Month: January 1970

Secret Knowledge of Backroads opens with an out of focus photo of greenery for a header and an equally green two-toned background that makes for a harmonious and pleasant vista. A two column blog, crisp and neat. Not too many links in the sidebar and the navigation is straightforward and easy to use.

I poked around and noticed that our blogger has been here since May of 2004. I searched in vain for an about page, so instead dove into the deep end and began with the first post hoping for enlightenment about who was writing. No such information was forthcoming. Ever.

Our author writes about music he (I think it’s a he) is listening to. Sometimes the entry consists of a picture of an album cover and a list of the titles of the songs on same. He blogs about outings to concerts and art shows and other local shindigs. He also tells us what food and alcoholic beverages he consumed while out, or gives us a list of LINKS to all the songs on his IPod playlist for the day…. 15 of them. . . . a habit, (overlinkage) that he might reconsider.

The one thing I found mildly amusing was his use of uniquely British lingo. And it aroused in me the desire to know what words like footy, cassingle, swizz, and git mean. But for the most part, the entries are rather mundane and honestly, I can’t tell you ONE thing about the author as a person.

Now this may be just fine for his regular readers, who may know our author personally, thus making self-revelation redundant. But if he wants to attract a wider audience, a little context for the entries would be helpful.

As it stands, I was left profoundly unmoved by his taste in music, food and activities.

secret knowledge of backroads

When I first opened up this blog, I was not very impressed with the layout . It was one of those 3 column layouts (which I am not a big fan of), several links on the left hand side and in the middle as well. The actual posts were on the right hand side. With this in mind, I began my journey into the world of “The orange haired boy”. Lewis (the author), was born in “Edinburgh, Scotland”, but is presently living in “Land o’ Lakes, FL “. He also has orange hair. So the title of the blog is about exactly what it says.

When I stated earlier that maybe the posts would make up for my disappointment in the layout/design, I was in for another disappointment. I went through the archives and it may have taking me all of an hour to read the entire entries. The posts had very little content in them what so ever. There were a couple of posts about the hurricanes that have been hitting the California area and other posts that had maybe one or two lines. The entries did not contain enough content to keep a reader interested. It took more time for me to go through all of his links etc.

The links on the page also seemed to be scattered all over the place and I found myself becoming really annoyed by this. However, I did like the concept that Lewis has a link on there that enables you to change the skin of his blog. I have said several times before, everyone has different taste. What doesn’t work for me, may work for someone else. To sum it all up, this is not a blog I would visit on a regular basis . orange haired boy

Mama’s Rants starts out with a nice layout, visually simple but effective. No amazing graphics of any kind, but appealing nonetheless. It’s a three-column layout, very tidy and the links include the usual recent posts and sites plus a long list of books she enjoys/reads.

The blog boasts a very complete “about” page with excellent writing regarding her background, her family and the purpose of the blog. Anne is a mother of two, married, ex-web content writer with a degree in journalism who is very much involved with “mom” work in her community plus some writing work on the side. Although she is now a stay-at-home mom, you can tell she is the intellectually restless type, looking for outlets to express her talent both as a person and mother.

This blog is unlike other “mom” blogs in the sense that Anne posts about issues that interest her as a human being mostly. Not just the mother. There are no long digressions on what motherhood is like or rants regarding parenting issues. Anne posts from the top of head on whatever she feels the need to say, be it pictures, news articles, musings from her childhood and/or present life. You might want to call this an eclectic “mom” blog. More about the woman than the mother, or both in somewhat equal amounts.

Her entries vary in length and her writing style is intelligent, simple and direct. I especially recommend the early posts dating from March and April of 2004.

Overall, I very much appreciated the work done on her blog. You can see she’s put a lot of thought into building a nice appealing site for her own self-expression and those who wish to share it. A Mama’s Rant

Mondo Irlando opens to a rather garish page, with a lot of homemade icons and an annoying flashing Amazon advertisement. The background is black and in three columns we have the headings, Film, Music, and Other Shit. Overall, not an inviting looking place I’m sad to say. I did not run across an explanation of what the title of the site means, although it may be in there somewhere. And I only found one journal entry, so technically, to my way of thinking at least, this is not a blog.

The author writes reviews about film, and music. In the “Other” category you will find articles like “The Duke’s Guide to Ireland”, and “The Cinema of Woody Allen”. The writing style is rambling, tangent filled, and liberally sprinkled with profanity. I must confess, I’m convinced the fellow is fairly intelligent, but his penchant for smart aleck asides gets in the way of some otherwise cogent remarks on his chosen subjects. This is a shame, for he obviously has put an impressive volume of work here.

There were a few links that I tried that were not working for one reason or another… might have just been a bad day on the Web. There is no “About” page that I could find.

I don’t think I will be returning to this site any time soon. But it is entirely possible that it might appeal to film and music buffs, who look for a healthy dose of sarcasm and irreverence in their reviewers. It didn’t work for me.

Mondo Irlando

Fringe Blog has a nice white background with a centered column that looks like a piece of paper. Nothing cluttering the sides, very easy on the eyes. I wish more blogs looked like this one.

In the About section I found that our author is 23 years old and wants to be a film editor when he grows up. He’s serious about it too, because he has won a few awards already in local film festivals.

I browsed through the archives, which start in February of 2003. Here is a quote from his first entry:

“The Grand Experiment
February 8
I’ve gone and done it. I’ve finally succumbed to the pressures of life in the digital universe. I’m not talking about starting up a dotcom (I already did that).

Blogging. Blog. Blogger. I am Jack’s Lack of Good Sense. What makes me think I can keep this up? What makes me think people care? Is it for the people that I make daily reports and maintain my independence, all the while drumming up thoughts on…whatever?”

These are all questions we bloggers asked ourselves when we first stepped into the blogosphere. Will anybody care? Blogging is a leap of faith there is no doubt about it. And our author found that his own motivations and the direction of his blog evovled as he went along, which is documented on the about page.

The entries are surprisingly mature considering the age of the author. He is articulate and has wide ranging interests that keep the posts from becoming mundane. He does movie reviews, posts chapters from his ongoing novel, takes a trip down memory lane about Garbage Pail Kids trading cards, discusses politics, and links freely to other blogs that he reads. I especially enjoyed the recurring Zen teaching posts.

I found something new to me on this blog…. something called the Christian Carnival, which seems to be a roving venue for bloggers to post essays on certain topics of interest. Our author was the recent host. Twenty bloggers participated. I also ran across something called The Storyblogging Carnival that is a site to submit a story that you have posted on your blog. This sounded like fun to me, and I am happy to have learned about it.

The author has an efficient style for his archives. They are listed by month and only include a brief paragraph and then a go to link for the full entry. It was easy to browse through the excerpts to find things you might be interested in reading. While I don’t care for the “read more” links on the main page of a blog, it worked surprisingly well for the archives.

I enjoyed my visit, and was impressed by the variety and depth of the writing. While there is a fair amount of strong political opinion here, it is far from ranting. And since politics is not necessarily the dominant theme, I think this blog would appeal to a wide audience.

Fringe