think.

The site’s hosted by Blogger, so it naturally has a Blogger template. Thankfully, it’s a simple one that’s very easy to navigate and keeps things simple. John lists a few of his favorite links on the sidebar, but that’s all of the customizing he’s bothered to do on the site.

Recommending the site to other readers is easy if they are just looking for a quick weblog read. What you see is what you get in this weblog – the straight facts, very little opinion, but very clear writing.
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I am always awed by members of an older generation embracing new media and technology, and wish I could do more to help those, like my grandparents, who literally fear computers and the internet. So when I first logged into “Watercolor, Pen, Photography & More” I was happy to find our author Jerry Dreesen is a 68 year old man from Indiana whose artistic skill must cause him some distress by the basic blogger template. On my screen width (1024 pixels) his beautiful images are too large for the table causing the right hand menu to obscure them.

Jerry’s website is just as the title states, an outlet for creative expression including some illustration, photography, haiku poetry and more. The artwork has a notably traditional Japanese feel, very minimalist and beautiful which I enjoy a lot. I’ll confess, I am a fan of this style. Some of the “photo-haiku” posts border on being a little sentimental but the shots are lovely and the poetry is easy to read.

The choice of black background is certainly intentional as it frames the artworks nicely, and true to the Japanese style the posts are single works of art and nothing more. No distracting monologue or waffly diatribe from young people confused and angry. On the contrary Jerry’s work is confident and peaceful. My only concern would be that the template design used for the site could be further reduced, header removed, distracting lines done away with. If the site design was as minimal as the work it displays, this unity would improve the overall feel tenfold.

An ancient practice
in a modern gallery
brings joy to us all.
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