The Weblog Review

Instantly, I loved the domain name for this site –hereinreality.com. The potential the domain name alone has is limitless.

When you are “Here in Reality”, you’re in one huge site. The general idea of this site is a new/links site that guides readers to the daily news, sports, deaths, or other bizarre happenings that the author of the site had deemed important enough to share at Here in Reality.

The Webmaster’s Blog, which is featured on the main page of the site, is the only portion of the weblog where the author exhibits some type of personal interjection to the links that Leigh Ann shares with readers. She really does a nice job of covering just about every aspect of current events, which is sometimes not an easy task.

A really neat addition to this site is the “Keyword Headline Feeds” where you can search a giant news database for any current news involving whatever keyword you should choose. Quite a neat little tool!

I really can’t get over how extensive this site is. It’s HUGE. While still visiting “Here in Reality”, I played a game of checkers (and won!), tried to see a Freddie Prinze Jr. striptease (no such luck, though), saw that even Yasmine Bleeth looks like crap in her driver’s license picture, and experienced my first (and probably last) javascript religious experience. I kept going throughout the site and found a little tribute to the “Dude, you’re gettin’ a Dell” kid, and some helpful survival links for just about every kind of threat of a natural disaster.

The design of the site is very simple, but with a site that focuses solely on current events, news, etc., there’s really no need for anything flashy or special. The current layout is a really good choice for the site.

You can really spend tons of time at this site, and while there’s plenty of news for you to catch up on, there are also some fun things to take in while you’re visiting “Here in Reality”.

Most of the entries throughout the site consist of just the link to the actual news article, and an excerpt from that specific link. While it does intrigue one to click to read the full article, I personally would have liked to read some personal thoughts or feelings by the author. Of course, that perhaps is not the purpose of this site, so I didn’t let that affect my overall rating of “Here in Reality”.Here In Reality

Fairy-wings is a very brightly designed site that, from the start, looks like it won’t hold back any punches. Sure enough, after the splash page, the introduction text to the blog states, “You’ve stumbled onto my domain on the net, Fairy-wings. This is my personal site with very frequently updated cam shots, blog, and content. I can say whatever the hell I want and if you can’t deal with that, click that lovely x up in the corner!” I was hoping this would be the kind of weblog where opinions on everything from bean sprouts to world peace would be offered. On a side note, another positive first impression was that the layout features Stitch from Disney’s Lilo and Stitch, which I’m a big fan of. A disappointing first impression was that the header fonts make it very hard to read – I feel like it’s work to make out what the various sections are called.

Once I began reading the weblog at Fairy-wings, I found it a little hard to follow. It’s definitely a personal blog, but I’ve found that most of the really great personal weblogs comment at least occasionally on some issues of general interest – and you can always count on a few good links, right? Well, Fairy-wings is great for reading about the life of Monique, the author, but if you don’t know her, it’s a little hard to get what she’s talking about, and she uses relatively few links to other sites in her blog content. Some spelling problems threw me off, but overall, the text was clean and simple enough to read through.

I think the design at Fairy-wings works well with the personal focus of the site. Prominent features include a tagboard, a quick e-mailer and a webcam. As I said before, the header fonts were a little hard to make out at first glance, but they do look nice. (And have I mentioned I love Stitch?) The only detraction to the design was the color of the scrollbar – I like colored bars, but there has to be differentiation from the bar’s track to the scrolling section, or else you never know where the heck you are.

There are several “extra features” in Fairy-wings’ content, most by way of links to other sites, but I think my favorite was the “Boyfriend Application” that actually is part of Fairy-wings. I just wonder what she does with them… if it works, maybe it’s worth a shot on my own site!

Overall, this is a nice site. I’d say its appeal wouldn’t reach many people over, say, 20 or so, but it’s well-designed, consistently updated and you can tell it’s something that the author has put a considerable bit of work into. It’s worth a visit, and I may stop back, if for no other reason than to see if the boyfriend application nets any results.

Fairy-wings

Derek writes about nearly everything imaginable. Political ramblings that are often quite opinionated (which is a good thing), happenings in his personal life, the occassional technical/geeky tidbit of information, and many, many other topics are the subject matter at hand throughout the weblog. The way Derek writes is quite thought provoking, and typically will make you think about what you’ve just read, rather than just skimming over it and going to the next weblog.




I like going back to read an author’s very first available entry. Usually it gives an insight as to why they might have started blogging, and it seems as if Derek’s start to weblogging can be somewhat credited to his accidental discovery of Wil Wheaton’s weblog.




The design is based on a three column layout, and overall, has a very nice, clean appearance. I love the picture he uses at the top of the site. Navigating the site is easy, as well as finding lots of information Derek was filled the left and right columns with.




The site contains several different areas, all named after specific rooms of a house. “The Study” is the home of some of Derek’s original poetry. “My Back Yard” is a wonderful collection of some very nice photography that’s laid out in a very appealing format. “The Window”, of course, is his weblog. And appropriately enough, “The Guest Room” and “The Neighbors” house the guestbook and external links, respectively.




There’s an “about the author” section and a section about the site. This is a very complete, well designed and well organized site.The Window

A journey. By reading this weblog, I felt as if I’d been in the backseat of this journey that the author’s life has taken over the course of the last 10 months. Keeping this in mind, Tricia has very appropriately named her website “A Spiritual Journey”.

Focused mainly on her personal life and the events that invoke her daily feelings, Tricia spends a lot of time spilling her thoughts out onto this weblog. She’s a single mom with two young boys (which are both extremely handsome!), and shares the pains and the joys that make her life what it is to her.

Currently, Tricia’s going through an analyzation of each of the 7 Deadly Sins and how they play out in her daily life. It’s no easy task, but undoubtedly a self-fulfilling one. My favorite post out of the entire weblog was this one – a resume of her heart, complete with professional experience, accomplishments, and even an objective.

At first, I thought the dark green background with light yellow text would be a hindrance to read, but soon grew attached to it. I even flipped through the other skins of the site, which all worked well with the site as a whole, but kept coming back to the default one.

The site is very extensive, which is a good thing. There’s a complete “about the author” section, some wonderful thoughts on motherhood, and you can learn quite a bit about Wicca and paganism.

This is a good site to come back to if you’re looking to add a site to your list of daily reads, and definitely worth at least one look to see if it’s “your type”.A Spiritual Journey || Magickal Musings

The author is on a “Search for Love in Manhattan” of which he describes a gay odyssey of neurosis. Said odyssey is entertaining, and very identifiable to those looking for Mr. or Mrs. Right.

I wanted to read SO much more from this author. I’m not kidding. Maybe it’s because I identified so well with his search for someone that uses punctuation correctly, pronounces all those fancy-schmancy words correctly like “cache” like they were meant to be said, and identifying the shape and proper name of a dessert, but I think it’s mainly because the guy behind the words at “Search for Love in Manhattan” is a personable writer – a VERY personable writer.

There aren’t very many entries to read through, and I was sorely disappointed. Of course, I don’t expect the author to put a slow down on his quest for love just to entertain the internet-viewing audience. The overused cliché that fits best here, though, is definitely quality rather than quantity, and I’d much rather have it that way. This month’s accounts do look promising, though, as there are already four entries and it’s only June 10.

The design doesn’t at all distract from the weblog itself, as it’s a standard Blogger template. Could it have had a better design? Sure, it could. But what site couldn’t use a better design?

The only thing that I would have liked to see on this site that I didn’t come across was an “about the author” section. Maybe the author’s intention is for readers to wonder about all the specifics that could be conjured up in one’s head just by reading about someone’s life. If that was the goal, then it was certainly achieved. I’d still like to know more, though.

And I’d like to apologize in advance to the author if any glaring grammatical or punctuation errors exist in my review!The Search for Love in Manhattan