Category: Uncategorized

I knew going in that Hydroponics – Soil-less Gardening was probably not going to be an entertaining site. I have heard of hydroponics and I have read about it before. Just didn’t think it was a topic worthy of a blog.

The site loads with a modified blogger template. The template is shades of greens which I find fitting considering this is about plants. Other than the customizing of the template, there isn’t much else to say about the design of this standard two-column layout site.

The blog is, as I predicted, about growing plants in a soil-less environment. The site covers everything that you can think of and more. This includes proper mesh, ph levels, and more. I was amazed at how much work went into growing things this way.

My biggest gripe is that this site seems like it was only set up to earn money. It doesn’t read like the author enjoys his work, rather the posts are detailed and straight to the point. The site is littered with advertising which is kind of distracting. The fact that it is hosted on blogspot doesn’t help either. The site really needs a regular domain and could use a message board.

Overall this site is only good if you have an interest in hydroponics. I don’t think the author is trying to make the site a place for other people to share their ideas which I think the site could greatly benefit from. The site does what it does well, but because of the lost potential I have to give it a 2.5NULL

I wish there was a hybrid category for this site. It is a personal site as well as kind of a computer site. I guess that makes it a multiverse.

Shadowmyth writes from Seattle, WA, but it appears she will not be there much longer. Looks like she’s southbound to Portland Oregon. I started with her June 2007 archives. The bottom of the page says there are 15 pages of archives, but the first two pages are the only ones with content. The other pages (using http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/shadowmyth/2007/06/page/3/ and beyond) appear to be portally content through lockergnome. So I apologize if I miss any relevant entries.

The content of the blog is really random… In the month of June, we move from Firefox Extensions to Insomnia help to our author leaving home at 15 to find The Meaning of Life, to Open Source and Fashion, to tips on how to be a real friend, and a really fun sounding apple to oranges practical joke.

I like this kind of blog — the one where the author just writes what is on his or her mind… almost like magazine articles. Sitting down and reading at any point, you’re not sure what to expect. Some of the content reads like a pay-per-blog (ie: the one on bone and joint problems, the insomnia help entry, and some others) but there is no demarcation on the site stating she has been paid to write this entry, so, it could just be that random.

My favorite Shadowmyth entries are the very personal ones, like all the creeps who hit on her when she’s dancing, the how to be a friend lesson, how she has no morals, what she thinks of her kids’ experience in the public schools, and glimpses into her past. “Life has branded me with a wandering soul,” she writes. And it seems that for the past several years she has wandered, adventured, seen, existed, and now has settled down to writing about it and the tools she uses to interface with the rest of the sphere in this stage of her multiverse.

I found the writing to be really interesting but didn’t like the navigation of the archives. Overall the look and feel to the site is incredibly simple. The main pages are a gradient purple with two column layout, and clicking on an entry title opens it up in a paler blue setting. It would be nice to walk through the entries in a link to “next” or “previous” fashion, but for the most part getting back to the main page is easy.

I give this blog a 3.75 rating and change the category to personal. There is more content, and far BETTER content, within the pages that is personal instead of the computer category. And I wish her luck with her move and in her new city.NULL

Pointless Banter is a site that I have heard of before, but never visited. I know I have seen links to it on other sites, and I have actually heard people talking about it. Well maybe they just said the words Pointless and Banter, but that has to count for something right?

The site opens to a nice custom design. It has a fluid rounded thing going for it for the logo and the navigation at the top which frames the advertisements nicely. I like it when blogs integrate the ads into their site rather than make them painful to stare at. The site has a 3 column layout but the 2 right hand columns are for additional information rather than have a left column and a right column. This works well for the site.

The blog is about pretty much whatever the author wants it to be. The topics range from funny items to interviews to thoughts on what happened that day. All the posts are very well written and you can see the funny side that the author is getting at.

This blog has been around for a long time. Thankfully the author has multiple ways of displaying the archives. One of the nice touches is that he has the “previous entries” style at the bottom of each page, and when clicked it tells you what page of how many.

One of the nice bonuses of the site is that the author wrote a book. The book is two years worth of his blog posts, with new introductions.

Overall I enjoyed this site a lot. The writing is great and the content is very funny. I am half tempted to buy the book as I think it would be a good read. I can’t stress how much I enjoyed this site. You should add it to your RSS reader now.NULL

Pointlessbanter.net is an interesting blog. The author takes on many different topics. The blog has been around since August of 2004 and I feel will be around for a long time to come. After reading through many of his blogs, I found the one on pay per review almost humorous considering what I was doing.

Who am I to review this blog? Will someone pay me to review something? Obviously so! Anyways I don’t know him (I am guessing him based on his about me section, but I could not find a name or anything definitive so if I am wrong I am sorry), but here I am reviewing what he has written.

The blog is laid out in a simple manner. The main part of the blog has a white background with black or dark grey letters. It has a simple red bar separating the different posts with a dark grey background. Simple, but it is actually a nice presentation. It doesn’t have distracting advertisements like so many are doing today. I hate advertisements on blogs; I don’t think Google pays that well, luckily this site just has a couple at the top.

The posts are interesting. They take on many different topics/categories: celebrities, love, drunken mistakes, hate mail, pop culture… the list goes on and on. A blog should be about many different topics so I think the author hits that on the money. The posts themselves keep the reader interested. I find his evaluations on many things a good read. It has something for everyone. Even though cheesy crackers with peanut butter got ripped in his March 27, 2007 post, I still cannot bring myself to reaching through my screen and pushing the “scrlk” button on his keyboard.

Keep in mind that this blog does have some fowl language, but it is kept to a minimum and helps to express his feelings.

I would recommend this blog to others. It appears to be thorough in topics and interestingly discussed. I give this blogger a 4 on our scale, but as he puts it who am I to review something. Keep blogging, you got my interest. My only problem is deciding what category to suggest the blog be posted under. I think I will leave it at Humor even though he talks about so many different things.

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Rebecca is an ex-pat living in Germany and while it is not quite clear, I believe she works in an environmental sciences field or is just someone passionate about global warming and reducing her carbon footprint in daily life.

Wait, wait… don’t click away. Stick with me. I love this blog. In June of this year, Rebecca packed up and moved to Bonn Germany from Bath England. She

She states “Aah, a fresh new blog, ready for me to crumple and soil with imperfect English.” After reading each entry, I want to know if she wrote BEFORE June 11, 2007 because I would love to read those journals and know what she was up to, what prompted the move.

Her journal is a mix of personal views such as “my new city looks like a Playmobil set” and articles and theories on global warming, all woven together with wonderful observations and humor. The global concerns portion of her blog isn’t preachy or boring. She even takes on the Queen of Pop, Madonna, and ponders the song Madge wrote for Live Earth this year. “The glaciers aren’t really retreating, species aren’t really becoming extinct, and that guilt you feel when filling up your car is an unreal emotion to be shrugged off. Why is it that with Madonna, even a song about the planet becomes a song about loving yourself? Unreal.”

It is actually interesting and very well constructed so that someone who isn’t exactly of the same philosophy doesn’t feel like a finger is being pointed at them. Rebecca writes with a keen sense of humor and a slice of cynicism. She talks about her new daily life in Germany, the piles of drunks in the Bonn train station, and about the crazed German bikers who run the banks of the Rhine.

Daytrips around Germany on her days off help her get out of Bonn and see the German Countryside. She treks to what used to be East Germany and writes about Martin Luther and religion and the unification of the country… which sometimes I forget only happened a few years ago (thank you David Hasselhoff!). She goes to Mainz and talks about how the buildings there are as pink as the ones in Bonn are yellow. She treks to an Indian/Hippie music and love festival near Leverkusen where she feared she’d soon be swept up by braless, yogariffic, smiling, zombie dancers.

The only complaint I have is with the layout of the blog. There isn’t an easy way to access archives so one can start at the very first entry and proceed forward. I clicked backwards through “previous entries” and luckily this is a young blog or I probably would have stopped right around the time her blog begins, and just review from that point onward. A good archive section that links out the entries from the beginning would be a great asset as the content of the blog grows and time goes by. The look and feel of the journal is easy on the eyes, but sometimes the quoted sections from articles that she selects have too light a grey color and the font isn’t easy to read. The rest of the site moves easily, with lots of photographic evidence that Bonn really is a city filled with way too many yellow buildings.

I will revisit Rebecca, and will probably blogroll her… I don’t know what brought her to Germany, what made her pick between this job and another one offered to her in the South of France. I am not quite clear what her relationship status is… but I am enjoying reading about her life. And I do hope she can get back to the shop and get that toilet seat. That is awesome. I give her a 4 on the scale, and look forward to reading more.NULL