Author: admin

This is the weblog of small-town-Wisconsin-native, Ira, who’s now living in Chicago. The North Avenue Traffic Report is a personal weblog detail Ira’s personal traffic report, if you will. Ira best explains his purpose and intent by letting all the readers know the story behind the title of the weblog, and how it effects what he chronicles at this site.

The way Ira narrates stories is often very picturesque. When he tells of his dumpster diving experiences, it’s very easy to imagine him, legs sticking out, scrounging around for that great deal that you can’t find anywhere else – aside from the bottom of a dumpster. With Ira’s description, for the first time ever, I realized the advantages of scoping out those perfect dumpsters and piqued my curiosity enough to wonder where I might find some professional dumpster divers in my area…



No, his posts aren’t all about digging things out of the garbage. A good portion of his posting deals primarily with his bike ride to and from work each day. I never knew one could have so much to write about just along a bike ride. Ira takes time to notice what’s going on around him each day, and does us all a favor by taking the time to write about it. It’s a refreshing thing to read for me, because on my way to work, all I’m concerned about is the jerk in front of me who keeps riding his brakes and the lady next to me who’s got her lipstick out trying to use her rearview mirror to apply it.

The only thing I really felt like I missed out on at the North Avenue Traffic Report was some more information about Ira. His stories sometimes clue us in to a little bit about him, but you only learn that if you go through the few months of archived entries that are available. I’d like to see somewhere I could read a more general description of this guy that managed to entertain me the whole time I read through this site.



The design of the site is nice. It uses standard black, white, and yellow. There’s nothing flashy or something that’ll throw in any shock value. It’s just a nicely done site that makes for easy navigation and easy reading.

Stop by and give the North Avenue Traffic Report a read for a few days. Ira is sure to hook you with is writing and just the mere way he can tell a story. And that always makes for a good weblog.

North Avenue Traffic Report

Anie is your typical angst ridden, why-me, hates-the-world, miserable teen who expresses her misery quite well in her blog. In spite of her constant over the top melodrama, her blog is honest, emotional and full of entries like this:

“I wish I could go back and relive my life. Life used to be so good. Now I don’t see the use for living. Life is so depressing anymore. I used to be so happy. I used to say I wanted to be so grown up. Now I look back and say I want to be a kid again. Life is too stressful. I miss the days when I could hang out with friends and we didn’t have anything to worry about. Now there is so much to worry about, and I fear my worries will lead to walking pneumonia (or pneumonia).”

Many entries are of the “I’m depressed” sort and they get tiresome real fast. Some entries contain a little more substance when she adds a political quote or rants about abortion, occasionally she has some poetry… but usually she is just depressed. She is always depressed. I think she should see a doctor or choose her words more carefully. Depression is a serious illness and tossing the word depression around for sympathy, attention or effect is wrong.

I think this is a blog other angst ridden teens might want to read, perhaps they could relate. The rest of us, however, won’t find this blog too satisfying. There aren’t many entries either, the archives go back barely two months. (Just enough to avoid the TWR 2 star archive crunch) The comments to her blog entries (and her subsequent responses to the comments) are fairly interesting:

“everyone acts slightly different around different sets of people, it’s not you, it’s just the effect those people have on your personality, you might just show one side more than others around different people…don’t fret
kate | 12.24.02 – 3:41 pm | #”

I guess, but… …just so dramatically???
I guess it’s part of being “enthusiastic personafied”… …or maybe I’m just depressed. Hmm…
Anie | 12.26.02 – 11:32 pm | #



A few things…Edit the contact code it reads “mailto:enter your email address here”. It makes a poor impression. Admittedly I use Word’s spell checker a lot. My spelling is awful. Why can’t others cut, paste and check their entries? Anie should learn this skill as well. Typical teen angst. Grrr. OI-vey.
OI

The Big Picnic graphic that’s used at the top of the site was perfect for the title. Blades of grass with nice clean cut text saying “Big Picnic” stretched out across it – had it not been 4 degrees Fahrenheit where I live, I would have ran right out for my own big picnic. Instead, I jumped right into this weblog.

Before diving into the articles at Big Picnic, I first signed up for an account. It took hardly any time at all and once I had my confirmed password, I could post comments, switch themes of Big Picnic, and even change my preferences of viewing the site any way I wanted. You can think of it has a very advanced bulletin board with very valuable content.

And the content – what content! News, Arts & Entertainment, Science & Tech, Web Miscellanea, Comics, Etcetera – you’re going to find something you’re interested in. Naturally, my curiosity led my directly to the “Arts & Entertainment” section. I was welcomed with movie reviews, art, sports, music, and anything else that could possibly fit into the Arts & Entertainment spectrum. Every base was covered and they were covered well.

I thought perhaps that Arts & Entertainment could have just been JNelsonW’s area of specialization, but I was wrong. Each of the other categories had just as many knowledgeable entries and opinionated articles as the next.

My favorite part of the entire design was the banner. My monitor uses a 1028×768 screen resolution, and still I had to scroll from left to right in order to see the entire site of Big Picnic. I’m normally not a huge fan at all of white text, but it looks sharp on this slate blue background. It’s easy to read and strays from the norm – a great combination.

This site is powered heavily by JNelsonW’s articles. There’s the ability to submit your own news articles, but from the looks of it, there haven’t been many people taking advantage of the freedom to do just that.

I like this site just the way it is. Could it be better with more users submitting their articles? It’s likely, but I’d be leery of adding someone else’s writing style to that which is already published and established at Big Picnic.

Big Picnic

Right away, our author here lets us know that “something is serious wrong with the set up of this page”, but she does claim to be “working on it”. Hopefully that work will be complete soon, because right now, it’s a hard site to maintain focus on.

The site is split into three portions. There are two columns on the left of the screen that literally contain a little bit of everything – a tagboard, a picture of George W. Bush, a description of the author’s family, and some more random information that apparently has no other place to go but on the main page. It certainly makes for an extremely busy site, and sometimes hard to focus on.

You learn a lot about Melanie’s family just by reading through her weblog. The way she tells her story each day reminds me of the same type of conversation you’d have while sitting down with someone over coffee – it’s a very conversational way of writing, and one that makes you feel comfortable from the start.

Melanie’s battling with progressive MS, which sometimes keeps her from doing the things that she’d like to do or experiencing things that her family members are experiencing without her. Despite this, Melanie manages to keep her posts upbeat. There are issues she gets hit with quite often that I think the average Joe wouldn’t really know how to react. A neighbor and close friend is murdered and then slandered in the local newspaper, her teenage daughter decides to dabble in WICCA, her son is a struggling musician who refuses to give up on his music, and her poor dog is paralyzed – not a very enjoyable last few months for our author, but one she manages to make it through with what seems like a smile in every post.

Through all that Melanie has experienced, or at least all she’s posted in her weblog, there was a recent post that had some of the best advice in it I’ve ever seen: “Don’t EVER become complacent with your life! Don’t find yourself at a point where you are just so happy and then stop doing what you just know you are supposed to be doing to feel that way”.

Overall, this is the type of weblog that you can certainly become hooked on. That’s apparent not only from the feeling I got after leaving the site, but the number of loyal visitors that seem to leave comments on each post. It’s certainly as personal as weblogs come. If that’s the type of weblog that interests you the most, then New Oreleans Live Blog is one for you.

New Orleans Live Blog

The first thing I noticed on entering this site was how attractive and easy on the eye the colours are. Yan Jun, the author, mentions that she has changed the layout over eight times, but I’d say that this one is a keeper. The site is clean and simple to navigate, with links allowing you to see all the past layouts, which I thought was a nice touch.

The weblog is mostly about Yan Jun’s everyday life. Her entries have been sporadic recently due a month long ban on the internet, imposed by her parents. Yan Jun writes about being grounded, skipping school and the dangers of high heeled shoes, but it’s all very readable and gives an interesting perspective on life. It will remind you of the frustrations of being a fourteen-year-old.

The about me section is pretty thorough and gives you a good idea of the girl behind the blog. There are only twelve posts so far, although I am sure that more will follow once Yan Jun’s internet ban has been lifted.

If you are looking for something more than just personal accounts then this probably isn’t the site for you. Most of the links on the page are to Yan Jun’s friends’ sites and the weblog seems to be used as a good way to update them on her life. illusions….