The Weblog Review

Oh dear. A three column blog, (insert ominous sound clip). This is a very white page with a rather pleasant header in an attractive font, declaring that a Scribbling Woman writes here. Honestly though, about the three columns. Why squeeze your precious words into this narrow place? I don’t get it. And in the case of this blog, the narrow place is surrounded by a mind numbing plethora of links, including a new variety to me titled, “Referring Web Pages”. If I understand it correctly, this is a list of web pages that refer to her web page. I don’t think too much of it myself.

As I explore further, I find in the About section that our blogger is:

Miriam Jones is an Assistant Professor of English in the Department of Humanities and Languages at the University of New Brunswick ,Saint John. She teaches courses in 18th-century British literature, women’s writing, and speculative fiction. And she is Co–coordinator / Webmanager for the Gender Studies Programme and Webmanager for the English Programme .

And that she describes her blog as:

Probably about books, c18, detritus, parenting, poaching, print, sf, or writing.

Which turns out to be fairly accurate.

I began to read the most recent entries and found her giving a travelogue of her recent trip to England. There are comments about jet lag and accounts of outings to literary points of interest and recalled phone conversations with her young son back home. (The phone conversations are my favorite entries).

I read further into the archives where I found she has been writing here since July of 2003. As I read the older entries I felt myself being drawn into a rather fragmented array of short posts that sometimes contained an excess of links to things that she had run across on the net. The topics include things literary, some trivia, some gender issues, some parenting, and are sprinkled liberally here and there with quiz results .. . (What Tarot card are you?). All in all it was rather disorienting. I finally realized this blog is on one hand a classic one (as I understand it) being a list of links to other sites of interest. Only thing is, there does not seem to be a central theme to these links. The subject matter is so broad as to be fractured in my opinion. On the other hand, it is a typical pop culture personal journal with discussions about movies, plus some references to daily family life.

She does address this tendency I think in one entry that talks about a certain novel in which the main character starts journaling in several different diaries and finds herself becoming too emotionally fragmented. She ends up going back to one journal at the conclusion of the story. This blog seems to follow in her footsteps.

In any event, this blog might appeal to you if you don’t mind changing gears often. I prefer a bit more coherency of purpose in my blog world. I myself, keep three different journals. Only one of them is online. This may explain a lot about my reaction to this blog! We certainly each bring a different perspective to the table, do we not?

scribblingwoman

When I first entered this blog, I was faced with a very plain, ordinary blog, but very clean in itself. When I enter a blog, I truly appreciate when the author has an “About Me” page to give me a better look at what the author is all about. Or even if the author gives a brief description of the blog. To my disappointment, there were none of those things on this blog.

At this point, I began my journey into reading the entries. It didn’t take a huge amount of time to go through the blog since it hasn’t been around for very long. From what I could gather, the blog was just mainly ramblings about the authors life in general. Entries about her past to the present.

The authors posts gave me a bit of insight on who she was, but I was hoping for more. I did learn that she is a girl who attended boarding school in Putney, Vermont. She talked a lot about things that happened to her while she was attending the school. She writes about her first crush etc. The very first entry upon entering her page, I found to be very interesting. To me it seemed like I was reading about a fairytale romance. There were a few extremely long posts which I enjoyed. But there were also a few one lined posts which just didn’t make sense to me. In a couple of entries, she strayed away from her personal life and talked about the US terrorists.

In conclusion, I believe the author could take this blog a long way if she puts her mind to it. She can tell a story that can peak your interest. The blog is very well written , however there are a few grammar and spelling errors. She has several links on the right side of her page which seem to all be in working order. Because of the grammar and spelling errors, and not to mention the blog is fairly new, I can only give it a rating of 2.5. With a bit of work on the blog, the author does have the potential to receive a higher rating in the future. gripes from the grumpy girl

Random Scatter is a rather appropriate title for the vast majority of weblogs, but none more so than this weblog. The posting consistency is random, and it is scattered, but then that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Over-posting when there is very little of interest to say is a far worse crime in my opinion, and no one could accuse this blogger of such a crime. My first impressions on arriving at the site however were less complementary – its yet another generic blogger template, which has been altered so that the design itself has been thrown out at the right hand margin. These are fairly small things in the great scheme of things, and can be easily overlooked if the writing itself it good. With no about me page to indulge in I headed for the archives – always my first port of call when reviewing a weblog. Only I was to find there were none, the heading was there – in the right hand column, but there were no actual archives. So I scanned down to the bottom of the only available page I had to hand and began to read. Quite quickly I realised that the lack of archives was not in error, but was intentionally done. I did find the archives in the end, but only via a little creativity with links!

This blog has been in existence since September 2003 as far as I can see, but the posting is, as the title itself suggests, rather scattered and random. The author clearly only makes an entry when they have something to say – a real attribute. Visitors to “Random Scatter” would do well to look beyond the design and the lack of obvious archive links . This person writes well. Maybe every post didn’t hold my undying attention, but the vast majority did. There are so few posts that it won’t take the reader long, in fact the index page of this blog showcases the blog in its entirety anyway – but what you will find will be written well, be descriptive and , in the main, very interesting to read.

The design as I said is a generic blogger template, one of the old designs it seems as well. Its made worse by a couple of errors which throw the design out at the right hand margin. The colour scheme isn’t particular offensive, and it is readable.

It may be random and scattered, but this is as worthwhile a contribution to the blogosphere as any other weblog I have come across recently. Its largely well written and interesting to read, and what the design lacks in individuality is nicely made up by the personality of its owner shining through in every word. Maybe its not a weblog I would refer to on a daily basis, after all the posting consistency alone wouldn’t warrant such visits, but it is one I would refer to now and again to see what the author has to say. A thoroughly attractive 3.5Random Scatter

I am strangely drawn to the deep orange lettering on the pleasant green background here at Random Scatter. I like that the entries take up most of the width of the page. It’s book-like. No clutter, few links. I settle in for a read.

It says something for this blog that I didn’t feel compelled to find out something about who was writing, as I usually am wont to do. The style of the page is welcoming and calm, so I just started reading.

Random Scatter is a good title for this journal. The author proses about any number of random subjects, from politics to music awards ceremonies on TV and other social issues. I have read other blogs from authors who use their page as a way to clear out the cobwebs before they start the day. This author is of that ilk I think. We don’t get much mention of his personal life, but we do get a lot of his opinion of the state of the political world.

By his own admission, his blog is a collection of “curmudgeonly rants”. I would concur.
He seems to post irregularly as there are large gaps in time between posts. But this is not a problem because of the nature of the entries. Several of the posts are full of criticisms of public figures and the decisions they are making. The criticisms are of stock variety in my opinion and I read nothing novel here. And after about the 10th entry, they began to be a bit predictable. This became even more disappointing to me when I dug into his profile in one of the links provided, and found out that he has an impressive resume’, being a writer for corporations, and has authored two web based, on line novels. From someone with such credentials, I would expect more.

But, I don’t think he takes the blog all that seriously himself, which is cool, it’s HIS blog after all! The following quote describes his outlook:

“What the hey. It’s only a weblog, right? They’re a dime a dozen in the digital age. And it’s a heck of a good way to wake up the brain on a damp June morning… “

As mentioned before, he has a website link that tells us more about himself and works just fine, but the only way I was able to access the Archives was from the information provided on TWR newsboard. This won’t help the regular visitor much.

Overall I was underwhelmed by this weblog. It is like so many others I have read that take pot shots at public figures. Ho Hum. But I did run across a jewel or two. This being one of them: Wednesday , November 05, 2003 “Why a Weblog Anyway?”

It’s a disturbing story, told as a cautionary tale. But it also contains some valid points about getting published. More of this kind of writing, would have made for a much more enjoyable read.

Random Scatter

I have changed the category of “Random Scatter” from “Creative Writing” to “News/Links” because I think this more closely reflects the content. Not that there are many links to be found in the blog, but the content is mostly rants about politics/ current affairs/ popular culture. That’s not to say the writing is not creative or anything, but well, I am the reviewer and I can do what I like. This line of argument seems to be going nowhere anyhow.

So this is a blogspot blog. Standard template, though no advertising box (unless Norton has become clever enough to block it out on my PC) and um… no archives either. Just writing. A whole page of writing going back to September 2003, although to be fair, the whole lot could be read in about an hour.

I could post up a URL to show you how to view the archives on a month by month basis, (one of my fellow reviewers has enough familiarity with Blogger to be able to do this) but in actual fact the author has removed said links to said archives deliberately, so I don’t see why I should help him out really. This whole system of posting everything on the main page works now because there isn’t that much content, but in the future, this could get to be a very big front page. The author claims that, well he only posts every now and again and he is editing his posts anyway to take out the ones he doesn’t like, so what the hell.

(START RANT) Editing posts and removing ones you don’t like is wrong. Very wrong. There is no rulebook on blogging to say this is illegal or anything, but I just don’t like it. In my opinion, weblogs should reflect everything about a person, good and bad. The only exception to this rule in my case has been ex-girlfriends and employers asking for content to be removed, and then only at a push. (/END RANT)

The author also doesn’t have any comments. Putting in sentences like “If anyone’s listening I’d welcome comments.“ without providing a comments facility is slightly futile. Also the content is opinionated and the lovely thing about opinions is that they can be disagreed with… but only if the author allows comments.

So having completely slated the technicalities of his blog, I would like to praise the content. The content is great- all his posts are literate, argued well and sometimes funny. He makes observations about politics mostly, but also music, TV and technology. He is quite “right on” about his views but I found this refreshing. Anyone who uses the word “curmudgeonly“ can’t be all bad. I like this author, I like his writing, I just don’t like his blogspot blog.

Well, I guess it comes back to form over content. The content is great but the form is not so great. I reckon if he makes the effort with the technical aspects of his weblog and continues writing the kind of stuff he is writing, this could become a regular of mine.
Random Scatter