Category: Uncategorized

When I first arrived at Smothering Chaos I kind of liked the simple green layout and the white lettering. I would come to find out that is about all I would like about Smothering Chaos.

The blog hasn’t been updated since the middle of July. Before that the author seems to be on a once a month posting schedule. Most of the posts are about random thoughts and reactions to current events. I was able to find the author’s main page using the “scroll the mouse pointer all over the page looking for a link” method. When I got to the main page I used the same search method and was able to find out the authors name and where he is from. I found some pictures too. But that took forever to find.

There is a guestbook, but thats the only easy thing there is to find. This is easily one of the most confusing designs I’ve ever seen.

All in all, my time spent at Smothering Chaos was nothing short of frustrating. The posts are few and far between, the whole site is confusing, just not a user friend site at all. Smothering Chaos is best viewed in Internet Explorer. I advice you not view at all. Half a star, check it out if you are bored. Smothering Chaos

I was confused. Earth Info was listed as a personal weblog, so I was hoping to find that kind of a special touch that gives personal weblogs the appeal to keep visitors coming back after making a connection with the author. This was not a personal weblog, so I switched the category over to News/Links, where it fits in much more appropriately.

The entries on this weblog revolve strictly around links from other sites. They’re mostly news related sites closely tied in with the current events taking place in the UK, since this is where Matt, the author of Earth Info, is from. Sometimes, the site is updated every two minutes for 10 or 15 minutes straight.



There’s not a lot to critique at this weblog. Quite simply, there’s not a lot to it. Each weblog entry contains links, and there’s a slew of links listed down the left hand side of the website. The weblog’s only been up and running since Nov 3, so I’m sure it has a lot of growing to do.

In the midst of that growing, I hope to see a different site design. It’s another one of those standard Blogger templates, but the color is slightly altered. It’s altered enough to make my eyes hurt. The blue hyperlinks placed on the bright orange background really work a number over while trying to read the rest of the site.

I couldn’t personally find anything special about this site, or anything that would make me want to come back time and time again. Perhaps people interested in the news in the UK would find this site more interesting.

http://earth-info-net.blogspot.com

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