I’d glanced at this site several times before it was submitted to The Weblog Review, often finding it linked off of someone else’s site. The content is hard to jump right into and grasp. Some background of where Ruzz is coming from and what he’s about is helpful, and I was able to latch on to that through reading the archives of the site.
In the very first month of journal archives, I knew Ruzz would be covering a huge variety of topics when he quotes Bette Midler and not more than five minutes later remarks about Nine Inch Nails. That is variety at its finest.
The design fits this site quite well. Never does Ruzz proclaim to be cheery or bright, and the dark layout he uses certainly doesn’t portray that. It’s a pretty simple layout and it’s easy to navigate. The colors that were chosen work great together. The daily photos that run down the left side of the weblog are a clever addition and present some nice photography work, as well! Another feature that popped out as one of my favorites is the “inputing” section of the site, where Ruzz gives us brief reviews on the books he’s reading. I’d normally point out the spelling error in “inputing”, but thought it might be intentional, sort of like a combination of the words input and computing… A couple of the older archives are a different format then the rest of the site.
Ruzz has been adding bits and pieces to this weblog for almost three solid years. And by solid, I mean multiple posts every day, rarely having a day go by without some words of wisdom to share with his following. From reading the comments and posts, it seems that those that have been following Ruzz and all he blogs about are people that have been reading up on him for quite sometime.
When the weblog first started taking its shape in the latter months of 2000, Ruzz was a wordy guy. Posts were paragraphs and paragraphs long, but they meant something. They were deep and they had you thinking.
This guy, who always seems to be in the middle of some type of website coding, takes time out to really let readers get involved into what’s going on in his head. It could be something as widely discussed as the latest in world events, a new personal goal for himself, or even how he’s battling with his own emotions and self trials. You find it all and you can’t help but really get into it all either.
Not all of the posts are as deep and philosophical as others, but they don’t need to be. As I said earlier, variety is certainly a key element with this site. Snippets from chat transcripts fill some posts, and usually these are the posts that have you chuckling to yourself or just shaking your head because it’s such a contrast from the multi-paragraph post to entries before discussing Thoreau.
It’s hard to discover that which is Ruzz from just reading a couple of posts here and there. It wasn’t until I’d gone through month after month of entries that I felt like I might be “getting” the guy. The only thing I can think of that would aid in getting brand spanking new readers to “get” this site would be an about section. Having said that, I don’t really think that the purpose of Ruzz’s site is to draw as many new visitors as he possibly can.
It’s definitely a site worth checking out. But if you were to check this site out, I would definitely recommend going back in time through the archives to find out a little bit more about creator behind this weblog.