Month: January 1970

When I first heard the title “The Transplant”, I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to touch this blog to be honest. Call me crazy, paranoid, etc., but when I hear the word “transplant”, the first thing I think of is the transplant of human organs. With that being said, I have a very weak stomach and I wasn’t sure if I would be seeing photo’s of that type of thing on this blog.

But don’t let the title fool you. To my relief, the author is just a person writing about such things as books, movies, neighbors, etc.

“The Transplant”, is still a very fresh site from what I gather. The archives only date back to June 21, 2004. The months seem to be filled with a lot of posts, but still I was kind of surprised to realize that it didn’t take me all that long to read the entire blog. Well at least, not as long as I had expected. The reason for that is probably because a lot of the posts consisted of one and two liners.

The posts consists of various topics as stated earlier in this review. It is basically nothing that you can’t find on any other blog/website. I know very little about the author except that the author is from “Seattle”, and that the blog is basically a hobby. I arrived at that conclusion when the author wrote the following in the “About Me” section.

In other words, I have not a single reason for a website, aside from reading to myself my very own words. Fodder for the ego. My very own hyperreal self. (***Pats on the back.****)

I just couldn’t feel the entries (so to speak). The blog just wasn’t for me. I went straight through the blog. There were some posts I even read a second time, basically to see if they could peak my interest. But it just didn’t happen.

The design of the page is very clean . It has a 3 column lay-out with the posts in the middle and links on both sides. It really has a fresh look to it. On the right hand side, he has links of books with a photo of each one and the title written below the photo. He has done the same for music cd’s he enjoyed. In my opinion, I thought this was a nice touch. Even though I did not enjoy the entries like I hoped I would, the writing was very neat and very easy to read. He also has links in the middle of several of his posts.

In conclusion with the review,I liked the design more than the entries. Maybe what I thought was boring, others may find interesting. Everyone has different taste, and their own opinion.The Transplant

I checked in to Originalism to be greeted by a fairly smart looking blog. There were two, (yes, TWO!) title bar pictures, which threw me a bit, but they were nice pictures so I let it go and moved on. There is also a close up of the author staring out of the screen halfway down the side bar, which is a little unnerving to say the least.

This is a “Modblog” blog which is a system I have never come across before, so I am not sure how much of the site’s appearance to credit to the author and how much to the system itself. Having said that, the author is a programmer, so I figure he has done a lot of the work himself. Either way, the site looks great- has a nice colour scheme and the already referred to title pictures. There is also a photo album to be had, a memo board message type thing, a poll in the sidebar and various other bumph, which is presumably supplied as standard. My only gripe with the way the site is put together is that the archives can only be scrolled through 10 entries at a time. As the author only started blogging in July, it currently takes 30 seconds to find the beginning of the blog, but in time this could become a major pain in the arse. Also, the “About Me” page is not very revealing, but I could see the humour behind the terse information supplied.

With regards to the content, I can only really comment on the entries going back to 11th August as I became rather engrossed in what was written up until this point and I need to go to bed sometime tonight. It is safe to deduce from this that here is a prolific blogger, whose the entries are often quite verbose. Most entries are laced with photographs – some taken by the author, which are always tasteful and brighten things up somewhat. The writing style is one of those effortless, witty, intelligent styles which I seem to come across more and more in blogging and is absolutely made for casual browsing and having a laugh. Posts are pretty much along the lines of some personal stories, witty observations and random pop-philosophy. Some made me laugh out loud, some made me think, but to be honest there isn’t much of huge weight or depth here, beyond opinions for the sake of opinions. In fact halfway through I was left with a vague gnawing feeling of “what’s the point?” Yeah I know we are talking about blogs here and if we start requesting that they have a point in order to get a respectable review score then we may as well all pack up and go home. However, this blog seems more pointless than most somehow, beyond having a bit of a laugh and seeing a few pretty pics.

I would have given this blog a lower score befitting of the category “3.5 – Site is above average. Has a few perks, nothing too interesting that you can’t find elsewhere” but I bumped it up a notch because the author seems like a nice bloke, his entries are all of an affable nature and there is little to be offended by here. Not sure if it will hold the interest of many people outside of his blogging community though for long periods of time.
Originalism

Deathnoruk is not a word I was previously familiar with. I’m now convinced
that it’s completely made-up and unimportant, since it doesn’t translate
into a word in eight different languages. Despite that minor technicality, I proceeded
to deathnoruk.com and was quite pleased with what I was first presented with.

My first thought was, “It’s always great to see a blog that doesn’t
use a template”. The image at the top looks great and matches the rest
of the site’s blue color scheme. The interface appears wonderfully clean
at first glance. This blog is easy on the eyes.

After remarking to myself that the presentation was definitely better than
the average blog, my eyes wondered to down to the content in the first article.
In less than a second, I noticed glaring spelling and grammatical errors. Some
of the articles are actually difficult to read and entire paragraphs can ramble
on without being broken up into sentences.

Curious about the author, I browsed to the About Me page. All of Jamie’s
personal details – including likes and dislikes – are listed in point form.
This blogger is from the East Midlands, in the United Kingdom and has had a
blog for many months. Initially residing on GeoCities he later switched to ModBlog
and now maintains both http://deathrowuk.modblog.com
and http://deathrowuk.com.

Jamie writes articles that appear to be sincere and from the heart. It’s
great to see bloggers post exactly what’s on their mind without holding
back.

Looking closer at the design of the blog, I notice that the first page –
a spash screen – doesn’t have a title specified and displays the
standard “Untitled Document, oops! Attention to detail in this blog is
lacking; minor design issues and the spelling and grammatical errors are two
such examples.

This blog offers a huge number of interesting features, all of which are a
tribute to Jamie’s creativity. He allows users to register to create blogs
of their own, which are displayed on the site. There is absolutely no documentation
for this process, however, and it’s not completely clear what this feature
is capable of. I decided to be the first person to sign up for a blog, and I
was presented with this after clicking the submit button:

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error ‘80004005’

[Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver] Field ‘publicblog_users.user_favfilm’
cannot be a zero-length string.

/simpleblogreg.asp, line 78

Oops! You’d better get that ironed out before offering
the feature to your readers.

There are a number of fully functioning features, however. Using inline frames,
there are many alternate layouts, including his blog presented from a mock iPod;
this blog is merely a rendition of one located at http://deathrowuk.modblog.com.
Did Jamie code all of this himself? He should take credit for that. If he didn’t,
then he should indicate that also.

I noticed that there were a few features on Jamie’s old modblog website
that he doesn’t have on his new one. The picture gallery, the calendar
browser and guestbook are just a few examples of absent features.

It seems that this blog is not yet complete. There are technical bugs, a couple
of missing features, and some desperately needed spellchecking. I’d suggest
that this blogger perfect what he already has before creating new features.

After writing this review, it has dawned on me that Deathrowuk can be separated
into Death-Row-United-Kingdom. Death Row has content that is only slightly more
interesting than what’s found on most personal blogs. Features are meant
only to compliment the content. Features are cool to check out and play around
with, but you can only do that once or twice. Without excellent content there
is little reason to bookmark this blog.

Deathrowuk!! 100% Genius

Wow.

I have just emerged from a labyrinth that begins innocently enough at a page called, Fred Sez. This page is only the blog portion of his website. It is the entrance to a vast domain filled to overflowing with all things comics and pop culture.

My head is spinning.

His blog page opens to a rather garish blue and pale yellow background with the words “Fred Sez” in bold block letters. As soon as I found out that our author is a long time published cartoonist, the colors made more sense. But they are still garish!

The opening entry that I encountered was a little retrospective on the passing of Fay Wray. I continued to read and found an impressive array of writing on subjects as diverse as, baseball, his misadventures with an overloaded clothes dryer, and an account of a family outing to a Paul McCartney concert. All of which are well written (if long) essays that left me feeling that I was in the presence of a hyperactive teenager, when in fact we are talking about a full grown man. But then cartoonists must have a very firm grasp of their inner child, otherwise they would grow up and be political analysts or something.

When I finally found his home page and a links page I was overwhelmed with the sheer volume of information on this website. There are what I could only describe as historical archives of the comic genre in general, with a liberal dose of pop culture thrown in, both past and present.

There are links to his own comic book art and one section I would recommend checking out is the link entitled “Kidz”. There are full-length comic book pages there that you can read. They are reminiscent of the Archie comic that I used to read as a kid. (About the only comic I was ever likely to spend my hard-earned money on come to think of it.)

It is entirely possible that you will recognize this author, but I must admit I had never heard of him, not being a big comics fan myself. However I was very impressed with the depth of his knowledge of the subject and his amusing take on everything he chooses to write about.

Well worth a visit. But plan to spend some time here. And don’t be fooled by that deceptive opening page, there is a serious man behind it who still seems to be in touch with the magic of his childhood. And if you stay long enough, you may be touched by that magic yourself.

Fred Sez

I liked the look of this blog when I first arrived. It is fairly stylish and put together well overall, with a colour scheme that works and an effective layout. There is a nice little sidebar section which covers various areas of the blog – a “cast list”, 100 things which is up to about 32 at the moment and some quotes which the author likes. There are also some extracts from previous blogs to give you a head start on this one which was started in March 2004.

Clearly some effort and thought had gone in to all this and I was impressed. In terms of content, the entries from the previous blog had a self-confessed “therapy” feel to them which I found somewhat indecipherable and over-analytical, but I didn’t let this put me off as I moved on to the main blog content.

Unfortunately, I quickly realised that this was a blog that I was not going to enjoy. It is a personal blog about the life and struggles of a female engineer aged about 30. And I mean struggles. There are a lot of entries regarding emotional or psychological issues which are currently concerning the author. I am sure these seem like very real problems to the person writing them and I don’t want to sound demeaning, but I found it hard to empathise with the things she had on her mind. They seemed like intangible issues to me- it wasn’t like she was in any physical, social or financial dire straits as far as I could gather, beyond being frustrated with her job. Oh yeah, and the author hates her job too. She hates it on the front page and on many pages prior to that as well. When TWR forms its own blogging police in the near future, persistently bitching about something on a blog will become a criminal offence. You have been warned. Either stop bitching or do something about it.

In the meantime, I had no other recourse but simply to get bored and depressed. There is little of much cheer to be found on the blog and ironically I seemed to learn very little about the person, (i.e. her interests, her world, her loves and dreams) despite their being 300 entries written on the subject. There are religious views (and as far as I am aware, she is only half convinced that religion has any answers), some day to day stuff, some weird dreams and some memes. In this ever expanding world of blogging, regretfully there is little here that can’t be found in a million other weblogs the world over.

Some blogs you like and some you don’t and for me this unfortunately fell in to the latter category, fair and square. It looks reasonable and has potential but the author needs to start writing about more positive, cheerful things and expand her horizons some more, for me to come back again.quo vado