Month: January 1970

Drugs Make Me Cool is the blog of Sharon, comedy reviewer for The Comedy Lounge. I wasn’t sure if I should expect drug-induced lunacy or a news-type site – Drugs Make Me Cool is a very plain template Blogspot site.

Sharon, a self-proclaimed “television cynic,” is absolutely media-obsessed. She is currently working on a project to list and write about every TV show she watches “thereby exposing what a restricted social life I have.” There are some interesting things here, even if you’re not interested in television or comedy acts. There is a particularly funny chronology of breaking in new Doc Martins, which I can relate to, as well as a comical job hunt saga.

Drugs Make Me Cool would be better served by a new design. Sharon makes it perfectly clear that she doesn’t really know HTML and makes fun of herself for barely being able to install a guestbook. Still, Sharon’s stories are entertaining and a design more suited to her writing would give the site some punch. The only real problem with Drugs Make Me Cool is the occasional broken graphical links.

Drugs Make Me Cool is really a no frills blog. To make it a more user-friendly journal I would recommend a good About Me page or even a 100 Things list. Expanded navigational links might also be a good idea – an entire month of posts is listed on page and readers must continually go back to the Archives page to navigate to each month. This is just a personal preference type of thing, but I heartily recommend making a special entry page specifically for meme entries [Friday Fives, Monday Missions, etc.] – meme and quiz entries tend to break up the flow of reading for me.

Overall, Drugs Make Me Cool was an entertaining read. I would likely go back for another visit.

Dreadful Nonsense

There were a few different weblogs at Trommetter Times, and quite literally, these were weblogs for all ages. Jason’s weblog focuses the typical weblog-reading audience, if there is such a thing, while Rachel covers those younger weblog browsers with her chronicle of School Days in the 1st grade. The two of them combined have started “Scrapblog”, which features random pictures of nearly everything.



Jason’s recent revenge to telemarketers may prove to be quite entertaining, and the regularly posted links he provides to external news sources are all very well chosen and used appropriately.

Publishing to this weblog since April 2000, Jason’s been a dependable source of daily news links, and brief narratives of what might be going on in his life. You don’t get a chance to feel deeply attached through reading each entry, but you do get the idea that Jason’s a laid back, friendly type of guy.

Over time, the site’s archives all have different color schemes. The overall design of the site is that of a typical Movable Type template, but it works well with the concept behind the site.

Also included on this weblog is the “Daily Manna”. Today’s Daily Manna was a scripture from the Bible. While Jason may be proud of his religion, and enjoy spreading the Word to others, he doesn’t go about it in a forceful manner throughout the site, which is always very much appreciated.

Of course, Jason’s daughter, Rachel, has one of the cutest weblogs I’ve ever seen. Between she and her proud dad, it’s refreshing to read a 1st graders point of view or just basic daily happenings from someone of that age. The pictures and other school projects that are included are quite adorable, and add a great touch to Rachel’s version of weblogging.

For most people, I would venture to say this isn’t a weblog you’ll find yourself wrapped up in, visiting multiple times in one day just to see if Jason’s made any more updates, but it is a site that is certainly worth visiting to see if this is your type of weblog. It’s a good overall site to bury yourself in for a while.The Trommetter Times

“There’s no moral to this story, it’s just a bunch of stuff that happened.” And isn’t that what the best weblogs are all about? That’s exactly what jeanhank.com is about, and Jay, the author of this weblog, even uses those exact words to describe it.

Jay is a college student. And while some of the entries you’ll read do involve the college life, they’re more than just the typical “he said, she said” and “oh my god, i hate this class” type of entries. Personally, I felt like I was just listening to a friend or acquaintence talk about his day and what he felt was worth sharing. The conversations that Jay writes about, with their accuracy and details, often left me actually “hearing” the conversation as it took place.

I immediately liked the menu bar at the top. It appears as a strip of negatives, with each different image leading to a clearly defined portion of the rest of the site. A very neat idea, and one that’s carried out splendidly.

The archives go all the way back to February 2001, with each entry being just as entertaining as the current ones.

Jay writes in a very straight forward fashion. His writing leaves an impression of a very down to earth, likeable guy who really knows how to have a good time. And that knack for having a good time is yet another thing that makes reading this weblog fun and entertaining.



I would highly suggest visiting jeanhank.com, especially if you’re looking for a website to live vicariously through.

jeanhank

Luckily, an immediately explanation at the top of www.billzep.com explains what’s going on with this weblog and it’s purpose- “Bill Zepernick’s Peace Corps experiences in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, starting June 7, 2002, and Uzbekistan, from 08-15-01 to 10-03-01, and all other things in between!”

Throughout the inception of this weblog, Bill gives us a detailed description of what it’s like to prepare for the Peace Corps. And from what I read, it’s not an easy task at all. From March 2001, this weblog details the preparation of Bill’s planned Peace Corp journeys in Central Asia.

Recently, Bill hasn’t been able to post to his weblog from his current location in Uzbekisten since early June. Instead, recent letters from Bill back home are posted in a “letters and updates” portion of the website.

There’s a great deal of information throughout this site including some photos of Bill’s preparation to ship out to Central Asia, information about both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and ever informative links covering even more information about the Peace Corps, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan.

Some of the links in the archived entries that refer to a specific document Bill wants readers to look at are no longer valid. I was slightly disappointed with this, because reading the story of Bill’s work led me to want to find out more about exactly what he was talking about and being able to view those links and/or documents would have greatly assisted in that.

I’ve never read a weblog quite like this one, but certainly enjoyed the in depth way in which Bill, currently in Kazakhstan, shared his trials and tribulations of preparing to join the ranks of the Peace Corps. It’s worth stopping by this weblog just to get a general idea of the time and efforts one has to put in just to travel the world with the Peace Corps.BillZep

“The Book of Paige” is quite a vocal and opinioned blog which some might and might not like.

Pagie is a fiction writer who’s been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for the past 12 years. She goes on to share some more personal things on her about page which you can read for yourself …

The layout’s pretty plain; different shades of gray framing the content of the site itself. You of course have your usual links to the about page, archives and so on.

From what I sensed from reading the blog is Paige seems a bit cynical in her writing. She talks about some personal things, but with a twist of sarcasm, which sometimes comes off like she’s not being rude about what she’s talking about … I almost want to say she’s bitter but that’s going a bit far. She discusses things going on, like one of the posts she did about when it seemed like her house was falling apart; sad but amusing to read. Other posts sometimes have little quotes she likes from a writer which are often good reads.

“The Book of Paige” is an okay site. Her humor isn’t something which all will like and even though I enjoy sarcasm, it was a bit much for me on this site. But it’s nice to read a site where the person isn’t afraid to express themselves on whatever topic it is.
The Book of Paige