The Weblog Review

Well, I was a little skeptical about reviewing this blog at first, but after I went through a lot of the archives, I figured, “hell, why not”. I will review it and be objective about it.

When I first heard the title “The mommy blog”, I assumed that it was going to be a blog all about a lady and parenting.

The first thing I saw upon entering the page was , a photo of a lady at the very top of the page. To the left hand side was a photo of her child. Well at least I figured that’s who it was.Well after reading a few entries on her main page, I was a little confused.
She mostly talked about her job and her co-workers. The couple of times that she mentioned her children, she talked about them “throwing up”. Now i can understand when children are sick. I have children of my own. But I really don’t think too many people would like to hear the details of when they threw up. What I mean by details is, what it looked like ect. Then there were more entries about her job and co-workers. I started asking myself “why in the hell is this called the “mommy blog”.

At that point I started going through her archives. Believe me, she has a lot of them.

It was in her archives that she started to talk more about her children and her husband. My favorite posts were the ones where she talked about the conversations she had with her children, word for word. They were very funny. Kids can say the strangest things and act so grown up for their age.Several of her posts had only one or two lines. A lot of them really didn’t have anything to do with the blogs title. Some of the posts were very confusing. I even went to her “About Me ” link which is located on the left hand side, to see if I could get a little more info on this lady. But there was very little about her.

The best thing I liked about the blog, was the layout and design. It’s a 3 column page (“which I don’t usually care for), which looked good. She had links on both the left and right hand sides, a few photo’s here and there of her children (which are really cute) and of other people. On the right hand side, she even has a “Blog Status” section which i found quite interesting because you don’t see all that many bloggers with those.

To conclude the review, I would just like to say, it would be o.k. to visit from time to time, but I wouldn’t visit on a regular basis.The Mommy Blog

Mondo Irlando is one of those blogs that seems to capture my attention even though I sincerely wish it didn’t. Maybe I’m too easily sucked into things for my own good. Maybe not. Who knows? Enough with the philosophy.

I’ll get the general broo-hah-hah about the aesthetics of the blog out of the way first – it’s boring and the layout doesn’t help break up each post enough to make them very easy to read and whilst it’s the job of a blog reviewer to review the content, I am one of those reviewers who ascribes to the “looks help” type of thinking and that a blog should reflect it’s owner in it’s appearance and compliment the writing. It’s not a very old blog but there are already loads of entries to read and they’re all of a very high caliber when it comes to spelling and grammar (for those of us who think such things are important).

In a word, the blog is intriguing but I think it’s also inflicted with a touch of the blog version of ADD. From one topic to another, it’s an eclectic collection of stuff about movies, weird facts and observations on pop culture. It very, as we Australian’s like to call it, “full on”. You have to be paying complete attention to get the full effect because the moment you relax and get distracted it’ll slap you in the face with something strange like certain comments about spam mail advertising equipment for enlarging certain bits of male anatomy and then a fact of the day – babies are born without knee-caps. They develop between the ages of 2 and 6.

See?

All in all, Aaron (or The Duke as he likes to call himself – in bold and everything), provides an entertaining twist to the normal review sites. He’s got a sense of humor that tickles my fancy, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on who you are. I found him quite refreshing and pleasant to fumble through, and his current review on The Passion of the Christ is really very good!

Whatever Happened To: Snow, who released the wonderful Informer back in the early nineties. “Informer, bahiddilly didilah didilah didialh heeeeyylo, I lick yo boom boom down.” I’ve often wondered the same thing. Mondo Irlando

The first problem I encounter is the very bland look of the weblog when I click on the link for the url of the site. The second problem I encounter is the fact that there are a totaly of 7 entries, two of them are the same exact thing. It just so happens that these 7 entries are dated back to mid-year last year. Nothing new, nothing recent. The last problem I seem to find on this particular url happens to be the fact that my IE window keeps refreshing itself every 2 seconds because of the webcounter they have added to the page. Extremely frustrating.



In my opinion, there’s so little content that it’s almost not worth writing about. I start to wonder if maybe something is a little off, and I go back to TRW‘s reviewer area and find that the actual url is different than the title. The first url has nothing to do with movies, however the second does. So in actuality there’s two places that appear to need to be reviewed. The first had a handful of entries and the second appears to be about movies. I’m not entirely sure what to review, if I’m meant to review one blogspot blog (the one started last year) or the new one (started in January of this year). Am I allowed to voice my frustration with the new blogspot blogs? With added ad’s and now pop-up’s make for an extremely frustrating blog experience.

If I had to do the review completely based on the actual link that’s provided I’d give the review a 1. Plain and simple. There are a couple of witty quips, but that’s the extent of the content on the first link. The this one was the one meant to be reviewed, then the score might be a little bit better. It seems that the newer link is a movie review blog. The author gives his own opinions on the various movies getting a little bit of buzz in the industry. These reviews are somewhat amusing, but the design of the site takes away from the ability to actually appreciate his humor.



The design is typical of templated blogs. Light blue background, tiny box for navigation in the right, and massive amounts of white with black text. Period. In my opinion this author has a lot more personality than you can see in the design. It’s a shame too.

Considering the frustrations I had when I first began to write this review, I’m grading it a little higher than I originally anticipated, but not by much. The author is witty and somewhat entertaining. It was difficult for me to find the point of entries, because they were sporatic in topic. What would start off as a review for a movie would go into details about something entirely different. The blog has promise, but I probably wouldn’t go back.

My final score is a midway point between the first blog’s score of 1.0 and the new one’s score of about 2.5. Mondo Irlando

I spent quite some time looking at the graphic of the man holding a pint glass. I squinted and turned my head to the side trying desperately to work out who he was. I did not recognise him as a famous personality, and that confused me. I looked away and decided that I liked the boxed layout, liked the fact that everything looked nice and clear and easy to navigate and then, despite all my best efforts, my thoughts wandered back to the question of who Ron was!

I had to know, so I clicked on the About button. I was relieved as I was not meant to recognise Ron. Ron is the web site author, and the name of the site is a tongue in cheek reference to himself. Now I had that sorted, I felt better to carry on looking at this site! There was an assortment of things to check out on this site. The posts are of a varied subject, some technical and some that made me laugh so loudly, like his little girl and her poorly tummy.

The design is simple, which I always like. The only thing that daunted me on the site was the way the archives were presented. They appear in a list of posts made. Whilst this weblog is relatively new, I can see that as time goes on, the list could become very long. However, I liked seeing the titles of the posts, as it meant that I could pick the ones that I thought would appeal to me. I did take notice of the things not to drive my car over, once I had stopped laughing. Ron has a dry sense of humour that I liked.

You can change the site look. The styles box contains a few different designs so you can have a play and see the site in different colours. I liked that! The Old School design does require squinting or glasses though! He has chat logs that you can read about a bizarre encounter that he has made with someone! You can become a member and enter the chat room. There are also other people in Ron’s life that occasionally post, I liked that as you get to know them all, one by one!!

I actually really enjoyed reading some of the posts on this site. Ron’s sense of humour and dry comments had me in stitches at times. It is not often that you can laugh out loud whilst reading. Ron is starting a new job, and I hope that he gets access at work, as I really enjoyed his writing style. I just wish that Ron would post more, as this weblog certainly cheered me up today. I will be making a note of this one and coming back again. Thanks Ron.
Central Site for the Ron Martin Fan Club

The first thing I must do is warn the would-be reader about the contents of this site. It’s marked as adult not because there’s a chance of seeing someone leather clad with chains and whips, but because the subject matter happens to be about illegal drugs and their affectiveness to the writer. While most of the site is written very techincally, like a pharmicalogist, there are a lot of details about drugs, their effects, and/or their uses.

As a would-be web designer the first thing that always catches my attention just so happens to be the colors of the blog. The design, the look and the feel of a blog. All too often I find “diamonds in the rough” and other times I find garbage amongst gold. I can’t help but be drawn to this particular blog given that when it first loaded to the green pill. I wasn’t too sure what I was getting myself into, but I had to read on to find out. I can’t help but be somewhat interested in the content of this particular blog, because the pill just happened to be an “ecstasy” pill.

Veritas, the author, admits that he has a problem with certain kinds of drugs. He makes no admission to who he is, however, and that he is not the same person that hosts the site. In spite of the topic of this blog there are a lot of resourses that are provided to the reader. Links to various law sites stating specifics on drug use and posession. There are also a lot of caution statements and disclaimers for the reader to understand that there are consequences to the actions that he has chosen. I can’t however seem to get away from the fact that there is a wealth of knowledge to be found on this site that simply cannot be found elsewhere. I found myself reading entry after entry about different kinds of drugs and the effects of those drugs to the author. Some particular drugs are more potent than others, and for me, this is interesting to learn about. The entries do read very similar to medical records of sorts, and some of the terminology is tough to understand. However, the entries are also very informative, even for someone who doesn’t ever want to experiment with them.

As I said before, the design is very simple, but for the subject matter Veritas doesn’t really need to have anything over the top. The blog is definately much more effective with it’s simple design. You can read a little more about the author and his kind host in the various about me pages spread out between this site and another. You can search the site for a specific drug if you so choose, but otherwise, the extras are almost nil as well.

There’s not a whole lot besides information on drugs on this blog, and for some strange reason I found it oddly interesting. I couldn’t help but read through all the various things I’m sure my sister has tried any number of times. This is a blog focused on a certain subject, so you won’t find much by way of personal information, and definately nothing that might be incriminating. I enjoyed the site because of the amount of details that were available, however this might not be everyone’s cup of tea.castitas.com