The Weblog Review

“kimbalina.com.” When I first approached this blog, I was greeted with a colorful banner at the top of the page with “kimbalina.com” written on it. It gave the page a very nice look indeed. On the right hand side, there were several links to other blogs, various sites, archives and an “About Me” page. She even has several small photos posted on the right hand side of her page. The first thing I did was click on the link to her “About Me” page, so I could get a perspective on who this girl was. There was some info in there on her, such as her name, occupation, and things like that. She even has a couple of photos of herself posted.

I went a little further down and she had a link to “100 things about me”. When I clicked on that link, I discovered that “Kimmy” had info about herself in there that went back to the time she was a little girl. It was very interesting and really kept me entertained.

Once I started reading the main page of her blog, I noticed that her posts were very short, (At least the first few) I thought to myself” What really is the point of this blog”. But after I got through the first few entries, I went looking through her archives. The more I read, the more intrigued I became. This girl has accomplished more in one year then most of us could ever dream to accomplish in a lifetime. In 2003, she graduated with a degree in computer engineering. She got a job with google/blogger, and she has done some traveling. The list just goes on and on. I just wanted to keep reading. She talks about spending time with her family and how she has 5 alarm clocks and she still doesn’t wake up. I laughed out loud when I read that. It reminded me of myself because I have 4. So “Kimmy”, you are not alone.

This girl seems to have a very busy schedule, but she can still make time to update her blog for us all to read. She seems to be such a dedicated writer, and a real down to earth girl.

To sum it all up, I love her design and layout. It is easy on the eyes and well organized. She even has several pictures and links posted on just about every entry.” Kimmy’s ” blog reminds me of one of those good biographies you get at the book store. Once you start to read it, it is very hard to put it down. You just want to continue reading until it’s finished. “Kimmy’s” blog is one of the best i’ve read so far. I know I will keep going back..
Kimbalina

I cringed when I saw that Leave Your Ego at The Door was hosted on Geocities. I cringed again when the site took an inordinate amount of time to load. The cluttered, badly dithered and aligned layout didn’t really do much for me, either. Reading on, I see that the author is a teenager whose long posts are nice and peppery. Despite the layout issues, this site appears to have promise.

As mentioned before, the author is a teenage girl, and this blog certainly reflects that, offering up all the teen angst and anxiety you’ve come to expect from the genre along with a sprinkling of occasional gems. She writes about her parents, her school experiences, and makes much mention of her friends, who apparently read this journal. The archives go back about a year, and, while the entries are very long, there aren’t very many. As mentioned earlier, the topics of the blog have limited appeal. Occasionally, the author does become reflective, but this never reaches its full potential, and the majority of the entries never venture beyond the everyday realm. The writing style is very chaotic, and this may appeal to some readers, though it did not strike my fancy. Here we have an underdeveloped blog, but one not lacking in potential.

The blog is the site. A biography of the author takes the format of a quiz, of the type that normally circulate by e-mail. This lets us know how she feels about soap operas, music, and flipflops, but doesn’t really let us get into her head too much. I would prefer a more traditional, introspective bio, and I suspect I am not alone. Some of her answers do get chuckles, however, such as when she imagines being “papercutted to death.”

The design is far worse than expected, even for a Geocities site. The archives are difficult to find (they appear in a popup window after clicking on the graphic reading “http://”) Furthermore, the site appears optimized for very large screens. In today’s browsing world, this is not practical and quite irksome. The large graphics take a long time to load, and the over-use of pixelization and fancy brushes make them too distracting. The creatively named site sections were difficult to navigate because of their vague titles. I suggest the author go for a simpler, less graphics-intensive and more inclusive layout.

Overall, this site is a very typical blog. It, like most such blogs, holds potential if the author continues to write and begins expand her repertoire. At this current time, however, the appeal of the site is limited. Other teenagers with similar interests may find a kindred soul in the author, but aside from them, readership may be small. Here, broad horizons are the key...leave your ego at the door

I love a funny read, so I was looking forward to reviewing a blog in the humor category. The name “Ironpants” concerned me, though, as I wondered if this was another “wanna be” frustrated comedian’s site full of potty humor. Ironpants, however, is so much more.

Keith is a single writer in his late 20’s who lives and works in Phoenix, AZ. The reader has several opportunities to get to know Keith. In fact, the entire blog is an insight into his personality. Readers can access the “Top 10 Lists of Things I Hate” as well as a list of “17 Interesting Things About Me” with simple clicks on the sidebar.

Keith loves lists. He makes them quite frequently and is kind enough to link them on his sidebar. There the reader will find more top 10 lists along with Keith’s “Letters to Spammers.” I don’t know if he actually sends these in reply to spam, but they are definitely things I wish I had thought of! My favorite Top 10 list has got to be the “Top 10 Things I Have Learned About Women During My 28 Years Here” posted on Dec. 1st. I won’t ruin the suspense for you. You’ll just have to read it for yourself.

I could do without the postings about bad Kids’ Drawings, because quite honestly they smack of being mean-spirited. This is a new “feature” for Keith and perhaps he’ll drop it soon. He doesn’t need to resort to this to be funny. Another feature I like quite a bit is Keith’s “Weekend Report By The Numbers.” In these posts the writer breaks down his weekend for you with tidbits such as “4 deliriously enjoying conversations with the future miss IRONPANTIES; 1 email from a girl who I was once madly and completely in love with,” etc.

The blog itself is hosted on Blogger, but the template is customized. The sidebar includes links to the featured posts mentioned above, as well as the archives. I did find it a bit confusing in that the archives start at October 2003 (which consists only of the 17 Interesting Things About Me) and then skips to June 2004. Perhaps this was done intentionally to separate out Keith’s “About Me” list, and if so is uneccessary. The pictures in the sidebar are GREAT! I especially love the dog pictures. It’s refreshing to read a blogger who is not dedicated to cats. Instead of the typical blogroll, Keith has a “Reviews of Ironpants” list which give the reader a glimpse into his sense of humor. My only complaint is that the grammatical errors that appear sporadically throughout are a bit irritating. Keith is a writer afterall, he should know better.

Overall, Ironpants is a blog that contains a dry wit that I find quite enjoyable. The posts are unique and the reoccuring features are worth coming back for. While not all posts are “laugh out loud, spit milk through the nose” funny, this blog is definitely one to check out when you need a laugh.
ironpants

When I spoke to Brent (the webmaster here at TWR) this morning, I told him I was going to try and find a blog to review which was entirely unrelated to the election. At the time, I didn’t fancy my chances, but astoundingly, this first one on the list, Trolhel has not mentioned George Bush once. Or anything else relating to the real world for that matter.

You see, this is a Dungeons and Dragons blog. They are describing their game as they go along. Now whilst my youth (and a lot of my adult life) has been misspent in numerous different ways, I have never played a game of D&D. However, I used to be involved in similar things as a child – we used to have fantasy game books over here in the UK, I’ve read quite a few Terry Pratchett books and I have even got the Lord of the Rings DVD Special Edition Box set. So what the hell, I ploughed in to the site to see what I could gain from it.

This is a “modblog” blog, which are strange creatures at the best of times. The archives are arranged by single entry in date order, with a little snippet to read on the archives page, or click to just read the whole thing. It is quite a dark and gloomy blog with a picture tiled across the background of erm… a cherub or something. Who knows, maybe it’s a dwarf. There is a sidebar with a helpful introductory thing, a chat box and some external links. Nothing fancy but I guess it does the job.

So on to the content. I found it quite hard to get in to the whole thing really. Whilst I am all for blogs which have a purpose (especially ones that move beyond “I hate/love Bush” at the present time), nevertheless this blog is not that great for anyone who isn’t actually involved with the game. You see the point is that this is a resource for those playing- they can keep up to speed with the gameplay, characters, decisions made, etc. I found a few postings which were links to other sites- cool T Shirts and the like, which opened the blog up a bit, but mostly it is a long list of descriptions about fantasy stuff. Elves, rings, dwarves, trolls, dungeons, etc etc. Whilst the entries are very detailed in terms of the surroundings and characteristics of people, I found it very difficult to get a sense of narrative, of where people started, what the point was of their journey and of where they hope to end up. Maybe I just didn’t read enough or maybe they don’t even know themselves, but I am afraid I just got bored after a while.

This is one of those blogs which is very difficult to score. For those involved with the game or have played similar D & D games of their own, this may be worth exploring in depth. As for me, I can’t see that I’ll come back again- I just couldn’t engage with the storyline enough. Back to my DVD Box Sets I guess.Trolhel

Trolhel opens to a black page made even darker if such a thing is possible by the indistinct gray/brown graphic in the header.

The print is a pale red, but fairly readable. Our author describes this site thusly:

“This blog chronicles adventures in our Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition epic – level campaign. Basically, I write it down as we play the game (The adventure is actually much further than what is posted).”

I found that this blog was created in July of 2004, but could only find entries from September, October and November.

The entries are detailed character development sketches that for a non-user are rather uninteresting and disjointed. Okay, here are these characters, but what is going on with them? There are not many comments, so it’s hard to catch a thread and figure out what is going on here. There are MOD terms I am not familiar with such as an: Entropic Shield and a Hornung’s Baneful Deflector, etc, which make this blog pretty much gibberish to me.

In the sidebar there are a lot of links to things of interest to the DD player, along with some detritus like, recent visit lists. There are the usual Links to friend’s blogs and what not. Pretty typical stuff.

This is a very specialized blog that would only be of interest to the players of the game and unless I got lost in some spell ridden zone, did not find that much content.

If you are a DD player, you might want to take a look. Otherwise steer clear.

Trolhel