The Weblog Review

The Daily Post… With a name like this I expect a lot of news stories. Some political, others entertainment, and every now and then one of those strange but true type of stories. Unfortunately and thankfully this site was not a news recap sort of place.

What we have at The Daily Post is a group blog. While there are only two primary people who post, there are others who will drop in with their own opinion. With all group blogs I either expect a lot of interaction between the members, or hardly any at all. This site defies both of those and has a nice mix of it all.

The posts themselves are not based around what others have posted about, the comments are. And the comments are mainly left by those who are authors of the blog. The posts have a nice mix of things from politics to daily life to books being read. Nothing stood out with this blog except for the blogathon section which we will get to in a bit.

The design of the site is a very simple two column design. The information you would expect in what is typically called the navigation column is all there. I wish there were links to outside places – more specifically if the authors have their own personal blog a direct link would be nice.

There is a nice about section which helps to glue some of those missing pieces together as well as individual pages for each author. The blogathon section looks to be an interesting one with a theme of what I am assuming is “What would you do if you were world leader?” Should be fun.

Over all I think the site is just average. Nothing is drawing me into this site to want to keep going at it, but at the same time nothing is pushing me away from it. This is a good site to read when you need to just sit back and kill some time. Not a daily read, but one you want to check out.
The Daily Post

Balikbayan Box… There is something I have never heard of before. What is this type of box? Is it something important? Does it have meaning? Or is it just a name? All questions I had before I read this blog.

Thankfully there was a nice little piece on what a Balikbayan Box is. See to send things to the Philippines you either A) have to have a lot of money, or B) use a third party shipping company to get the present to the right person. And a Balikbayan Box is one from one of these third party companies that ship stuff. I hope I got this right as it wasn’t made very clear on the blog itself.

With this knowledge in hand, I had a good idea of what this blog was supposed to be about; sharing ideas, thoughts, and daily life with others. And the name of it is somewhat symbolic as to how it is delivered.

Getting through the archives was a chore. The blogging tool is using the good old calendar method to go to specific days worth of posts. The tool makes up for it by having a previous and next link at the bottom of all the pages to go backwards through the archives. The other problem with the blogging tool from what I can tell requires that you use their hosting. A lot of times I had problems loading the page and I also had a hard time loading the blogging tool’s page.

The blog itself is just average. There are a way too many “Monday Madness”, “Friday Five” and those sort of posts. While those are good for filler pieces, using them as a majority of the blog is not. The spots that do not have a predetermined format (question and answer) are where the true gems lay. Talking about what is going on in the daily life is very important.

The design of the blog is very out of control. For starters there is a background image that tiles (as it should with HTML) but is somewhat annoying when I have my screen set at a higher resolution. The colors of the blog are to match certain colors in the picture and at times I had a hard time reading the text on the background color. There is a script that creates these flying pixels around the mouse which was turned into crosshairs instead of the pointer. This was really annoying as I had a hard time figuring out what were links. Finally the author has disabled right click and copying of the text. This was bad considering there was so much going on with css and javascript tricks that some of the posts would not load properly unless I refreshed the page (or read the source).

Unfortunately there are no extras on this blog. There are a lot of off site links, and a small section about the title and about the author. I really wish the about section was expanded more to learn more about the author.

Over all this weblog has a lot of potential. Get a much cleaner design to make it easier to read. Get rid of all the javascript tricks to make the weblog less busy. Finally I would get rid of all the filler posts and post only the normal posts. I hope that the author of this blog will look at my opinions in here, and apply even some of them to the weblog. Just changing one of the things I recommend will vastly improve the weblog. After the author makes some changes, I encourage them to resubmit there site so we can see how much the blog has grown.
Balikbayan Box

Stennieville.com was enjoyable and certainly taught me quite a few things about movie appreciation. The author, Heidi Sackerson, is definitely one of the more genuine movie gurus I have met. Online, that is.

This website has 2 main blogs. One is a movie blog, which was renamed “Black & White World” after Heidi noticed a similarity between the original name and another movie blog’s name. “Black & White World” basically contains reviews on movies and links to other movie related sites, and it goes hand-in-hand with “Movies” – a list of movies she has watched. The “weblog” is a collection of daily thoughts and chuckle-worthy events jotted down by Heidi (check out that entry where Heidi laments about her coffeemaker breaking down on her and the other entry where she muses on men promising to fix her broken kitchen drawer).

The layout is simple, quite user-friendly and easy to navigate around. There’s a collage of photos used for a banner with the blog title “Stennieville.com”. The blogs are updated regularly and the “weblog” has a weekly “surveys” (i.e. Monday Mission, Friday Five). The writing is pretty smooth, and at times, the drama portrayed in the writing is most apt.

On the whole, I would recommend this blog for true movie fans (think “Chicago” and “It’s a Wonderful Life”, not “Crossroads” or “Pluto Nash”). It makes a good personal blog too, so if you’re into both movies AND literal voyeurism, this blog is a double delight with a cherry on top.
stennieville

There’s something about the dark shades of grey that always makes me think of something mysterious. So of course, knowing this, my initial thought of this blog is that there’s something different going on here… something magical… something only I would be allowed to see. Of course, it is someone’s blog, and the world can read it if it so chose, and I am just another passerby.


When I first visited Michelle’s site I got the pleasure of getting to read her reaction to her googlism search. I had never actually heard about this before, so it was a nice little surprise to read what she found, what she thought, and take the opportunity to do it myself (interesting stuff to say the least). A good portion of her blog is based on her own personal movie reviews. She generally gives a quick thought about the movie, but she does so without ruining the movie and giving spoilers. I can easily appreciate this, as I hate someone telling me about a movie I want to see before I’ve had a chance to see it. She’s in the process of publishing a book and though I know what a hell this process can be, it’s nice to see she’s actually in the process of doing it… getting it done. She’s participated in the Mirror Project (which I’ve always wanted to do myself) and Blogshares. It’s fun to read about her life, and there are many interesting personal posts amidst the movie reviews.


The design, like I said, gives an air of mystery, but when you start reading you find that she’s just a girl writing about her life… like most of us who are blogging. The design works well, and it’s easy to navigate. She gives you the option of listening to a piece of music that she likes or is her favorite. There are plenty of pictures and a year by year biography of the majority of her life, her trials and tribulations. It’s by far one of the more interesting “about me” pages that I’ve read in a blog. There are quite a few other goodies, but nothing out of the ordinary of what you’d find in a blog.


Overall the blog fits into the category of blog. It’s not unlike others that you see out there, with the daily ranting and ravings, save for the movie reviews. She colors do start to hurt your eyes after looking at the site for too long. But she’s got a number of other projects going on (an Honesty fanlist, which is beautifully designed) and there’s always life to write about.
Vacuity

The great thing about Nessa’s blog is that when you first go there you’re not bombarded with a slew of things that might not be necessary. The blog itself is a good read. It’s always interesting to be able to catch a glimpse of the 100 things that so many people in the blogging world have taken part of. The contents of this blog are actually quite interesting. Even in short snippets you get just enough to pique your curiosity and you’ll find yourself wandering through clicking links that say “idiot son of an a**hole.” Through Nessa’s links you’ll find a lot of other really interesting things, besides the fact that she recently got accepted into graduate school, are planning a wedding and had a degree in zoology.

The blog itself was very interesting. The entries that are meant to be funny are. The entries that are supposed to convey the fact that the author is irritated, do just that, but not in the harsh ways that some blogs go. She’s not all profanities. Actually, for the casual reader you might have a better time understanding if you have a dictionary on hand, because this girl’s edumacation shows through fully… trust me, it’s a huge breath of fresh air. But she doesn’t use her higher education to throw the reader off; it’s used to almost emphasize her point. Other times you get a peek into what’s going on in her real life, troubles with roommates back almost a year ago. As you read about the joys of having found the love of her life, you feel almost as though you’re watching a movie through words.

The design of the blog works. It’s not overly extravagant with heavy graphics (there aren’t any at all) so the load time is pretty quick. The colors work well together, but it’s very simple. The text is unchangeable, you can’t make the font bigger or smaller for personal preferences, but that’s just small potatoes. The design could probably use some sprucing up, but then again, its simplicity gives the blog a different feel.

There are a lot of good links from this blog, though a lot of the older links in the archives either don’t exist or are no longer there. But maybe it’s my own fault for trying to go back that far and actually finding I wanted to read those articles. She allows the reader to write to her via email (brave soul that she is), and her blog offers ways of commenting. Some of the links to things like pictures, or other things housed on her school account no longer exist, so it’s sad not to be able to look at pictures and other information she’s come up with.

Overall the blog is your average blog. There’s nothing overly exciting, but nothing overly boring either. It was interesting to spend a bit of time in getting to know the reader and I’m sure that there are plenty of people out there who find planning a wedding interesting. I, however, don’t know what that part of life I like, so I found myself seeking out other entries that weren’t wedding related. The blog itself is very well written and an entertaining read. unapologetics