The Weblog Review

One Stop Thought Shop – that sounds promising….

The opening paragraph displayed on the palest blue header reads:

“the web log of Brian Hayes, a personal blog about ideas or biographical views sometimes written in the first person by a hardworking fellow who is big on love, tolerance, freedom and the human potential. • My interests shift from tech and science and politics to craftsmanship and building. Here are a few interesting tools, techniques and ideas.”

That would be an understatement. The most current entry of September 23rd is front and center on the page, and declares proudly: “Mark Twain For President 2004”.

So we know we are in the theoretical realm right off the bat.
In my admittedly rather short Weblog Review career, I have yet to run across a blog that discusses such a variety of subjects. Our author not only writes about Mark Twain for President, but gadgets of all kinds, soil testing experiments, discussions on the meaning of Nirvana, pet food label rules, Noam Chomsky, plus a consistent smattering of political topics.

Added to this dizzying array of interests, he also maintains two other blogs. One he calls “Construction” and the other is a computer/technology blog. They are crammed with even more amazingly diverse things. Both are worth a look.

I wanted to browse the archives which go back to September of 2003, but not one of the links were functional on the day of my visit. Even though they were not working, I noticed that they are listed by full date, thus making for a rather long list. A month my month archive link would be less cumbersome in my opinion. Also the sidebar had been relegated to the bottom of the page, making for awkward navigation. I’m sure a small adjustment would take care of it. There is no comment function, which I thought was curious.

My overall impression was that the author is a quite intelligent and complex person with his fingers in many pies. But that very quality, plus a rather oblique writing style made for a kind of muddled picture. Now, I will admit that taken one day at a time, this blog might be a lot more user friendly. But read all at once, it was a bit overwhelming.

This blog would appeal to the technophile and those with wide ranging realms of curiosity. To me this site and its companion blogs are the epitome of the word “eclectic”.

http://brianhayes.com

The first thing that strikes you about this site, as you scroll down the first page, is a real sense of insouciance. At first I thought I was in for another dreary neo-conservative brain bashing experience that was similar to holding on to an electric fence wearing wet clothes.

Do not be fooled, this is no hard-nosed cynic; this dude has a sense of humour. Actually, as one begins to delve beneath the surface, there’s a whole lot of optimism and astute observation going on here disguised as something to make you laugh. There is a lot of copy and pasting and linking to other sites, however one sees it is mostly in a vein of thinking, yet it does leave the reader wondering what is his writing and what belongs to other people.

There is some deft sentence construction here. The writer reveals his mind and ideas using a particular brand of humour that not every writer is capable of. In the post ‘First’ where he is revealing encrusted fingernails and the depth of fatherly love, he does it with a wry sense of levity and a wide sphere of reference including Freud and Jung. I must also say I was impressed with the use of vocabulary. It is rare to find blogs that have more than a run-of-the-mill vocabulary, and the use of ‘rent’ in a sentence was appealing. It provided me with a delightful reading experience.

The design is sparse, and economical loading very fast in my chosen browser. The sparsity of bells and whistles though allow one to focus wholly on the writing, and is very easy on the eyes. The linkage is in a reliable left navigation menu, yet when hoping to dig deeper, methodical clicking revealed every archive link was dead; all were ‘404 not Found’. This was very disappointing. All the off-site linking lead somewhere, but what I really wanted was to explore this blog’s past in more detail. Yet, I was denied!

Seeking more information, I scoped the profile page. His claimed title of ‘Sr VP Rebellion’ was interesting. One does have to wonder whose rebellion he is speaking of. He’s been using blogger for a respectable five-year period and he has a substantial word and post count, although I suspect it is from a combination of the other blogs he writes.

Back to blog: I feel I must say his ‘current grief’ is a short and cutting little paragraph about antinomianism was very illuminating regarding his overall raison d’etre regarding this blog.

I would reccommend reading this blog on a regular basis, if only for the lack of reliable archives and he does have interesting perspectives to share and when he does write originally it is of an excellent quality. You don’t want to miss some witty, brilliant piece of writing, because once it’s archived, that’s it… it’s gone, lost in the ether somewhere or hoarded in Blogger’s control panel somewhere.

I believe this blog will appeal to a more mature audience, in touch with politics and with a social conscience. A sense of humour is a must, and if you want a highbrow laugh from time to time, this is a good place to find it or a jump off point to it.http://brianhayes.com

I spent a good 5 minutes saying “Blagh” out loud so I’d understand the name of this blog. MJ is from Wisconsin—that clued me in pretty quickly. So as I read her blog (she spells it ‘blagh’ consistenly), I imagined her WisCAHNsin accent and that made the time spent at her blog even more enjoyable.

It’s a very pretty blue blog with some blinking, pulsating button thing at the top that I thought was cool. I also liked the way the color fades at the bottom. I question the need to have DAILY archives in the sidebar. It just makes the site look cluttered—and imagine what it will look like after she’s been doing it for longer than a few months. The sidebar notes that the blog is “Now with Tracy for twice the fun without the added calories.” This was funny to me, although I didn’t really know who Tracy was. I’m guessing Tracy is MJ’s friend as they both live in WisCAHNsin. Tracy’s posts are also enjoyable, although MJ tends to post the majority.

MJ talks about her husband and 2 children and their (mis)adventures, and she has a very readable style and tone to her posts. She posts things like “Dumbest Thing I Did This Week,” and trust me, she holds nothing back. She doesn’t use dirty words, in fact, she edits them out of other things she finds and wants to post. I think that is extremely noble for a mom of two. I am the leading potty mouth in my county, so I give props to MJ for her non-cussing blog and, presumably, life.

I especially liked the post Maintaining Privacy in a World Gone Awry because we’ve all had moments where our lives would not be the same if we didn’t win a stuffed cow at the State Fair. I really enjoyed getting a peek inside MJ’s life. I do hope she gets that Catwoman suit that she’s been wanting.
MJ’s Blagh, Blagh, Blagh

Fuki Blog opens to an attractive header with an American flag motif complete with one eagle-eyed eagle. Unfortunately, things go a bit downhill from there as far as visuals are concerned. The three column page minimalizes the blog text which gets crammed in between a mind boggling number of links, logos, buttons, polls and a frustrating list of blog links that are unreadable unless you highlight them. Navy blue font on black background? Can we re-negotiate that decision?

Adding to the confusion, the left-hand side bar is blue and the right one is red. It’s just too hard on the eyes really. The one thing I’m giving points for is the fonts are of a readable size. Thanks for that.

Our author is a proud Libertarian and posts clearly written political opinion, laced with moderate numbers of links to articles he has run across. His ideas are cogently presented and in no way to be considered rants. One gets the feeling that a differing opinion would be welcomed and responded to with respect and intelligence. He also posts a few personal entries about day to day things in his life in a lighthearted style.

He seems a bit obsessed with his traffic numbers and muses out loud in several entries on ways to increase them. One tactic is a decision to post a “Girl Friday” cheesecake photo.
While these photos remain in the tasteful category, they ARE after all, mostly, or completely bare naked ladies. (And in one case a bare naked guy) I think it’s a silly way to get numbers when those numbers probably don’t guarantee that visitors are actually reading what he has written. And the presence of several photos on the site makes the page load time annoyingly slow.

Overall, I enjoyed his political opinion, and the way he presented it in writing. But the look of the blog and the bare naked ladies got in the way of this. If I have a suggestion, it would be to make up your mind what kind of blog you want.
A soft porn site with a lot of superfluous traffic, or a pretty darn good Libertarian blog with real readers.

Fuki Blog

I loved, loved, loved the look of this site. It’s a fifties-inspired print in beautiful red and salmon tones. It’s one of the most striking blogs I’ve come across visually. On the page linked for her photos, the 50s background changes to black and gray polka dots but it’s still a cohesive site all around. Most everything is well organized, easy to understand and follow, although some of the links take a while to load even with a cable Internet connection. I’m guessing it is because of the sheer size of the blog.

Luka (not her real name) is the blog’s owner, and she’s been posting for quite some time—four years—so the archives are extensive. She posts in her “Why I’m Luka” section that she is incognito because she wants to become ‘a better blog writer.” And she has, especially when compared to her early entries featuring what she did that day or how neat it is to write in her blog. Almost all bloggers start out this way, so there’s nothing new there. Luka still reports on her daily activities but they flow better than in the beginning. I would rethink the rambling audio posts, Luka.

She isn’t afraid to voice her opinions on hot button topics such as abortion and politics. She backs up her arguments with links to other sites holding statistics and in-depth analysis. I so like it when bloggers do this. It lets you know they are informed and they want you to be as well.

Luka is an amateur photographer and there is a section where you can see her work and her comments on her work. The photo page is like a second blog, a bonus if you will. It’s also a bonus because the photo blog opens in a separate window, thus giving you twice the Luka at once. (I would like to see the link to this page be more prominent on her main page, however.) There are self-portraits, photos of trips she takes, and (why am I not surprised here?) photos of her cat. If there is a cat owner with a blog who does NOT post photos of his/her cat, please alert me to this fact. I don’t think said person exists.
incogblogo dot net