Category: Uncategorized

Sleepyme.net did anything but put me to sleep! This is a site that combines a simple, uncluttered layout with witty, intelligent thoughts.



Heather is a twenty-two year-old girl living in Massachusetts (I love spelling that word!). Her journal archives don’t go past March 8, 2002, so I didn’t collect too much background info on her, but her “about” page covers the basics. She claims she loves grammar but can’t spell, yet I didn’t find any obvious spelling errors. Way to go! 😉



The navigation on this site consists of four text links at the top of each page – log, photos, about, links, and archives. Each page is laid out nicely and in the same format. The few graphics she has (excluding the photo page) load quickly. Her photo page contains thumbnails arranged by date. The thumbnails load quickly and each image opens in a pop-up window.



There’s nothing flashy about this site, but it’s perfect that way. Heather’s entries are inviting and easy to read, and I would recommend this site to anyone who’s interested in a nice, easy read that leaves you with a smile on your face.

sleepyme

If a flashy layout, an extensive site, and a well-maintained weblog is what you’re looking for in a site, then Marcos Owns Me is worth your time to check out.



While I never would have guessed it by just reading through the site, Marcos is a 16 year old high school student. His journal entries aren’t about the typical teenage sagas, and that’s well appreciated in audiences of all ages.



Reading the updates were entertaining, and well worth the time.



The site is very thorough, and all equally as interesting. He has a very extensive image gallery, some very handy downloads, several hilarious chat transcripts, and some helpful CGI scripts – just to name a few of the noteworthy things at Marcos Owns Me.



Marcos’ site is suitable for the teenage crowd and above, but there’s certainly something for nearly everyone at this site. Marcos Owns Me

Pink is probably one of the most difficult colors to use well, and the author’s use is average at best. I wasn’t sure what to expect, due to the bland nature of the design.

The articles listed on the front page were pretty lifeless. I browsed through some of the archives to get a better feel of the type of articles she wrote. I had a difficult time finding more than a handful that really got in touch with the author. It appeared to be mostly day to day type stuff (“I dropped the kids off and stopped at the bank…”, etc.) and the occasional link here and there to friends of hers. She sometimes talks about projects that she’s working on, but the entries about them are almost apathetic.

The site itself has a pure CSS layout (maybe a little too “simple”) that looked not quite right in my browser. A quick look under the hood explained why Netscape 4.x can’t even load it and the content to the right (nav & ‘rings) looks funny in Opera: multiple body/head tags. The visited links are difficult to see, since they blend in with the body text. I do have to admit that the design fits the log entries, though.

Overall, I was disappointed to see that someone with such a witty “about” page would have such a dull log. I would guess that only close friends or family would enjoy her entries.Work In Progress

Read Nonfiction is an unassuming, perhaps even slightly obscure site, providing a slower-paced alternative to the cacophony of the warblogging / antiwarblogging side of the political blogosphere.

The site is devoted, simply, to quoting and referencing media items with light commentary, placing it solidly in the media-link-and-commentary subspecies of weblogs. Recent topics have ranged from Oscar Wilde on socialism to an assessment of Zionism, and the site generally focuses less on the news-of-the-day than on more thoughtful analysis pieces found in publications such as The New York Observer and The Atlantic.

I might have tried to characterize the author’s politics, but handily, he’s already done so himself by taking a little online quiz. He reports his results as “leftist and somewhat libertarian.” Judge for yourself, however, from this sample of his commentary from his review of Wilde and socialism:

“It has always been my belief that if one attains more than what one really needs, sharing this surplus becomes a moral imperative. This is not about forcing a reduction in the divide between classes (which is a side-effect, no doubt), but about improving the quality of life for the lower classes. Surely, a better distribution of wealth will result in more members of society existing more comfortably than they are now. The flaw in this, of course, is that no man will voluntarily admit to having a surplus of private property.”

The site layout is a clean, simple Moveable Type template, and is fairly easy on the eyes. My only quibble would be the choice of fonts for the body text — the site appears to be using Garamond or something close to it for both the quoted passages and commentary, which is not the world’s most readable font. And distinguishing more clearly between quoted passages and the author’s commentary wouldn’t hurt either.

Update frequency is fairly low for a straight link-and-commentary site; averaging a post every few days. (May 2002 had entries on 5/1, 5/3, 5/10, and 5/28). While for some weblog forms infrequent updates should not be viewed as a negative, a site so totally devoted to following the media might benefit from a more frequent publishing schedule.

Overall, I’d recommend Read Nonfiction as an occasional stop for those who want to ensure no interesting media stone remains unturned in their reading universe, and as a supplement to a more regular diet of the more frenetic and compulsively updated news sites.

read nonfiction

Flombaum.com opened up to a nice display. I’m a big fan of people who know how to use color without making it look garish or disgusting. The nice varying shades of blue was a nice entrance that made you feel somewhat welcomed into the life of Avi Flombaum.

Sadly, upon venturing through the blog itself, it was less on quality content as much as it was big on trying to make itself seem as funny and entertaining as the writer himself would like us to see him.

There are only two blog entries under the “Daily Dose” column. For something that is supposed to be a “Daily Dose,” it’s odd that almost two weeks past between the only two entries on the page. In fact, if the link to the archives is supposed to be active it’s not. There are just the two blog entries – the second of which apologizes that he has not written more often.

There are plenty of places to go on the site. From Flombaum’s own writing (The Mystery of Bathrooms was a fun read) to his artwork (I loved that yellow flower picture) this seems to be the heart and soul of Flombaum.com. Perhaps this should be more of an artistic blog where our author focuses on his creative endeavors with the occasional shout out to let us know what is going on with his life.

Other links include Avi’s webcam which I did try but no picture came up. In fact, the window that should have popped up at least show me that nothing was on didn’t even active. Perhaps it’s my slow as molasses PC.

Overall, the design of Flombaum.com helps override the lack of blog content. Once our intrepid author decides which stance he wants to take on this site, I think it deserves another review.
Flombaum Dot Com