My first impression of “Angelic Lucy’s Out Cry” or “tuliplucy.com” (which is it? I’m not sure) was that it was kind of a mess. Perhaps it was my browser, but the blog didn’t load correctly and some things in the sidebar were covered by non-clickable graphics. The colors were pink and white–nice and girly, and the blog was definitely written by a woman. After reading the most current post, which contained a medium length mediocre love poem, I was pretty certain that the writer was not a native speaker of English. The writer does not have a full command of the past tense, which makes reading some of the entries a tad confusing.
The entries have a very chatty, “dear-diary” style. It seems that this weblog is written directly to a few (or several) friends of the author. I had a very hard time reading the entries due to the poor English and the rambling, disconnected nature of the posts. I went back into the oldest archives (April 2003) and it was even harder to make sense of the older posts. I did not find myself drawn into the personal story of Lucy. She seems to be upset about something but it is very vague and I couldn’t follow, though I assume it is the break up of a romantic relationship. Because I could not follow her story, or fully understand the posts, I did not find the weblog a compelling read. Of course, this is a personal weblog, but it does not have the coherency necessary to draw in strangers. There may well be interesting stories here, but I don’t have the patience to discover them. The very poor writing is an impassable impediment.
The weblog is nicely designed and the features are easy to access. I have a quibble with the comments, which can only be made by entering them on a tag board. The board appeared to be a conversation between Lucy and her friends, which seems to fit in with the purpose of the blog–as a form of personal communication. I did not find any problems with loading or links on the page.
The bonus features are links to photos and a link to the author’s other blog, which are a series of poorly written, but enthusiastic, food reviews. I did not find much of interest here, but it is well designed.
I would not recommend visiting this site unless you are a friend of Lucy’s or if you are looking for some good design ideas. Lucy’s story is rambling and incoherent and only accessible to her friends.
If I could split the rating, I’d give Lucy a 4 for design and a 1.5 for content. Since I think content is more important than design, my rating is a 2.Angelic Lucy’s Out Cry