I wasn’t sure what to make of the site when it appeared in front of me. I’m not the world’s greatest judge of colour co-ordination but the colour choices didn’t work for me. The name could have meant almost anything; so no clues as to where we were going. Unusually the post at the top of the page was the first. I learned from this that the web log is real new. Less than a month old.
A quick hop over to the about C-I link revealed the purpose of the site. An opinion’s site on the why’s and where fore’s of US politics. The parties are not spinning effectively enough for Mr Salyer and he wishes to set that straight and he has a right to his valid opinion.
At this point it kinda depends on the guy’s savvy as to whether this was gonna work for me. I’m a politics graduate and have done my time reading half baked politicalese. I wasn’t optimistic.
The design is straightforward. The text used is readable, blue on yellow. It has a left side panel which just didn’t fit in my browser (IE6). There are a bunch of links to blog related sites which seem cool. A links page to “insightful” stuff, the aforementioned about C-I page and an archives page which as yet does not contain any archived posts but a categorised list of Scott’s articles. Political, environmental and minutia. The majority of this works. A couple of links to Blogdump and Bloghop didn’t producing a file not found error.
Scott has posted fifteen times in his first month and kept to his political agenda for a couple of weeks before veering off into the world of “cool stuff on the web” and what he calls minutia. Trivia by a different name – and uninteresting trivia at that. The political and environmental posts tend to end prematurely and link to a fuller post on a separate page. I don’t get the reason for this. It makes reading a hassle. I don’t like that back button. He also links from the posts to his articles or small essays on the political and environmental issue du jour. Like I mentioned the guy’s political “savvy” was gonna make or break this for me and unfortunately it doesn’t work. His mission to make a better job of presentation proved impossible. His writing has a mixture of straight academia, vernacular, unsupported opinion and sarcasm. He appears to be politically naïve which is no bad thing, but the site doesn’t do what it says on the tin. It muddles the muddled.
The site makes a liberal use of links and they open in a new window which I like and all work. The down side was a porn pop up. I don’t need this kind of thing in my life thank you.
There is as yet no comment facility.
Eyesight to the blind it isn’t and still pecking it’s way out of the egg. Maybe Scott will go on to thrill and enlighten, but this reader will not be back to find out. I’d give it a 1 out of 5. Here’s hoping things improve.
Common-Insight