The Weblog Review

Monoblogue opens to a visually uninteresting background of very fine, closely spaced gray lines with tiny generic fonts. The first entry on the page that day was a small paragraph about an apple computer site, followed by a huge blank space that perhaps is supposed to contain an image, I’m not sure. I searched for some information about the author and found one paragraph:

the author lives in los ángeles and in good company . he was born in 1970 , started reading grown-up books altogether too early and stopped playing with legos a bit late . he is now just a tourist in two cultures •

Okay, that was informative. I began browsing through the most recent entries and encountered a disjointed mix of liberal politics and computer related subjects, along with the occasional, out of left field bit of trivia, such as the link to a site for “Psychiatry for Mishandled Toys”.

Political blogs are so pervasive that in order to stand out, one needs to really do some homework. And in my opinion, this blog does not stand out in any way. I don’t get a sense of the author’s thought processes, only a regurgitation of tired finger pointing slogans that are frankly a dime a thousand these days. If you want to persuade someone who might disagree with you, show me your gut feelings, write about how you have struggled to understand the world from your point of view. Try to convince me with sound reasoning. Don’t just post a link to MoveOn.org and another link to where I can contribute money.

Elsewhere on the page there are links to our author’s family tree which was fairly well done, and a travelogue section with some very nice pictures from Ecuador that is worth taking a look at, and some original line drawings and Photoshop digital art that might be of interest. As far as I can tell, all the entries are from August of this year. There were no older entries that I could find.

Overall, I found this blog rather uninspiring. The entries don’t seem to hang together with any real coherency. Perhaps if the author revealed more of himself in his posts, I could have connected with him. Since this seems to be a very new blog, it is possible our author is casting about trying on different things to see what fits. If he succeeds in finding his style, this blog has potential to improve.

mono[b]logue

Upon entering this weblog, I was greeted with one of the most outstanding pages I have ever come across. By outstanding, I mean it wasn’t your ordinary design. You could plainly see that there was a lot of time and effort put into it.

Jacob (the author), started the blog in December of 2000. He writes about everything from Television, music, food, etc. You name it and it’s there. When you click on the index link, you will see what I mean. Most of his entries are very informative as well. Jacob has so many topics listed in his index, that it makes it kind of difficult where to start first. It would take quite some time to read his entire blog. When you click on his navigation link he also has desktop wallpaper which are his own original material. Jacob states in his “about me” section, that he could also be called a designer. That would explain the design of his page being so unique.

Jacob is apparently a very talented individual. His entries are extremely well written. They are really not just your ordinary entries. When he writes about a particular topic, he will give you a detailed description of how something works.

I was playing around with the blog for a bit, and I did notice that most times when you enter his pages, the background changes in certain aspects. This really gives the blog a sort of uniqueness as well.

In conclusion, Jacob could take this blog a long way. I couldn’t find one fault with it. My only regret is that I couldn’t go through the entire blog at the time. I’m sure Jacob’s blog will be around for quite some time. It is one that I highly recommend you bookmark. VerseGuru

Verse Guru. My poet’s soul stirred. A blog devoted to poetry?

Alas, it is not to be. After much searching I found that the Verse part refers to some kind of web/tech/consulting/design/development company.

Our author states right off the bat that this site does not look so hot if we are using Internet Explorer. (Poor unfortunate me…. IE is what I have.) He recommends we use Mozilla. Now I am not going to go download Mozilla right now, so I agree, the site doesn’t look so hot. The page is cluttered, the fonts too small and the background is an annoying hazy leopard print…. although I think it changes. Wait a minute… Yep, every time you refresh the page, the background changes. All of them are too busy for my taste.

There are tabs at the top of the page that read: Blog, Deli, Journal, Entries, and Index. They lead to other pages that look similar, but are categorized a bit differently. The Deli one has entries about food, complete with photos of same. The Journal and Blog pages have the same entries, but one has more pictures, I think. It all adds up to a confusing mish mash that is starting to make me frown. It’s not NICE to make the Weblog reviewer frown!

I got the impression that because he CAN produce an incredibly complex and confusing page … he DOES. But frankly, it’s a navigation nightmare.

After much clicking and searching, I found an About page. Our author is a British citizen living in France. A Myers-Briggs type INTJ.

Okay, so let’s read some entries. There are quite a few about film and TV in the recent posts that did not capture my imagination much. And while reading, I encountered sentences like this one:

“I think Clay Shirky [Many2Many] has lost grip of his divining rod in respect to XFN. Certainly you can argue over the rationale until you reach the restaurant at the end of the universe; I agree with him that XFN does provide inflexible categorization… “

I don’t know about you, but I have no idea what that is all about. And to add to my growing pile of annoyances, the entries contain just a sentence or two and then you have to click a “read more” button and open another window for the rest. I don’t get this strategy. What’s the point of not having the whole entry visible on one page?

I headed off to the archives to see what might be hidden there. . . I found entries on food, computer topics, an entry that includes a graphic picture of a road killed rat, technical themed entries containing obscene amounts of linkage and entries that have bulleted sections that jump from one subject to another.

Aaarrrrrgggghhhhh!

Perhaps this entry will give you a good picture of the mind of our author: Dec. 31, 2003 Entitled “Old Ideas”.

While I must say the author of this blog is obviously an intelligent fellow, I found his writing style to be quite inaccessible and at times aloof. What can I tell you. He has myriad interests and blogs on all of them. I just could not connect. However, if you have technical leanings, this blog might just float your boat.

The one redeeming thing about this site is his photo gallery. There are some truly beautiful shots there. It’s worth a visit just for those.

VerseGuru

I really enjoyed reading the entries of this blog. Kevin (the author) is a college student who writes about his every day life, his friends, emotions and a dream that he continues to have.

He continues to have a dream about some mystery girl. According to Kevin, he has been having this dream for quite a long period of time. Reading his posts concerning this dream, I found to be very intriguing. It kind of makes you wait for him to have the next dream to find out what happens. Kind of like a daily soap opera.

Kevin also writes about problems he has been having sleeping, different mood changes he has which he can’t understand etc. I guess you could say his blog is like a soap opera and a mystery novel all rolled up into one. But interesting for the most part. From reading Kevin’s entries, he seems to be trying to discover who he is and what he wants to do with his life. I discovered from reading one of his earlier entries, that he applied for an internship. Hope it really works out for him.

There is nothing spectacular about the design of the blog. But it is very clean and neatly laid out. He has a little rubber duck in the corner of each post (where I don’t see that it has any bearing on the entries.) His archives and links are located on the left hand side of the page.When you click on Kevin’s archives, there are calenders for each one, which is a little different than most blogs. However, I did notice that he doesn’t post too many entries in the run of a month , which was a little disappointing because there was less to read.

If you like a bit of mystery , then this is a blog you should really check out.After these messages…

Upon arriving at The Transplant I was greeted with a striking banner graphic and a clean (but very busy) website. The author of The Transplant is a twenty something that lives in Seattle. The ‘about me’ really didn’t tell me a whole lot about the author other than he’s : ‘perplexed by the simple act of tying my shoelaces’ and ‘I have not a single reason for a website, aside from reading to myself my very own words. Fodder for the ego. My very own hyperreal self.’ . While this was interesting content… More specific information would have been useful as a starting point. It took several pages of reading to know where the author was, that the author was married and the author’s gender. Hmmpt.

This blog consists mostly of short curious observations by the author. The entries are often about things the author is interested in… such as TV shows, bands, and the odd personal reflection. The blog is well written but at times exhaustively verbose, such as the entry ‘We shall ride in silent’. While I believe the author is trying to be funny somehow… I’m not sure all readers would hang in to read the whole entry. The entries are categorized by: Body Parts, Luminaries, Nonentities, Pointless and the Inbetweens. Curious categories indeed. In Body Parts you’ll find the author’s suffering with his mandible, Luminaries is mainly movies and music, Nonentities was strange descriptions of people presumably in the author’s life, Pointless: mostly amusing observations and Inbetweens is generally personal reflections. Sometimes entries aren’t explained, such as ‘&*!@#&!!!^*’ which reads, ‘Food, then drink. Food, then drink.’ Huh? Which is the down side to Transplant… sometimes you’re left wondering “Huh?”. Clearly this blog is often more for the author than the reader.

If you are looking to read a different perspective this blog may appeal to you.
Some of the more eclectic entries ‘Is Sweden better than the United States?’, ‘Onomatopoeia, Frenzy and Glocked Bus Trips’ and ‘You best not steal my Blockbuster card’ have a uniquely aberrant wit to them which I’m sure some readers would enjoy. Check out The Transplant to see if this wit appeals to you.

The Transplant