The Weblog Review

Every now and then I come across a blog who’s name is original. It is almost impossible to find something truly original in this thing we call the blogosphere, but this name of Sensibilities just struck me as original. I didn’t know what to expect, so I dove right in.

The blog tells us that it is “An attempt to make sense of things in a random universe.” That’s quite a burden to impose upon oneself, but nevertheless it is still a task.

The blog is not quite about the universe, more about the author. Which is fine and a little more manageable. The blog talks about all kinds of different things the author has been through. She also likes to talk about the books she has read, and by the looks of it, she reads a lot.

The design of the site looks like a blogspot template only slightly modified. It works for this site, which is a rarity amongst the blogspot templates. The biggest complaint is that the left hand navigation is obscenely long. Sometimes longer than a month of posts.

Overall I enjoyed this blog. The posts aren’t all that frequent, though they do typically contain a lot of content. The navigation for archives is at the top of the left hand column so this also makes a little annoyance, but overall this is a good blog to read.NULL

Mary Anne Moll writes from the city of Manila in the Philippines. She is an author and full time writer in addition to keeping the blog. She is also a mom, a writer, a watcher and a reader, and a beautiful woman with a sense of poetic grace that few I’ve come across have exhibited so wonderfully.

Mary Anne’s blog “Sensibilities” began in December of 2005 with a retrospective of the year that passed. It is a standard blogger template with easy to navigate archives and lists on the sidebar of what she currently is reading and working on, and links to the publications she’s been featured in as well as the books she has written.

The blog progresses through the year 2006 and so far into 2007 with entries outlining where she is in writing and in love, where she is as a parent to her son, and her involvement with the Philippine National Police Special Action Force Training School, or Sureshock… which I found incredibly interesting. There are extensive lists of what she is reading, digesting, consuming in literature, and small personal entries about the simplest things, like the gift of good penmanship.

My favorite entry by far was when she cleaned out her car.
http://maryannemoll.blogspot.com/2007/05/two-year-baggage.html
and it made me really consider what we carry around with us in our proverbial trunks in memory.

Her entries are accentuated beautifully by photos, some of her own and some from other sources and as a writer I noted she is very VERY careful and makes sure photo credit is given for each shot, a touch I found refreshing and appreciated in this world of blogs that never credit sources. Nicely done. A lot of the photos are of the PNP Special Action Force because she’s focused on writing for the Force & Valor magazine. Some are just of Manila or Bicol. My favorite pictures were of her mother’s bougainvilleas who lost their blooms all through the house in the December 2006 entry.

I read each and every entry over the course of two days. There were huge spans of silence, and periods of frenzied postings where Mary Anne pours out her heart and soul. In July of this year (2007) she shut down the blog when the man in her life became the man no longer in her life, stating that “Under the weight of so many unanswered questions, and still reeling from the impact of disappointment and loss, I am unable to make sense of things.” The break in blogging seems to have done her well, and we all know that when faced with situations that sometimes lack words, it is okay to not speak. It is truly okay to put the hands away from the keyboard and embrace another part of life for just a little while.

Within three weeks she phoenixed back and has written a few new entries, none of which deal too in depth with her relationship in full but shed light on who she is, from her new glasses to the “Something about me challenge” that she takes to write about. She thanks those who have rallied around her in her time of sadness, and it seems that she’ll be okay. I’m sure she’ll be okay.

I enjoyed Mary Anne’s blog greatly, and will revisit for certain. I give her blog a rating of 4, and look forward to more from Ms. Moll in the future.
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With a name of Shucking oysters, shelling peas, I knew this was going to be a food blog. Or at least I hoped it would be. Thankfully it was a food blog.

Before I get on with the contents of the blog, I must first point out this is a blogspot blog. This blog deserves its own domain name, so please, Alexa, get a domain for this blog. You can keep the blogspot template as it works for the site, but your site deserves a domain.

Now the food blog if you hadn’t guessed is written by Alexa. She is a self proclaimed food and wine enthusiast but you have to give her credit. She knows her food. In reading through the first couple of posts she talks about her upcoming corporate dinner that she is preparing. You can tell that she has given a lot of thought into what is going to be served and how it will be served. This is how I know she knows her food.

Continuing on we find ourselves reading recipies and other items all about food. Never did I come across a posting and think that this blog was bad. Like my dad’s apple pie, you always want more.

Alexa is very talented and as I said, her blog deserves a domain to itself. Her skills should not be fooled by a simple blogspot website. I really enjoyed this blog, and I know anyone who enjoys eating or drinking will enjoy this blog too.NULL

Dave’s Guide to the Best of the Web is a blog theme which has been done many, many times over. We’ve even recently reviewed sites just like it here on TWR. Most of the time, these types of blogs are hard to navigate, full of advertising, and really are Pay Per Review scams where people write glowing gushing reviews of stuff because they’re being paid to do so — not because they actually LIKE the thing.

What I like about this blog is that it seems Dave writes honestly about his opinion and what he likes about the sites. He states in his About page that he “likes to share” good things. And that’s good and well appreiciated. I get the impression that he is actually LIKING these things and hoping to share them with people, and not LIKING them just for Pay Per Review kinds of purposes. I hope I’m right and that he has not tricked me with a ruse and that this is truly a Pay Per Review site… I’d feel silly then, now. Wouldn’t I? I liked his writing, the constant wiki-like links out to topics within each of the best ofs entries, and the general ease of use of the layout.

The thing I kind of dislike is that Dave asked us to review his site when he only has five entries of best of the web topics. Had this request come to us after, say, December 2007 when (hopefully) Dave had built up a host of wonderful reviews to best of the web stuffs, perhaps my rating would be higher.

I would like to see Dave pound out a good year’s worth of great webstuff to share, and to dig deeper than companies like Apple. I mean, everyone likes Apple stuff, right? So that’s hardly a discovery worthy of sharing.

Maybe he’ll put The Weblog Review down as something to share as the Best Of The Web. One can hope.

I give the site a 2.75 because I like the personal tone, and again I stress that I would have marked it higher if there were more entries and interesting/deeper/unique content.

Best of luck to you Dave as you dig through the interwebs for great things.

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It’s not often that I get to review a blog and I don’t feel the need to click on in and every external link I can find to get the hell away from what I’m reading. While browsing the short-lived archives at InsanityChyld, I only found myself wanting to do one thing (in relation to this blog) and that was to find some more archives to read.

As I do with any site I end up reviewing, I want to read an “About” section to find more about the author, or in this case authors, why this site exists, or what I can expect by reading through their entries. This section didn’t let me down and filled all of those informational voids that you usually have the first time you start reading a new site.

There’s a warning featured on the “about” section letting readers know that the site isn’t intended for people under the age of 18 or anyone that’s close-minded. I like these authors already. This is also where I found that InsanityChyld is actually a group blog with five authors listed, all with anonymous personas.

Many of the posts are very personal in nature – an interaction between the boss of one of the authors discussing the growth of facial hair, for instance. While others turn a picture of Paris Hilton into a “Guess What’s Wrong” game that only ends in a not-so-pleasant discovery once you figure out what it is you’re looking for.

It only takes reading through just a few entries to realize that the author(s) don’t hold back when posting about their personal lives. While they may post pictures of themselves, nobody ever knows their real names, making them pretty tough to wind up on a random Google search by their boss (been there, done that).

InsanityChyld falls into the personal blog category very easily. People either like this type of blog, or they don’t. I found it enjoyable and have added it to my RSS reader. Will others feel the same way? Just reading two or three of the past two months of archives will help them easily make that decision.
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