Is it a group blog or isn’t it? Is it really a blog at all? These two questions immediately spring to mind when first delving into Harlan’s Rant Page, and further inspection yields no hard answers. In fact, the more one reads, the more one may become convinced that this is no weblog at all, but a bulletin board. Bulletin boards, themselves, can make for interesting reading; but Harlan’s Rant Page is not only somewhat disorganized, it also leaves the reader feeling as if he or she has stumbled in upon a long-standing private joke after the punchline has already been issued.
From a technical perspective, there is merit in the author’s ability to configure and run this type of site. The author states that he has made a conscious decision to keep the format simple and free of graphics, and he has no qualms with admitting that his Rant Page is a “testbed” for his acquired technical skills. Unfortunately, this “testbed” is not a weblog in the sense that most readers expect; and, as it is updated infrequently, there is little here to read or enjoy. What may have started off as a personal site for rants and ramblings has seemingly declined to a fairly neglected bulletin board with a handful of regular readers whose comments add little, if anything, to the author’s original posts.Harlan’s Rant Page