The Weblog Review

My first impressions of Tiffinbox were good- I always think that blogs with black backgrounds look pretty stylish and this one is no exception. There is a cartoon logo in the corner which is groovy and also a little paragraph explaining what the blog is about. Apart from this, the sidebars are pretty much made up of links and blogrolls. Whilst these are extensive, they don’t seem superfluous either; most external links seem to be on–topic and useful for anyone interested in the blog contents.

As for the subject matter of the blog, I feel it is best left for the blog itself to explain itself- “Tiffinbox is a blog (for now) that is interested in exploring the cultural fabric of the South Asian diaspora through photography, writing, art and design.” I think this description pretty well sums up the contents found within. The author is currently living in NYC but spreads his entries between NYC and Indian cultural issues and often combines both. I found this use of Internationalism works very well with a medium such as blogging. Whilst the author’s primary interest seems to be photography and related exhibitions, there can also be found lots of interesting articles related to politics, music, theatre, film – in fact pretty much every creative pursuit. The entries nearly all have this Indian/ American theme to them and are politically aware and politically “right on” too – lots of anti – war links, references to poverty and how India fairs in the global economy. It was also refreshing to hear about how many Indians have made it in their respective fields and are successfully able to take on their Western counterparts.

Archives go back to November 2003 and are extensive – way too much to be read here in one sitting. I found that most articles contained something informative though, were relevant to the overall theme and of some interest. It would have been nice to see a few more photos amongst the entries though, especially considering the theme of the blog. I also found that the category archives were particularly useful in a blog of this size, allowing me to home in subjects that appealed to me particularly.

Whether this blog has long term appeal to those not strictly interested in photojournalism or Indian culture is debatable. However, for those wishing to open their minds and learn something new about these areas, there is plenty in this blog to keep them amused. Overall a well structured blog.
Tiffinbox

Fat Eye For The Skinny Guy. The page is sharp looking with a pleasant dark background with lighter colored lettering. Works well. The three column style is not my favorite, but what are you gonna do, lots of people have them. Seems to me that it might make more sense to put your excess linkage on another page and let your writing be the focus. But let us not quibble about the little things.

The big thing I want to quibble about is that our author has written his own Weblog Review already. (Why didn’t somebody tell me this site had been reviewed? I would not have spent the last two hours reading and making notes!) 😉 Here is a list our author has kindly provided of reasons why he thinks his blog is the worst of them all:

“1. It’s not funny

2. My life is pretty pathetic

3. My About Page is all false

4. Everything I talk about is stupid

5. My layout is boring and uninspired .”

Interestingly enough, this is a good example of an underlying theme of his blog. He makes fun of himself, before anyone else can do it.

Only thing is, while he is doing this, he is pretty darned funny. His writing is sort of a cross between Rodney Dangerfield and Don Rickles. If something bad is going to happen, it does when our hero is around. From not being able to go to major league baseball games for various and sundry reasons, (even though you have season tickets) , to having the whole cheerleading squad turn snotty on you, he seems to end up on the short end of every stick.

There must be something in the water in New York City that everyone seems to end up so….. grumpy. And just a warning if this kind of thing bothers you, the author has a severe case of potty mouth. (Not that there’s anything WRONG with that.)

As he freely admits, his About page is pure fiction, so we won’t go there.

One entry I submit for your consideration is June 3rd 2004 entitled “Fat Dude Loves Summer Pt. 1” I couldn’t find part 2, I don’t think he has written it yet, but I want to read it when he does.

This is a raunchy blog, almost exclusively grumpy, (check out the Friday Rants), contains a lot of “guy” humor, and is a pretty good time.

Fat Eye For The Skinny Guy

Will’s Delirium is the on-line journal (thoughts, rants and other posts of good, accurate writing) of someone named Will. We cannot really know anything other than this because there is no information on the author. I could find no “about” links on his site and only by reading the archives (which date back to 2001), did I manage to find out that Will may be a teenager or a man in his early twenties. Whatever the case, he studies (as he usually refers to “homework” in his posts), other than this, I simply cannot say.

The template is black with a table in the middle; you can scroll to the posts that show up on his main page. To the left of the table, there’s a photo of Will (maybe retouched with one of Adobe Photoshop’s filters). If you scroll down to the end of the post section, you’ll find the sole link on Will’s page is to his archives. The template could use a little more work, it’s too middle-oriented.

Will’s writing is in-depth. He constantly asks questions about himself and you get the feeling he’s still trying to discover who he is or can be. The posts are honest and many of them deal with what goes on inside his head. They make for good reading if you enjoy discovering a person’s soul, if you enjoy “lighter” blogs or blogs of a more amusing nature, then this is one blog you wouldn’t want to visit.

Personally, I enjoy this type of writing. I like reading blogs where people pose questions and try to find answers. It makes the reader feel like he or she is part of the author’s growth process.

I give this blog a 3.5 because of the lack of information on the author and the lack of links. I think it detracts from the blog, making it look stale. Most blog readers are a curious bunch, and most crave extra information. Even if you wish to remain anonymous, there are ways to make your blog more appealing. Were it not for this, I would have rated it higher.
Will’s Delirium

As I was thinking about Spriteboy World, I thought the name sounded familiar. Where was it I had heard this before? Why was I drawn to this blog like a magnet to a fridge? What was it that made me want to read it?

They say that first impressions are the best impressions, or at least the most memorable. Spriteboy World has a very nice, clean, hip layout that loads very fast. At first I was a little turned off with all the green, but then it grew on me as I read the archives. More on the design later.

One thing I hate is a splash page. It serves no purpose. Spriteboy World gets around this issue by actually posting real information to the first page. So its not so much a splash page as it is more of a directory. Where would you like to go today on this little website of mine? Of course I went directly to the biography section to find out a little more about our Spriteboy.

Birthed from a mother who is Mexican chihuahua and a father who is an Irish leprechaun, I immediately knew this was going to be one fun ride of a blog. And this also explained all the green on the site. But there is more to Spriteboy (aka Chris) then just his heritage. He lives in New York and seems to be in the loop with some semi to very famous people.

The blog itself is about his daily life. Most of it is told as such as it is a summation of what is going on in a funny way. Just the good parts are what is typically featured here but of course with a funny spin. He took a break in March of this year, only to return in May. The posts since his return were the most enjoyable for me. More depth into who he is, more opinions on what is going on, some good realizations about life in general, and it was refreshing to read about someone else coming to grips with similar things. I would go into detail about the major event that is going on his life, but I don’t want to tell you everything.

I have one complaint about this blog. It is surprising that I only have one problem considering most blogs have numerous faults. The problem lies with the archives. You can only access them one post at a time. This is annoying and creates a lot of work for someone to go through a site’s history. Imagine if you had to turn the page of a book every paragraph. Yeah that was how I felt with this. Put the archives in a monthly format so we can just read the site. It is enjoyable to read, it is not enjoyable to do work just to read.

By now it is very obvious that I enjoyed this site. I would have given it the perfect score of a 5 but the archive situation really annoyed me and threw me for a loop. Spriteboy has an amazing site. Oh yeah, remember my question earlier about why this blog sounded familiar? Yeah it was because he was reviewed a year ago. And since that review he has grown a lot and I really enjoyed reading this site.Spriteboy World

Upon entering Will’s Delirium, I am greeted with the startling whispered message: “It’s gonna be okay” I sure hope he’s telling the truth! There is a black background with a stylized graphic of our author. The newest entry is displayed to the right. And there is virtually nothing else on this page. No links, no frills, no errors… well, we’ll see about the errors later. The only other thing on the page is a cryptic countdown to “Freedom”. 53 days and counting at the time of my review. This blog is the epitome of minimalism. A Zen kind of blog if you will.

I began to read the entries beginning with the present. And what emerged as I continued was a deeply introspective young man of a philosophical bent. His entries are intensely honest and very personal. He asks himself big questions and sometimes arrives at answers, but just as often does not. Frankly, this is the closest thing to a truly personal and private journal that I have thus far read for Weblog Review. These entries are more like the things I write in my really real journal, not my blog. In this respect our author is particularly interesting to me.

The writing style is clear and understandable. No obtuse references to nebulous things here. There is no “About Me” page, I found by reading that the author is in college and also works. But these aspects of himself are kept way in the background in the entries I read.
I would have read more but the rather awkward navigation began to get tedious, and finally started to balk. When I clicked on an archive date, the screen went white and it took up to a minute to reload the archive list. After about the 12th time trying to get back there, I gave it up.

The archives go back to February of 2001. That is quite a body of work. I would suggest an easier navigation function for those interested in reading more than just the most recent posts. In the older archived entries there are many graphics that no longer work, which may or may not matter to the content of the entry. I just mention it because there were so many of them.

I might check back in with this blog from time to time, to see how the author is doing in finding answers to Life the Universe and Everything. He certainly is asking all the hard questions.

Will’s Delirium