The Weblog Review

The first thought I had upon arriving at caffeine_sparks was “fabulous background image, now where are the archives?” They appeared to be missing. I spent a few minutes poking around and finally realized what happened. The author has chosen black as her link color. Unfortunately, she has also chosen black as her background color. In order to see the links I had to highlight the text. Obscuring your navigation is a pretty lousy way to greet new readers to your journal.

Once I finally found the archives I began reading. The author is Sparks, a twenty-three year old student from Manila, Philippines. She began the journal in February of this year. Most of her entries are concerned with her love life. At the beginning of caffeine_sparks, she is dealing with a freshly broken heart. As the months go by she enters several new relationships, each just as confusing as the last.

Most of what Sparks details is typical early twenties confusion: dealing with old heartbreaks, new loves, dashed expectations and the various slings and arrows that come along with young adulthood. The most affecting writing she offers deals with the loss of her father and the strained relationship she had with him before his death.

As I read through the entries, I come across more black links against the black background. I found myself highlighting everything to make sure I missed none of the links. Sparks also has the habit of writing completely in lowercase, something I see a lot of on journals and blogs. It’s a minor annoyance, but proper capitalization would make everything a bit more readable. Aside from that, the design itself is fairly attractive. The lovely background image is a nice touch.

Overall, I found caffeine_sparks a fairly typical read. There’s nothing here you won’t find on a hundred other young women’s journals. If you enjoy reading about the ups and downs of young love and can find your way around the obscured navigation, Caffeine Sparks may be worth a peek.
caffeine_sparks

Have you got DSL? Yes? Good, you’ll need it, because this site is slow on dial-up. That was the first thing that hit me when I popped in to visit Kelsopetz. It’s very graphics-intensive with pictures all over the place, but hey, it’s a personal site – and it shows. Unfortunately many of the pictures were so big (dimensionally) that they fell over much of the text in some entries, which meant that I couldn’t read them.



The general set-up of the blog is very easy to read but it’s almost plain to a fault. It’s a standard format with a few header graphics up the top and links and things to play with down a right-hand column and the blog entries on the left. Sarah has archives listed (very important for us reviewers), as well as her contact details and a great tag-board on which you can leave her messages. In this column she also has a poll, movie reviews, current WinAmp playlists (she’s got great taste in music!) and a referal script in place – many things that add just a bit more of Sarah’s personal touch to the blog. The only thing I would suggest is to perhaps make the photos she’s got on display thumbnails or link to them as she has done with some of her entries. A funkier layout would have added a bit more personality to the blog as well.



As it is a personal blog, I immediately jumped over into the “My Story” section, thinking it would be about Sarah. It was, but not in the way that I had originally thought. It turns out that this girl has been through a lot in the past few years. She’s experienced many troubles stemming from her family relations and the loss of her young brother in 2001. It certainly made me understand her standpoint as I was reading further into her blog.



Sarah wears her heart on her sleeve. Her words are raw and emotional. They come from living a hard life and learning to make do on her own. But after that, there’s still the odd bit of wry humour. She can still laugh at herself and the things she did when she was younger (not that she’s old now). She’s not a prolific blogger, and by that I mean she doesn’t post every day, several times a day. She makes an entry when she has something of real worth to say. She thinks about what she is writing. Quality is definitely better than quantity with this blog. I love the way she linked photos and other blogs and sites throughout her entries, adding that extra dimension to the look into her world. All in all, a great read. I’d certainly visit again.KelsoPetz

Wow! Simply, wow! I can see how the design could have a chance to be visually appealing, but initially, this blog is very hard on the eyes. Very cute coffee cup picture, but the colors simply don’t mesh well. You quickly find that the author is from Manila, and I honestly hope the content makes up for my initial reaction.

The archives seem to have the “correct” look that the blog is supposed to take. The content is supposed to have a tan/yellow background instead of the black. So I’m going to assume that this is just a tiny error in code and can easily be fixed. The content is good. The content is interesting. I’m curious about her. She leaves me wanting to read more and more. The author seems like so many other blogger’s only she can write. She can write well. She tells the stories of her life the way that a book filled with short stories would read. You pick it up, start at any given point, and find yourself reading… and reading. Her entries are well thought out, and well designed. They make a point, and leave the reader thinking. I couldn’t take my eyes of the content of this blog. I couldn’t stop reading the pain, and happiness, and anger of the author. There are times when you get mad at her and other times when you sympathize with her. The author is an emotional writer and while some people don’t like to know what’s going on with the deep internals of the author’s, I personally think that it gives more depth.

The design, as I said, is probably not being executed correctly via blogspot. I don’t know if it’s in an incorrect image tag, background color tag or the css, but I see (in Mozilla and IE) a lot of black with white text. This makes the links impossible to read. When you wander towards the archives you see exactly how the layout should work, however, that’s now what it looks like when you actually read.

You can learn more about the author as she has a link that leads you to another blog that has some vitals, and explanations of “Character” or people in this author’s life. There’s a tagbox for people to leave comments to the author, and a poll I’m assuming changes. Otherwise, it’s your standard looking blog with a few links, lots of content, and the ability for strangers or friends to comment.



This blog reads rather well. You feel for the author. You empathize and sympathize with her. She writes extremely well, even if there’s an inconsistency with punctuation, capitalization and spelling. It’s an intense emotional read but in a very clean way. While this blog could probably use a little bit of work on the design level, this author has got the content part down. Worth a read. caffeine_sparks

My first initial response to this blog is that it’s very professional. I

almost thought it was the incorrect link because it looks more like a

business site than a personal site. Though as I started to look around I

realized that it is a blog about the web admin for SKMedia.net, a web design company. I also

noticed that there is no easy way to find the archives. This was the first

thing I searched for, as I always start from the beginning to do my reviews.

All you have is a calendary in which you have to keep going back to get

earliest archives.

Upon going back as far as I could I see that archives only go back into

August, and that is where I shall begin my reading. The look of blogs can often be rather deceiving. While this blog looks very well designed, there’s a bit of functionality that doesn’t quite mesh very well. On archived entries that have the caption “Click here to Read More” and it goes to a blank page that states “Sorry, No blogs in this month.” This isn’t so frustrating about the general topic entries, but on entries like August 27th where the author gives their “Top 10 Movie” and you must click the “Read More” link to see what he chooses for #1, and you never actually get to read what it is. The few entries that are on the blog are well written and to the point. The problem isn’t that the content is lacking in character, but the blog is lacking in content. There’s not a whole lot to read; all of 6 entries that I could find.

The design is very nice, asthetically. Like I mentioned earlier, there are a few problems with functionality of this blog. The colors work well together and make everything easy to read. The comments are turned off to visitors, so there’s no way for random passerby’s to interact with the author.

The author, Webbie, has a professional site that’s attached to the domain. That’s well designed as well. There’s no “about me” page and very little about the author within the context of the entries. If a blog to be successful simply based on looks, then this would be one of the better contenders. However, since most people writing and reading blogs are looking for quality content, this blog lacks in that area very much. My only suggestion to the author of this blog?? Vamp it up a little bit for random visitors, put a little more content, and make sure the features all work, and re-submit. This blog has a lot of potential, but not a lot going for it at this time. SKMedia.Net – My eBlog

I was intrigued when I saw the title of this journal. “Humorous Blips From A Backpack”? Would it be the day-to-day dramas of student life? A travelogue? As it turns out, Humorous Blips is a bit of both.

The author is Beaner, a young singer, student, writer, and world traveler. In the past year, she embarked on a year long backpacking jaunt across Europe. At least, that’s what I could glean from the parts of the journal that were accessible.

After reading Beaner’s ‘About’ page, I headed for the archives. There are links to archives stretching back to April of this year. Unfortunately, all of the archives prior to August lead to a BlogSpot error page. This meant that I only had a month of posts to review, hardly enough to get a sense of who Beaner is or what she is trying to communicate with her journal. As if that weren’t bad enough, on the pages I could read, some of the archive links would disappear. I was forced to go back to the home page and access the next month of posts from there.

I wish the archives had been working. Not only would it have garnered her a better review, I was also interested in reading the full account of her time in Europe. As it is, there are only a few weeks of posts detailing a pilgrimage in Poland, some adventures in Latvia and Lithuania, and her voyage home. After her arrival back in the U.S.A. (Las Vegas, to be exact), there are a few days’ worth of posts detailing her return to school and struggle to find a job.

Although many of her entries are detailed and funny, there seem to be a lot of gaps in her stories. I realize it must be difficult to update a website when you’re backpacking through a foreign country, but it’s frustrating for the reader to begin a tale and then be denied the ending. Some of the entries written after her arrival back in the States suffer from the same gaps. There’s nothing wrong with a journal that’s sporadically updated, as long as the entries flow together and don’t confuse the reader.

The color scheme of the site is taken from a painting featured on the front page of the journal, one of Degas’ beautiful dancers. The reds, yellows, and white work well together, although it is a little harsh. The design is simple and easy to read, but not the most attractive I’ve seen.

I wish I could score Beaner’s journal higher, but the lack of complete archives and unwieldy navigation prevent me from doing so. Her writing is lively, and the subject matter is fantastic (indeed, I wish I could have read more about her adventures in Europe). If she gets the problems with her archives under control, she would have a travelogue worth visiting.

Humorous Blips From A Backpack