The Weblog Review

I had no idea what to expect venturing onto the domain of EdgarAndEllen.com. After reading the first couple of posts, I realized that I was clearly missing out on who Edgar and Ellen are by not watching their television series. With the help of Wikipedia and all of the information available on this weblog’s main site, I learned more than I could have imagined. Edgar and Ellen are the main characters in a series of children’s books written by Charles Ogden. The two namesakes of this site are children that spend time in a cemetery with the likely spooky company that one would expect.

When the site loads, a design comes up that has tweaked to show pictures of Edgar and Ellen in the header image and to make the site appear a bit more spooky than the standard WordPress template would. The site is easy to navigate and easy on the eyes, both much appreciated features of a weblog. It uses a two-column layout and the creators of this site keep the additional information in the sidebar to a minimum. Readers and fans can order the books or find out where to download Podcasts. They can also send Edgar and Ellen e-cards or play games involving the characters of these stories.

The site is fairly new. Appropriately enough, the blog portion of the site only rolled out a couple of days following Halloween. The updates come somewhat frequently and make an attempt to encourage reader feedback via the comments portion of each post.

It became clear to me that this site is geared towards people that watch Edgar and Ellen. Having never seen the show, I was unable to participate in the posts that pose questions about how one might interact with the title characters or what readers think about particular aspects of the show.

Blogs are becoming very popular. We all know that. In this case, the creators of the EdgarAndEllen.com site have opted to use a blog for viewer and fan interaction, rather than a message board. This may be something that takes off for other fan-related type sites in the future.

For now, this site is a must visit for those that follow the show. Those folks that know about this show will immediately add it to their list of bookmarks to be updated on all of the upcoming activity related to the show.
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Humor is a diverse human condition with no real defining preconditions. Much like beauty, humor is difficult to quantify or describe. The English love their wordplay, the Australians are self deprecating, and the Americans like to offend. At “Tiny Little Rants of Doom” our author, El Sid, lets it rip like an american stand up, only sitting down.

“Tiny Little Rants of Doom” is highly stylistic with an obviously gothic slant, and black humor to match. The design is typical blogger, with all the color pulled down to #000000 (black).

Reading through the latest posts I become familiar with the authors stream of consciousness rants which have no regard for trivial and annoying things such as capitalization, although she seems to have a good appreciation for the exclamation mark, as it is well used. You feel like you are inside her crazy, anarchic head, privy to her raving. Granted, there is humor in here, but this blog is a personal one foremost.

I skip ahead to her favorite posts among the plethora of interesting links along the side, and read some genuinely funny lists she has written about her evilness, customer types, hospitality FAQs, The Cure albums, and with the anger poured on thick and sticky about a million reasons she hates her job, or rather, her customers. I honestly believe you should be nice to people serving you food, really, think about it. I sympathize with our evil overlady completely, having worked in the service industry myself.

All in all “Tiny Little Rants of Doom” is a devilishly funny rant site, with less wit and more anger in its humor cocktail. Our authors bubbly personality is evident and the posts are mildly engaging. We share some heros (eg Neil Gaiman, The Cure) and I’m fairly certain her friends would find her site a riot. Its interesting to get inside the mind of a gothic waitress who wants to main and destroy her clientele and worth a read through if only for its perverse outlook on life. NULL

Being an extreme amateur in the world of photography, I always appreciate someone that is dedicated and talented enough to regularly update and maintain a photography weblog. The author of “Deography” categorized his site as one of these rare photography weblogs, so I really could not wait to jump into the site.

The first thing I noticed as the site loaded was a link-filled menu right below the title of the site. I immediately began exploring these links. The FAQ is what it says it is, and the photoblogging link provides readers with a great amount of comprehensive information on the how-to behind creating their own photoblog. Also at the top of the site are quite a few different ways to go through past pictures – by the entire gallery which is sorted by category, by the last week or last month’s worth of pictures, by species, and, of course, by what the author feels like are his top ten pictures.

The complete design of the site is unique – it only has one column. While this might not make a lot of sense for a site that focuses mainly on text to use this kind of layout, it’s perfect for a site that primarily spotlights photography. The only grievance – and I use that word lightly – I can find is that the light gray text on the dark gray background may pose a readability problem for some people.

As I moved along from one picture to another, I incessantly appreciated Dylan’s talent. Instead of just highlighting his talent, he is also gone one step further. With each photograph, he includes the camera and file settings for the particular picture. Readers can see in a quick glance whether or not he used a flash for a particular photograph, and if they are somewhat advanced in their skills, they’ll be impressed to find what type of metering mode or exposure bias a particular picture contained.

As he says in his “photoblogging” area of the site, a picture is worth 1000 words, so he keeps his writing to a limit. He explains the picture – where it was taken, who is in the shot, etc. Then, it’s up to the viewer to make up the rest of the story.

With the different subjects he captures, it appears that Dylan takes his camera almost everywhere. Whether it be an amazing shot of a water droplet rolling down a leaf, the ocean water against the sandy beach, or someone he knows playing at an open mic night in a dimly lit room, Dylan uses his camera to capture things the average person would just skip right on by.

Deography breaks up the monotony of the regular, everyday text-based weblog. It’s a great addition to anyone’s list of daily reads, especially if you are in search of something that’s not like everything else you read.

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I was supposed to be packing for an upcoming vacation. I wanted to get it done ahead of time so I was not rushing around at the last minute and forgetting things like, um, underwear. I probably could have finished up tonight if I had not started reading “The Secret Brain”. I wanted to read it earlier today while I was at work, but due to it being marked as an “Adult” themed blog, I decided to wait until I got home. As enticing as the site may have been before I even looked at it, my job just seemed a bit more important!

“The Secret Brain” is a weblog started just a few weeks ago by ArtfulDodger, who wisely keeps his name, location and names of other completely anonymous. He lives somewhere on the East Coast, is married, has a son, and has a very regular girlfriend on the site. A good deal of his posts deal with marriage that is in shambles and how the relationship with his girlfriend balances out the bad times he endures while at home. His girlfriend provides him with an escape from his wife, and this weblog provides him an escape from keeping all of his actions and thoughts bottled inside.

ArtfulDodger just started writing in his weblog on December 1st. While that’s given him less than three weeks from the time the site started until this review was complete, he’s already gained a very loyal audience and is able to capture readers very easily with just one post. He mentions several times that his “day job” requires him to maintain a professional blog, which explains why it is very palpable the author isn’t new to the blogging scene.

The author samples different types of writing in his posts. Typically, after a romp with his girlfriend, he’ll post their experiences. While, if he hasn’t seen or been with her for a few days, he’ll explain why he’s still married or how he met his girlfriend. There are even other times where he’ll try tapping in to writing something from a woman’s point of view of even some poetry. Each entry is certainly not like the next one, but they all stick to the same topic, for the most part, and that topic-driven format is what will turn readers loyal to this site.

Design-wise, the site is just … okay. It’s a site hosted by Blogger, which is ideal for the author looking to remain completely anonymous from the public. In addition, of course, since Blogger hosts it, a standard Blogger template is being used. Different shades of greens are used throughout the site giving it a calming appearance. It’s an average design, but a site such as this one has a myriad of opportunities for a much more personal and/or unique design.

As I’ve mentioned and as ArtfulDodger has gone out of his way to mention on his site, “The Secret Brain” is an adult-oriented weblog. If you’re above 18 and not at work right now, definitely read it. The author has a way of yanking you in with each post and not letting go until you’ve read from start to finish. Even then, you’re still left wondering what his next post will contain and, ultimately, which directly his life will go.

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I read the first post on this site and immediately thought one thing – scandalous! The author, whose name we never learn, believes that he is gay. What’s the problem? He doesn’t feel as if he can tell anyone and can only live his gay lifestyle online. What’s this mean? Those of us that stumble upon his weblog, called “1Body2Souls – A Gay Confession”, are reading top-secret information that is not even known to the author’s friends and family.

The first thing I wanted to read was an about section – a link to a profile somewhere or just a couple of words about the person sitting at the keyboard when this site is updated. Unfortunately, I could not find that anywhere. Instead, I did what any obsessive blog reader would do – I jumped to the very first post, which took place just about two months ago. The beginning is a great place to start for this weblog; it gives readers the general idea of why this weblog is such a personal avenue for the author.

We learn through reading that the author is from India, where homosexuality is extremely frowned upon. Visitors to this site read about the vicissitudes of developing crushes on guys and being unable to do anything at all about his feelings. We read about the things he must sacrifice and the decisions he must make between being accepted by his peers or being gay. Reading the posts, it’s very evident that this battle is an extremely situation for him to handle. The author seems to be trying everything he can to pull himself away from the gay lifestyle that he feels like he really should be a part of.

The layout for the site is, with no surprise since it’s hosted by Blog*spot, a standard Blogger template. It uses a dark gray text on a white background, which makes the site easy to read. The two-column layout has the main blog posts in the bigger column, followed by the typical blogger fodder in the sidebar – archives, links, buttons, and statistical information about visitors. The author intermittently posts pictures of half-naked attractive men, which breaks up the monotony of the text.

More frequent than not, the posts are difficult to read. Perhaps due to living in India, the grammar and spelling in the posts is almost to the level of being atrocious. The spelling errors are things that can be easily corrected by running a spell-check in any word-processing program. It’s bad enough that it distracts from the writing a great deal.

The author has himself in a very difficult predicament. Does he enable himself to live a lifestyle that feels natural, or does he abandon his soul and feelings and feel trapped being someone he’s really not? Reading this weblog is the only way you’ll find out.

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