Month: January 1970

The Sum Total of Me opens with a generic blogger template. While it is not a fantastic template, the template works very well for this blog. Something that few templates can do. This isn’t known until about halfway through all the posts, so please don’t let that get to you.

The Sum Total of Me is about True Willow. It wasn’t until the last post I read (the first post of the blog) that I fully understood the title of this site. TW says Like an irritable child I asked her why, and I will never forget what she said, “Because we are the sum total of everything we have been through in life.” She goes on to dedicate this site to the person who told her this quote and the first post was very moving for me.

The blog is just what it says; the total of the author. The posts range from childhood memories to current events happening within TW’s life. She talks about her children, her friends, and her family. She is a teacher, and her words are well chosen. I was amazed at how quickly I was drawn into this site.

This site is hard to review without just pulling quotes from the site. I read each post and genuinely felt emotion with each. Sometimes I laughed, sometimes I almost cried which is a first for me as a reviewer, and sometimes I was scared for her, just as she was when telling a story. This site reads like a great movie with flashbacks in key points to give us that much more character development. To say that this is a story is kind of misleading, as each piece makes up a different part of the puzzle. I enjoyed my time here, and look forward to spending more here.
The Sum Total Of Me

My first thought before I entered The Anchor Song was, “What the heck am I going to find here?” I have never heard of an anchor song so I was a little confused. So with some confusion in mind, I dove into the site.

Now I don’t know what people’s fascination is with splash pages, but I do not like them. There is not a purpose for them. This one is a hand drawn sketch of a person, presumably the author. Clicking on the little guy takes us to the simplistic designed blog. The text is in the center of the screen with an image of a partial man under water. Ok. Not quiet sure if that goes back to that anchor man thing or not.

The first post I read was this one which was a very graphic adult posting about the author being with another male. Since I wasn’t expecting this kind of post, nor the level of detail, I was confused yet again.

Reading through the posts you really start to get a feel for who the author is, his friends and other people in his life. Almost all the posts are of the “this is what I did” type, but are told very well. Each post has a high level of detail which is amazing. I really got into how some people were just called by the first letter of their name (J for instance) while others had their full name. My impression after reading through almost all the posts was that the people who just had a one letter name were done so to protect them which I found to be a nice gesture.

My absoulte biggest complaint about this site is the lack of navigation support. Well let me clarify. In order to navigate to any part of the site (About, Contact, or Archives) you must select it from the small little drop down in the last post on that page. Trying to read the archives in Firefox is not going to happen and will result in a 404 error. To write this I had to go into IE and view it. I should note that the archives work fine in Safari for the mac. Not sure what causes this problem, but it is a huge one.

The navigation needs to be changed. This site has a great story to tell but it is ruined by the fact that you almost have to take 2 steps back for every one forward. I have changed the category from personal to adult as I believe that only adults will really get the author in addition to some graphic details of things. Overall I enjoyed reading The Anchor Song, but was disappointed by the lack of navigation. As far as what The Anchor Song refers to, my only guess is that it is referring to Sailors, but I could be wrong.
The Anchor Song

The Sum Total Of Me has that nice parchment Blogger template that I am rather fond of. It is a very simple straightforward place. The only things in the sidebar are some of the author’s blog friends, recent posts, and the Archives list.

Our blogger lives on the west coast and is married with children and works as a pre-school teacher. The subtitle of the blog reads thusly:

“Just another individual trying to heal through the power of writing.”

As good a reason to start a blog as any I can think of. She has been writing since July of 2004.

The entries are of a moderate to lengthy nature and are filled with various reactions to her world from day to day. There are ups and downs recorded with a guarded candor that at first was hard for me to break into. She is obviously a private person, trying to deal with the very public world of blogging.

She is dealing with psychological issues in these pages and occasionally manages to outline quite clearly what haunts her even today. This entry is a good example: November 1, 2004 “My Wish”.

Her writing is clear on some levels, and cryptic on others. It’s kind of a mixed bag in this respect. There are often entries that contain music lyrics, which I don’t usually find all that inspiring to read in people’s diaries. But I do understand the desire to share how a song affects you when you listen to it. Frankly, I think it’s difficult to share that kind of emotion on a blog. Would that it were easier for some of us less technically adept to include the sound clip. That might work better!

In any case, it was a pleasant visit all in all.

The Sum Total Of Me

Christien’s a 27-year-old guy from Canada. His weblog, Cat Whisperings, has been up and running since May 2004, according to the blog information listed on his site. Readers can learn even more details, though, by clicking on “Full Profile”. The only reason I’m even pointing out that link is due to the links being the extremely close to the same color as the text on the site.

The layout of the Cat Whisperings appears to be set specifically for a 1280 x 1024 screen resolution. Anything smaller resolution results in visitors having to scroll from right to left to navigate the entire site. Everything is done in some shade of gray/black – the text, the background, the links, etc. Gray is great. In a blog entry, however, it’s extremely difficult to distinguish between the sentence and the link readers are encouraged to explore.

Readers never learn the myth behind the name of the site: Cat Whisperings. Perhaps it’s better left untold, or perhaps I just didn’t find it in the six or so months of archives on this domain.

The sidebars of the site do have some interesting tidbits. There’s a poll that changes from time to time and my personal favorite, Christien’s own concoctions for his favorite alcoholic beverages. There are also the usual archives, a chatterbox, and the typical links to other sites on the web.

I don’t remember the last time I reviewed a weblog that had this many quiz answers or other various memes. The author’s appropriately stuck these posts in a category called “Dumb quizzes, etc..”. Christien has many different categories, as well, which give people an idea of how wide a variety of topics he covers from day to day – Geek stuff, Hotness, Stupid White Men, and finally something to do with the name of the site, Cats.

There are posts that contain Christien’s interests, which are often very well written and become quite passionate in meaning. Enjoyably, he gives readers the chance to comment on the things he writes. According to his disclaimer, he’s more than happy to participate in a debate type atmosphere about any given topic, but would rather avoid discussing anything with anyone who isn’t open minded and in Christien’s words, has an IQ of over 100.

When Christien actually takes the time to write a post from his thought or his experiences, readers will be in for quite a treat. He’s conveys his thoughts clearly on very serious topics like gun control and politics, and is very confident and well-informed on the subjects of his writing. These posts don’t come often enough, though, and people may lose interest in the copied and pasted text from other sites and the very regular results to the current quiz.
Cat Whisperings…

I was thinking about maybe skipping over reviewing The Captain’s Log as this is not my first visit to the site and I thought it might be a bit weird to go back as a reviewer. However, I am glad I did get the opportunity as it was nice to revisit a pretty solid weblog about a (now ex-) Canadian and his every day life.

This is a Big Blog Tool blog and when I started out as a blogger (way back in er… 2003), I cut my teeth on BBT as it was pretty straight forward to get going on. Another thing I noticed from exploring its “Recently Updated” list was that nearly all the sites which used it had absolutely awesome templates. Captain Spanky was already well under way with his blog by this stage (it dates back to March 2002) and his blog is certainly no exception in terms of impressive design.

It is a custom, two column template with a witty titlebar and stylish fonts used in the sidebar. The blog itself is tasteful and easy to read with differentiation between the comments and blog entries, the comments being displayed inline. There is no “About Me” page but there are a few cool links to be found including one to a site where the author sells his own custom car stickers and the like. You can also find out the local weather, read the archives or browse the “Recently Updated” list mentioned earlier. My only minor gripe is that the site doesn’t look quite so slick in Firefox, due to slight alignment problems, but it does not make the site unreadable by any means. I also really liked the “Front Pages” which are always clever, funny designs and add another touch of individuality (click in the top right corner to go see).

So, top marks for the way it all looks, but can the content match up? Well kind of. This is very much a personal blog about the day to day stuff going on in the life of the author. As the archives go back a couple of years, there is no way to get through them all unless you have A LOT of spare time. I decided to read the first few months, then picked a few pages at random after I got fed up with the Republican bashing which has been particularly rife in the blog recently. It’s not that I like Republicans or disagreed with what was being said, it just got a bit wearing. Other topics to be found in the blog include pool tournaments which The Captain takes part in, programming stuff (his career), some cool links, rants and some photos of social events – the usual blogging fare in fact. There is some swearing, but none of the content is really offensive, just opinionated and often funny too. Overall, it is of a high quality, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary.

So this is really a blog of the old school variety. Great design, and consistent content about a 30 something, socially adept, tech savvy American. Nothing more nothing less. As with so many thousands of blogs out there, this is obviously great for his social circle, but it is hard to think of many things which set this apart and would draw in the casual reader.The Captain’s Log