Author: admin

Arrival at a site is greeted with yet another version of the generic movabletype template, which is fine but not very eye catching. It looks OK, it doesn’t stand out and is little dull, but, it’s easy to read and isn’t hard on the eye. There is a small about me section part way down the left hand menu, containing a variety of links to a homepage (there’s a small biography off this link), and a few work and photo gallery links. Pretty standard stuff thus far, and so I head off to that first posting in the archives.

The first post confirms my initial suspicion, the author immediately detailing that the reason behind the blog is a mere jump onto the bandwagon. This is fair enough, its how a lot of people got into blogging, it’s also how we ended up with a lot of blogs with very little to say for themselves. That said I continued to read. Entries go back to June 2003, so I’m guessing that the scenery proved favorable to the author, check the first post and you’ll understand what I mean by that. Early on it struck me that this was going to be a very technical blog with just the odd personal entry thrown in for good measure, later I realise that this isn’t the blog of someone who has nothing to say themselves – there is in fact some interesting posts going on here, maybe not for everyone’s tastes but definitely people who share similar interests to the author. There is the odd example of some really great photography as well.

The posts are well written, they are easy to read and quite often (depending on the subject matter) I found them pretty informative and interesting. OK, they weren’t anything out of the ordinary, but I do think it has enough of a pull factor to bring me back every once in a while to see what he has to say for himself.

As I said the design is a generic movabletype template with very few alterations, however, it is easy to navigate and read, and it doesn’t draw anything away from the content. Some amendments to the design may well help it appear a little more individual, but so far there is nothing seriously going wrong here.

Imablog was an interesting venture, nothing out of the ordinary but a worthwhile contribution to this phenomenon we call blog as any other. I might be tempted to pay it a visit every once in a while, but it wouldn’t draw me back on a regular basis. Personally I think the content is likely to appeal to those who share interests with the blogs author rather than the blogging community at large, but then no blog appeals to everyone. A worthwhile contribution, showing some real promise, a well deserved 3.5
Imablog

“I’m an ordinary bloke, but I feel as if I’m living the life of another. For the past five years, I’ve lived almost every dream I’ve ever had. Several careers and a lack of direction all came together when I was 30 and I found a previously untapped ability to use my experience and make things happen. It doesn’t feel like work.

I’d pay to do my job. I am the accidental journalist and this is my story.”

What an introduction, eh? Rarely am I struck by a blog that offers such wisdom and intelligence as is shown in Someone Else’s Life. Blackrat (as he’s known on his blog) is a truly remarkable individual and I found myself absolutely riveted by his writing.

My first impression of the blog was a general “WTF?!” as I tried to maneuver my way about the various links, it all eventually fell into place for the most part as I stumbled through the archives to read. You do need a full resolution of 1024×768 though, as all the content and layout (and there’s lots of it) takes up the entire screen, however it’s very easy to read and the photos that are frequently posted aren’t so ridiculously big as to slow me down much (always appreciated by a surfer on a slow connection). It has several sections, though I mainly concentration on the “This Life” blog, easily traversable through the calendar.

Immediately upon my arrival at the blog, I read the introduction and then jumped into the “More about me” section where I found out how this man got to be a freelance journalist, one of the few professions I truly admire and straight away, his entry struck me…

“Freelancing is tough; it’s a competitive market and money is tight, but the rewards and perks are out of this world. Most Bloggers could do what I do. Writing is half the battle. Add in your unique and diverse experience allied to a thirst for knowledge and a love of English and you could argue that you were born to do it.”

Apply that to any of the millions of well educated bloggers out in the webisphere and you’d have millions of freelance journalists giving poor Blackrat a run for his money. Even I got a bit of a tingle when I thought about journalism as a possible profession for myself.

You can already tell that this entry set the tone for the rest of the blog (i.e., a very good one).

Blackrat is a great observer of people, life and everything that surrounds him and it’s demonstrated in his writing. Always optimistic, even when he say’s he’s not feeling 100%, I came away with the impression that this guy never gets so far down as to be depressed.

“Journalism has opened up all sorts of doors to me and I’d have been foolish not to indulge my love of aviation as a result of it. For me, there is nothing quite like that feeling as you punch through thick, impenetrable cloud into clear, endless blue sky dominated by the sun. It’s a thought that’s always with me in my lowest moods – however bad things are, above the clouds the sun shines always. It’s always summer at 30,000ft – and the views are fantastic.”

Obviously you’d be hard pressed to be pessimistic with thoughts like that bouncing about the inside of your skull.

Something that also struck me about this blog was the photos, they are terrific, and if you can’t get into the writing, then the photos are sure to impress, they’re unreal. This is definitely one for the favorites, no matter what your tastes!Someone Else’s Life

As soon as I got to this site, I laughed. The bloggers own description? “Rants of a sweaty emotional Italian”. I have to admit I was amused. I assumed (and correctly I might add), that this would be a laugh.

The blog is hosted by Motime, which appears to be less template-y (Im making up words here), and free of the obnoxious Blogger Ads, but has a really annoying bar on the top. I knew ad free was too good to be true. The site is pretty sleek in design, with a simple yet artsy picture of the blogger, some perma links and quotes. The archives are easily accessible and all the links seem to work. Continuing with my curse, there is no About Me page which I miss dearly. There are however bios of friends (possibly roommates?) of the writer.

The blog is personal in nature, but nothing is so in depth that you would need to be inside the writers social circle to understand what is going on. The posts are light, not a lot of passion but still pretty entertaining. I have found a bias love for the site, as the writer is a Canadian student in Montreal. I find a Canadian outlook on life to be refreshing at the best of times, and a French Canadian one just adds that much more. I don’t see any specific audience in mind (although the writer thinks otherwise). People close to him in real life may find more humour in some things, but over all it is easy to get wrapped up in his writing.

One of the cool things I found about this site, was the links to the other bios. It seemed to give a bit of insight into the other players in the stories, as they don’t have the chance to explain their side.

I really did enjoy this site, and found it to be a pleasure to read. The only suggestion I would have is to add an About Me Page, as it makes it a bit easier for any new reader to get into your writing.
I NEED A GRIP!

I am sure regular reviewers here at TWR will be able to back me up on this, but sometimes there are reviews that we don’t want to write at all because we would much rather just keep reading the blog instead. I have been reading “SuperSteve for the last two hours (which has got me through the front page and a couple of the archives) and if it wasn’t for the fact that it is now gone midnight, I would much prefer to carry on reading and not bother with the review at all.

Anyway, write the review I must, so here is what I think of the site. I was a bit dubious at first when I entered the site. Don’t get me wrong, it looks great, is his own original design and has an overall “Superhero” theme. I had to get passed the introductory page first, which was reasonably impressive (had an animated gif amongst other things) though admittedly was a bit pointless. The blog itself included his own art work, streaming audio and each post had a cool little movie quote at the end. This guy could have got a five simply for having “The Littlest Hobo” theme tune available to play whilst reading! I couldn’t help feeling though that with all this work carried out on the theme, the appearance of the blog, there is no way the content was going to measure up. This guy was overcompensating with his design for the lack of anything interesting to say, I was sure.

However, I was wrong. This is a personal blog- the majority of the postings are about Steve and his life. There is not even an “About Me” page, let alone Photoblog, dedicated reviews section or other things which tend to attract a high score. So what makes this blog a 5, whereas others which do have these things have to make do with 3 or 3.5? Well firstly, there is no need for an “About Me” page, because his whole blog covers this. And who wants to see photos when the writing is so creative, funny, interesting, personal, honest and er… I am running out of adjectives here, but you get the idea. It’s a good read. And Steve has that great knack amongst a few bloggers of writing for the reader, not for himself. He is often back-tracking and making sure readers are “up to speed” with things, so you don’t ever feel like you need to read the entire archives to work out what the hell is going on now.

Now it is rather fortunate on Steve’s part that he does seem to have a great life – a new job (and even at the old job which he hated, everyone seemed to love him there), lovely girlfriend, loads of friends, interesting opinions but most importantly, a great way of conveying all this loveliness to the reader. (This abundance of affability might also explain why he has recently been averaging 14 comments per post, too). There is no pretentiousness or arrogance to be found, but simply some genuine gratitude and a love of and involvement in life. Even when he is feeling crappy he manages to write a letter to Santa about it.

I don’t know what else I can say really without you all getting bored about reading how much I enjoyed this blog. To summarise then, I thought the blog was accessible and life-affirming – it will also be added to “my fave blogs” list (which is actually harder to achieve than a 5 out of 5 – a rare accolade indeed!)SuperSteve.Org

Warning! Peaceblog alert! I groaned when I read just the URL of this one, let alone saw the site (but because of the rules of being a reveiwer for The Weblog Review I couldn’t skip it). I’ve read peaceblogs before and I’ve never been impressed with them, either because the authors of the site cannot get their point across without trying to push their opinions onto the reader (passive aggressiveness is always fun – not), or they cannot back up their reasons for whatever it is that they are arguing about. That doth not a happy reader maketh.

Now, my general impressions of the blog on first entry. Very organised. Not anything spectacular as it’s a re-coloured version of a standard MT layout as far as I can tell. Everything’s very easy on the eyes with little fanfair to distract from the writing. There’s loads of features down the right-hand colum from most recent entries to recent comments. It’s not a very old blog, having started in October 2003, but what is there is A-grade stuff, but I’d love to see a design that reflects the nature of the site a little more.

I got a little confused to begin with as there’s no mention made of the fact that there seems to be more than one author at this blog – Morgan and Rachel, though the creator of the blog is clearly Morgan.

Now about the content. Alright, it’s better than expected. I checked out the “About Me” section but had to laugh upon reading the first sentence…

“My name is Morgan Daly. I am 24 years old and I have some ideas on how I would like my/our to look and how we are going to get there.”

Our what? Morgan, your bio needs fixing! It’s all important in the blog such as this.

So, reading the bio and the information page, we find out that Morgan felt he had to share his ideas with the rest of the world about his views for world peace and general huggy-feeliness. Very noble, and a very different way of approaching the topic of peace. Morgan concentrates on ways to achieve peace and not just the fact that he wants peace.

What I truly liked about this site was that there is no pushing. It’s not all “I am right, you are wrong, nyah nyah nyah” which is quite commonplace with some of the blogs I’ve read with a peace theme. Morgan puts his thoughts to the reader and then leaves them for the reader to decide on whether or not they agree. That is truly admirable. Morgan has literally said that he is critiquing the Peace Movement. He’s not entirely happy with it at the moment, he wants things to change and he encourages that change. There is no browbeating and I think that will really appeal to his audience and make World Peace One a very popular site, especially if it continues in this strain. Well done.World Peace One