Month: January 1970

Zazzafooky. What does that mean was my first thought. Clicking the link meant that I had no idea what was going to come up on my page. So when the nice, clean and neat page did come up, I clapped with joy, a) because it had a lovely, even if it is a bit of a exorcist pea green soup spew, background and b) the whole style is one that compliments the other colours on the webpage so that the overall view isn’t one that makes you want to scream, run away and hide. The text is also easy to read and well written, the colour and size of it doesn’t get you pulling out the microscope either.

The line under the heading fooking around when I should be working made me snort my coffee because that’s exactly what I’m doing!

Tj’s brand of humour tickled my funny bone. Her posts I found amusing, especially her most recent one where she talks about the Top Ten Lies Wives (or at least this wife) Tell Their Husbands. I don’t have a husband, but I know those white lies because I’ve told them to previous partners & parent as well! Her love of pets and the pictures of said pets made my day. As a pet lover, the picture of the dogs fighting over couch made me smile as I’ve had that same argument with my mother’s little critter when I was still living at home in regards to my own bed.

The layout of the blog itself as well as the content are amusing, they do make you laugh, smile and reminisce. The animal shots, especially the “about” sections for the animals make you awe and ahh.

Overall, I gave Tj’s blog a 4.5 because of the different style of writing she has. Her dry humour is probably not what lots of people would understand, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check it out. Best just head over there because you’ll be missing out if you don’t!zazzafooky

Initially, I could not get a handle on what the weblog was about. There did not appear to be a theme. It seemed to just be ramblings about life. The title of the weblog, “zazzfooky.com” turned out not to have any particular meaning but was a random word that the author invented. She does, however, use “zazz” as the name for her family and “fooky” is related to “hooky” and the f-word. That’s fine, cute, and a tiny bit clever. Unfortunately, since I am a stickler for correct grammar and spelling, a bit fat typo was almost the first thing that caught my attention when I read the most recent post. It was the classic “your” instead of “you’re” mistake. When reading the entire history of posts (which didn’t take much time since this weblog was launched in March 2005) I found several errors of this type, such as “their” for “there” and a few instances of clunky grammar and syntax. The problem with these types of errors is that they create a distraction for the reader and make it harder to focus on the substance of the posts. The weblog would most definitely benefit from proof-reading.

The posts that had a humorous take on everyday events were the best. Examples are the stories of the author’s reactions to her daughter’s grades and bathroom fun time with her dogs. These are the themes the writer should stick with as her observations are succinct, humorous and unusual. Her more serious posts are somewhat less compelling. Generally, the writing is good, if informal and colloquial. This writing style is common in the “blog-o-sphere” but the author’s voice is clear and original. You get a sense of her personality from her writing style. The posts are a random collection of the author’s musings and often recount a humorous event from her day. The events discussed are a mix of work, family and cultural commentary, but the emphasis is on family life. The author clearly cares about what she is writing about. The purpose of the weblog seems to be as an outlet for the author.

The design of the weblog is excellent. Considering that this is a brand new weblog, the author obviously put a great deal of thought into how to arrange the page. The fonts and colors are pleasing to the eye and designed for ease of reading. The format is easy to use and all the links work. It is very easy to navigate around the site and return to the home page.

She has quite a few pictures and background things that add interest to the blog. Her “100 things” list is not very substantive but does tell you a bit more about the author and it is amusing. The bonus features include pictures of her pets (the cats were especially cute) and pictures of her daughter. There is also a link to her daughter’s weblog. While I’m not that interested in reading the not entirely coherent details of an eight-year-old’s day, it is kind of sweet. Overall, the features add to the “big picture” of the weblog.

Since this weblog is in its infancy, it cannot be stated with certainty if it will grow into a good site to visit. You can get a sense of the author and what her take on life is, which I find to be one of the main reasons to read personal weblogs. Personal pages are an opportunity to learn about the world from another person’s perspective, and “zazzfooky.com” provides such an opportunity. I am not sure who the target audience for the blog is, but probably other people like the writer: mothers/wives/professionals in their 20’s-40’s dealing with life’s little ups and downs. If you are interested in humorous takes on everyday events, you might enjoy this weblog.

My rating for the blog is 3.5. The site is mostly well-written, but there are a few too many spelling mistakes. The design is excellent, but there is not much substance yet. Until the author finds her focus and builds up a few more posts the rating should stay at just above average.zazzafooky

Random Acts of Verbage proved to be a religious blog. This is not the only type of posts that can be found on the blog, but the majority of posts seem to fall under this category.

The first thing I noticed upon entering the blog is the width of the page. It is so wide that it neccessitated a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom, and I am viewing it with a 1024 x 768 resolution. This seems to be the result of some pictures that had been posted side by side on the blog, which increased the width. I do believe that if you paid attention to your blog, you would see this issue and fix it. As a result the blog is extremely difficult to read and navigate.

You can really get a feel for who the author is by reading his ‘bio’ and may I add that he seems to be on a very interesting path in life (Go to his blog to read all about it). His blog is the main content and is very interesting, if you are interested in religion. But he also posts his thoughts on international politics, his recent writings on theological topics, and his daily life – which really shows off his less serious (and funnier) side, because some of those topics mentioned previously are pretty ‘heavy’ reading. There’s plenty there to keep you reading and entertained and you can actually learn something.

Overall, I really enjoyed this blog. The aspect that I liked the most was his daily life posts. What I enjoyed the least was the ‘too wide’ width on the main page which made the blog difficult to nvaigate, and I also did not like the fact that the sidebar was so long. There are so many things on the sidebar (some of which could probably be removed) and with the link to the categories being the last thing – I felt like it took hours to get to it. MattJonesBlog

From the title itself, I knew that this was going to be about Iran. Duh.

And I was right. After the first few entries I read, my hunch was proven right.

The entries itself aren’t really entries. They were bits and pieces of news articles and the links where it came from plus more articles and more links. But hey, it’s cool. The fact that this blog is out there to help anyone who needed some information about recent news in Iran is good.

The layout was alright. It was the usual blog template but I always believed that the words mattered more than the look. And this one wasn’t so bad. I especially liked the banner it had. Very strong and powerful.

Overall, I liked it. I haven’t really been current with the events and whatnot from Iran and this blog is very helpful. Regime Change Iran

When I first saw that the name of this site was Boobs and Legs I thought that I would be subject to an adult blog run by either a horny 18 year old male or a money hungry male trying to get people to sign up for all of his affiliate programs. Thankfully neither of these choices is what I received.

When I first got to Boobs and Legs, I was greeted with a nice caricature. I immediately knew that this was not one of my initial thoughts and was going to be written by a female. I thought this was a great name for a blog, especially one that is written by a female. Why not take what you got and flaunt it or use it to your advantage?

The blog has a nice two-column layout with the caricature in the top of one column, which is home to all of the links she provides us with. The color scheme is a dark khaki and red, which works very well. Going over the link column I was a little taken aback by how much was on there. From top to bottom we have: navigation, about section, a quote, blog chalk thing (that doesn’t work), archives in the form of a calendar then again in a drop down, stats about comments, the last 10 comments, more comment links about the posts, most commented posts, about a screen and a half of links to other sites, some people she is giving credit to, some more stats, and finally the weather. Wow that was a long breath. While I don’t find anything wrong with having this much in your link column, at least make sure there is more content than the links, which unfortunately there is not.

So going over all of the posts I can tell you I found this blog to be boring. The blog does not talk about a specific topic like technology or sports, but is about her daily life. There are far to many “What type of blank are you” results within the blog. Whoever came up with those quizzes should be shot. They don’t tell us anything about the author. The posts that aren’t of this sort are about what the author is going to wear, more specifically bras and underwear. Now I have to give the author some props for actually taking pictures of her bra’s and panties and posting them for us, but the thrill of it kind of wears off after about the 3rd time. All the pictures are hosted on flickr and unfortunately are not even sent to a popup and thus we have to navigate back to the blog. This was a deterrent for me.

The author has a great concept for a site, but poor execution on it. I love the name of the site, I am a fan of the design part, but the content just isn’t there for me. If she would post less results and more general stuff then by all means, this blog would improve. The author has no problems with taking pictures of herself, and I think she could really capitalize on this. More specifically, run with the bra and panty idea, but make it more relevant to your target audience (females). I cannot justify giving this site a higher score, as there were just too many things that knocked it down. I honestly think this site has potential, but it requires that the author sit down and focus on what she wants out of the site and stops focusing on what she thinks her audience wants out of her site.http://boobsandlegs.net/