Review 2218

Why, it’s just like being back in college! Ward Entertainment brings silly, sophomoric, raunchy humor to semi-literate fruition. However, these guys – or one, anyhow – is an accomplished coder, so the effect is a well-designed, mostly clean layout; there are no technical glitches to interfere with the juvenile fun.

A majority of the postings feature several photos, usually of themselves, naked women, celebrities, naked celebrity women or rappers. Your hosts, Greg and Ryan, unapologetically detail their drunken shenanigans, occasionally venturing onto the slippery realms of politics and current affairs. Usually these forays are short-lived and they quickly go running back to the solid ground of…more drunken shenanigans and photos of girls kissing.

This site would benefit from shorter posts and fewer, or smaller, photos because the effect is often overwhelming (and not in the good way). Moreover, the posts often ramble on and on, until the reader gives up and just scrolls down to the next titillating photo. The blog is at its best when shorter posts are combined with related photos (even tangentially), as opposed to longer posts interspersed with completely irrelevant photos. Ironically, Greg and Ryan, who appear to be quite proud of their copyrighted status, fail to appreciate that their rampant posting of various celebrity photographs likely violates several copyrights. Now, who’s up for a kegstand?ward entertainment

Review 2220

You and Me and Wainbows. Interesting title. I have no clue what to expect about this, other than it might reference three people (You = the reader, Me = the author, and Wainbows = some random person). But with that in mind I launched myself into this weblog.

Normally I like to pace myself when it comes to discussing a weblog. Some good points, some bad, all mixed together. I really only found one bad thing with this site, and it was the design. I like the images of the cats at the top (reference to the author), but then the rest of the design has gone to hell on the main page. Stuff is misaligned and it just doesn’t look good. Going into the archives we have yet another design, and this one is much better, but not original. So that is the bad part.

Everything else with this weblog is amazing. You cannot find another flaw in this site. The writing is outstanding, funny, and thought provoking all at the same time. Of course the first post I read was a very misconstrued version of an email I sent to her about reviewing her site. But it set the tone for the rest of the reading.

Recently she is posting about her trip to Spain which is pretty cool. She is going into a fair amount of detail for what she is doing there. I imagine that the weblog combined with pictures she has taken will make a good memory.

One of the more interesting things I noticed is that she really re-reads her weblog. Almost as if she is a reader herself, and not an author. Then she likes to comment on it. Personally I think she should just let it flow and only go back to read the comments.

This site should be nominated for the “Best kept secret” weblog with the bloggies next year. It has everything that an enjoyable blog needs and then some. I really hope that she does not take it down as she is thinking about doing as this truly is a diamond in the rough.

You and Me and Wainbows

Review 2225

Finally a site that I can immediately identify with, stuffed with honesty from the first line I see;
“Welcome to my weblog. I whinge a lot but my heart is in the right place… “
This is one of the few websites that I feel doesn’t maintain a false pretense of blogger glory. The clean, but typical ‘blog’ layout is used wisely (unlike some horrors I’ve seen in the past, and for once, the sidebar isn’t longer than the actual blog. (However it would be suggestable to archive weekly or monthly rather than daily)

Reading on I was delighted to grasp a taste of Matthew’s daily life consisting of a mixture of current affairs, daily excursions and the trivialities of life, all nicely illustrated with relevant pictures. I particularly identified with the boredom entry.. and titillated by the picture to go with it! A paragraph of speculative nonsense always calms the soul.

Focusing on the story matrix, an interactive story generator, the idea is highly amusing however proven to be effective. I’d love to see more of this on the website.

Target audience would involve anyone with two eyes and a brain to process it! Wombleweb provides a taste of life in Wimbledon (without the false Womble pretenses of course..)wombleweb story matrix

Review 2225

I love it when weblogs don’t expect their readers to have expectations of grandeur when they visit. Matthew points this out right away as he very quickly explains “the purpose of which is entirely undefined and extremely meaningless”. No claims to perfect posting or thought provoking entries here, and with that in mind, readers don’t expect anything less then just Matthew’s own journal.

The very first post at the time of this review dealt with the originality of weblogs, and how the standard templates that seem to get passed around the internet get so very tiresome. It was refreshing to see Matthew with a template all of his own, which had a very simplistic navigation method, and I wasn’t distracted by any of the current trend in unnecessary javascript or flash tools that sometimes get thrown right into.

The story matrix is a definite highlight of the site. This is the portion of the site where any reader can go in and add a line, paragraph, or even chapter to the already involved story that’s been written entirely in that fashion. It’s quite interesting so far, and will only get better as different people continue to contribute. Go ahead and add to the mix!

Other parts of the site include a very brief bio section, which does give us the basics on Matthew. Of course, there’s your typical computer “stuff” with the Technical and .Net portions of the site. And one would be remiss to leave out the obligatory “Donate” portion.

Now, I could only find archives dating back to January 24th, which was when this site first kicked off. Having each individual day linked along the left hand side isn’t something I’m very keen on, and I hope that Matthew has a plan for those archives in mind once Wombleweb has been up and running for a while longer. The archives were a bit disorganized in the manner that they were grouped, but that’s just a personal preference of my own.

I had trouble staying focused on the actual weblog content at Wombleweb. With a great weblog, I can start at the very first post and make heads or tails of how everything relates or at least make some type of a connection where I want to read more. I couldn’t do that with the entries here. They’re not poorly written at all, but they just don’t make this the type of weblog where you grow attached or find some magnetic connection to the writer. The entries are more along the lines of just sporadic entries about random thoughts.

For an occasional read from time to time, I would definitely recommend Wombleweb to readers. If you’re looking for something to draw you in and really want to come back every single day, this may not be the place.

wombleweb story matrix

Review 2227

Les made a smart choice when picking colors for The Blues Blog – it’s primarily different shades of blue!

Each entry starts the same way, usually “Woke up this morning…” or “Woke up yesterday morning…” and then the rest of the entry completes the sentence and moves on. I love the unique perspective given by the location – Japan doesn’t seem like a blues-heavy country, but Les has lots to share anyway. It’s also nice to see a topical blog that actually stays on topic most of the time, too.

The yellow-on-grey is kind of dreary and hard to read, and the text is awfully small. Graphics are few and far between, though, so it’s easier to focus on the words without being distracted by pictures. There seem to be some problems with links within the archives, but all posts are accessible if you try hard enough to find them. The links list is quite short, but the sidebar has a cool random quote about music every time you reload the page.BluesBlog