Author: admin

When I came across “Simon Templar”, I was very excited. You see, I’m a big fan of “The Saint”. I love the movie, and as for the TV show, I used to watch the reruns on TV back in the late 70s. Simon is slick, smart, and just plain cool.

Then, I started reading the site. The content is political. If you’re the kind of person who’d rather have an elephant in your house than a donkey, you won’t like what he has to say. I like to think “The Saint” has political leanings just like the author of this site. I don’t know for sure, but a lot of things point that way, so I feel the name of the site is justified on those grounds.

However, the web site and the legend have little in common when it comes to being slick and stylish. The layout is not very well thought out which in all fairness, may not be the fault of the author as it appears to be controlled by the hosting service. The navigation is difficult, and the writing is nothing like what I expected. For the most part, it’s just entry after entry of rants. He seems to be very angry and it comes out in the site. The use of different fonts and font colors is simply distracting and the seemingly random placement of images is annoying. He needs to find a punching bag somewhere and get rid of his anger. Then, he can come back and write something thoughtful and meaningful instead of raving on and using slurs.

Although my personal beliefs are more in line with the liberals than the conservatives, I find it difficult to read what he has to say and have any confidence in it. If he were to tone down the anger a notch or two, he might have something worth reading.

To cut a little slack here, the author hasn’t been blogging for very long. His style hasn’t come out. He lists himself as having expertise in several areas, including freelance writing and amateur punditry. Sadly, none of this freelance work shows up on his site (that I could find). In fact, he references another site quite a lot and seems to be more of a cheerleader than author.

The author has done a lot of work on the promotion of the site. He’s on five different blog rings, which I would guess bring a lot of visitors. This will get a lot of people to see the other sites he references. Those people will likely go back to those sites, but as for Simon, what Simon says doesn’t really matter.

Simon Templar

“Everything but what’s on my mind” is the weblog of Sharon, who describes herself as “new and improved at 18 years old, but still tragicomically inept”. When I was 18, I didn’t even know what tragicomically meant, and to be honest, I had to look it up even now. Apparently, tragicomically is an extension of the word tragicomedy, which is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a drama or a situation blending tragic and comic elements”. Good to know, I thought to myself.

Nearing almost a year in existence, “Everything but what’s on my mind” doesn’t give off the essence that it’s from a teen-aged writer. Not at all. While the entertaining antics are typically those enjoyed by people that fall into the same age group as the author, the writing is far better. The word choice, sentence structure, and just overall writing style of each entry seems to be that of a well-seasoned author, not that of someone who’s just beginning their search for the right college.

The design of the site it one of the generic template Blogger offers its users, and the site is hosted via BlogSpot. While not a terrible design by any means, I personally felt like the writing alone deserved something a little more. The main point of the site, however, IS the writing and that’s certainly what draws you in the most. Bordering on the right of the semi-daily entries, you find two brief sentences about the author, links to the monthly archives, and the standard of links to other weblogs.

Most readers that fall into the age group this weblog is written for and by might not find the interest or want to take the time to read the detailed entries Sharon jots down. Actually spending time easily forming the mental picture that the author leads us to see is definitely one of the finer points of this weblog. While you may not get exact details of what a certain person looks like or the complete play-by-play of the evening, the author provides readers with enough information that creating the situation and/or people involved in your mind is easy to do.

From experiences in the past, I tend to lump any weblog written by someone barely old enough to vote into a group of undereducated, attention-hungry kids who really only need to share their weblog with their friends. “Everything but what’s on my mind” is very far from that. While it still has a few bits and pieces that are probably only understood by those near and dear to the author’s personal life, I felt like she was really writing for absolutely anyone that stumbled upon the site and that’s the kind of thing that brings readers back. Everything but what’s on my mind

While I know that the biggest percentage of internet users probably includes the majority of people using a 1028×768 screen resolution. I, however, am not at this moment in time, and because of that, I had to scroll from side to side to read entries on the main page. It looks like this is just caused my the placement of images in certain monthly archives.

I was absurdly amused by the FAQ section of the site. Perhaps it was, for the most part, made up, but I still found a lot of interesting information about the author and the “Studied Authenticity” weblog – personal information about the author, like his pets or his current living situation, and information on how the weblog got its name and the initial purpose behind it all.

In addition to the “witty banter and links”, there’s also a link to some of the author’s personal poetry. The standard external links to other weblogs the author reads, links to the books he’s reading through Amazon.com, and the archived months are listed along the right side of this standard Blogger template.

Most of the posts I read through related back to some form of pop culture. Combining a review of the Ben Affleck/Samuel Jackson movie “Changing Lanes” along with a comparison of how the movie relates to his daily life is one of the many entries that stood out when reading back through the archives. The author is genuinely funny, with the type of slightly dry, offbeat sense of humor that not everyone’s going to get.

He throws in a great diversion of humorous images throughout some of his entries to break up the stream of constant text. Another fun addition is the way the author uses phrases like “The Lord sayeth unto me, ‘Yo nigga, I done gots some revelations fo yo dumb ass!'” as a title for a weblog entry, turned essay-length rant the author claims “really went nowhere”.
Topically speaking, readers are going to find a broad range of subjects to read about. The author, through his writing, seems very passionate about any subject matter at hand. Whatever he feels like talking about is always backed with strong opinion and plenty of explanation.

Reading a weblog from someone that appears as confident as this author is always refreshing, and even helps build confidence in your own opinion on matters. So, in all, this weblog is ideal for those that have opinions or enjoy reading the opinions of others and are looking for a little more than just the standard day-to-day updates of someone’s every day life.

Studied Authenticity

eternal autumn is a site where you have to really, really concentrate in order to see things from the author’s side, what with the tiny font and the chosen appearance of the links, which are verging on invisibility.

From the information on the site, we know that eternal autumn is penned by a twenty-year-old American girl. Blog contents focus mainly on movies, concerts, TV, her friends, and her pets. In short, a twenty-year-old American girl’s life.

There’re plenty of interesting entries of the ‘what happened today’nature. After all, how dull can a twenty-year-old’s life be? However,
action-packed as her life might be, the reader’s interest might wan after a number of entries. It would probably make a much better read if the
author could blog down more of her thoughts, feelings and mental reactions to her life instead of just recording moments and instances as
they are. Everything that happens to any one person can happen to someone else; it is reading about an individual’s unique thoughts and outlook
that will hook readers.

As for the layout, there is nothing wrong with the bluish site, except the font and its colors. Navigation is somewhat hampered because the
links are hard to read, as mentioned before. The title, eternal autumn, comes as a bit of a surprise after a survey of the site, because other
than a strip of a brown tree, there is nothing that suggests the implied melancholiness of the title. In fact, there are some cute graphics on the site, including an adorable cat mood indicator.

eternal autumn is not a bad blog, but it is somewhat bland and lacking in personality. With some changes to the site, it can be a lot better. I look forward to a re-review.

eternal autumn

An introspective, intelligent, witty and honest read. The author’s personal reflections and observations about what he experiences and what he shares is very intriguing and thought provoking. The Kiwi author seems very down-to-earth and approachable, and so is his writing. “But wait. There’s more!…” His partner in crime, Natalia also contributes to the blog, and is also a stylistic, articulate and enjoyable writer. Wow. My Luck! Another great blog. 🙂

A few excerpts to illustrate:

She writes about some furniture they bought: “As the weasel (who is lying on the rug in front of the TV right now) said yesterday, we finally ordered ourselves a black leather couch/loveseat set, and a very groovy glass coffee table. That was precluded by furniture-store-hopping, and, of course, price-gazing and subsequent jaw-dropping. ” Heh. Been there done that. Isn’t writing at its best when the read can relate by how something has been described? I think so.

Just thought this was funny:

“That’s right, there were absolutely ZERO posts for the month of August 2002. Move along people, nothing to see here”

The “weasel” writes about his former work environment:

“I’d love to be given an opportunity to make major changes within the communications division where I have been working, but it’s a paramilitary organization and everyone is just required to follow orders without question. Fine if you’re a robot or you just want to go to work, meet the requirements, and get your basic salary without any sort of incentive to perform and be recognised for it, but no good if you actually like to use your brains and advance as a result, know what I mean? This is no reflection on the people that work there at all by the way; they aren’t the ones making up the rules.”

The blog focuses on reflections of the days events like most do. ‘Demon’ talks a lot about jobs and the experience of moving to, and the experience of, being in New York, New York and his crime fighting exploits and how cold NY is.

I simply liked this site. It is visually appealing (clean graphics and I love the hieroglyphic tiled background – right click Save Background As…wink), everything worked, the writing (by both authors) was well written and entertaining. The author also cares about Urban Scrawl, the word “re-design” was mentioned no less than 32,347 times. I will be visited US again ‘fer sure. Thanks for sharing.
Urban Scrawl