The Weblog Review

I had the sinking suspicion that I had visited this site at some point in time. Maybe it’s just because the word “precocious” is so popular for website titles/names. If I had visited in the past, I certainly don’t recognize it at all now. I would almost call it refreshing if I hadn’t already seen thousands of black & white no tables sites before.

The writing itself comes from the heart. She says what she thinks, feels, and believes. This is a Good Thing(tm). She allows us to see her life in its entirety: good and bad. She’s been to hell and back and still managed to keep her sense of humor. Like they say, “What doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger.” Aside from her personal life, she talks a little about web design/programming, role playing and a few other interests. Not much useless personality quiz/Friday Five type fluff here (also a Good Thing), she has more important things to say than that.

There were a lot of problems with her site design. The author goes through the effort of making her site XHTML validated, but does not check her CSS. Some of it appears to be proprietary of Internet Explorer, which was the only browser I had that could display the site properly. Because of this, some of her black journal text overlapped a dark background image in Opera, since it doesn’t support the proprietary code that makes background image transparent. I tried to load the site in Netscape 6.0, but all it did was crash miserably. Every. Single. Time. Netscape 4.76 handles the layout better than expected, except where the calendar and a few of the images appear right behind the journal text in some spots, making it difficult to read.

I enjoyed reading her entries and I recommend this site if you enjoy reading what’s on the inside of a real person. I found that the more I dug through her archives, the more I liked and respected her, despite the design/layout issues.

Precocious.org

The Book of Paige opens up to a nice design with a funky logo in script writing. It’s a simple blue and white design that’s easy to navigate and all of the links appear to work cleanly. It’s easy to get to what Paige is reading, listening to, etc. The links are clearly defined on the right with no guesswork needed.

As for the actual blog entries, Paige has a nice way of incorporating humor with serious topics. Case in point, Paige references a woman who hit a homeless person who was, pretty much, impaled himself on her windshield and she ignored his please and cries for help. Paige shows her own personal contempt for this woman’s actions by giving the woman a little jab in describing some of the “important” things the woman needed to accomplish prior to reporting the homeless person in her windshield. Each entry was a wonderful read and you learn a lot of about our author.

I only have two small complaints. First, Paige needs to invest in archiving her posts. Having posts that go back about three months all on one page meant (for this guy on one slow PC with a dial up connection) that I had to wait to start reading some of the entries. Archives are our friends.

Second, the opening page has, what I assume to be, the post of that specific day. I think I would have preferred more entries over the plethora of links to webrings and such. Also, I think there might be too much space between the links which spoils the “clean” design I liked above.

But like I said, those are small complaints. I really enjoyed reading The Book of Paige and think that it’s a worthy read.
The Book of Paige

There were things that I liked and didn’t like about this website…

Marc Cramer, who is sometimes referred to as “Cosmo” which I found funny, has lived in New Zealand a good part of his life and recently he has moved up to United Kingdom where he was born and currently living in London and has been with his wife for the past few years.

When I began reading this site, I was a little confused about the navigation. In general you can get around this site okay, however, it can be better. I’m sure it’s mainly because the writer has just moved from MT to a different weblogging called, pMachine. I think he’s still trying to sort out the bugs of his site.

The name of the “blog” is called “marc cramer’s photography website” which doesn’t seem 100% appropriate. When I was reading through the archives, photography was not the dominant subject in his posts. He mentions things related to photography, but mostly it’s an average blog where the writer posts their thoughts about things going on in their life. To me, it would seem more appropriate to called it “marc cramer’s weblog” so he doesn’t confuse his readers too much. But he seems like a cool and funny guy from what he writes.

Another thing, which I didn’t like too much, is you have to register to make comments on his posts in his new blog. Even though it takes a minute to probably register, I would find it a hassle to do … but then that’s just my opinion.

He does have a separate site on his photography, which is quite good I must say. Speaking as someone who has taken some photography classes, the composition, tones and colors of some photos are done wonderfully. I’m sure if you’re into photography, you’ll appreciate his work as much as I do.

The layout itself is nice, though some organization is in need here. The site’s not flashy or anything, but a simple, round-ish type layout is what you’ll find here with a blue theme.

He needs to work on a few things, but I’m sure the site will be as slick as his photography within a week or so. I give it a rating of a 3.5Marc’s Musings

It’s a been a long time since I’ve read a site where I got a good feel for who the writer is and I think I got a pretty good idea of who Eric Cheng is.

After reading this site, I was just blown away at all the stuff I was finding about Eric who’s the creator of “echeng.com.” I first was introduced to one of his many passions, photography; specifically digital photography.

He’s a Stanford graduate living in San Francisco who seems to be enjoying his life. What I really enjoyed about his site is the fact he has a life away from the computer. Yes, some of us don’t have much of a life away from our computer, but Eric has so many interests, I’m surprised he has the energy and time to run a personal website.

The blog itself is pretty good. I mostly liked it for the photos he adds to his posts, but that might be because I have strong interest in photography. In addition to photos, you get to know what’s going on in his life, who has dropped in to town for a few days to visit, computer woes, and so on. His writing reads pretty neutral to me, which is fine. Some might and might not like that.

Other perks about this site is there’s a lot for you to learn about Eric. He has an “interest” page, which contains information about his friends, his music (he’s a cello player), photography of course, which I must say is fantastic for digital, traveling and more.


There’s an overwhelming amount of information on this site, which can definitely be cut down and seems to take over the blog itself. Other than that, I think this is one jam, packed site that’s worthy of a visit.
ECHENG.COM

I am in love – in love with Eric’s photography. Due to his near obsession with taking pictures, viewers are treated to VERY frequent weblog entries in which several photographs are available to browse through. Scenery, people, abstract shots – they’re all simply amazing. And my regards were that high for Eric’s photography even before I found out his shots have been published in various mediums.

While drooling the fine quality of pictures Eric has displayed everywhere, I also read the weblog and browsed through the rest of the extensive site.

The weblog is laid out very well, with it being easy to distinguish between entries and find my way around. With the author’s active life, it makes for an entertaining weblog. Trips to San Francisco, eating in NYC and running into people like Conon O’Brien and Danny Devito – they’re entertaining events, and Eric does a great job describing them to his viewing audience.

The bio section is one of the best I’ve seen. Eric has a rundown of how he’s grown up, from 1977 until now, in a slideshow type format that shows some MAJOR changed – definitely excellent ones, to say the least! I laughed out loud at the scanned handwritten note Eric’s younger sister wrote about him during their squabbling elementary school days.

I had a good time at this site. The pictures, as I’ve mentioned before, were amazing. Those alone are enough to make a person come back again and again.ECHENG.COM