Author: admin

First impressions were good, the design of the site is simple, clean and well organized allowing easy navigation, content on the index page shows a good style of writing, yet I remained unsure whether I found the content appealing or not. Left hand navigation menu containing links to ‘about’ section which explains the intentions of the site as well a very brief (actually non existent) introduction to the author. Although each entry lacks the standard entry comments that come with most weblogs the owner seems to encourage interactivity from its readers in other ways – a forum and a clear contact link. Perusing the left hand menu also reveals some interesting diversions, three songs under audio and 2 films.

I approach most reviews in the same way, and so after reading the about section and quickly perusing the first page I headed straight to the archives in search of that crucial first entry, in this case I was to be disappointed, because the October 2002 brought up a error 404. Ideally that should be looked into and fixed. So, I headed to the next available month, November 2002 and was immediately presented by a whole host of short and concisely written entries supported by images. The author writes very well, he doesn’t mince with words and he comes to the point quickly. Quite often there is a very strong political statement in his entries; readers not agreeing with his every word must still admire the ability to put a point forward concisely.

A good design isn’t important when the content of a weblog is good, but it helps. This authors design is much like his writing; it is well organized, clean and suits its content. However, I would liked to have seen a navigation system which would have allowed movement from month to month in the archives, as opposed to having the reader return to the archive menu each time s/he wishes to move onto the next month.

The additional features complement the content of this site well, the additional audio and film material in the left hand column may not be to everyone’s taste but I found them rather interesting from a technical point of view. Absence of a comment system in the weblog itself is replaced by a forum, and while I personally like to have the ability to comment on a specific entry I can understand why someone would opt for this format. Other weblogs attempting to utilize forums have failed, often left unused by anyone except the author themselves, this is not the case with crushkill.com – an active community seems to have been established here, and it is definitely worthy of a look in.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I arrived at crushkill.com, much less whether I would enjoy reading it, but I discovered quickly that, while I may not agree with his stance on some issues I enjoyed the way in which he puts his point across. His style of writing is catchy, to the point and wastes no words. The design of the blog reflects similar principles; it is clear, well organized and attractive. I do believe closer attention to navigation between archives can only benefit its readability. I’m not sure whether the content will appeal to everybody, but it is worthy of a look in for those of you who enjoy strong opinions put forward eloquently and in few words!

Now the rating, I really was not sure where to place this site. His approach to blogging has a certain uniqueness, his entries are well written and concise, and he’s funny. It wasn’t flawless, improvements to navigation, ensuring there are no bad links could only improve the readers experience. While I admit that the author’s choice of a forum works for him and his current readership I personally like to be able to comment on specific postings. It is for this reason that I award a rating of 4.5crushkill : digital cynicism

I like Flash. I always have. (ok.. I’ve developed in flash…:P) So when I come across a site that *tastefully* utilizes flash I’m naturally quite impressed. Jaymorgan.com is such a site. Using a simple flash banner at the top is neither combersome or distracting, but rather enhances the flow of a clean, well structured web page.

So I dove into the Archives… Oddly the archives pages are listed differently than the main blog. The archives are one long list for each month, which is a great overview. It took me a minute to figure out the archive navigation. To advance to the next entry you click on the ‘title’ of the next entry at the top of the page. I think this should somehow be made clearer. Such as Next Entry : Cable and Previous Entry : Birthday photos. Just a suggestion. It functioned fine. Just isn’t apparent since I didn’t write the blog. 🙂

Jay writes about things he does and enjoys. Like programming, the Internet, playing with flash :), his family, pets, vacations. His writing is clear and easy to understand, sometime a little techy as well.
Such as this on kimble.org:


‘His website was the first website to inspire me to start learning Macromedia Flash.’ Ironically I had the same experience. I still remember the crazy voice overs and, sports car animations from kimble.org. Hehe.

There are also some more personal reflection, such as this sentimental reflection about his vacation in Okinawa:

“What is it about Okinawa that I love so much?
Well, I can say its just about everything. I love the Atmosphere, I love the people, I love the roads, the buildings, the trees, the flowers, the warm weather, the language, the hospitality, the culture, the beach, the island, the stores, the nightlife…There is something about Okinawa that just gives me this warm, comfortable, happy, free feeling. I love Okinawa. When I am there I am happy and carefree. I can feel it in my heart….To experience Okinawa, hearing the sounds of Okinawa, the smell, the touch, to see it in front of you, you can feel it. It can’t compare to reading about it and seeing its pictures. The pictures represent a moment in time, that we try to capture and remember again when we view it, but to actually FEEL it and experience Okinawa, is incredible.

Until I live in Okinawa again, I will keep it in my heart and keep dreaming.”

The blog content is heavy with GREAT web developing links (heh, thanks man – not everyone shares their great finds 😉 ), images and web goodness. I think anyone in web development would benefit from pursuing Jay’s blog archive. There are also many parables, and some entries with some religious content. Not my cup of tea, but may appeal to other readers. From one entry:

“Religion has basically two strikes against it – it isn’t true and, instead of making people more tolerant, compassionate and humane, it
seems to have precisely the opposite effect.”

Dig and you will even find a recipe for Tempura (batter fried veggies). Mmmm. Tempura. I found it interesting to follow his documented court case with the massive toll fines. Gah! In spite of my obvious personal geeky bias -grin-… I think that most people would enjoy this blog, especially the tech savvy among us. An enjoyable, useful, colourful, engaging blog which I will definately be bookmarking. Great job Jay!The Blog of Travis Morgan

Let’s get something cleared up right away. This blog is personal, very personal. If you read it as if it were your own, you will be on an emotional roller coaster. If you read it as a guest with an open heart, you will be on an open roller coaster. And if you try to read it for entertainment, you will be very disappointed. Oh yeah, you need to start at the first post, and work your way to current otherwise you will miss the entire point of this blog.

With that said, we have the weblog of a 19 year old girl who is recovering from an eating disorder. The weblog is full of pain and suffering, but then there are times when you see that moment of happiness that really brightens up the weblog. Posts consist of poetry, daily life, and mixtures of the two. The daily life posts are written and formatted sometimes like a poem, with only a couple of words per line.

As I stated above, you have to read the archives first with this weblog. I started to read current to old, and I just didn’t understand what was going on. I read her little about section and still didn’t get it. I finally decided to read it from the very first post and it all made sense.

The design of the site is beautiful, but not functional. On the current months we have a picture of a chandelier and the archives have a picture of Sarah Michelle Gellar in front of a cemetery. Both designs feature an iframe for the blog which is a pain in the butt to use. My scroll wheel only works about 50% of the time inside the iframe, and if switch windows I must click inside the box again for my arrow keys to work the scrolling of the window. Also some of the archived months do not load properly from the archives, but will load properly from the current month.

This is one of those blogs where you can see the growth of the author through out. Unfortunately that was about the only thing I enjoyed with the blog. The blog was clearly started for the author’s benefit, and I am not sure if the public should be able to read it and judge it. The posts are filled with emotion, mainly pain, and this was a very hard blog to read, let alone review. It just wasn’t my cup of tea. So if you are looking for a blog that has a lot of growth and a lot of potential, here you go.
sleepless

My initial reaction to the site is that of “simplicity.” Nothing jumped out and made a great impression on me, but the site had a very different feel to it which I couldn’t place an actual word on. Maybe it’s the colors, or the large contrast to the link colors. It might draw more readers if there was something a little more to grab someone’s attention.

Initially thought this was more of the “personal” type of blog, but as I started reading through the recent entries I realized there was a chance this blog might be considered “news” instead. That being said, I started to think I might find more about the author through the archives. Starting with the oldest month I realized that there is a definite change in the feel of the blog from the older entries to the current ones. The older entries are littered with the controversial and newsworthy. All great things, but I was hoping for a bit more insight into the author. He litters the weblog with many links to many different kinds of things, ranging from politics and religion, to things that could easily take up a lot of “fun” time. The weblog itself is extremely well written in clear English. His rants are worthy rants and his news is often very interesting.

There’s nothing breathtaking about the design of the site. The “all white” background can be a bit of a strain on the eyes, but more so the link colors on his sidebar are difficult to read because the contrast just isn’t quite right. It’s simple, but everything seems to work correctly.

Some of the better features of the blog are that you get a feel for the author based on the out-going links and the other random content on the net that he posts about. I easily found myself visiting a lot of the external links to see what he was talking about and what made them so note-worthy in the first place. It’s easy to find that the author has a very eclectic sense of humor based on these links.

The overall feel of the blog is almost lost. There’s not real point to it, be it that it’s meant to share news, or have a more personal atmosphere. There’s a scattering of everything there. My honest opinion is that this blog isn’t meant for the younger reader. Some of the entry subjects probably can be placed in the “adult content” category. It doesn’t feel as though the blog is the kind that I’d visit on a regular basis, but it would be the kind I’d stop in and read once in awhile.this is the samaBlog

“A Little Bit of Lisa” – I figure you can’t get more self explanatory about a personal weblog than that. I can certainly appreciate getting right to the point of a title and not leaving everyone guessing what they’ll be reading about.



Naturally, the first thing I noticed when loading the site was the layout. The image of a rubber duck and the use of different hues of yellow give the site a fun appearance, and the colors are also very easy on the eyes. The main focus of the site, naturally the weblog, can be found directly underneath the rubber duck image. A good chunk of information about the author can be found along the right hand side of the weblog – information about the author, the archives listed in both by month and by category, stats on the weblog itself and MANY more things to check out upon visiting.

The archives for April had a line or two of coding that may have been a little off, causing the majority of the entries for that month to be difficult to read, but the rest of the monthly archives were all uniform in design and just matched up perfectly. I was met with “403 Forbidden” screens a few times when following some of the links along the sidebar, but I’m assuming that has something to do with the “moving in” process to a new domain.

“A Little Bit of Lisa” has been around, as far as the archives indicate, only since January of 2003. Already in that time period, it’s switched from a Blog*Spot location to a new domain/location: http://www.lisaandben.com/alittlebitoflisa/.

Depsite over five months of entries, the time I spent reading all the archives seemed to just fly by. A good chunk of the entries are that of the standard weblog “fillers”: Friday Fives, Saturday Scruples, and a few various quizzes. Thrown in with those entries, you find personal tidbits of Lisa’s daily life. A very personal type of entry that I really enjoyed were the different entries where Lisa listed five things she loved about her husband, Ben.

Lisa is a regular person just like you or me, and her weblog reflects that. She talks about every day topics that any one of us could experience. For that reason, “A Little Bit of Lisa” is a good weblog to check out if you’re looking for a personal site to add to your list of daily reads.

A Little Bit Of Lisa