Category: Uncategorized

“Looking out the window…” is the personal blog of Ashley, a young woman from Canada (who I am estimating to be 20ish) who is also a 2nd year Honors Sociology student at a University. Ashley posts regularly on the blog regarding happenings in her life and what’s going on around her (hence the title).

My ititial thoughts on this blog were “Yucky”, because I use the Firefox browser. When I switched to Internet Explorer, the blog looked fine. When I began to look at her site through my own window, I got a good sense of her life and what was going on in it.

I like the fact that Ashley has a lot of pictures on her blog. A blog can be just all text, but it’s always good to add photos with your posts to give the reader an extra idea of what you’re writing about.

Aside from the non-Firefox friendly layout, I like the colors and graphics. I think the huge strawberry in the bottom right of the page is an added touch. The blog itself has a very simple design, which is not too flashy, but gets the point across. The only thing I would do is invest a litte time in making sure that the design is compatible with popular browsers. Someone who visits the site will be more likely to stay and read more of your posts if the blog is easy to read and aesthetically pleasing.

I give you a “B” for effort. Definately an interesting read.Looking out the window…

The at-a-glance description of “The Girl Behind” would be clean, somewhat plain, with an early-morning breeziness. The second thing that hits a split-second after the initial color-scheme take-in is, of course: “SQUIRREL!!!” As of current, the newest post contains a photo of a plush squirrel toy in natural surroundings. This, of course, is a surefire way to get my attention. Is it just me, or do squirrel-lovers generally have cute and interesting blogs?

So, personal preferences aside, I move on to the rest of the blog. A quick glance at the subtitle tells me that the author is a “33 year-old English girl.” Hmm. Sounds interesting! Scrolling down to take in a bit of the content-to-link-to-photo ratio, it turns out that our English author (she chooses to remain anonymous, and simply calls herself ‘The Girl Behind’) has a nice combination of all three. There are a few posts with just one photo and a caption, as well as a proper scattering of links where appropriate. The rest of it is pure text. Girl Behind ranges from reviewing theatrical productions and other blogs, to reminiscing on earlier years, to current happenings in her personal life. What is written is spontaneous and does not follow a specific “chronology”. In fact, my favorite post so far is “Five tips for a woman…” It’s short, funny, and has absolutely nothing to do with anything posted before or after it.

As I mentioned earlier, there isn’t much to the design and layout of the site. It’s a premade template (I worship premades too, so no qualms there), and a very simple one at that. Like I said before, the site possesses a breakfast-in-bed sort of zing to it. Maybe tea-time in Great Britain? The colors are nice, practical, and easy on the eyes. Not much else to the design. Personally, I would have liked to see a layout centered around that stuffed squirrel! It would have definitely added to the at-a-glance appeal, but even without, the blog is just fine.

Checking out Girl Behind’s profile, I can see that she has four separate blogs. However, ‘The Girl Behind’ is the only one with actual content. The other three have a single post: “x”. This is endlessly confusing to me. Perhaps she decided to integrate all three of her older blogs to create ‘The Girl Behind’? Back to the main blog, Girl Behind links to some of her favorite blogs, a webpage full of squirrel photos (squirrel lovers must-see), blog-ranking sites (TWR included), and her current leisure reading.

Overall, I can say that ‘The Girl Behind’ is a nice blog. Decent, clean, and well-written. There is something appealing about the way it jumps from one topic to another from post to post. However, it comes off as perhaps a little too light-hearted. Or maybe simply not “earthy” enough? I keep mentally comparing ‘The Girl Behind’ to a scone. Is it a blog? Yes. Is there anything horribly wrong with it? Of course not! But I can’t help but think that a little pat of butter or jam would do it a world of good. I give it three out of five stars. Good effort, nice for dreamy reading, but nothing overly extravagant or “new”.The Girl Behind

I Have Seoul. With this type of a title I am expecting to see a regular site about someone’s life. I am also expecting to receive a reason on why they feel they have soul. This site is hosted on blogspot.com so it has the typical header. After I opened up the URL I come to find out this is a Canadian teacher in Seoul, South Korea teaching English. The site is easy on the eyes and appears to have a lot of content considering it has only been around since February of 2005. It contains pictures as well as stories to go along with them.

The weblog is about a teacher who is located in Seoul, South Korea. She is teaching English there. The site walks you through her life as it happens. She posts frequently and tells you just enough information to get her point across without boring you. She provides a lot of useful links and also links to her friends. The English/spelling on the site needs some work.

The design is a typical blogspot layout. It is easy on the eyes and contains both pictures and stories. It is purple and tan in color and the stories stretch on forever (distance down the page). The site contains links, archives, random pictures, and an about section.

This is a personal site that would be more appealing to friends and family of the author. I do not feel I would visit again. I feel that if you are interested in learning about Seoul, South Korea, you may find this site helpful. She takes pictures of where she goes and tells you about them from her point of view. This site is not what I was expecting by the title. I feel the content and completeness of the author is fantastic, even though it does not appeal to me.

I have Seoul

I liked the catchy subtitle this blog has: The darker side of technology, it’s fun over here… I skimmed over it a little and I was a little disappointed at the infrequent rate the author updates this blog. There are posts where months come by before a new one is made. I always believed in regular posting.

The blog content itself is quite interesting. It’s about the personal life of the author, Shadow. His profile says he is an avid gamer and computer-user and there are things here that talk about his projects and goals in that area. I found a little hard to follow the posts he had mainly because of their infrequency. The posts are well-written, with proper grammar and mostly correct spelling – kudos for that – and they can be quite interesting.

The design is very simple, nothing fancy but it is organized, and that’s good. The black background definitely complements the author’s name (or pseudonym).

Overall, it’s definitely among the above-average blogs out there. But there’s not much that stands out. That could be a goal, or maybe there isn’t a goal after all other than as a place to write thoughts and other whatnots.NULL

When I first arrived at this site, I was somewhat disappointed by the layout. It’s a very common layout that’s used all the time and I love things that are a little more… well, unique. As I read through the entries, I wasn’t as amused as the title led me to think I would be.

In this blog, we do find exactly what is promised to us: useless information. This is the blog of CK, an obsessive-compulsive microbiologist from Michigan. In his blog he writes about his life living with his wife (MK) as well as the aforementioned useless facts.

As far as extra things go, there aren’t really any. There are links to a few different places, Google ads (if you could consider those extra), and some lists of current reading and listening material.

I already sort of got to the design, but I’ll reiterate. The layout is very basic, the Minima Black theme from Blogger. (I’ve seen it often enough to remember the name.) I liked the design the first hundred or so times I saw it, but after awhile it gets a bit dull.

In the end, I really wanted to like this site. Useless is sort of my specialty, throwing practical knowledge out the door and preferring things that won’t get you anywhere. However, after going through the site, I have no choice but to label it average. I’d say it’s worth checking out, but it won’t be making it to my personal favorites list.
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