Month: January 1970

Well, a-loooo-ha! Pessimistic Satisfaction certainly has an upbeat and floral design going on. From the name of the blog I thought I’d be greeted by something dark and gloomy. There’s something vaguely jarring about the color scheme that put me off, and I thought I was in for some boring reading.

Melinda, the writer, is a 17 year old from Australia. It appears that this blog is not even a whole month old, so there really weren’t very many entries to read. Melinda has a nice flow to her writing, and makes even the minutiae of her life seem interesting. I caught a few spelling and grammar mistakes, but nothing major. I do wish Melinda would flesh out some her thoughts – occasionally she hits on something interesting but doesn’t really say much about it.

There is an exhaustive biography section – anything you ever wanted to know about Melinda can be found here. In Pessimistic Satisfaction’s section called “Bits and Pieces,” Melinda links to surveys, her own movie and book reviews, and miscellaneous other things. The blog also has the typical things: guestbook, tagboard, guestmap, and calendar.

I’m not crazy about the design. The background color and the graphics don’t really match very well, and it was bugging out my eyes. Each element separately is fine, but together it’s not good at all. It is unnecessary to have scroll bars all over the place, and really breaks up the screen in an unflattering way. Navigation is a bit confusing – the reader must work to find his/her way around the site. I was unable to locate a link back to the blog section from other sections in the blog, and the link to the archives is hard to find. I recommend making navigation more self-apparent and streamlined. I also recommend coordinating your entire site to match the main page.

I might stop back in a few months to give Pessimistic Satisfaction another read when there are more entries to read. I like Melinda’s writing style, and I think if she finds a design that is more easily navigable her blog could be really wonderful.
Pessimistic Satisfaction

There’s a lot to read here. Most of Will’s entries are very long. They’re detailed, and you know exactly what he’s talking about. I could easily see, though, if a reader isn’t interested in what the author may be talking about at that particular time,

Reading the entry about the time just days ago that Will spent with his girlfriend in Minneapolis and how much he cherished that small amount of time they spent together was just one of the many entries that really forced anyone reading the site to be able to form some type of personal connection with Will – feeling his pain of leaving her, his joy of just being close enough to touch her, and all the other emotions described those few paragraphs.

My first thought of this site was on its appearance – it seemed to dark and dreary as it loaded in my browser. However, the different shades of blues and purples that are used compliment each other very well and it does make for a serene appearance.



Of course, it would have been nice to get an idea of who this “Will” guy was. He’s a student and we find that out right away, but I still have tons of unanswered questions about this guy and would have loved to learn more about him personally.

This is still a relatively new weblog. I could only find archives dating back just a couple of months. As time goes by, I can only see more and more people become regular readers of this particular weblog.

Will’s Journal: Blankness, nothingness, everything

I’m sure it has happened to you at one time or another.

You stumble upon a page, you get hooked instantly, and you want to tell everybody about it, Mom & Dad, and Uncle Percy, your dog trainer, your non-blogging, non-Webbing wife (girlfriend, boyfriend, whoever…), even Mrs. Gunnatharty down at Human Resources (who hasn’t seen a Web page in her little, form-and-pencil bound bureaucratic life, ever). The site is that good, it’s attractive, it’s alive, it has got “flesh” to it, it may be even called a “magnum” site….

“Webraw – digital sushi for your mind” is such a beautiful site. I saw and I got hooked. Webraw is already in the top tier of my “Blog-an’-Web” resources. Save this URL. If you’re serious about blogging, and also enjoy lively writing, humor, and almost flawless technicals behind the page, Webraw is for you.

In fact, the part that was submitted to TWR is the blog section of a larger site that contains three other areas: Form, Function, and Theory. I won’t go into details of what the rest of the site is all about, but suffice it to say the other sections are as interesting and a must-visit as the blog. Make sure you click though to them all. There’s plenty of good material in every section.

Eric J., who’s behind Webraw (and its blog section of course), is obviously somebody who knows his stuff very, very well, and has put together a multi-layered site with great care and finesse. Colors, graphics, photos, the whole page design of the blog (and the other sections) are eye pleasers (but adjust your browser for character size, otherwise you may end up with 8 point Times New Roman throughout, not exactly recommended by your eye doctor).

The reading area is adjacent to a column that contains links to the Archives, a box where you can subscribe to Webraw, and several other useful pointers, including one to The Weblog Dictionary, a smart, concise resource on acronyms, nomenclature, et cetera.

Contrary to what you might think, Eric J. doesn’t post exclusively on computer-Web-blog related material. There’s variety, including, for example, the photo of webraw.com’s new puppy, whose name is Wendy Moira Angela Darling “as in the gal from Peter Pan” (nice touch, Eric, but how are you actually going to call the dog? Pooches are generally unresponsive to anything resembling a name beyond two syllables… “Here, here, Assurbanibal…” Take my advice, it just doesn’t work)…. I was two-three posts down on the current page and caught myself already clicking furiously on links provided to all the new goodies from Google. Expect this to be normal when you scroll down Webraw’s blog — archives, too. Links and links and more links, always to something you can save for future reference.

The December 3 post includes a clever list of “You Might Be A Blogger If….” attributes. Check the list to discover if you’re among the dyed-in-the-wool or simply passing time with your blog.

Several days later, Eric J. says:

I feel like I’m drowning. There is something about the Web that is crushing my non-Web self. I feel compelled to spend every moment of my free-time learning, studying, reading, teaching or constructing something related to the Web. Feelings similar to guilt descend upon me when I’m doing something that is not Web-related. While I’d like to be able to just integrate the Web with the rest of my existence, like television or newspapers, the very evolutionary nature of it demands that I always be improving or else I will fall hopelessly behind. When I think about this it seems kind of sad but what else am I to do? I actually enjoy this, most of the time. I guess I just need to get used to drowning because the Web is an ocean and one can only swim for so long in the ocean.

Copy this and read it again and again over the span of several days. I think that Eric has caught the deeper feeling of many of us out there…

I can go on and on about Webraw. Although, strictly speaking, we’re here to review the blog only, Webraw cannot but be perceived as the well-oiled whole that it is. On this count, Webraw gets a 5 and the set of stars to go with it. The Weblog alone gets a 4.5, completely deserved.

If you haven’t visited Webraw yet, do it now.webraw/blog

Although this is a relatively new blog (archives go back to the end of November), Will seems accustomed to writing his thoughts out. Most of the entries here are of considerable length and detail, documenting the important happenings in Will’s life (mostly about his long-distance girlfriend)and his personal thoughts and reflections on them.

Perhaps due to his being a philosophy major, Will comes across as a sensitive and emotional young man. In his blog, he probes himself and lays out everything openly. Will’s self-analyzing entries are interesting to read, although the pace is somewhat slow and Will seems to mull over certain things repetitively. Other than text posts, Will also occassionally puts up pictures taken of his area, a nice touch.

I think that the layout complements the site perfectly. The calm and peaceful blues reflect the overall tone and mood very nicely.

Will’s journal comes off as being somewhat melodramatic. Nevertheless, it makes an interesting read.

Will’s Journal: Blankness, nothingness, everything

Today, some of the best locales in the ever-expanding Bloggosphere are centered on dissecting mainstream media stories and offering spirited criticism of big-time editorializing, and that makes everything so much more interesting (not to mention, giving the “gurus” a punch they wouldn’t have imagined five short years ago).

Ed. Note falls within this lively category of blogs-on-news. The webmaster introduces himself thus:

And Just Who The Hell Is Ed. Note?

Ed. Note (but you can call him, “Ed.”) is a veteran Chicago newspaper reporter/investigator/editor who spent decades covering the daily dramas of that great Midwestern city. This blog is his way of presenting news and opinion to readers without the tyrannical, oppressive meddling of (mis)managing editors and assistant flunkies. Oh, the stories I could tell! But he has some good ones, too, that he’ll share with you from time to time. …

Ed. decided to go on-line on November 19, 2002, using one of the most common Blogspot templates on offer, and the same one I used myself to launch my first blog in July 1998. It’s the gray background, with a white reading area, a blog title stripe at the top, and the grayish column on the left for buttons, links, and the like. Ed. provides only an archive, and deep, deep down, outside the reading area, a link to the Windy City Webloggers, the Chicago Blogs Webring. There’s also a Rate me link for BlogHop.com. Ed. Note is free of ads, which I think is a must for all webloggers given the option.

Ed. focuses on “A periodic reflection upon the news, current events, politics, government, society and the mess that results from mixing them together”. And, boy, isn’t he right in putting up this statement! His posts abide by this motto, with Ed.’s trained eye catching the nuances as he surveys the mass of news stories out there. Witness, for example, his post on the death penalty (December 7th) and on Colombian defense minister Marta Lucia-Ramirez (December 2nd).

Younger bloggers should be reading blogs like Ed. Note closely. Writing a blog is thought to be an “unorthodox” exercise overall, but, in the end, there are many basics even Bloggsphere guerrillas should observe, unless they want to remain largely nonsensical. Ed.’s writing is on the mark, unhurried, lucid, and without the twists and turns many consider the hallmarks of “creative” scribbling. And for those who’d say “but Ed. is a professional journalist”, just trust me: there are scores of “professional” journalists out there who’d win the Tin Star Award anytime with all fours on the keyboard.

I give Ed. 3.5 points only because the run-of-the-mill template subtracts from the whole design/technical picture of the blog. On content/style alone, Ed. Note is certainly a 4 – 4.5 effort. Also, I’m not sure putting Ed. Note in the Humor category tells the story. I’d certainly choose News/Links as the more suitable realm. And I’m happy to recommend Ed. to a wider audience without reservation.

Ed. Note