Month: January 1970

Question: What do you get when you take one part weblog, and one part professional writer?

Answer: You get Aa’s Blog.

This is a rather interesting blog to read. It doesn’t read like your normal blog, and it took me a while to figure out why that is. The main reason is because the author doesn’t update his site every day like most of our daily reads. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t. I think it all depends on his mood, and what he finds on the web.

A lot of his posts have links to sites outside of his, which can be either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your preference. By no means, is this a links/news site, it is just he likes to link a lot of different things.

The main focus of the weblog seems to be on his book. Of course, there are links to go buy his book on the page, which doesn’t hurt. Every time there is something new or interesting about his book, it is posted on his site. There are some personal posts through out the weblog, but I didn’t see them as being the main focus of his site.

The design of the site is nothing to brag home to mom about, but nor is it something that is horrible. It is an average design, 3 columns each with a specific purpose. The color scheme focuses on a green background with white and grey areas for the text to be on. This may a good thing, this may not. I was impartial to it.

Over all I think the site has a lot of potential. It would have been more interesting had the blog itself started during the “writing” process of the book, but maybe when the author starts work on his next book, we will be treated to the mind of the writer. This site is one to add to your bi-weekly read list, so go and enjoy.
Aa’s Blog : Aldo Alvarez

Attention Future Post-High School Students: Kiss Mom & Dad goodbye, and get a real education! Study abroad at The Indiana Jones School of Management, awaiting your fevered, spongelike brain! Here’s all you need to know about your future:

The Dean: Geof L. Morris, employed at a systems engineering firm in Alabama, has just received his Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering, and is a self-proclaimed Southern Christian who enjoys:

Reading (mainly O’Reilly-published techie bibles–don’t we all?),
Baseball
Monty Python
CS Lewis
Baseball
Christian Studies
…and lots of things that other vibrant, intelligent young adults enjoy.
Did I mention baseball?

Admission: Free.

Aren’t you packing your bags yet?

Syllabus: Don’t let this school fool you. The site menu says so, but there’s no actual schedule, curriculum, lessons or even bona fide lectures. The dean says, “Even though this isn’t a real school, this doesn’t mean we can’t make people think that it is.” A brilliant web marketing ploy? Indeed. Students go searching at Google for school stuff and what do they find? A place to goof off. With a capital G. Oops, I’ve let out the big secret. Read on anyway! Folks, what this site really is, a little corner of the world, offering “Lecture Notes” (blog entries) that promise the readers they can: earn a B.A. degree in Slackerdom (a term I’m not fully sure the author is the one to have coined) or get a Master’s degree in Time Mismanagement. Just a little over a year old and chock full of quotes and personal thoughts of the author, The site is a place where he and his ‘colleagues’ and ‘students’ hang out and waste massive amounts of time. In truth, it’s really nothing more than a personal web site/blog that just happens to belong to a pretty clever individual.

Report Card: Definitely a school blog to visit if you’re truly bored with the average John Q. Public weblog of daily activities or news commentary. I forgot to mention, even though the site implies something of the kind, it’s not an Indiana Jones site, the author’s hardly even a fan of the adventurer played by Harrison Ford, so don’t go running over there in search of memorabilia, movie posters, links, sound clips, and the like.

What you will find is a well-thought-out site catering to the hungry mind. As far as a blog goes, it has its entries–where if you don’t really know the author or share something in common–you can be sort of wondering about. Even so, it boasts life lessons to be learned. Here is an individual who, for all intensive purposes, has put up his daily rants and thoughts up for the world to see, not uncommon these days…but in a different fashion. Throughout most of the author’s trials and tribulations, he remains ever witty and thoughtful and has a positive outlook on life. I’m no advocate of rays of sunshine myself, but tIJSM is a truly refreshing experience.

Web site owners that have a hard time marketing their sites or believe in the Field Of Dreams formula (If you build it, they will come), can definitely take a clue or two here: This is a really good example of a site that has potential for a large–and maybe even devoted–readership. Yes, declaring it to be a school is sort of false advertising, but I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that the people who bump into the site find something interesting here. I did. To me, it’s so far one of the most astonishingly creative ways I’ve seen, in which to deliver a personal site.

And I’m damned picky. Diploma Earned. Grade: 5.0The Indiana Jones School of Management

I jumped to the very first post made on this website to start out my review process. It was a detailed description about quite an extensive throat surgery Larry had done early last month. I know it doesn’t sound interesting, but Larry’s nearly play-by-play recollection of the events leading up to, and immediately following the surgery read as if it’s a chapter in a novel.

Polygon, the Dancing Bear is far from a “day in the life” weblog, but more of the author going into great detail on a wide array of topics and expressing his views very eloquently in a place where random people can stumble upon.

Larry’s a former politician, which is somewhat prevalent in some of the essays/entries that are available for perusal, and also the webmaster of The Political Graveyard, which is a huge compilation where history buffs all over can visit “The Web Site That Tells Where the Dead Politicians are Buried”. And his website doesn’t just stop with the weblog, but yet expounds in great detail in a section where you can learn all the details of Larry’s likes and dislikes. He also has one of the largest collections I’ve ever seen of the latest and greatest email scam, which Larry calls the Nigerian Fraud Email Gallery.

The design works for the site. It’s nothing glamorous, but the point of Larry’s weblog isn’t necessarily to BE glamorous. All the links work, and the site looked just the same in any browser I checked it out in.

Want mindless reading? Don’t visit this site. Want to read a very well written weblog that belongs to someone that’s really taken the time to formulate ideas on some sometimes very heavy issues? Definitely check this weblog out.
Polygon, the Dancing Bear

This is probably the most interesting (and enlightening) blog I’ve reviewed. I was at first taken aback by the bald guy in make up background but if you read the blog you’ll understand that.

In his blog’s first post the author; Sean, states: “I’m 21 and gay. I’m not in the closet, I’m not confused, and I’m not contemplating suicide.” I knew immediatley this was going to be a good one. As a heterosexual guy I hoped this blog would give me insight into what life is like, on a day to day basis, for a homosexual male. The author post regularly, pretty much on a daily basis. There is a a break for a few months, but after the author picks it back up, there aren’t any large gaps in posts.

The author posts about pretty much everything that is going on in his life; work, love life, family, friends, all very honestly. Sean is definatly not posting for an audience but using his blog as a real journal. I found the posts about his mother the most touching. Once I started reading I couldn’t stop and spent most of the afternoon reading entry after entry. Some entries are hilarious i.e. the 3/14/02 (80’s day at work) begins; “At work. So Here I sit as Boy George.” The blog does touch on discrimination (in the form of a banana ornament, the whole incident is just priceless, a must read). Sean’s blog also has something most blogs don’t. Suspense. The author takes an HIV test and I found myself skipping ahead a week in posts because I couldn’t stand to not know the results.

I give this blog a high score because through reading his site I felt I knew the author, and by the way he wrote it, you can’t help but feel some of what the author is going through, ups and downs.

One other interesting note. After reading most of the journal I realized the author and this reviewer actually work for the same company but in different states. Sean wisely does not name the company he works for (that has led people into more trouble than it is worth). That didn’t affect my review though, I had already decided that this blog was getting a high rating. Just shows you well this site is written.

The site design was nice and easy to navigate. I had no trouble using both Internet Explorer, and Netscape. There is a guestbook, archives, a photo section, no broken links, this site pretty much has it all.

In summary, this is a ‘page turner’. I’ll add Freeze The Flame to my favorites list, and if you read this blog, I think you will too. Four and a half stars, check it out.

freeze the flame

The author of this weblog is a writer. I could tell that from just reading the first couple of entries. When I dove head first into the extensive archived section of the site, I realize that she does, in fact, spend the majority of her career doing editing work for different websites.

It’s hard to get to know the author on a personal basis, since there’s no “about me” section to check out. However, some weblog entries really do give you a chance to learn about how the author feels about a specific topic, or the trials and tribulations she may be going through at that time.

Texting has one of the best recounts of the events that unfolded on September 11th that I’ve read in a while. Being in New York, the descriptions she gives are obviously accurate and often chilling.

The majority of the entries are extensive in length, as well as meaning. The author has written a letter to Senator Clinton about the overwhelming power AOL/Time Warner takes upon its customers, which is an entry I found both quite purposeful and eye-opening. In Feb 2002, the author also has a very informative entry about the rights and legal issues behind domain names, which is actually a very interesting entry.

Design-wise, I’d like to see a bit more to this site. The colors of the links are hard to read, and you can’t even read the email address because the link is the same color as the background in the table the link is in. There’s an image in the title area of the site that may or may not have anything to do with the site. It’s hard to tell with the image being so small.

Without a doubt, the author of this site can write about anything. Don’t expect the average “here’s what I did today” site here, because it’s not that at all. If you’re up for some sometimes intense reading, then visit this site. You’ll be glad you did.Texting