Month: January 1970

Was I really destined to make reviews of other TWR review staff member’s blogs? This is too much of a coincidence.

Thor, the God of Thunder, is the owner of this blog. Looking at his picture, he reminded me of Agent Smith of the Matrix trilogy, which I must say got my attention first. I am not fond of BlogSpot blogs, but his layout and organization was good enough to make me stay.

He classified his blog in the Humor category, and I must say that his writing, which pays the plain blue and gray layout off, is amusing. Still, I am not so sure whether I should categorize this one into the Humor or Personal category. As I am typing this, I’m still not sure where to stash Walking Stick, but I’ll figure that out.

It’s a personal blog that’s very funny that it’s dangerous. Then again, it’s a humor blog that’s too personal that it’s NOT like some mediocre humor blog wherein they continue with their BASH BUSH campaigns or other simply insane posts just to provoke one’s wicked sense of humor.

He has this, as I dub it, a Blogger’s Humor. It’s like a Oh-Life-is-so-Messed-Up-but-I’ll-Use-That-For-My-Own-Good kind of humor. Okay, that was vague, but that’s what his approach is like. He makes use of uncanny but funny coincidences and incidences that happens in his life and turns them into entertaining posts which makes you crave for more. It also makes you think, “How can this be for real? Then again, how could one be so gifted with such dog-eats-world life?”

I enjoy his sense of humor since I almost have the same humor as he has, only mine needs more development. He does need improvement with the jokes he cracks, too, but he’s on the right track. I can say that his blog is entertaining and amusing, but it’s not so hilarious just yet.

Design-wise, he has a clean blue and gray layout, and it looks okay in Internet Explorer even if he had this one post saying he had trouble with his layout in IE browsers. Also he has a layout which will take away the popular belief that all Blogspot layouts suck, but I did see developments of other BS users regarding this aspect.

He doesn’t have javascript or dhtml (…etcetera, etcetera) extras in his site, but I must say that his entry titles and subtitles makes up for them – a hundredfold. They succeed in their objective which is to attract their reader’s attention. He also has his “Classics” section in the sidebar, and this is what he considers as the creme of the Walking Stick crop, and I agree with him in that point.

All in all, I give him a 4.5. Why not a 5? The design doesn’t do justice to his writing, which deters most readers from getting to read Walking Stick. Still, this blog is a must-read, because there are only a few blogs out there which succeed in giving each and every post a personality.Walking Stick

Weapons of Mass Distraction is certainly an original, intriguing title for a weblog. I naturally expected it to focus on current events, and was correct in this assumption. I initially found the layout creative and aesthetically pleasing, though I was naturally miffed to discover the site’s navigation was cut off on my screen.

We have here a Canadian news blog which discusses news pertinent to Canadians. As an American, many of the topics were, well, foreign to me. However, I did not find this the least bit alienating. In fact, I was all the more interested. WMD is a news blog, no doubt, though it is pleasantly interspersed with what one could call editorializing, and the author seems to enjoy taking an online quiz now and then.

In essence, we have a very accessable news blog that readers of non-news sites might use as a bridge to new material. We have here the pundit-ish links to news sites accompanied by the author’s thoughts, but we also have subtle strokes of the personal weblog, with pleasantly humanizing diversions from this format. Readers quickly come to trust the author, whom they can easily feel a connection to.

I was especially charmed by the author’s occasional feature, “Saskatchewan or Mars,” which challenges the reader to guess which locale the photo shows. Equally charming is his occasional digression from news into discussing the downfall of porn magazines and various bands. This blog isn’t very old, but the quality of it’s content makes it absolutely adorable. With another six months on it, it would indeed be a very high-quality read. To the author of this site, I say: Blog early, blog often.

The site loads quickly, and opens with a large sketch of the human head, showing the blood vessels and muscles in blue over a black background. The rest of the page eloquently continues this color scheme, with fairly legible white text. Unfortunately, though, the site appears optimized for large resolutions, and in order to view the navigation, I had to change mine. I could not help but think that, were I not reviewing this site, I would not have bothered with it. I recommend the author review his stylesheets and fix this error. I also recommend adding biographical information, which is almost always a plus with any blog.

I recommend that Danny of WMD keep writing in this digital topos koinos of his. While this isn’t a trove of news, it needn’t be. I suggest readers look at it as a bridge between the world of personal journals and the world of the pundits. All in all, Weapons of Mass Distraction succeeds fabulously at being one man’s outlook on an information-drenched world.
Weapons of Mass Distraction

Warning! Peaceblog alert! I groaned when I read just the URL of this one, let alone saw the site (but because of the rules of being a reveiwer for The Weblog Review I couldn’t skip it). I’ve read peaceblogs before and I’ve never been impressed with them, either because the authors of the site cannot get their point across without trying to push their opinions onto the reader (passive aggressiveness is always fun – not), or they cannot back up their reasons for whatever it is that they are arguing about. That doth not a happy reader maketh.

Now, my general impressions of the blog on first entry. Very organised. Not anything spectacular as it’s a re-coloured version of a standard MT layout as far as I can tell. Everything’s very easy on the eyes with little fanfair to distract from the writing. There’s loads of features down the right-hand colum from most recent entries to recent comments. It’s not a very old blog, having started in October 2003, but what is there is A-grade stuff, but I’d love to see a design that reflects the nature of the site a little more.

I got a little confused to begin with as there’s no mention made of the fact that there seems to be more than one author at this blog – Morgan and Rachel, though the creator of the blog is clearly Morgan.

Now about the content. Alright, it’s better than expected. I checked out the “About Me” section but had to laugh upon reading the first sentence…

“My name is Morgan Daly. I am 24 years old and I have some ideas on how I would like my/our to look and how we are going to get there.”

Our what? Morgan, your bio needs fixing! It’s all important in the blog such as this.

So, reading the bio and the information page, we find out that Morgan felt he had to share his ideas with the rest of the world about his views for world peace and general huggy-feeliness. Very noble, and a very different way of approaching the topic of peace. Morgan concentrates on ways to achieve peace and not just the fact that he wants peace.

What I truly liked about this site was that there is no pushing. It’s not all “I am right, you are wrong, nyah nyah nyah” which is quite commonplace with some of the blogs I’ve read with a peace theme. Morgan puts his thoughts to the reader and then leaves them for the reader to decide on whether or not they agree. That is truly admirable. Morgan has literally said that he is critiquing the Peace Movement. He’s not entirely happy with it at the moment, he wants things to change and he encourages that change. There is no browbeating and I think that will really appeal to his audience and make World Peace One a very popular site, especially if it continues in this strain. Well done.World Peace One

I am sure regular reviewers here at TWR will be able to back me up on this, but sometimes there are reviews that we don’t want to write at all because we would much rather just keep reading the blog instead. I have been reading “SuperSteve for the last two hours (which has got me through the front page and a couple of the archives) and if it wasn’t for the fact that it is now gone midnight, I would much prefer to carry on reading and not bother with the review at all.

Anyway, write the review I must, so here is what I think of the site. I was a bit dubious at first when I entered the site. Don’t get me wrong, it looks great, is his own original design and has an overall “Superhero” theme. I had to get passed the introductory page first, which was reasonably impressive (had an animated gif amongst other things) though admittedly was a bit pointless. The blog itself included his own art work, streaming audio and each post had a cool little movie quote at the end. This guy could have got a five simply for having “The Littlest Hobo” theme tune available to play whilst reading! I couldn’t help feeling though that with all this work carried out on the theme, the appearance of the blog, there is no way the content was going to measure up. This guy was overcompensating with his design for the lack of anything interesting to say, I was sure.

However, I was wrong. This is a personal blog- the majority of the postings are about Steve and his life. There is not even an “About Me” page, let alone Photoblog, dedicated reviews section or other things which tend to attract a high score. So what makes this blog a 5, whereas others which do have these things have to make do with 3 or 3.5? Well firstly, there is no need for an “About Me” page, because his whole blog covers this. And who wants to see photos when the writing is so creative, funny, interesting, personal, honest and er… I am running out of adjectives here, but you get the idea. It’s a good read. And Steve has that great knack amongst a few bloggers of writing for the reader, not for himself. He is often back-tracking and making sure readers are “up to speed” with things, so you don’t ever feel like you need to read the entire archives to work out what the hell is going on now.

Now it is rather fortunate on Steve’s part that he does seem to have a great life – a new job (and even at the old job which he hated, everyone seemed to love him there), lovely girlfriend, loads of friends, interesting opinions but most importantly, a great way of conveying all this loveliness to the reader. (This abundance of affability might also explain why he has recently been averaging 14 comments per post, too). There is no pretentiousness or arrogance to be found, but simply some genuine gratitude and a love of and involvement in life. Even when he is feeling crappy he manages to write a letter to Santa about it.

I don’t know what else I can say really without you all getting bored about reading how much I enjoyed this blog. To summarise then, I thought the blog was accessible and life-affirming – it will also be added to “my fave blogs” list (which is actually harder to achieve than a 5 out of 5 – a rare accolade indeed!)SuperSteve.Org

As soon as I got to this site, I laughed. The bloggers own description? “Rants of a sweaty emotional Italian”. I have to admit I was amused. I assumed (and correctly I might add), that this would be a laugh.

The blog is hosted by Motime, which appears to be less template-y (Im making up words here), and free of the obnoxious Blogger Ads, but has a really annoying bar on the top. I knew ad free was too good to be true. The site is pretty sleek in design, with a simple yet artsy picture of the blogger, some perma links and quotes. The archives are easily accessible and all the links seem to work. Continuing with my curse, there is no About Me page which I miss dearly. There are however bios of friends (possibly roommates?) of the writer.

The blog is personal in nature, but nothing is so in depth that you would need to be inside the writers social circle to understand what is going on. The posts are light, not a lot of passion but still pretty entertaining. I have found a bias love for the site, as the writer is a Canadian student in Montreal. I find a Canadian outlook on life to be refreshing at the best of times, and a French Canadian one just adds that much more. I don’t see any specific audience in mind (although the writer thinks otherwise). People close to him in real life may find more humour in some things, but over all it is easy to get wrapped up in his writing.

One of the cool things I found about this site, was the links to the other bios. It seemed to give a bit of insight into the other players in the stories, as they don’t have the chance to explain their side.

I really did enjoy this site, and found it to be a pleasure to read. The only suggestion I would have is to add an About Me Page, as it makes it a bit easier for any new reader to get into your writing.
I NEED A GRIP!