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The Huge Entity
Daniel Rourke is a brit on the JET program in Japan. His blog sports a background with the rising sun motif that has inevitably come to be affiliated with his country of current residence. Daniel's indentification of his gaijin status immediately draws comparison to other weblogs of foreigners stuck in Japan, many of which are really pretty damn good. Being a bit of a japanophile myself, I actually read a fair number of these blogs. Thus, when I first started reading the huge entity, I found myself thinking that Mr. Rourke had a pretty huge task ahead of him - he had to go above and beyond the 'Japanese people are kooky' type of blog, and add something new to the genre.
Naturally, 'danieru-san' makes the occasional obligatory 'only in Japan' type posts that you would expect of an expatriate in the far east. However, to be fair to him, the scope of his blog by no means stops there. Other topics Daniel enjoys discussing range from sino-japanese relations to the papacy. All in all, Daniel manages to give his readers a fairly entertaining collection of eclectic links, as well as the occasional amusing one frame gnomz comic, mainly based on political figures.
Daniel's blog isn't exclusively about link farming, either. Most original material in the site can be found in Mr. Rourke's huge rants; these, like the site, are incredibly eclectic, and fairly entertaining. I particularly like his story, Thor, the Mighty Thunder Hamster, a childrens' story about a boy and his hamster's quest for the perfect hammer. He's currently looking for an illustrator for this particular project, but based on the comments on his site, it doesn't seem like one is forthcoming.
The Huge Entity has a layout I would describe as fairly good; it doesn't have too many extraneous annoying links, and everything is pretty easy to find. Examining Daniel's 2004 and early 2005 blogs, though, it's fairly obvious that his blog has come a long way. The earlier entries look kind of tentative, and don't appear nearly as sharp as his latest efforts.
All in all, therefore, I figure the Huge Entity does just enough to set itself apart from other gaijin blogs, and thus is worthy of a visit or two.
This site was reviewed on 2005-05-06 by jschnorng.
They felt this site belonged in the News/Links category.
jschnorng felt that The Huge Entity deserved a rating of 3.75.
The blog is written by a 23 year old British man teaching English in Japan. The site has a pleasing and easy to navigate design. Built on a basic blogger.com base, the author has done a good job creating a pretty new template.
While the weblog is potentially very interesting, I didn't find it a compelling read. There were rehashed news articles, confusing poetry and philosophical meanderings. I would have found stories about the author's experiences in Japan interesting. There are bits of his thoughts on Japan but very little about his teaching experiences. The problem is that the author uses a distant third person reportorial voice. The blog reads too much like a dry travel guide. Is it the authors purpose to highlight his experiences in Japan? If so, he needs to write more about his experiences, please, and give us less reportage. If you don't add personal reflections, why should we come to your site for the links? Even a "news/links" site can benefit from a personal voice.
Because the voice was so distant, there wasn't much humor, though the author is occasionally bemused, as in his entry about the sex lives of the Japanese. However this was a serious post as most of the others are. Not dead serious, but not ha-ha funny either. I suppose the author cares about what he is writing--why else would he bother? But he is not present in most of the writing, so you don't get much of a feeling for him. That said, the techincal quality of the writing is good and the posts are well constructed. There are no obvious grammatical or syntactical problems.
The design is excellent. The site really looks great. (I recommend changing the color of the blogger NavBar on the top of the page; the beige bar does not fit with the rest of the color scheme.) The links are intuitive and all work. I like the way the site looks and the author has done a great job working within blogger.com's limitations. I'd think this were a typepad site if I didn't know better. The bonus features are the pretty pictures, "rants," the message board, a links page and a categories menu. I am impressed with the technical ability behind all these nice features, but it's hard to say what they add when the blog is lacking heart.
It all seems to be screaming "read me, read me" or maybe "love me, love me," and I can certainly understand that impulse, but the author needs to do more than try and generate an audience. He has to write something that is worth reading. The framework is here, but the substance is lacking. I think this is a blog with a ton of potential. The subject matter has inherent interest. The author is technically adept, but he needs to show more of himself in his writing. The problem is that anyone can make the very general observations he's making about Japan from a western point of view (I could make them if I did a little research and I would never even need to visit Japan). The author needs to find his voice and let us share in his particular experiences in Japan. What he thinks about life there is what will make this blog interesting and worth reading.
The design is excellent, but the content is not compelling. I rate this as an average site, though with some changes to the content it could easily become excellent. My rating is 3.
This site was reviewed on 2005-05-06 by Jamy Barab.
They felt this site belonged in the News/Links category.
Jamy Barab felt that The Huge Entity deserved a rating of 3.
2 reviewers gave The Huge Entity an average rating of 3.3750
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