The Weblog Review

I have officially been to a website that has one of the most interesting ways of using a weblog that I have seen. “Horse Training Tips” is exactly what the title says; it gives horse training tips in weblog form. When I realized this, I was intrigued. How did the author make this kind of format work? I immediately delved in deeper, first going to the profile so I knew something more about the author.

His name is Andy Curry, but what I found disappointing is that his profile doesn’t tell much about his background with horses. All it says is he loves animals…especially horses. Well, I can see that, there’s a whole website devoted to the animals. What I wanted to know was, is he a professional trainer or is this a hobby? How many years has he been doing this? How many horses has he trained, or does he own? This is information that should be in a profile about a weblog dedicated to horse training.

Next, I began browsing the entries. A lot of these entries are structured like letters, ending with “Sincerely,” etc. And, there are a lot of external links for more information on the subject broached in the weblog. For example, there was a short tip about bucking horses, and at the end was a link to more information. However, these external links have to be copied and pasted into the URL bar! I found this very inconvenient; it isn’t very hard to add a link command into the html, I think of it as a common courtesy.

Now, I don’t know much about horse training. I did a little bit of riding when I was younger, but that’s about it. However, from what I read from the content, Andy seems to know what he’s talking about. But, it isn’t all tips, there are a few anecdotes, too, and I found these especially enjoyable. It gave the weblog a more personal feel and made Andy more human. It also made the weblog fit into the “Personal” category.

Unfortunately, there was one huge detrimental fact that reduced the overall score: when I clicked on the archive links, I received a “Page cannot be found” error, so only the posts under “Previous posts” were open to me.Horse Training Tips

I did not know what to expect to find at a blog, vaguely named “Marshall,” and because there is not an About Me section or even a simple blog chalk, it’s still hard to tell even upon visiting. Although a graphic contained on the left indicates that Marshall is a Blogging Brit and a post reveals that he is living in Manchester and plays football recreationally.



The blog’s tagline reads “Stuff, things and other bits and pieces,” which is what his blog seems to contain. His posts range from bizarre coincidences, social commentary to Marshall’s adventures at a Karaoke pub.



Do not expect daily descriptions of Marshall’s life since it seems that lately he only blogs new entries a couple of times a month. So far there are no new entries for the month of January, although in a late November post he cites a heavy workload and “blogger’s block” for his infrequent posting.



Marshall’s writing is very witty and refreshingly simple and honest. I found myself smirking at a few of his observations, conversations and exploits.



The left navigation area includes the standard blog requirements, a calendar, archive, XML feed, counter and links. The blog’s design in general is pretty minimal, the colors are black & white and there aren’t any graphics to liven things up either.



As of late it seems that Marshall needs to put a little more effort into his blog, writing more and maybe sprucing up the look a bit. But after doing this he could have a pretty popular blog that would surely delight readers.Marshall

Well, the term “Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless” certainly caught my eye as I viewed this site. I wasn’t quite sure if the author was being humorous about the statement or if he was really being serious. I guessed that it was a little bit of both.

As I read the subtitle, which promises security tips and tricks that offer on the people and not the technology, I expected to be bombarded by jargon that will be of little help to my poor, not-so-security-savvy brain. But it was not so.

I started reading and at first, I was fascinated with the stories compiled within. The blog entries, to me, seemed just like a compilation of stories and articles the author found while surfing the net. As it is so, the entries do revolve around one certain topic – security. It is great though; the stories cover a wide range of topics and are quite interesting.

Design-wise, the blog itself has a very simple one. It is a straightforward, no-nonsense kind of layout. However, through its simplicity, it emphasizes on the fact that this blog is not some unthought of kind of blog. It has a purpose and that purpose is security.

As I said, this blog is straightforward and has a purpose. It is a great blog to visit to find out, if not everything, some good tips and trick about security. Though most of the entries are just links of articles with a little bit of summary up front, it is a great one to visit to find out more about security. I would suggest anyone of any age to visit just to find out more at what they cater to best – security.

Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless

My initial reaction when the weblog finally loaded was, “Oooh, nice design.” I suppose my joys of finding weblogs that take the time to personalize their little havens on the web will never cease. Yes, the design was a little plain: just black and white, but it was stylishly done. So, with a warm glow in my belly, I began to read.

“Tread softly, lest ye drown in the depths of my insanity” is a personal weblog. It is the writings and thoughts of its author, and it would seem there are a lot of thoughts to catalogue. On the front page is one entry, to read more, you must click on the “recent entries” area, or the “footprints in the sand.” So, I read a few entries and I began to see a similar trend in the author’s writing style: he wrote like he was talking to a specific party of people and I was not privy to that party.

The first entry I read began as an anecdote about some sort of scandal, and provided little or no background information and no links or references to earlier entries. Throughout the whole thing, I was asking myself questions like: What scandal? What website did he get this from? What’s going on?

While this was the worst example, when I read other entries, I got the distinct feeling there was some joke and I was missing it.

All-in-all, the author’s writing isn’t engaging, so it was a difficult read for me. That doesn’t mean he didn’t have good things to say; in fact, some of them were witty and amusing, like pointing out cultural differences between the East Indian culture and the Western culture. However, it’s hard to pick out these little gems hidden amongst the author’s otherwise brisk writing style.Tread softly, lest ye drown in the depths of my insanity

When I clicked on the link for Young Liberals, I decided to keep an open mind. I like reading about politics – any politics – because it’s interesting to hear other people’s views, no matter how much they differ from my own. But, sometimes, these political weblogs can become preachy, scary, or downright boring. I always enter politically based weblogs with a bit of trepidation and caution.

However, I didn’t need to feel at all cautious when reading Young Liberals. If you can’t tell by the title what the political views of the authors are, they are liberals and they try to present their views with humor. The effort at humor worked; I found myself chuckling, giggling, and shaking my head at entries such as “Christophenia,” and “The Machine Goes On.”

While the authors don’t seem to know each other well, and from the entries I read, rarely make references to each other, they do share a common belief system and their writing styles compliment each other. The authors also tried to add personal entries about their everyday lives every once in a while. I found these entries helped to give more substance to their voices; they didn’t seem like nameless entities on their soap boxes, preaching about politics, but came across as intelligent, real people.

The only thing that kept me from giving this weblog a 5.0 was the design. While it does have a neat layout that compliments the site’s content, the entries’ text was so much larger than the headers and footers that sometimes, it was hard to see where one entry ended and the next began. When I initially looked at the web page, I thought that it was just one very long entry on the main page!

But, beside that little, nit-picky detail, I thoroughly enjoyed my read of Young Liberals. In a day and age where people keep whimpering that the youth of today don’t care about politics or their country, it’s good to see a weblog like Young Liberals out there, proclaiming that the youth of today do care.The Young Liberals