The Weblog Review

I liked reading through this weblog for several reasons. The main reason, I think, was that it was simple to read. The author’s entries were short, but they were fun to read. He has a sense of humor that he applies towards current events or just random images and/or links he’s found on the internet.

Most of the entries posted are based upon links found throughout the internet. This has its pros and cons. The main pro is simply that anyone can jump anywhere in the site and not feel like they don’t have an idea of what’s going on. The main con is the fact that you don’t get to know a lot about the author through this type of posting. Luckily, that doesn’t affect the outcome of this weblog, and is still one that I would recommend visiting for a good laugh.

The site design is the only thing average on this site. The different shades of blue that are used all look very nice together. It’s a standard three-column layout – the first being a column full of external links to different websites, the middle column is where you find the weblog, and the column to the far right of the site seems to be the start of a novel of some sort. There’s a ton of words throughout the site and sometimes it gets a bit tedious to focus on one particular column of words.

I would have loved to read more at Made in the Dark. With the author and his wife having seven kids, I would imagine that even posting once a month isn’t the simplest task in the world. The posts that have been made, however, are definitely a treat to read.

Made in the Dark

Paper Tiger is as good as ‘teen style’ blogging can get. The site design is creative and functional, and the author’s writing aesthetic transcends his age; nevertheless, the expressions are sentimental, dealing with the emotion-laden introspection coloring his world. The libido for the writing is a relationship that went sour, and one gets the sense that everything he writes is a way of dealing with this.

The author’s commentary reflects an exploration of a world that’s a mixture of unexplored (and thus powerful) feelings. He sprinkles his blog with a few observations, and though he does offer meaningful insights, one would be better served by opening up a few novels.

The expressions themselves are of a hopeful desolation, and they will only be important in the context of his life story. There’s no doubt he’s talented, but he lacks the life experience to make this blog anything but an exercise in pretty writing for anyone who doesn’t know him. Paper Tiger – By RichardCross

As blogs that fall into the “Teen” category go, Neurotica isn’t bad, but there isn’t much that makes it stand out either.

Poetry, personality quiz results and internet conversations are littered throughout the blog to add some spice, albeit spice used by many other teen blogs. Neurotica is saved from being mundane by blog owner Abby’s writing. Abby’s words and comments tell about herself just nicely. But then there is no basic information about the blogger anywhere on the site, which makes it harder to conjure up an image of a real person writing about a real life. It also takes a little reading of both blog entries and comments to figure out relationship between names.

The web design of neurotica is simple: pale words on dark background. The archive link works well on the home page, but something goes wrong when you try to access another archived page from an archived page. I like the little twist on the links: Abby assigns descriptive emotions and adjectives to links that range from
“unbelievable” to “intense”, and asks you to pick: “today you are…”.

Neurotica is a nice little blog about a nice girl’s nice life, and it makes a fair read, but more information about the blog owner would make things clearer.

Neurotica

When Halie writes about her own writing as being “reduced to strings of shallow imagery and worn out clichés”, I definitely feel the need to argue. While the spelling is sometimes quite off kilter and the comma key is rarely used where it needs to be, Halie’s writing is not even remotely close to being shallow or worn out. The very first entry I read was one entry that made me have the desire to read the entire archived site to find more explicit, beautifully written imagery. And I found several of those.

With lines like “Bet you can’t guess which particular person I’m thinking of right now” and “I’m tempted to include names here but I won’t because that would offend too many people” throughout the site, it leads me to believe that this is another site where it’s not necessarily meant for common strangers to stumble upon this site. I felt myself becoming a little more involved and connected with this teenage writer than I have many in the past.

This is another relatively new site joining the weblog world. Halie admits to not being extremely proficient in HTML, which would explain the use of the standard Blogger template. It’s not a terrible one but the pale yellow color on the navy blue background does wear some on the eyes.

I learn a tiny little bit about the author here by the self-description beneath the main title of the page. Granted since it does say she died in the 2nd grade, I’m not sure how much of it is true, but it does give first time readers a vague idea of who they’ll be reading into when visiting Iridescent Skies.

This site is a tough one to give an overall summary of. Sure, some posts are meant only for those that have a clue as to who is involved in Halie’s life. There are other posts, though, that have the potential to draw any reader in and make him/her feel some type of a connection with the author. With that, I would encourage anyone to try the site out – read through a few entries, and see if that connection is there.

Iridescent Skies

This is a teenager’s weblog. It’s based primarily on our author’s daily life, her school activities, and her friends and family. One outside of our author’s circle of friends and never have been part of her “real” life would probably have no clue as to what’s going on in 95% of this weblog. However, I get the feeling that this weblog is probably only for those that the author has told about it and probably makes more sense to those people.

A black background, with gray filled-in tables and white text are the colors and design of choosing of the author. While it’s certainly not ugly, it’s not my favorite. It is well put together, however, and it’s easy to navigate through either the site’s archives or take a peek at several different other weblogs the author has linked.

All the links to other weblogs on the right hand side of the weblog are listed in a unique way. Rather than listing them by the title of the weblog or the author’s name, they’re all listed by different feelings one person can have. I’ve never seen this before, and I really liked it.



The weblog’s only a few months old. Some links to the archives don’t work, and the ones that do reveal the same type of weblog entries that I was introduced to upon my initial visit to the site.

I would have liked to been able to read more into the author’s frame of mind by some more in depth posting, or perhaps some type of an “about the author” section so new readers have some idea whose life it is they’re becoming voyeuristic of.

Typical teenage site this is, and I could easily recommend it to people in that same age bracket. Anyone out of high school, however, may not have the tolerance and/or patience to come back time and time again to this site.

Neurotica