Category: Uncategorized

Pirate Cafe is a new weblog, dating back only to the beginning of July, but wow, there’s a lot to be getting through.

Unfortunately, there’s no logical introduction to the site, no “about” page, which is a shame, because this is a blog by a girl with a real story to tell. From what I can make out, the narrator, going by the name of pirate-tron, is in her twenties, has a boyfriend and works as a teacher.

From such a generalisation, however, the blog streams forth with witty and interesting opinion pieces. For example, read about the writer’s introduction to small-town sex parties in a very well-crafted tale on July 27th. Or go further back, and read of one of her experiences with an inept co-worker.

There are many types of entry, too. Aside from the longer comments, which are what I found to be the highlight of the site, you’ll also find a smattering of illustrated recipes, poems and shorter, personal updates. Pirate-tron is politically-minded, but not overbearingly so, and represents an interesting and interested minority in America that feels alienated by George W. Bush’s presidency (perhaps not so small a minority).

On the left hand side of the site, accompanying the scant internal navigation (a few archive links) are external links to sites of interest, and a nifty message board. I think the board is a great idea, especially having it on the front page, and not hidden away from the majority of everyday visitors.

Unfortunately the design, on the whole, is generic and doesn’t fit the length of most entries (a lighter background, better word and line-spacing would help readability), though it isn’t intrusive and the site is quick to load.

I foresee a strong future for Pirate Cafe. I will be following the narrator’s search for land with interest, and hope that I won’t be alone in doing so.

pirate cafe

I was intrigued when I saw the title of this journal. “Humorous Blips From A Backpack”? Would it be the day-to-day dramas of student life? A travelogue? As it turns out, Humorous Blips is a bit of both.

The author is Beaner, a young singer, student, writer, and world traveler. In the past year, she embarked on a year long backpacking jaunt across Europe. At least, that’s what I could glean from the parts of the journal that were accessible.

After reading Beaner’s ‘About’ page, I headed for the archives. There are links to archives stretching back to April of this year. Unfortunately, all of the archives prior to August lead to a BlogSpot error page. This meant that I only had a month of posts to review, hardly enough to get a sense of who Beaner is or what she is trying to communicate with her journal. As if that weren’t bad enough, on the pages I could read, some of the archive links would disappear. I was forced to go back to the home page and access the next month of posts from there.

I wish the archives had been working. Not only would it have garnered her a better review, I was also interested in reading the full account of her time in Europe. As it is, there are only a few weeks of posts detailing a pilgrimage in Poland, some adventures in Latvia and Lithuania, and her voyage home. After her arrival back in the U.S.A. (Las Vegas, to be exact), there are a few days’ worth of posts detailing her return to school and struggle to find a job.

Although many of her entries are detailed and funny, there seem to be a lot of gaps in her stories. I realize it must be difficult to update a website when you’re backpacking through a foreign country, but it’s frustrating for the reader to begin a tale and then be denied the ending. Some of the entries written after her arrival back in the States suffer from the same gaps. There’s nothing wrong with a journal that’s sporadically updated, as long as the entries flow together and don’t confuse the reader.

The color scheme of the site is taken from a painting featured on the front page of the journal, one of Degas’ beautiful dancers. The reds, yellows, and white work well together, although it is a little harsh. The design is simple and easy to read, but not the most attractive I’ve seen.

I wish I could score Beaner’s journal higher, but the lack of complete archives and unwieldy navigation prevent me from doing so. Her writing is lively, and the subject matter is fantastic (indeed, I wish I could have read more about her adventures in Europe). If she gets the problems with her archives under control, she would have a travelogue worth visiting.

Humorous Blips From A Backpack

Well, we know it isn’t a blog, per se. There’s not much here, but I’ll comment on the site as-is.

First, it does look dated. The black background with brightly-colored type was often used for emphasis years ago, but today I think it detracts from the validity of the message. If the author wants his work taken seriously, I suggest he consider changing that. A visible hit counter is also a last-century website detail.

Links should be easy to read and active. Most people aren’t going to bother copying and pasting, and in this case, the dark type makes them easy to ignore.

I wonder about the reasoning behind the posting of a chapter at a time on an occasional basis. I can understand why one would want to serialize a book, because it’s a good way to develop a following, but in this case, a regular schedule would probably be better. I once considered serializing a book of mine. I polled my newsletter subscribers, and they felt that they’d enjoy a serialization, as long as it was on a regular schedule they could count on. It didn’t matter to them whether it was weekly or bi-weekly, but any interval longer than that would be too long for them. They felt they’d forget to visit the site, even with e-mailed updates.

As to the content; it’s hard to make an informed judgement with so little to read. I will say that the existing content would benefit from a good editing, since there are many mistakes of punctuation, spelling and grammar. There may be some good ideas brewing; there may be a simple rehash of oft-repeated ideas. Only time can answer that, and after I’ve read the full book I’ll know better.

I hope the site owner has found my suggestions helpful. There are possibilities here. If presented in the right way, this site could develop a following with some active discussion, once the message board is active.

Doomsday America

I was keen to review this site as it had a nice name. “I beg to differ” is a phrase I use a lot, is pretty appropriate to blogging and the owners of this group weblog have also sorted out the domain name too, which always suggests that an effort has been made. Once I clicked the link, my first visual impressions were also good- a technically sound moveable type blog which, although is a bit “templatey” (an adjective I just made up by the way) and slightly unimaginative, is nevertheless functional and does the job.

I quickly found the “About Begging to Differ” link, which gave me an idea of what I was in for beyond the “politics, culture and law” mentioned in the titlebar. It is interesting to note that the four people who contribute to this blog have never physically met, but previously frequented forums and the like together. There is also a rather sweet story about how the name of the site came about which I liked very much.

Ok, so far so good, but what about the content? Well, the title bar is a fair summation really- the posts are categorised in to the three subject areas mentioned, as well as “Prediction Watch” which is about er…predicting things and “Miscellaneous” for everything else. There is plenty of content to be found in all of these categories as there are (obviously) four contributors and archives go back to June 2003. It is also worth mentioning that the weblog is surprisingly unified and consistent, despite the authors having never met.

Anyone who is into US politics and/or law issues will love this blog as there is LOADS of material on these issues, all coherently argued and intelligently written. So what else is there for other readers? Well, quite a lot actually. Scanning the archives I found quite a few personal entries, usually including photos, entries about cookery, religion, blogging and other bloggers, humour and cartoon strips, movies, and for some reason the US “Survivor” series. All of these are again, well written and entertaining.

So there is something here for most people, though primarily those interested in US politics and law I would say. I didn’t give them 5 as there are no comments available, which I felt would really have enhanced the debates found here. Maybe the template could be livened up a bit too, or made a little more unique. Besides that, I reckon this is blogging (and especially group blogging) at it’s best.

Begging To Differ

I have just read on the site that the author submitted it for review way back in September, so not wishing for him to wait any longer, I’ll crack on. :o)

The site has quite a nice title and the design is pretty straight forward- a Movable Type two column layout with some appropriate linkage and a nifty little titlebar at the top. No “About Me” page though, which means half a point deducted automatically! I could see that the site had a comic book theme to it, which gives it some direction, though it was nice to discover that this is not overpowering.

Now, link sites can be difficult to review sometimes because the content is primarily supplied by someone else. To make a weblog of this sort stand out from the crowd then, the author needs to either provide some great, original links or the links should be embellished with the author’s opinions and made their own.

The author of Alter Egos has accomplished this to a certain extent. I clicked on a fair few links during my review and the subjects covered were humour, sci fi and technology, a few games to play and of course comic books. It probably helped that I have an interest in most of these subjects anyway and a few of the links I had seen before. I should imagine that most people could find SOMETHING here for their enjoyment though and to raise a smile.

The links could have certainly been embellished a bit more though. Usually there was just enough information for the reader to be able to decide whether the link would be of interest or not and in one or two cases, not even that. Blogs can be a great way of getting in to the mind of the author, and I never really felt I did this during my review. A few movie and book reviews were provided which did help and the use of pictures definitely improved the posts too. Some sources were used quite frequently though, which doesn’t always make for variety.

Overall then, this is worth site is definitely worth a visit as there are some very entertaining links here, though the site would probably only have lasting appeal to the comic book fan.

Alter Egos