The Weblog Review

The first page of Maft.co.uk isn’t the weblog, however, I was charmed by it. Neon-green on black with little stick-figure icons. This may very well be a case of “it’s so crappy, it’s awesome.” MaFT acknowledges this wondrous crappiness. One click, and I’m at the blog, which, rather than displaying the most recent entries, displays a linked list of all entries, in order, with small summaries. Definitely unconventional, but I can deal.

Unfortunately, updates to this weblog are highly sporadic. The most recent entry begins with “ooh, two updates in one month.” The entries are short, rambling, with a lot of train references and people-watching entries. The people-watching entries are great, especially when MaFT revels in the image of two polite individuals smacking into eachother due to their politeness.

The train entries are just confusing. MaFT apparently takes a train to work, and seems to have a fond affection for the locomotives. However, many of the entries (and not just the train ones, either) seem to take “stream of conciousness” to unhealthy extremes. Few make much sense, unless the reader is an acquaintance of the author, I assume. Many mention places, bands, and phenomena that leave the average reader clueless. Reading, I learn that the author is twenty-three, and has just recently discovered the blogging community. The knowledge that he has been writing in a void at least someone explains the chaos of the entries. In an early entry, he says “basically, this bit of the site will be me babbling on about things that happen in the world.” Unfortunately, the entries never transcend this babbling style.

The design is unique, enjoyably kitsch, and easily navigated. The deviation from the traditional blog format may alienate some readers, however. The theme of the site appears to be HTML itself, and the mock-tags surrounding each post are an interesting approach. However, the refreshing design adds little to this already chaotic and barely readable blog.

MaFt’s blog is only part of his site, which includes the requisite current books and music list, a table of all the concerts he has attended (with a few reviews), and a selection of family and concert photographs. In fact, the photos are the only part of the site I would recommend to anyone, aside from MaFt’s friends or anyone else who might know what he’s talking about.

Despite the author’s adeptness with HTML, I can’t help but feel this site is nothing more than the common vanity page, and, while it may interest people who know the author personally, it isn’t the place for the average blog reader to spend their time.a new thing

Infiniti… Is it a purposely misspelled version of the word infinity? Infinity: something that goes on and on and has no end? Is this what I am to expect when I get to this blog? Something without an end? I guess that is actually what is ideal with a weblog; to always be updating it. We shall see.

The first thing I noticed was the very unique layout of the site. There is a wonderful animie logo at the top. The site uses a vast assortment of the color pink which was surprising. Then I noticed some things. My mouse pointer had changed. It was now an arrow with a question mark, and when I mouse over links it changed to a double sided arrow instead of the hand I am use to. I really hate when people mess with the mouse. It doesn’t add to the experience of the weblog, and it is distracting. I also noticed that the layout wasn’t lining up properly, or at least where I expected it to line up so I fired up IE just to check, and it still was not lining up correctly.

The weblog is written by Jei and she is, wait, let me quote this directly: “i’m a vampire girl who lives in the philippines with the ethnicity of 1/4 japanese, 1/4 chinese and 1/2 filipino.” Interesting. With this said her English is very good, but if I remember correctly English is one of the main languages in the Philippines, so I wasn’t too surprised. I was however very intrigued by the vampire girl aspect and how that would play into effect with her weblog.

While I was reading each post I noticed I was actually getting further away from the author the more I read. There was something that was just pushing me away from this weblog, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. Something about the way the weblog is written, it seems oddly familiar, but what was it that was pushing me away? Was it the vampire girl aspect or just where she was blogging from? After some research I found out that Jei is only 16 years old. There is that link I was missing.

The posts read a lot like other teen blogs. What is going on in the person’s life: most notably school, friends, music, online quizzes, generic blog type posts, etc… I decided to see if it really was like a standard teen blog and re-read the posts completely out of order and it still read the same. This is a disappointment to me, because hidden underneath all this general stuff I bet are some amazing things. Some posts start to hint at this, but don’t completely shine.

I would love to rate this blog higher because I can see some great potential with in the blog. But unfortunately I have to base it on what is actually there, and not what could be there. I really want Jei to let go and really take a chance at standing out from the crowd of webloggers. If she did this I can see this weblog going places
Infiniti

I loaded up this page and liked the simplicity of it. I think that it may be a ready made template. There are no fussy bits, nice big text section and all the links nicely filed on the right hand side of the page. Heading text matched the heading border, and there are limited text colours. It was easy on the eyes, and loaded nice and quickly. The text was nice and big so it was easy to read. My first impressions were that the main focus would be on the content so I hoped it would be good!

The clue about the content of the blog is in the title!! There did not appear to be an “about me” page, so I had to gather all the information that I could from reading the content. The blog was started in October 2003, but there was a fair bit to read. At the start of the blog there are some lovely pictures that captures Thom’s view of Verona. I was quite upset that the camera broke part way through the blog. Some of the photos are lovely and very imaginative.

The content is really interesting, especially if like me, you have never been to Verona. Thom has an interesting way of looking at the world around him. He makes some fascinating comparisons between how the English do things to how the Italians approach the same thing! I liked the different approaches to asking a girl out and how to behave on a first date!! I liked the way he noted all the differences between Christmas in Verona and Christmas at home, though I suspect he was looking forward to the cricket far more than the festivities back in England!

I think that the design of this blog is misleading as it gives you no idea of how fascinating it is going to be!! There is not a single hint that once you start reading, you will get so involved that you will read the entire blog. Yes, I honestly did read everything, I wanted to know whether thom would say, despite the lack of Frisbee teams, or last out until the summer and leave on a good note! It is, in my opinion, very well written. I was truly hooked by most of what I read. It just really did intrigue me as to how living in Italy could be via a complete starnger. I also felt quite inspired to go for a visit.

I am a great fan of simple and easy on the eyes site. So whilst I claim the design to be understating the content, maybe that is also part of its attraction. I was not side tracked by following links and being distracted. I just got sucked right into reading about Thom and his adventure. I was not distracted by quizzes and guessing what cartoon character he might be!

In my opinion, this is a very well written and very interesting blog. It is both informative of what it is like to up sticks and live in Italy, and it is also a nice insight into Thom’s world, and his feelings on his big adventure. I must say that the photos were defiantly a bonus feature on this blog, and I really hope that Thom gets his camera fixed soon so that he can carry on capturing Italy as through his eyes. I have to say that I really enjoyed this blog. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is one of the best that I have read. Superb I say! Superb.An Englishman in Verona

One of the main problems I have with blogspot weblogs is they have the tendency to all utilise similar designs – that in itself would not be a bad thing if the designs were anywhere near decent, except they aren’t. I am frequently reminded of this every time I land on a Blogspot site in order to review it, and sadly ‘Elderbear’s Den’ fails to break the trend on the design front. A brief bio of the site resides at the top of the page, just underneath the banner. It reads “Fighting to stop creeping facism! Responses to life, culture, inner daemons, my family, and work from a privileged, elitist, pragmatist, anarchist mystic with a sense of humor and outrage who finds most of the situations on “That’s Just Wrong” to be pretty OK, if not downright enlightening, inspiring, and morally uplifting” . With that in mind I head off in search of those first postings without much idea of what I really will find there.

It seems like Elderbear’s Den is actually quite a young blog, the archives don’t even extend beyond the current month (February), but that is not to say there isn’t plenty to read here. The archive formating (weekly) suits his posting consitency, and is relatively easy to navigate unlike most blogspot managed weblogs. I quickly discover that the ‘tagline’ mentioned earlier is actually a fairly accurate description of what you will find within these pages – the author touching on a wide number of subjects with the same satirical / analytical style. The quality varies, but the author never fails to be thought provoking – whether you agree with what he has to say or not. The writing style suits the shorter, sharp edged posts – clearly not someone who minces with their words when putting a point across, and I like that.

I touched on the design before, it appears to be a generic blogger template with some minor alterations, and sad to say it’s not one of the better ones. That said, it serves it’s purpose – the colour scheme isn’t offensive to the eyes, you can read the text and although there are minor read problems on Internet Explorer involving the side margin seems to work comparitively well – it just isn’t very visually appealing.

A few interesting sidelines reside in the side column – some interesting sites created by the weblog’s author, a blogroll and a few quotations.

Design aside, Elderbear’s Den looks as promising as any other weblog I have seen in their early stages. It’s mostly well written, covers a broad spectrum of subjects and is relatively interesting. A few design modifications would heighten its visual appeal, but all in all it’s a really promising start : 3.5
Elderbear’s Den

As soon as I go to the site, I had to look up one Bernice Clifton. Once I read that this was who Kai, our author, felt he was the illegitimate child of, I was done. I didn’t stop laughing from that point on, and the review took 2 days. thats a lot of laughing.

As for the site itself, it is hosted on Blogdrive, which I am becoming more and more impressed with. The only thing in this case is the placement of the ad distracts from the banner of the site, but I got over it. the layout of the site itself is clean and sleek, and I am really impressed with the use of images for links on the left hand side – something I took away as a tip for making my own site look nicer. It is easy to find everything you are looking for, including an About Me section!!!!!!

The writing within the site is very wry, sarcastic humour. It is some of the funniest stuff I have ever read. Kai is obviously well spoken and doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks about what he says. From writing new years resolutions for the stars, to telling off women in Wal Mart, he just says whatever pops into his head. I haven’t found anything yet that didn’t make me laugh.

Technically, the site is great. The links are all working, the little features like the message board function and I really didn’t hit any problems. one small annoyance was the fact the page auto refreshes – for the message board i assume. Drove me insane. But that is likely just me.

Overall, this site is fantastic. I haven’t laughed this hard in ages and over the course of the night shared the link with basically everyone I know. The only advice I have for you Kai, is don’t change a thing.Rambling Along