Review 3444

I feel incredibly fat, old and tired just looking at the pictures and reading about the lives lived here on Driven By Boredom. I’m so not a club scene kind of gal. Being almost 41, I kind of cringed thinking about reviewing this site.

Nate, aka Igor (and you had BEST not pronounce it Eye-gor a la “Young Frankenstein” or he’ll get bloody pissed at you) photographs the nightlife in clubs in New York City.

The pictures speak for themselves. Igor points out the locations and events (ie: goodbye parties, halloween parties or just plain party parties), bemoans the fact that he keeps leaving his memory card at home, and periodically complains about the lack of boobie shots in a lot of his galleries. Igor does an amazing job capturing a scene, sharing the faces and places, and really diving in to what looks like a hell of a lot of fun. Visiting his photo journal over the past few weeks, through the halloweeny (one of my favorite words too, Igor) season is the perfect time to immerse your mind and psyche into his scenes.

The weblog itself is simple: a black background with white text and really huge, crisp photos with a little narrative about the party or the club. The archives are easy to navigate and date back to March 2007. The About page is informative, and Igor has a link to his DBB (or dbb for the lowercase, closer to his logo look) version 1.0 which I am looking forward to going back and reading after I finish this review.

Just about every entry links to his photo galleries where they’re hosted and the links open in a new window, one of my favorite things in the world. That way, I can walk through 30 or 40 pictures and not have to click back or find my way to the source of the initial launch out of the site. I love when bloggers/web designers use target equals blank or any other such code to let people parouse another page. Thank you Igor.

My favorite series of all of his shots was the recently photographed (October 29, 2007) Get Close at M. In looking through this gallery, there are a lot of faces shot very close up, and a lot of them are people seen in full body shot throughout the rest of the journal. I found the closeness of the photos very interesting and don’t really think people are that scary, that close up.

A lot of Igor’s photos are Not Safe For Work (NSFW) unless you work at Suicide Girls or an alt-porn website fueled office. And if you’ve got little kids around they may wonder what the heck is going on in some of the shots. So it is best viewed without prying eyes and cyber nannies about.

I found Igor’s photos intriguing, and really enjoyed my stay here. I subscribed to the RSS feed. My only complaint is that I actually like his writing, and wish there was a little more of it.

I give Driven By Boredom a 4.5 and will my fat, old, lazy self will be back to visit again and live vicariously through his lens. Just try and remember your memory card more often, Igor. NULL

Review 3344

I knew going in that Hydroponics – Soil-less Gardening was probably not going to be an entertaining site. I have heard of hydroponics and I have read about it before. Just didn’t think it was a topic worthy of a blog.

The site loads with a modified blogger template. The template is shades of greens which I find fitting considering this is about plants. Other than the customizing of the template, there isn’t much else to say about the design of this standard two-column layout site.

The blog is, as I predicted, about growing plants in a soil-less environment. The site covers everything that you can think of and more. This includes proper mesh, ph levels, and more. I was amazed at how much work went into growing things this way.

My biggest gripe is that this site seems like it was only set up to earn money. It doesn’t read like the author enjoys his work, rather the posts are detailed and straight to the point. The site is littered with advertising which is kind of distracting. The fact that it is hosted on blogspot doesn’t help either. The site really needs a regular domain and could use a message board.

Overall this site is only good if you have an interest in hydroponics. I don’t think the author is trying to make the site a place for other people to share their ideas which I think the site could greatly benefit from. The site does what it does well, but because of the lost potential I have to give it a 2.5NULL