I went to review this site, not exactly knowing what to expect. I smiled to myself as I noticed the possible reference to “Fast Dedi” Felson character played by Paul Newsman in The Hustler and The Color of Money but I was not sure how this would correlate to the subject of the site.
The subtitle however relates more closely to the actual bent of the posts: “Epoisses (Cheese) on the Web”. It is a collection of his thoughts regarding subjects as varied as the sad state of education to a contest where pictures are post of bloggers bums and you guess which ones belong to whom.
Once there I found that I liked the background color and found myself questioning his locale, since his banner included what appeared to be some sort of lighthouses. I looked for a few seconds and realized that he is located in Belgium, which makes this the first Belgium blogger I have run across.
There are also two authors a male (zeno) and a female (kimberlee) who seem to be friends. As you read through the posts you quickly discover this since one moment they are discussing men’s urinals and a little farther down is a thankful post about how blogging has gotten the author through being separated from her husband.
I noticed that each post seemed to have comments, which usually translates into traffic. The comments on his site appear to be from the same core group of folks which can be a good thing. It means that he is keeping their attention over time.
The posts are for the most part, lighthearted and funny and seem to revolve around a circle of Internet friends and fellow bloggers that they know. Not a lot in the way to politics or religion but it is a good, fun read. Think of it as the blogging equivalent of a sitcom.
They seem to have developed a few standards in there posting repertoire. There is a Tuesday ChoosDay where readers are asked a series of “would you rather this or that” questions. There is also the aforementioned Blogger’s Bottoms game.
The site is laid out in a three-column format using Movable Type, with two smaller columns to the right stuffed with information about the author, comments, and the obligatory list of links. They are using the fairly standard tools, such as the TTLB Ecosystem and SiteMeter. They also have the list pretty standard list of archives and such. The site has a list of books but does not use Amazon plug-ins or MediaList so they do not link to anything other than the book cover image which is a little sad since they appear to be interesting books and it might be nice to look them up and get a synopsis for them.
The text that it used through most of the site is a light color and works well with the background. The only thing that might cause some users a bit of grief is the very small font used for Permalinks, Comments, and Trackbacks, all of which are setup.
The only real thing I found wrong with the site was the layout. It does not look balanced when viewing and I would like to see more screen real estate committed to the actual posts. But this is more a personal preference and does not diminish the humor of the posts.
On the whole this site is a good, fun read. It is not political for the most part although there is the occasional post regarding Blair and Bush. For the most part it is the stories, poetry, and ranting of a couple of very good writers who have an interesting take on the world. It is a fun read and hopefully you will find yourself smiling slightly as you read, just as I did.
fasteddiesbullet….