Month: May 2004

“Watski’s World”. (Day to day mutterings and observations of a 31 year old serial thinker with far too much time on his hands.) Those were the words written at the top of this blog.

As I entered the blog (which was very fast in loading),I was greeted with a very dark background. The blog is hosted on “Blogspot” and in spite of the darkness , it was very clean and crisp looking.

To my disappointment, I couldn’t find any link etc. to tell me a bit about the author. However, from reading the entries, I did discover that the author is British and likes football. Upon reading the posts, there was one in particular that I found impressive. It read as follows::

This blog is pretty simple fare, as you may have noticed from the technology shyer article, or maybe the general layout of this site. Lets face it, its not going to win any prizes for design and layout.

Id like to promote this as being intentional, some sort of minimalistic blog style movement that ive accidentally founded. I could go all out and say that the words are all i need, man. But its none of the above. Its because i have no idea about how to design it any other way than on the template provided. Please dont think that i do know how to and that this is all i managed to come up with. Although i think it does the job.

As regular visitors (of which i have 5 – hello family!) will maybe notice, i’ve learnt recently how to link things to the site, as you will note from the array of sites listed down the right hand side. If i start showing off with the new thing ive learnt and start to list lots of links that makes it look too dodgy then please let me know.

There is much more to blogs than pretty pictures, graphics and code that only the tech snobs understand. My hope is that anybody who visits this site of their own volition likes reading the stuff eminating from my mind rather any graphics that they might find, and comes back to visit again occasionally because of that.

Thats bearing in mind that your only reason for visiting isnt because its the only site the warders let you have access to.

In my opinion, you couldn’t find more truer words on another blog/website. It was very well spoken /written. I give the author props for this.

The author has made it clear that he is just starting to learn coding ect. But as the author stated, it’s not pretty pictures or coding etc. that make a blog. It’s the writing . In the other entries, the author wrote about a new job he would be starting. He talks about gardening, new shelves he has to put up etc. The blog is just basically about the authors every day life. I even found that in some entries, the author writes with a bit of humor. The blog hasn’t been around for very long as of yet, but I did enjoy reading the entries that were posted.

As mentioned, the b/g is a dark background, but very clean and crisp. The entries are posted in the middle, with several links to the right hand side. However, I did run into a few problems.
There were some spelling and grammar errors.
Most of the links are not in working order.
But the author has also stated that he recently learned how to put links on the page, so I am sure he will fix this problem in the future.

Upon conclusion, Since the blog is of a fairly new nature, I can’t give it a higher rating than a 3. Therefor, because this is the case, and because of the non-working links etc, I am giving it a rating of a 2.5Watski’s World

Watski’s World is little more than a digital diary where Watski records the events of his life and the thoughts in his head. With the only navigation options on the site being ten ‘recent entries’ links, the archives, and three links to outside sites, the first-time reader has little to go on in the way of a description of the blog other than the subtitle: ‘day to day mutterings and observations of a 31 year old serial thinker with far too much time on his hands.’ Thus we are left to wonder what Watski the serial thinker actually thinks about and we must jump right in. A look into the archives to find his first entry on June 11th, 2004 at least hints at what Watski’s World is all about, as he basically admits that he’s got time to burn and the internet is a great place to burn it.

As it turns out, he might be called an everyman’s philosopher, though I use the term ‘philosopher’ loosely. His entries are rather prodigious and touch on everything from his gardening to his plight as a tech-challenged man in an increasingly tech-dependant world, and there are undercurrents in his writing, let’s call them implicit admissions, of a general incompetence which he seems to relish. Watski is English and many of his entries involve football (soccer) in one way or another. There’s also a recurring thread involving his employment situation (or lack thereof) and, as previously mentioned, a thread focused on the challenges of the technology-challenged.

The writing of the entries rambles at times, but Watski has a good habit of not straying too far from the topic he starts with, though the blog itself doesn’t focus on a specific theme. The writing is good, but it failed to draw me in and I found that the insightful comments or observations were interesting but few and far between and sometimes it was difficult to keep my attention focused on what I was reading. However, in the more recent entries Watski seems to be developing a more focused voice and a knack for amusing the reader. The blog is only a month old and if Watski can further refine his digital voice, Watski’s World could be a very entertaining, if light, read.
Watski’s World

Watski’s World – “The day to day mutterings and observations of a 31 year old serial thinker with far too much time on his hands.” This is what we see first on this generic Blogspot navy blue template. The white lettering on navy is not too bad if one is going to read one entry. But as I read virtually ALL the entries, (the blog has only been in existence for a little over a month), I began to get a headache from it. And the “daily mutterings” comment is about all we can find out about our author until we read further.

But this is where the fun begins. I read the most recent entry first, which at the time of my review was July 3, 2004. I immediately identified with his humorous take on technology and recognized a kindred spirit.

I saw that this was a new blog, so I began at the beginning and read through all the entries. I discovered along the way that our hero has been lately out of work, looking for work, finding work, and is now waiting for his new job to start on July 12th. (Good luck!) He writes on various and sundry subjects including: his job search and employment agencies, politics, gardening, football (being a rank Yank, I don’t know if that means Rugby or Soccer. Or come to think of it, some other sport altogether…), and his hilarious misadventures with his new cell phone in serial form. I had a ball.

He is articulate and funny in a cheeky British sort of way, and is a joy to read. I am insanely jealous that American English has no corresponding word to “posh”. It seems such an all-purpose word that one could use on so many juicy occasions to poke fun at those who take themselves too seriously. But I will just have to muddle along with “snooty” I guess.

I especially enjoyed the entry of June 21, 2004 where he has a conversation with himself and his mind on why he is losing it. Read it. And he painted a picture of Nottingham that I won’t soon forget, as it has thoroughly displaced my rather romantic notion of the place. I think I especially enjoyed this blog because he did give me a little taste of British life from one of it’s proud citizens.

I hope he keeps writing even after his new job begins. I’m giving this blog a 4.25. The only reason it didn’t get more points is that it is very new, and I really could not enjoy the template he has chosen. In my opinion it is an obstacle to his entertaining writing.

Watski’s World

Yet Another Internet Diary. I appreciated the clean straightforward style of the page. Easy to read font for the entries and large clearly marked entry headers made finding my way around simple. The beginning of his About page is permanently displayed in the left column so I found out right away that I was reading a blog from John in Glasgow, Scotland. Now to this American, Glasgow sounds like an exotic location and I was hoping I might learn a little something about a place I have never seen. He has been writing here since July 2003.

I began at the most current entries with an open mind. But slowly I became disappointed. The entries cover all manner of trivial subjects, which include rants on tea, alka-seltzer, cheese and onion chips, expressing one’s anger by beating inanimate objects to bits and other scintillating minutia. It was rather puzzling to tell the truth, because our John is no dunce. He writes clearly, has an impressive vocabulary and is a fan of Bill Bryson (a personal favorite of my own), so why waste these talents on drivel?

There was one time that I laughed out loud while reading his diary. It was an entry posted on November 7, 2003. I wish there had been more stories like this one. For you see, there are amusing and thought provoking things that happen even in the most common of everyday things of life.

There is one entry where he writes that people have complained that he is not writing anything personal, and he basically tells them off. Which of course is his prerogative. It’s his blog after all! Then I found the quintessential kernel in his own words that sums up his site:

“I think I know what this diary’s main flaw is. I’ll illuminate it for you. See, I pretty much prattle on without a care in the world for anything.”

There you have it.

I suppose there is a place in blogdom for a person just to have a place to vent, which to be fair, is how he describes his own blog in his opening statements… “it has just allowed me to vent my feelings in a vaguely constructive manner.” So if this is his intent, then his blog is serving it’s purpose. But it’s not going to be very interesting for anyone else to read.

Yet Another Internet Diary

Mistress Passion? You’ll have to wait. The page may take quite a while to load. I’m not sure why. Could be the handful of pictures on the rather long home page. The pea green background looks odd surrounding the picture of a pair of feet in toeless shoes.

I got confused right off the bat here because the page was taking so long to load, I clicked on a link just under the toes, and in a cyber-undertow, was taken to another site. I thought for a while that this opening page was just a ruse for “Dean’s World” where I ended up, but turns out after coming back to Mistress Passion’s site, it had loaded. This kind of confusion, I don’t need.

Anyway, there are only 6 posts on this blog, and most are long. The content is a rather muddled combination of supposedly real life stuff, and lectures about what the author calls “bdsm”. For those in the know, now you know. I found the writing rather patronizing and pompous considering the subject. But I suppose if one is into this kind of thing, you might be able to have a dialog with the author. Although in reading one of the few comments left on the entries, it seems like people who might comment, have trust issues.

There is no real “About Me” page that I could find. And frankly I did not check out the other links as I was not into seeing stuff I wasn’t prepared for. I only decided to review this adult site because it was not loaded with offensive images.

It’s hard to say what direction this site might take. If a real conversation about this lifestyle develops, it could be interesting. I admittedly don’t know jack about bdsm, but would not mind hearing how people get involved in it. I feel less threatened by reading these kinds of things than by being bombarded by shocking images. And if this site does not go in that direction, it could become something fairly interesting. But it’s way too soon to tell.

Mistress Passion