Author: admin

The first and absolute thing I noticed when I came upon this blog was the green in the eyes. I couldn’t help it. I have a strange attraction to green eyes in general and the image is black and white, with the green color showing through. The blog seems so simply and yet, I have high hopes.

The first place I stopped was the “about” page. I try to avoid doing this, but I love to learn about the author before delving into their often intimate words and writings. How glad I am that I did. You’ll read that this author doesn’t have comments, for all of the reason I wish I didn’t have comments but am too much an attention whore to avoid. She’s writing for writing, and I give a lot of credit to her for this. Her first entry states that she may not continue to write for too long. As with most blogs, they start full force, and eventually die away, becoming less of a priority for the writer and thus the reader. Obviously, this blog continues. I’m hooked on this blog. I can’t help but find the entries completely enthralling. I keep thinking that this blog is the blog I meant to write, but never got around to being creative enough to do it.

The author tells about how women work and their mentalities, at least in the beginning. Soon after it becomes much more personal. The entry about her daughter is beautiful, for anyone who’s a mother or has been the “teen girl.” The writings are quite easily small short stories leaving the reader (at least this reader) wanting more. There are a lot of archives to read through, but for the most part, if you’re looking for quality, you’ll want to read through the majority of them.

The design is beautiful and simple. Like I mentioned above, the eyes of the image at the title leaves you wondering… Do these eyes belong to the author? The author’s daughter? Someone else entirely?? It doesn’t matter, because the blog speaks for itself. I continue to read, even as I tie this review up and bring it to an end. The blog is readable, and the archives work (with permalinks). It’s simply, but functional.

I’ve said it before in reviews, you can’t judge it based on the design. While the design is simply and functional, people might find themselves wondering why they’re even at this blog. Simply… content. This blog is filled with interesting stories about murderers and other such stuff. What makes this blog more interesting and fun is that they’re true and real stories. The author has a way with words, and I commend her on her ability to share, with the rest of us, her little take on life. Go and read. You won’t regret it. And if you’re like me, you’ll find yourself wishing you had more hours to spend starting at a stark white screen with little black words, and finding yourself completely enthralled. Completely.Broad At Bat

Its been a little over a month since The Illusion of Safety was first reviewed. Having read the original review back when it was written, I had some expectations going into this site. Hopefully there have been some improvements to the site since then.

Nope. No improvements. Well wait, I take that back. The author did get rid of the bouncing titles. Other than that, the site looks exactly the same. Same black background, same white text, same red links, same parental advisory above every single post.

Ok, so the author didn’t change the design, maybe the content improved. Nope it didn’t improve much either. The weblog is still about what is going on in the author’s life, as told to his brain. He writes what he thinks, but the thoughts are on what has happened during that day, week, month, or however long it has been since his last post. Topics vary from school to friends to video games to movies. One good thing is that the author can write well. With a little better direction I bet it will be much improved.

One thing that really annoyed me was the fact that the author spoke as if he was the coolest blogger out there. Um sorry to break your bubble, but no. You are not God, you are not all knowing, you are a teenager! In one of his posts recently he states that he has been single for a while, and asks females to answer his little survey. Well when you have a question of the form “Have you posted your picture on Hot or Not? – If yes, send me your picture and proceed, otherwise stop cause you will be rejected” or something along those lines. Um let’s think about this one for a second. On second thought lets, not.

One of the features that is supposed to be funny, but really isn’t is his Hot Or Not captions. This is where he takes pictures from Hot or Not and then comments on them. This had potential to be good, but unfortunately all of the comments are predictable and kind of mesh together. Nothing too original there.

One last note I would like to make about this site is the lack of updating in the past couple of months. For someone who has written about wanting more comments, emails, and traffic, he doesn’t fulfill his end of the bargain. Granted, the way the posts are written, I am glad there are only a few a week instead of a few a day as it made my job easier.

Overall this site is targeted at two types of people: friends of the author and teenage males. Anyone not fitting into either category is more than likely not going to enjoy their time spent. I understood the goal of the site, and I have to say that the author does achieve it, but unfortunately the goal just isn’t what I am looking for in a weblog. The author can write well and is funny when he is not trying to be. I think after a couple more years of living, he will mature, and his blog will be something to read then. I hope the author takes these words seriously because he really is not testing his talents.
The Illusion of Safety

The first thing I thought when I saw ImDateless.com is that it’s one of those match
making sites. The banner ad on the bottom of the splash page IS from a match making
site and I was wondering how this got into The Weblog Review. The site’s splash
page uses Flash, but there is an option for a non Flash entry page. I clicked on the
Flash intro and the animation reminded me of the Star Wars intro and while it’s not
as professionally animated as some Flash animations, it has a nice charm to it. It is
entertaining, if you have Flash, I suggest you watch the animation.

When I entered into the main page, I still thought it was a dating site, but
reading on shows that it is indeed a weblog, recounting experiences of this 24 year
old part time Retail Manager and university undergraduate student. The blog is in
the news section and it makes interesting reading, if you’re into personal blogs. I
find his writing easy to read since he somewhat writes in the same style as me and
he structures his paragraphs well.

Even though this is a fairly new site, it has a lot of content from his writings. I
found that the most interesting aspect of this site. He writes about a lot of things,
from his travel diaries to religion. I particularly enjoyed reading his trips around
Europe. He writes a day by day recount of his experience traveling and that is a
major attraction of this site if you like traveling stories.

Design wise, the site navigation is a little unusual, but the Expand All and
Collapse All dynamic navigational change does help in this aspect. However, I
found the sidebar too cluttered when it’s expanded. I also found the Membership and
Shopping pages to be distracting, although I can understand the need for it, since I
pay a lot for excess bandwidth fees as well. The site’s design isn’t exactly the best
out there, but that’s not the point – the content more than makes up for this.

Back to the content, a whois lookup revealed that the domain was registered on
the 12th of August 2003 and his blog begins on the same day! Even though it seems
like there is a scant 2+ months of entries, don’t let that dissuade you from visiting –
he has a lot of other writings to occupy you for many hours. He says he is a
“ubiquitous storyteller” – and I agree, his stories would entertain you.

I’m wondering what the hell this site is doing on my computer screen though. 😉

P/S – Read the 4th October 2003 entry if you didn’t get that one.The Imdateless.Com Website

I really wondered what was going to be waiting for me at The Imdateless.com Website. Was this going to be a male or female author? Was it just going to be like the other sites where the person goes out on dates with people and blogs about it? Or was this just going to be a dating website? Lots of possibilities, so lets hope for the best.

When I first got to the site I was greeted with a flash intro. I am not big on intro pages at all. I don’t think they serve a purpose other than inflating statistics for a page. I chose to skip the intro and I was presented with a membership page all done in flash. What the hell is going on here? This is a dating site? This isn’t a blog. Where is the blog? All of those shot through my mind immediately.

So I saw a non-flash intro link and clicked on that. Again, I am presented with a membership page and I am starting to get frustrated. I notice a news link on the left, so I click that. That expands into a couple of options so I click on current, and I am brought to a blog! Finally I found it. So for all of you who wonder where the blog is from the front page it is: Non-flash -> News link -> Current. Ok, since my first time visiting he added a “Current News” link on the front page. Just click that.

The design of the blog is very simple: two columns with navigation on the left. To give it a little bit of flair he is using a DHTML menu thing to expand and collapse all the options for the navigation. Kind of cool, but I can see where it will get annoying since he manually has to change it.

Now that I have gotten to the blog I found the golden gem. This blog, for the most part, is a very fun read. He talks about why he is dateless, his attempts at dating, and other things in his life. There are posts about updating the site which seem to get old and annoying quickly, but it just ads to his personality. One thing that he could benefit from is using includes as he talks about having to update like 90 pages every time he changes something.

The stories of why he doesn’t have a date and his attempts are the best. You just want to help this guy out with any advice you think you should give him. Some times I thought man he is trying way to hard, others I thought not hard enough, and other times I was asking myself “Why the hell is he doing that?” This is the only downside I have to the blog itself: it is good because of the topic and how he is telling it. What will happen when he does get a date? What will happen if he gets a second date? Will the stories still be as vividly told, or no? I hope not.

Overall we have a great blog with a great idea behind it. He even went so far as to make imdateless.com a company and to run it like a company. Interesting. The lack of a fluid design for the site and hard to find (originally) weblog make it hard to give it anything above a 4. This site has some improvements to make and I hope they get made. Interesting that my initial reaction for this site was give it a 2 or worse based on the hard to find navigation, but then this is the WEBLOG review and his weblog is very good.
The Imdateless.Com Website

I was keen to review this site as it had a nice name. “I beg to differ” is a phrase I use a lot, is pretty appropriate to blogging and the owners of this group weblog have also sorted out the domain name too, which always suggests that an effort has been made. Once I clicked the link, my first visual impressions were also good- a technically sound moveable type blog which, although is a bit “templatey” (an adjective I just made up by the way) and slightly unimaginative, is nevertheless functional and does the job.

I quickly found the “About Begging to Differ” link, which gave me an idea of what I was in for beyond the “politics, culture and law” mentioned in the titlebar. It is interesting to note that the four people who contribute to this blog have never physically met, but previously frequented forums and the like together. There is also a rather sweet story about how the name of the site came about which I liked very much.

Ok, so far so good, but what about the content? Well, the title bar is a fair summation really- the posts are categorised in to the three subject areas mentioned, as well as “Prediction Watch” which is about er…predicting things and “Miscellaneous” for everything else. There is plenty of content to be found in all of these categories as there are (obviously) four contributors and archives go back to June 2003. It is also worth mentioning that the weblog is surprisingly unified and consistent, despite the authors having never met.

Anyone who is into US politics and/or law issues will love this blog as there is LOADS of material on these issues, all coherently argued and intelligently written. So what else is there for other readers? Well, quite a lot actually. Scanning the archives I found quite a few personal entries, usually including photos, entries about cookery, religion, blogging and other bloggers, humour and cartoon strips, movies, and for some reason the US “Survivor” series. All of these are again, well written and entertaining.

So there is something here for most people, though primarily those interested in US politics and law I would say. I didn’t give them 5 as there are no comments available, which I felt would really have enhanced the debates found here. Maybe the template could be livened up a bit too, or made a little more unique. Besides that, I reckon this is blogging (and especially group blogging) at it’s best.

Begging To Differ