The background of this site (ModBlog – Thoughts on paper) as it loaded took me back to about seven years ago, when I first got the idea of using a notebook paper image as my background… because, well, that’s the image that’s used as a background here. Despite that, the black and white sketch of a warrior on a mountain, and the big orange modblog banner, I was able to concentrate on fairly reviewing the actual weblog content of the site. Once I found the beginning of the site, that is.
As with any site hosted blog (Blogger, LiveJournal, et al. ), users aren’t really allotted a lot of freedom when it comes to layouts and organization of the archives of their site. Readers have to click through about four pages of archives before being able to find out where and when Taylor, the author, first started blogging here, which was April 4, 2004. Without much introduction or a very extensive “about” page, it doesn’t appear that Taylor just jumped on the blogging bandwagon in April.
Taylor writes very well. Quite often, I forget that I’m reading the blog of a 16-year-old. In fact, it sometimes takes posts spelling out the fact that this author is still in high school to remind me. “I know the skills are there they have gotten me awards, but that is another story that involves going through my life in the 6th and 7th grade,” he writes in a post about wanting to sit down a write a song. In the same post, he writes in detail about The Who’s Tommy album, which again isn’t really typical teenager blog fodder.
There are posts that are filled with typical teen angst, but instead of what could be deemed as a whiny post; Taylor expresses his angst via a song/poem that he’s written himself. These bits of expression can be found throughout the weblog, and do a nice job of breaking up regular entries.
Of course, his current entries have been dealing with a harassing person or group of people that have been leaving comments of sorts on Taylor’s site that he’s found offensive. Unfortunately, in the weblogging world, that will always be something that happens, and hopefully Taylor will be able to find a way around ignoring the harassment and continuing on with this weblog.
While this weblog probably isn’t one that the average web surfer will stumble upon and truly enjoy, it is one that is probably best fitting for readers around Taylor’s age and a bit older. Readers that are older than Taylor will be able to enjoy a few posts, but will then probably run out of commonalities or interests, just as they would outside of the weblogging world.
ModBlog – Thoughts on paper