The actual layout of the site was going through changes as I was reviewing it. Matt made people aware of this, which was a nice gesture. From what I saw, it was a standard Blogger template with a few tweaks thrown in by the author. Thanks to some of those tweaks, navigating the site is made very easy along the left hand side of the site. The colors Matt has chosen are also much more soothing, in my opinion, then the ones that usually come with the aforementioned template.
You learn about Matt through various avenues – some of his articles for the newspaper are self revealing, the subjects he covers and the opinions he gives give readers an insight as to what kind of a guy he is, you also learn a few things as you navigate through the information alongside the menu and the various links on the left side of the site.
How’s the writing? It’s good. It better be, especially since Matt’s a freelance writer and because he gets paid to write newspaper articles. The posts and articles read like newspaper editorials. They seem to be geared towards the average reader, simple to read phrases, easy to understand verbiage – exactly what you’d want in a newspaper or even a weblog. I wouldn’t so much think of this as a personal weblog, but more along the lines of one that deals primarily with newsworthy topics.
If you read this site in reverse order, which is what typically makes sense if you really want to see what an author is like, the first thing you’re met with are articles that our author has had published in the local newspaper. Most of them are editorials of sorts dealing with whatever heated issue may be gracing the front page of any media outlet or just Matt’s general thoughts on society as it is today. In continuing reading, you find out that the initial purpose of creating this weblog was for Matt to have a place to store or electronically archive the biweekly columns he has published in his local newspaper.
Soon after the inception of the weblog, Matt strays from just publishing his newspaper articles online and, and jumps more into two or three paragraph posts, again dealing primarily with the news and current events.
This isn’t a weblog that’s going to leave an average reader thinking about what’s going on with Matt on a daily basis. It’s a good site to bookmark if you’re looking for something to stimulate your thoughts or justify any opinions of your own you might have.
Occasional Subversion