Category: Uncategorized

Ibidem’s all about “same news, but different…” This is what “jesus gil,” ibidem’s apparent webmaster, announces in introducing his plain vanilla Blogspot weblog — and I was immediately off to discover how “different” this “same news” was…

Jesus gil casts his net wide. His blog is a succession of hyperlinks leading to big media stories on mostly everything: oil slicks, Harry Potter, surgical tags for sex offenders, Iranian women in the fight for democracy, FISA’s secret court, Marge Simpson’s breast job… You name it, jesus gil has it.

Ibidem’s plain presentation won’t tire your eyes, but I felt the page was just too bare-bones. A column of links to other blogs on the left-hand side includes a substantial component of Religious Blogs, but ibidem’s posted material did not indicate any special focus on religion (although the use of an alias like ‘jesus jil’ probably points in one particular direction).

Typically, jesus gil inserts a paragraph or two from the news story, leaving it up to the reader to follow the link and read the actual source. Sometimes, the post is just a bare link without even the sample paragraph(s). There’s little commentary or counterview. Links take you to mainly common mainstream media.

Straightforward links to news stories hardly produce “same news” that is “different.” I couldn’t find anything while reading ibidem to support jesus gil’s header claim.

“Different” could have been asserted perhaps if there were some form of specialist commentary; or maybe an innovative cross-reference job showing how a main, high-visibility news story originates in less than credible information or deliberate distortion of the facts.

With Bloggosphere swarming with News/Links blogs, any “blog master” with even the slightest claim to fame and originality is hard pressed to work out an interesting formula. Ibidem hasn’t got this formula yet. Posts come from all points of the compass — and are not integrated with any opinions or points of view of the blog master.

A mark of 3 is all that I give imbidem. I don’t see a target audience and I can think of better and faster ways of reading the news.Ibidem

“Quiet” is the first thing that comes to mind when looking at Kane Blues for the first time. If this blog had a sound I imagine it would be white noise. I thought maybe Kane Blues would be a quiet and introspective blog. I was right.

The writer of Kane Blues has a calming writing style. She is detailed – not in a Hemingway-like way, but in a descriptive yet fleeting way. She has a lot to say, and is thoughtful. Good writing, and insightful commentary are the rule here. Good job!

Kane Blues is a very simply designed journal. Sometimes simple is boring, but in the case of Kane Blues that’s not what’s going on. Of course, I wouldn’t call it exciting or interesting, either. But it’s very functional and not unpleasant to look at. And it has excellent navigation, which I appreciate more than anyone can know. The only thing I can really complain about is the main logo graphic – the font is slightly hard to read.

There aren’t a lot of extras at Kane Blues, but the extras that are present are well worth a visit. There’s a link to the writer’s poetry and an excellent photoblog.

I would likely come back for another read of Kane Blues. It’s good writing with a very reflective feel to it.
KaneBlues

Lionel Set Loose is a three table Blogspot template site. It’s white with black type. Sure it’s easy to read because there’s no color, but it’s boring. And when I arrive at a site that looks boring, I’m not particularly excited to read it. I did find an explanation on one of the side bars about this – apparently it’s some sort of bug, but it’s fixable if you click the link to skin the site. Unfortunately, in trying to skin the site I encountered an annoying plethora of pop up ads and it’s not immediately obvious that I skinned the site at all. Instead it looks like I was thrown into an older version of the blog at a different location. Finally I figured it out and went back to the original URL. Reading a blog should not be this much work.

Lionel, an engineering student in Kuala Lumpur, is the writer of Lionel Set Loose. Lionel writes about his day-to-day in a really engaging way. I was on the floor laughing about Lionel going on a raid of the just emptied dorms for leftover booty, and Lionel’s entry about going to the dentist had me squirming. And can I just say how hilarious his entry about the American tourists was? What I’m trying to say is that I like Lionel’s writing. It’s interesting, has good flow, and his grammar and spelling are generally pretty good.

I’ll be honest: I like the purple colors of the design in the skinned site. But I hate the red used to outline the boxes and for the headlines, and the dark purple used for the text can get a little hard to read after a while. The thing with the site skins needs to be fixed – halfway through my blog reading the skin reset itself back to white and black and I had to go through the hassle of re-skinning the site. The only other thing I noticed is that archives only go back to September, but October through the present are all on his current blog index.

Lionel keeps a log of the changes made to his site, and also has an About Me page, a little Idiot’s Guide to Lionel Set Loose type of page, links page, and a guestbook. It might be a nice idea to install commenting for each entry, as some of the entries could generate a lot of discussion.

Skinning errors aside, Lionel Set Loose is an interesting blog. I would definitely go back for another read.

lionel set loose

I’m always a little disappointed when I arrive at a blog to be greeted by a template I’ve seen on dozens of sites. Thoughts Gone Astray has one of two or three standard Blogspot templates that I see constantly. I never expect much on a common template site, because I suspect that if the blogger can’t be bothered to find a new template from one of the hundreds of blog template sites out there, the blog content won’t be that interesting.

Jesse isn’t a bad writer. He’s thoughtful and makes a real effort to flesh out most of his entries. Some entries start with a quotation, which I really like. It’s different from most of what I see in blogs, and I wish he’d begin every entry that way. Most of Jesse’s entries read like a personal and private journal instead of a blog meant for public consumption. He’s really tied into religion, so if you share that interest Thoughts Gone Astray might be a blog of interest.

I’ve already complained about the template, so I won’t say anything more about it. Navigation is kind of clunky – it’s not streamlined, and entries are archived by week only until September. Entries from November to the present are all on the main blog page. There’s no About Me type of page, or commenting capability or a guestbook. There is a link to email Jesse. Older entries reflect a different colored version of the same template. I recommend making the entire blog one template.

I doubt I would become a regular reader of Thoughts Gone Astray. It’s isn’t that it’s a bad blog – I just don’t know Jesse and reading about his day to day wouldn’t keep me interested.
Thoughts Gone Astray

I’ve never read a weblog anything like this one. The entire thing is purely fiction.

The author has made it easier for us to read the weblog through like an actual story by using this link. I’d definitely recommend that if you’re thinking about giving this site a look. It makes much more sense reading it in that order as opposed to a backward chronological order.

The writing style of the entire site gets better over time. January 9, 2002’s entry was the first one I read, and right away, I knew I wanted to read how this weblog got to this point.



The layout of the site isn’t anything spectacular. The background looks as if it’s one of standard stationary templates that comes with Outlook Express, but the vine down the side actually goes along quite well with the whole idea of the site.



The only thing missing from this site that would have helped out in functionality is an archives section. There is an option to read from the very beginning, but if I happened to be a long time reader and just hadn’t gotten a chance to read it for a few days, it’s very tough to find out where you stopped.



If you’re a first time reader, start from the beginning. It starts off at just a novel concept, in my opinion, but as time goes on and the characters become more developed and the things that happen become more detailed, I found myself becoming more and more enthralled with Jamie each day.

Ravenstone