Author: admin

For a teen blogger, sixteen-year-old Sidhe of guppychild.com is something
of a minor pro, and it shows. The design is as good as they come, the blog
has sufficient content, AND she has a webcam.

Unlike most teen bloggers, Sidhe does not record trivial information that
so fascinate the average teen blogger. She writes about happenings in her
life that affect her and her reflections on those happenings with clarity.
Because of this, and because she does not try to be cute (“Dashboard
Confessional is so cool. La la la.”), her blog comes across as mature and
honest.

I’d say the design of the site is immaculate. Everything is within easy
navigation: links arranged neatly in piles and archives in a pull-down bar.
One feature I loved: the blog content itself is in a separate frame so that
when archives are accessed, only that frame refreshes, instead of the whole
page. The layout is also impressive; background of a starry universe and an
eye-catching graphic.

As far as teen blogs go, guppychild.com is a 5.0 blog. Rather than try too
hard to be interesting, Sidhe simply blogs what she feels. As a result, her
blog captures teenage angst in all it’s true form.

Guppychild.com

C:Arvind.blog is a very clean site, easy to read, nice dull murky colours on the default skin which are easy on the eyes, though I began thinking some army camo print as a background to go with the colours might have been more appealing. I did have a little problem with the layout in that it wasn’t loading up properly on my monitor (resolution set at 1024×768), however that was fixed by swapping the skins over to something far more interesting. I really appreciate the technological know-how in order to set up skins for the reader’s amusement, and there are a number of cool offerings to please the eye if the default layout is not to your liking.

All of the layout/skins available are pretty much the same Movable Type template, just tweaked a little – but all the buttons he’s included made for a good change too, and he’s got loads of links and rings to check out. He’s also got several links to other specialty blogging communities and resources like BlogSnob and BlogTree – always a good thing for fellow bloggers.

Everything in the blog is neatly structured and well maintained – not a dead link to be seen (lovely!). All the archieves are easily found by most recent entry, month and category. Everything is just so clear and concise! Each entry is well planned and written though they tend to be more like recounts than anything more indepth and personal – however I did like reading all the holiday entries. It was great to find out more about India from another perspective and not just the normal touristy stuff.

I was surprised to discover that the blog had been created by a 14-year old boy, Arvind Satyanarayan (now that’s a name that rolls well off the tongue!) as it’s quite a mature offering compared to what we normally see other teen blogs and journals providing their readers. This blog is basically the day to day runnings of Arvind’s life – what we’d expect of any boy who goes to school and attends the Scouts. But he writes so well! If you’re put off reading teen blogs because of the new craze with the crazy “leet” typing and kids WhO TyPe LiKe ThIs, OMG! OMG! (ugh!), then give Arvind a go, he makes for a refreshing change to the norm.

Chinwags from Abu Dhabi

The first thing I noticed about this blog was how soothing it was. The very design set me at ease. Maybe it was the colors, maybe it was the easy to read style, I don’t know. The title itself is rather captivating: “Wandering on Threads of Woven Starlight”. Very nice.

The blog pretty much speaks for itself. Every single entry is extremely well written and you can tell that much care went into it. There are personal reflections, poetry, and other random musings. All are very beautiful to read. The author remains nameless, but much can be known about him through his writing. If you’re still curious, you can read his about page or his 100 things page. His most recent entries were what really captivated me. He has been translating Chinese poems and then commenting on them. Very interesting stuff.

Like I said earlier, the design of the site is what really captivated me. The colors have a soothing effect. The header is really well done and features some great design work. The blog is made with Movable Type, so there is a built in comment system, permalinks, easy to navigate archives, and the like. The author definitely took the time to make the template his own and add some style and flare.

This is definitely not a blog you can simply give a casual glance to. There aren’t any pictures in the blog itself. The beauty is in the entries. Read a few, and you will understand what I am talking about. The updates are frequent enough to make this a regular read and even though the author doesn’t update every day, the content of the entries certainly make up for it. This is an excellent blog.WhisperingWords

Cactus Lover‘s writer, Ribs, is, on the evidence of the photograph in the half-empty about section, an attractive young lady. I love it when bloggers include a photo of themselves on their site (partly addressing the voyeur need we all feel; surely a factor in the attraction of blogs, no?), so thank you Miss Ribs. Hopefully we’ll see more information, too, eventually.

The blog itself is neatly presented, with a few rough edges. Once you get going, the site is easy enough to navigate (although there is no obvious link to the home page, and the calendar-format archive isn’t as strong as available alternatives), and reads well despite the low contrast.

The strongest area of the blog currently is the one that addresses English language misuses, rather like Bill Bryson does in his early novel “Troublesome Words.” I’ve certainly heard enough empty instances of the word ‘quality’ to agree with Ribs that it needs a modifier at all times – good quality or poor quality but never simply quality, which means nothing. Good one Ribs – I hope 95% of British football commentators find that entry on your site.

Other posts are loosely grouped under various headings; the cactus of the week section is looking a little sparse, but other sections make up for the lack of content. The “Currently Reading” portion of the site contains only two entries – both reviews of Palahniuk novels (he of Fight Club notoriety).

Unfortunately, this is fairly representative of the site as a whole: there simply isn’t more than half an hour’s worth of content here, which is a shame. What there is shows signs of promise; by grouping blog entries into sections, it hastens the reader’s arrival at an interesting story, though with so little to read anyway it would make as much sense to browse through the site in its entirety. For now, that is.

ramblings of a cactus lover

Upon first glance, Spreegirl.net resembles countless other online journals. Nothing jumped out at me screaming “Woah, this is something I’ve never seen before.” But it was clean and spare and easy to read and I’ve always maintained that the true value of an online journal lies in the writing itself, so I jumped into the archives to see what the author had to say.

Spreegirl is Ren (short for Erin), an Australian woman in her mid-twenties with plenty to say. Passionate, honest, foul-mouthed and funny, Ren doesn’t hold back. She rarely discusses politics, preferring instead to focus on her personal life. From her rocky relationship with her father to her exasperation with her fiance, Ren lays it all out and she doesn’t mince words. One gets the sense that Ren is a woman who says exactly what’s on her mind, something I find refreshing. I can tell from the snippets of stories she posts that she’s a good writer, but her day-to-day entries have a relaxed, uncensored, rough feel that I like. My personal favorite entries are her work-related rants. She’s a customer service representative who works a helpline and frequently journals some of the more difficult customers she’s forced to deal with. I’ve been there, and I feel her pain.

The author is a quite creative. She’s a photographer, a writer, and a graphic artist. She spends a lot of time creating “dollz”, pixelated figures which I had never really seen much of before. She’s very talented.

The design of the journal itself seems to be a fairly standard, slightly modified Moveable Type template. It’s visually appealing but nothing we haven’t seen before. The author has a ton of personality, and it would be nice to see some of that reflected in the design.

I enjoyed the time I spent at Spreegirl.net. It’s not the most outstanding online journal I have read, and a design that reflects the author’s raucous nature a bit better would be a nice addition, but I’ll be going back for more.The (mis)Adventures of Spreegirl