Month: January 1970

You never know what you are going to be getting into when a site has a normal title of Jainie’s Journal. Will it just be a journal or will there be a little twist on it?



It turns out to have a small little twist in it. In general the entries are about Jainie’s personal life: her trials and tribulations, but there is also a lot about Buffy The Vampire Slayer in there too. At first I couldn’t help but think, why is there all this Buffy stuff in here, then I checked out the profile: under bio it reads, “Buffy addict, Spike addict.” Enough said. The quality of the writing is good, well thought out and not any errors that I could see.



Design of the site is very basic. It has two columns; one being for all the links, the other for the blog itself. One problem that I did have with the design is the links are all black normal looking text. Unless you mouse over them, they look like part of her normal entries. I was unaware of any links in the blog part until I realized this little problem.



Overall the site was pretty good. If you don’t like Buffy then you probably won’t like this site, but if you do, you will enjoy it. Other than the design issue mentioned, there isn’t anything else wrong with the site so go check it out.

Jainie

I should preface this review by saying that I don’t like anime and I don’t understand the fascination with it. This site, written by a Japanese university student, is all about anime.



With that said, I think people who are interested in anime will love this site. Entries in her guestbook (those in English, anyway) say that people think she’s doing a great job with the site. Besides her weblog, which discusses anime shows and music at great length, she’s worked up a database of anime songs and song lyrics as well as anime photos. I found the guestbook the most interesting part of the site. At least it gave me a clue that the “people” she talks about in her entries are anime characters.



I do like the color scheme and the fresh, clean-looking layout, although she could use some kind of header.



There’s very little on this site for people not interested in anime. As I said earlier, people who do like anime will probably be interested in visiting this site. For those who don’t have a interest in anime, it’s not worth the trip.

Little Diary

Why is it that anime sites seem to have the best designs out of any other type of site? Seriously though, does watching anime make you a good web designer?



So I start reading, and I just pray that there isn’t too much anime talk going on, as I have no clue about all the shows and what not. Thankfully there wasn’t too much other than, I got this or this character is so good, type stuff. I am glad that there wasn’t an exploration of the anime stuff.



But it gets better; as she didn’t post solely about anime, yet post things about her daily life. Oh the joys of being a teenager again. Pretty much everything that she said, I could relate to as it happened to me before.



Though teens will probably appreciate this site the most, it might strike a trip down memory lane for anyone else.

Lady Commander

What is going on with this site? Hijinks, Shenanigans, and Tom-Foolery… What am I supposed to be looking at?



So I look, and I see a picture of Tara D. with marker on it like those Captain Morgan’s ads saying the Captain was here. I started to laugh. Then to the left I noticed the real picture that says that she is a stand up comedian. So I hope that the posts are funny.



My hopes came true as about 95% of the posts were funny. Some were just links to other funny sites, and some were just funny stories that she has been in, or heard. And lets not forget that she has a wonderful talent for writing things in a funny way.



The design of the site was the only thing that brought me down. Each section of her site (links, picture of the week…) has a different background, yet the site maintains the same link colors through out. This causes some links to almost blend in with the background, which is very hard on the eyes. They are just enough off colored to do a little trippy thing that if you look at it the wrong way, you swear it just glistened or moved or something. Thankfully, the content area had a better choice of colors and thus readable.



If you are looking for a good laugh, check out her site. One thing I wish is that she had a listing of when and where she was performing, as it would be a nice thing to know if you are ever in the Chicago-land area.

Hijinks, Shenanigans, and Tom-Foolery

An ambitious teen weblog, Petals is an extremely attractive blog which features an unfortunate lack of content for the average reader. However, Petals may have an audience among like-minded teens who enjoy interacting via the Internet.



Christin, the 15 year old author of Petals, has taken great pains to present a feminine weblog which views exceptionally well in MSIE 5.5. The pretty blue-grey layout is a visual treat which, with a bit of necessary tweaking, would view equally well in NS 6.1. The only flaw in layout appears to be in column or table width, which is too narrow to properly showcase the individual weblog entries. Posts appear crunched into the column and the reader is optically tricked into seeing the posts extend past the column boundaries. This oddity can make for difficult reading over a period of time.



The author’s entries are typically short and focus on her daily life. The author’s tone is extremely friendly and outgoing — a welcomed plus among teen weblogs. Unfortunately, posts can prove impossible to fully understand unless one is personally familiar with the author, as she makes many references to friends and places which are not well-defined for the casual reader. Petals, indeed, appears to have been designed to appeal to a small group of readers, many of whom may be familiar with the author in real life. This weblog, despite it’s attractive appearance and the author’s outgoing tone, is an example of a private weblog made unnecessarily public. There simply is not enough content at Petals to appeal to a wide audience, which is disheartening given the author’s obvious effort in layout and her friendly demeanor.



Petals may attract an audience among 12 to 17 year olds and the author seems to especially welcome readers from this age group. The visual charm of Petals, when viewed in MSIE 5.5, is undeniable and one can only hope that an improved readership will prompt the author to craft better entries with more substantial content. This is a weblog which, if continued, may be worth a second review in the future.



petals