The Weblog Review

Well, there are text links on the left and boxed links on the right. The text is in a pale coloured box in the center. I must admit, that I personally thought that, because of the left hand side, it looked a little messy. The links on the left almost merge into the text boxes. Aside form that, it was pretty clean cut. I did keep finding myself drawn to the right links though! I feel a bit uncomfortable writing that as the author is website consultant!

John has handed in his notice, got rid of his desk and bought himself a new laptop. Sounds like a big change is brewing in his life. He mentions a new job, but there is no real information on that yet. He teases us a bit I think! He talks of a blind date that he had, but again keeps us in suspense! He posts about personal events that are happening in his life with some technical information. Sometimes he refers to the news, and he was obviously really moved by the major fires that took hold in October. He has posted a beautiful photo to add an edge to his heartfelt post.

The author, John, does a lot of technical work and website consultant work, so I feel that I have to be quite carefully with what I say! I must admit that I do really prefer the right hand links in the boxes. I like them as they stand apart form the main blog. I can see why he does not have the same on the left though as it may well squash his text content.

You can enter your email address and sign up to get notifications of when this blog is updated. The blog contains some interesting technical posts, though some of them were over my head! I also like the little links sections for thoughts. The car and food only have an entry or two in the, but I liked the concept. It is nice to pick interests to you and read all about them.

I enjoyed reading this blog. I enjoyed having a wander round the links, though I did get lost in some of the technical links and posts. I like the category links box, and the nice simple easy to use archives. I found the posts interesting, and some of them gave me a real insight into John’s life. I liked the mixture of his topics, and have to say that I really enjoyed my visit to his site. I wish him well with his new laptop and job, and hope that the blind date with Christy goes forward in leaps and bounds.

John Speaks

The first thing that caught my eye about this blog was the design. It looks pretty darn nice. The blog appears to be a personal blog with journal like posts, some interesting writings, and random links, quizzes, and the like. Some people consider this kind of blog boring, but I usually enjoy them. I definitely enjoyed this blog.

The author of the blog is named Lee. She seems to be a pretty cool gal. The thing that I really enjoy about Lee’s post is that they are genuine and honest. If she’s not feeling very creative, she’ll write about that. She doesn’t pretend to be an amazing writer, but at times he can be. She also doesn’t try to impress the reader. I would like to link to some of my favorite entries, but this isn’t possible because there are no permalinks. I’ll talk about that later though. The blog is updated regularly, sometimes multiple times each day. Since this is a Big Blog Tool blog, Lee uses a separate commenting system. She uses Snorcomments, which is works really well. The comment window loads quickly and Lee actually took the time to make the comment window integrate with the design of the blog. Bravo. Lee’s been blogging since October of 2001, so her archives are chock full of great entries. Definitely worth a look.

Like I said earlier, I really enjoyed the design of the site. The actual blog itself is in front of a watermarked background picture. It looks nice and it doesn’t interfere too much when you are reading the blog. There are two separate navigation menus. One is for the blog features and another is for external links. Lee obviously spent a lot of time working on the design of the blog and it shows. My only major beef is that there are no permalinks for posts. Apparently, Big Blog Tool doesn’t support Permalinks, so that’s a bummer. Overall, the design of the blog is great.



I also enjoyed the way Lee handled her about pages. They come up in nice little pop up windows, are very well designed, and are easy to navigate.

Overall, this is an excellent example of a quality personal weblog. It’s definitely going on my blogroll and I can’t wait to see what Lee blogs about next. firefly: version decoy

Trent’s Music Heaven is not just a weblog, it also provides a service to the online music community. The site design is a little bit scattered, but Trent’s main projects – the guitar tablature and song lyrics – are kept right up front.

I’m not a guitarist myself, so the tabs are a bit lost on me. I can, however, see that they are nicely presented – putting up tabs online requires a little bit of design know-how so they’ll appear right, and Trent has done a great job with that. (And yes, he even has Stairway to Heaven up there!)

There aren’t as many lyrics as there are tabs, but it is such a treat to view lyrics online without having seventeen pop-up windows opening while I’m trying to read the words.

The archives are a little hard to browse – I’m not terribly familiar with the Nucleus CMS, so I’m not sure if there’s an easier way to view them. I tried to view the archives from Trent’s “general” category to see what guitar tips and articles he’s linked to, but I could only find a couple of entries in that category, even though I know there are more because they’re listed on the “Previous Posts by Month” page.

Trent’s also implemented some additional features, mostly Nucleus plugins. Any entry can be forwarded to a friend by e-mail, or displayed in a printer-friendly format. There are smilies available in the comments, and an option to search his site using Google.

I’m rating Trent’s Music Heaven a 4 for a few reasons. First, it’s nice to see a blog that’s also a helpful public service. I also like that Trent interacts with his readers, responding to their comments directly on the site. He’s also got some interesting links, mostly in the blogroll – and I hadn’t even heard of Nucleus before! Trent’s done very well with his Music Heaven, and hopefully he’ll keep up the good work.Trent’s Music Heaven

Ah, gray, white and black, my favorite combination. A nice, attention-grabbing name too: brainrazor. From all appearances, this is a promising site.

And it is a site that tries to be promising. This is fairly apparent from the writing style of netshade, site owner (presumably). The tone is pompous, with ‘big’ words thrown in. The occasional flowery ‘doth’ doth come in too. The average reader used to most journals’ casual tone might need a little readjustment, but once you get used to netshade you’ll find that his entries are often funny and insightful.

The disappointment is that we know squat about netshade him/herself (my guess – it’s a he). No background information, no stats, not even a name. Perhaps netshade can do something about that. Also, the links section is a little messy, what with them not being in alphabetical or categorical order. Too many frames in one page is also sometimes a hindrance.

However, if you have the time, I’m sure you’ll delight yourself going through the various random links and images on the page. The reader participation is quite cosy too.

The verdict: this is a site that is so much more fun if you are a friend of the site owner. Which is why you should go over there and make friends with netshade.brainrazor

“Helping Out The Music Lover Since June 2002…”

Initial impressions were good. A good layout and a well organised, well respected source for guitar tabs and song lyrics. The site was obviously centred around guitar music, which is where I decided to call in an expert:

Enter my brother. Wearing a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt, electric guitar slung over his shoulder, humming Voodoo Chile. After some strumming of his guitar and monosyllabic grunts, he assured me that the tabs were all accurate (apparently they’re not on a lot of tab sites). The site, in his opinion, didn’t cover as many genres as he’d like to see, focusing more on recent music. I, however, was impressed with the list I saw, ranging from the hugely popular Coldplay, right through to the Goo Goo Dolls’ Iris and Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven.

My brother’s interest in Clapton and Hendrix meant that he didn’t stay long, but he admitted that it was a good site for the large number of guitar players interested in chart music, and he liked the tips, such as Tuning Your Guitar. He also felt that this would be an ideal site for beginners.

Viewing Trent’s Music Heaven more as a weblog, there were many elements of the site that I liked. The comments are displayed on the main page under each post. Whilst on more personal sites this can sometimes override the original post, here it works well, and along with a referrals list, creates an interactive aspect.

Trent’s Music Heaven is a specialist site, and to someone like myself who has no interest in guitar music there is no real reason to go there. My brother’s reluctance was that he is used to sites such as guitartab.com and Olga, where everything you want is already there. He wasn’t used to the weblog element, where you check back daily for updates. For guitar enthusiasts, especially those who also have an interest in weblogging, this site is a rich resource.
Trent’s Music Heaven