Category: Uncategorized

I am going to do something here I haven’t done since the early days of The Weblog Review. That my friends is review a blog after only reading about 25% of the entries. The reason for this? My brain hurts, but in a good way.

So I had no clue what to expect at pandemian. Pandemic means a outbreak of a disease but that’s not quiet the entire word for the title. But what ever. The site loads, simple white background, softer grey text, old tin can phone image at the top. Very basic and I like it.

I started reading and the first thoughts that went through my head were “Words on blog. Entertaining, yet forcing me to think. Why is this funny? What the heck is going on here? Do I even know what this blog is supposed to be about?”

So I took a deep breath and tried again. Again I got the forcing me to think thought going on, but I enjoyed it. Ok let me back up a second. The posts are by no means any life changing essay that you need to read, but they do make you think about the topic presented.

Since I was so distracted by the thoughts going on in my head this blog was creating I decided to poke around the archives in a completely random order. Again the blog listed all the articles and I was forced to click on them which is something I really don’t enjoy. But since I felt random order was just as good as any other order, I was in luck.

Most of the “earlier” posts all say they were originally posted at another url. At first I thought this was a website that was stealing the content from another site and then making comments about the article in question. Nope I was wrong. Server switch caused a massive deletion of the database and the author only had a select few posts saved and that he cared about. Thus those were reposted on the new domain.

Changing topics for a brief moment – I recently got to watch a final table of a poker game. This final table was by far some of the best poker I had ever seen. In fact I made sure to tell all the players that I thought it was some of the best poker ever played. Why do I bring this up? Because this blog is some of the best writing I have ever read and I want everyone to know about it. Granted my mind was made up about this without reading nearly 50% of the articles, but my brain needs time to think and digest what the author is saying. I will definitely be going back to this blog as I want to make sure I enjoy it all.
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Ok so the first review of this site I mentioned how there wasn’t a blog and that there needed to be one. The author quickly sent me an email asking me to review the blog portion of the site. The blog can be found at http://fusioncharts.blogspot.com/.

One thing I kept in mind that the blog is not listed off of the main product page like I suggested in my original review. This is something that should change very quickly.

The blog is short. Very short. There are 3 posts. All 3 posts happened on May 1st or May 4th. So that makes this pretty easy to review. The blog helps explain what the product does and how to use it. But it isn’t very engaging. It reads more like a bad sales pitch or a power point presentation.

The author really needs to figure out the purpose of this blog. If it is a sales pitch site, then it needs to do something to spice it up. If it is more for tech support then they need go that route. If it is more for showing off the features of the product, again go for that. Personally I think it should be used for all of those and then also showcase sites that are using the product.

Overall I can’t rate this blog very high. The blog doesn’t do anything for me, nor for the product it is trying to sell. The lack of posts may just be due to the relatively newness of the site, but even if that is the case, it hasn’t been updated in almost a month.NULL

Shucking oysters, shelling peas – I seriously had no idea what I was going to be reading; I only knew I have a strong distaste for both oysters and peas, so this could be a horrifying time of reading a blog.

The first thing I had to do was start at the beginning of this blog and see why it all started and where it’s gone since then. March of this past year is when the site first started, but the only other two months listed within the archives along the sidebar are June and July. There were 61 posts written on March 7th according to the archives, so it sounds like maybe this blog had a home elsewhere before finding itself on Blogspot.

Being hosted on the infamous Blogspot usually means the layout will be one of their templates that have been provided, and this site was no exception to that rule. It’s an easy to navigate layout, though, so finding the things you need is simple.

Quite simply put, this blog is about food. There are a few various other topics thrown in from time to time – a U.S./Italy soccer game or a cute tale of the author’s parents’ dogs and their distaste for American rawhides – but overall, this is going to be a site for those folks we refer to around here as foodies.

It’s hard for me to relate to a blog that goes into great detail about either recipes or the quality of food that the writers have sampled in various restaurants. I’m a creature of habit when it comes to ordering things in any restaurant, and I find Velveeta Shells & Cheese an acceptable meal from time to time.

The author does manage to make an effort in keeping the attention of people not as into such fine food as myself. There’s a post that’s full of YouTube videos, including a link to The Geeky Gourmet, which is definitely on my line of kitchen-work. My friends are going to be so impressed when I serve sake in a cup made out of a cucumber. Maybe more scared than impressed actually…

Overall, this site won’t appeal to every random blog surfer. However, if a random blog surfer happens to have suggestions on how to bake quail in champagne or has an interest in whipping up an authentic Italian stewed squid recipe coming straight from the author’s mother-in-law, this will be a place they can add to their bookmarks. The site is very good at what it’s meant to be good at – food.
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I’ve been blogging for years. I think it’s safe to say I’ve been posting my personal life online since 1998. Anytime I can find a site that will offer me tips towards blogging, I become leery. Nine times out of ten, that site is going to be full of tips on how to get-rich-quick while blogging, and I’m not a big fan of that. I was very relieved when I read the “about” section of the blog and found out that Sharon, the author, was focusing on “bloggers who just want to express themselves, connect with others, and have fun”.

The best thing to do with this site is to dive right in. The archives are listed on the right sidebar and date back to May 2004. I had to do some creative navigating in order to find the beginning, because when I picked the May 2004 option from the drop down menu, I got a pesky 404 message. Other than that, the site is very easy to navigate. The sidebars provide readers with several options of reading through the archives, as well as other site-related links where readers can discover even more information Sharon has included. The layout she’s chosen for the site is simple and aesthetically clean which is always a welcome site to any website.

As I read through the archives and followed a link or two, it seemed like this blog was initially created as a learning tool as the author familiarized herself with how to change things on her personal blog. A learning project that turns into something helpful for everyone on the internet? What an awesome concept!

Through the first year or two of the blog, Sharon does her best to post intermittently, but the Blogging Blog seemed to take a backseat to other blogging projects. Once the site was turned into a group-blog, the posts became more varied, slightly more consistent, and really helped this weblog gain some value.

My biggest, and possibly only, complaint about Blogging Blog is its inconsistency. Each post is full of information on the topic at hand, but the posts come too infrequently, in my opinion. I’ve added this to my RSS Reader of choice, and when I see it’s been updated, it’ll be a nice surprise. I hope it slowly becomes a more frequently updated blog, instead of just a handful of times per month.

This blog is a great idea. People new to the blogging world start their own weblog on a daily basis, and a site where they can find “tips, tools, ant toys for the personal blogger”. Those people will luck out when they find this site.
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I’m taking just a little bit of editorial license in calling Mirror Image a blog, as it is really a website without the series of posts that blogs normally have. But why not include such an excellent website in TheWeblogReview.com listings?

Peter Shah is an amateur British astronomer who has about US$32,000 pounds of astronomy equipment set up in a shed in his garden. Incredibly, he has produced photographs with his 8-inch telescope, despite the often cloudy British skies, that have been favorably compared with photos from the multi-billion dollar Hubble space telescope.

The Mirror Image site is Shah’s repository of breathtakingly beautiful photographs which are the product of his relatively humble infrastructure. The photos are of extremely high quality, with endless detail that the eye can peruse for minutes at a time. I’m no astronomy expert, but beauty like this needs no expertise whatsoever to appreciate. On the contrary, anyone would find it totally accessible.

As I gazed at my favorite photo of the Andromeda galaxy, produced with an exposure time of two half hours, I thought “If Shaw is smart he will sell his images in various media as soon as possible, because they are absolutely worthy of it.”

The site is an example of how powerful personal publishing can be, and for we who visit sites like this, it shows again how rich the benefits of surfing the Internet can be, looking for sites created by people who are passionate about their interests and talented at conveying their enthusiasm.NULL