Author: admin

The “Eye of Smoog” is brought to us by a 30-something Canadian woman, who describes a life epiphany involving a brain tumor, though the blog overall doesn’t tend to dwell on this at all and this fact is dwarfed by the scale of the rest of the content. The author’s profile is a good summary of her life including the brain surgery and like the rest of her site, is very, very well written. See what I did just there? I had to repeat a word to describe the quality of the writing instead of taking the time to decide on a fitting adjective.

Smoog is an odd online psuedo-nym, but our author is decidedly odd, and happy to admit it. Her oddness lends itself to some fantastically devious posts full of wit and sass that are a pleasure to read. She mentions that in real life she has a slight speech impediment and a kind of ”verbal dyslexia” which is hard to believe reading the articulate posts, she should be writing for television, this stuff is gold.

Her latest post about religious tolerance (and intolerance) is great, and sums similar feelings for me of rampant evangelism and futile attempts by traveling faith peddlers to offload their wares to good-old-fashioned scientifically learned people. She goes on to describe her sarcastic Flying-Spaghetti-Monster retort to an unsuspecting god-botherer. I love this girl!

The site itself is neatly packaged with a rather odd looking logo of an eyeball in a nest as the site header. The only thing that distracts me is the vacant space in the top right hand corner which just looks like something should be in there. Overall though the site reads well and is really, really (I did it again!) genuinely funny. Well worth the read, a highly recommended site for readers who like their blogs spicy. NULL

This is a nicely designed blog about the day-to-day life of the author, “Pewari Naan.” She uses a pseudonym, but is far from anonymous as she occasionally posts pictures of herself and, most recently, her dog (note: the photo in question was taken by the author’s child, but is not, in fact, her dog).

Pewari’s Prattle has been around since April 2003 and there is so much material that it’s hard for a new reader to get oriented. Luckily, Pewari has a “N.S.F.A.Q.” (not sure what “N.S.” stands for) where she introduces herself and the cast of characters for the blog. She does not discuss the theme of the blog.

I found the content, observations and stories, to be mildly amusing, occasionally confusing due to lack of context, and sometimes very interesting. The quality of the writing is excellent with no grammar, spelling or syntax issues. It is a pleasure to read a well-constructed sentence. While there doesn’t seem to be any particular focus or theme, each post is self-contained and well constructed. There are reoccurring characters (the author’s children and husband) so you do get a sense of the author’s life from reading several entries. The author recounts bits of her life through describing her experiences–there is something inherently interesting about seeing the world through someone else’s eyes, even if it’s only a small corner of the world and a small corner of that person’s life.

The design of the site is excellent. The template is spare, content is central and navigation is easy. The simple grey text on a white background is easy to read. All links work and the F.A.Q. and links to popular posts are right up top. There is a prominent Flickr badge, if you are interested in seeing the author’s large photo collection, and lower down there is an extensive blogroll.

I liked the site, but I don’t know if I would visit again. If I were acquainted with the author, it would be a great way of keeping up with her. As a casual reader, while I like her writing style, not knowing what to expect from the blog might keep me from returning. I’m not sure who the audience for the blog is–perhaps that’s something the author could answer.

It’s a quality site, well designed and well written. The lack of a central theme keeps it from being of greater general interest. NULL

It’s a pretty site with a picture of the author, Lisa Manzi, right up top. It is a three column format, so slightly busy, but the focus is clearly on the middle column where the content is. The author is a writer–a poet, in fact. Many of the posts contain poetry or are poetry related, but there are also personal anecdotes and political observations.

Not being a poetry fan, I didn’t find the blog compelling. The quality of the writing is good and the author impresses me as a pleasant, happy person. I’m also not drawn to the political writing, though my views are not contrary to the author’s. The author cares about what she is writing and she has been keeping the blog for quite a long time. She is a serious writer and I respect that.

The blog is well designed. The colors are pleasant and easy on the eyes. All links that I checked were functional and navigation is easy and intuitive. Thought has gone into design and it shows.

There are links to the author’s wish list, categories, recent posts, “must have books” (are we supposed to buy these for her?), and some of the typical blog-promoting badges. There is another group of links at the top of the right column with the heading “Published By:”. I couldn’t quite figure out what these links are for; possibly they are places where Ms. Manzi has published poetry or other writing.

The site is well designed but I did not find it a compelling read. If you are interested in poetry and liberal politics, though, you may find something of interest here. The writing is good and the design is pleasing. I am not the right audience for the blog, but there is probably one out there.NULL

Well, guess what, it’s a blog about sex. The blog contains graphic, not particularly original, slightly titillating descriptions of sexual encounters from a woman’s point of view. How old is this woman? I’m not sure. Where does she live? I don’t know. Is there any purpose to this blog besides the sexual stories? If there is, I can’t tell.

The stories are jumbled and rambling. The author is married but has sexual relationships with other men. I was lost in this blog–I’m not particularly interested in reading about sexual adventures without any narrative framing. Without a context for these encounters, I actually find them to be a turn off. The graphic nature of the encounters are a bit disturbing. I am sure that many people, male and female, will find this material quite compelling. The purpose? Perhaps to detail the author’s sexual adventures and fantasies? Seems likely.

The quality of the writing is adequate. Writing good erotica is quite difficult and this author does little more than a pedestrian job. The lack of character development and context is a serious weakness. The details are what makes any story compelling, even if we know it will end in a sexual encounter. The how and why also matter, not just the what.

The site design is pink and sloppy. The right column contains a random mix of links, Japanese-anime style cartoon drawings of scantily clad women, badges and counters. I can’t make much sense of the author’s method of categorizing links, but most them appear to be sexual in nature.

This blog is not my cup of tea, but if you are looking for simple stories of graphic sexual encounters, you may enjoy it.NULL

My initial feeling on Pewari’s Prattle was that it had a very simple and inviting layout. It had the “to be expected item” of a blog roll on the side bar. One thing that really caught my eye is how the author found a discrete way to link to the sites archives without stretching this huge list of month, year down the sidebar as well. They were in a simple dropdown menu for quick and easy access.

The blog was created in April 2003, so there is a lot of content on the site. If you select a month from the archives list you will see a brief excerpt of the articles the author presents. This makes it very handy for a reader to see if he or she would want to finish reading the article or move on to the next. The author posts regularly on the site, which always makes for a good blog. It has a green header with the title located in it. A simple white background, where the articles are presented, was used with an olive/green color as a border for the site. The site uses simple black, white, and green text for an easy read. A neat feature built into the site is a blog of the week. This area has a simple screenshot of the blog and a link back to the blog of the week site. Along with the archives drop box, another box appears in the sidebar. It contains category information.

This blog has a lot of personal information built into it, but it does also pose information to women. In the archives, I found a post that lead me to many other posts that were interesting… The top searches for 2005. Being male, I found one of these rather disgusting to read, but I was interested just to see how women talk about tampons and that dreaded “time of the month. The author was surprised that it made the top searched pages, but if you are a woman and you want a review on a mooncup, here is the place to read. Many things are discussed in the blog: husband, child, friends, etc. I feel this is better kept as a personal blog.

The site was designed well and she posts frequently. I would have to say that she has started taking her blog to a new level and developing her posts more than the archives show. Most of the posts are short. She is now starting to pick topics and write about them, as you can see, in the latest post on Feminism. I feel this blog has great potential just for the simple fact that the author does communicate through her blog to her readers. She is always responding to comments on her site, and I feel this helps to make a blog great. She appears to have some frequent readers. Some of the readers post comments to many posts on the blog. I rate this blog as a 3.5.
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