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I definitely consider myself a movie buff, and perhaps a little too obsessed with what goes on via the big screen and behind the scenes. Suffice to say, I was anxiously looking forward to reading “Milk Plus: A Discussion of Film”.

“Milk Plus” is a collaboration of several different folks that claim to be a “collective of writers who have come together because we are all opinionated, passionate lovers of film who wish to share with friends and strangers alike”. That self description hits the purpose and function of the weblog right on the nose.

One of the best things about this particular type of weblog is the choice of movies the writers choose to review. They don’t stick with the big screen blockbusters, but also dive right into the independent film pool. These writers are die hard movie fans, and they very much know exactly what they do and do not like about a movie. While it may be viewed by some as too biased, their reviews are anything but that.

With each review, you get comments about the plot, the script, the camera shots, and the acting crew to name a few of the things the writers touch on. Something I became particularly fond of was the comparison between other movies, whether it be something the particular actor had starred in or just another movie that happened to be somewhat similar. As a reader, this gave me the opportunity to, in a way, judge whether or not I would have any interest in the particular movie after knowing what these fine reviewers would compare it to.

With over a year of archived reviews, the troop of reviewers at Milk Plus are definitely consistent. The reviews of movies that I had actually seen were fun to read because I could compare my thoughts on the movies, and the reviews of movies I haven’t yet seen had me mentally adding movies to watch to my list.

The layout goes well with the title. As I found out from the FAQ section of the site, “Milk Plus takes its name from … a name chosen in homage to Stanley Kubrick and his film A Clockwork Orange“. The banner at the top of the page is a “spoof” of the Kubrick film’s logo, which is very tastefully done. I would have liked to see the tables that are used lined up a bit better with the top banner, but once you start thumbing through the reviews, the design is the farthest thing from your mind.

I was very impressed with this weblog. Truthfully, I headed straight over to my Netflix account and started adding some of the movies these folks had reviewed – especially A Clockwork Orange.

Milk Plus: A Discussion of Film

The first thing I noticed about Digitalbranch.net is the strong Christian lean that’s evident from the introduction
splash page. The weblog describes itself as “One man’s thoughts, poetry, and writings – an attempt to reach
humanity and the people of God” and there’s a quote from Jeremiah as well as several Christian oriented webring
memberships. The site is owned by Mark Jedrzejczyk and it’s been online for quite a while.

The archives dates back to October 2002, but the “first” post on the 8th of October goes into the hosting
troubles that Mark has encountered, resulting in the site being offline for a period of time. The pre-October 2002
archives are not fully up yet, but Mark has done a good job in re-posting several of the more noteworthy entries.
He’s also clearly marked the re-posts as such (usually with a header detailing the original post’s timeframe) and
I found this to be a nice touch.

The blog posts are mostly about issues related to Christianity and Mark’s poetries and stories, which also
tends to have a biblical motif, from my subjective opinion. This can limit the site’s potential audience, but I
found it interesting to read about Mark’s struggle with depression during the end of 2002 and early 2003 (from
what I can see) and his ways of dealing with it within a Christian context. Mark might take exception with this
though, as he mentions that “sad” would be a better adjective and “wanderer” an even more suitable one in his 9th April 2003 post.

I’ve also found his commentaries to be interesting, particularly the one in February 2002 regarding
“apostolicity” and his views about atheism and the meaning of life in May 2003. I consider myself a Christian and
I’m fairly familiar with the scripture, so I can relate to Mark’s posts, although his views are slightly more
fundamentalist than mine. Unfortunately, the blog does not get updated very often, each month averages about 10
posts, but most of the posts are well thought out writings, and that somewhat makes up for the irregular posts.

Besides the main blog, there’s also a sidebar with links to articles, poetry and stories that Mark has
written. There’s a very nice feature in those individual categories where the “last updated” date is listed on the
top. This is a good way of telling if the menu items have been recently added to, and it certainly seems to be
something that will be appreciated by the readers.

The articles are further subdivided to General Writings (issues related to Christians), General Textual
Studies (Mark’s writings on various books in the bible), General Topical Studies (history of Christianity and
other related issues), and Mark’s senior paper. There is an article in General Writings titled “The Problem of
Christian Apathy” which I felt was a very interesting read. I can see that this is a common occurrence in many
Christians today, including myself, and I was moved by this article because of the strong resonance the subject
has with me.

Revelation is my favorite book in the bible (as can be seen from my site’s URL) and I enjoyed Mark’s studies
on that book entitled “Exegesis of Revelation 13:1-8” in General Textual Studies. Most of his writings have a
bibliography at the end, which is another nice touch as interested readers can follow up the topic based on his
citations. The poetry section is nicely populated as well, but I can’t really comment on poetry since I don’t have
any background in this. The stories section has a couple of stories, and I recommend that interested readers take
a look at “Anguish”, which I interpreted as a metaphor for life after death.

The other links from the right hand sidebar is a Recommended Reading list and a message board. I actually read
Mark’s recommendation on C.S. Lewis’s “A Grief Observed” before reading his blog, and that was where I first
noticed Mark’s experience with sadness (to use his term). I have heard a lot about this book, but unfortunately,
my readings of C.S. Lewis’s works is limited to his Narnia series that I read during my childhood. The message
board is a good feature, but it’s not being used much by the readers of the site. The final items on the sidebar
are links to webrings, an awards section (where Mark lists the web awards his site has acquired) and a search
feature.

The design of Digitalbranch.net is clean and efficient, I liked the small sidebar and the “directory style”
browsing feature. By this, I’m referring to the hyperlinks that appear at the top when browsing into the
categories (eg Articles / General Writings / How to Pray). This allows for fast and easy navigation even when
browsing “deep” into the menu items. This is a very nice touch indeed.

The site is also optimized for users with a lower screen resolution, which is a rarity nowadays. The only
“flaw” I could find in the design is that I was expecting the large banner on top to be clickable and I’ve clicked
on the static image in vain several times before realizing that navigation to the main page is provided by the
“Home” link in the sidebar and also the top of blog pages. Design is not my forte, but I feel that the large
banner would be an ideal anchor to the main page.

Well, the site’s emphasis on Christian related issues would limit the appeal to readers who’s interested in
those issues, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Mark has thought about expanding the site’s focus to include
more subject matters, but decided that doing that will involve writing about “issues are not generally near and
dear to my heart”. I respect Mark’s decision and I agree that having a strong focal point on Christianity has its
appeal to similar minded readers. I recommend that everyone clicks through to Digitalbranch.net if you’re even
slightly interested in religion (and even if you’re not). At the very least, it’ll be an insight into Mark’s
devotion, which I’ve found to be nothing less than impressive. I’m giving it a 5 for the unique content and the
interesting articles and stories.

Digitalbranch.net

This is a Christian blog and many of the entries are related to the author’s struggles as a Christian. These entries, which clearly depict Mark Jedrzejczyk’s difficulties in sustaining his faith, are something that Christian readers can relate to. The writings are very deep and the author is able to express himself beautifully. Mark also occasionally posts lyrics, poems and short stories on his blog (though the more recent ones have been transferred to the section under “Stories” or “Poems”).

The design of the blog is simple and functional. There are 2 boxes on the side; one containing the monthly archives and the other encloses a list of sites pertaining to this blog (including a list of recommended readings and awards won by the site, as well as the “Stories” and “Poem” sections).

The archives started from October 2002, and according to the ‘debut’ entry, this blog is older than that, but there was a discrepancy with the previous host of digitalbranch.net. Thus, there are much fewer entries on the ‘new’ site. The blog is updated a few times per month, so you may want to check it out on a monthly basis.

I found Mark’s writings very touching (particularly the entry titled “The Fire Immortal” and it is definitely one of the more “genuine” Christian blogs on the Internet. Personally, I think that non-Christian readers would not be interested in this blog because of the religious content. But you could always give it a try, and you might develop a liking for the author’s poems and short stories, if not for his blog itself.
Digitalbranch.net

Now I don’t like to start on negatives, but on entering ReMo Stylz all I was faced with was dark font on a black background. Assuming a lighter background was loading, which would enable me to at least read the posts, I waited. But after a few minutes, several animated GIFs were twitching at me from the left hand column, the centre of the screen was a dark void and the posts to the right were still unreadable.

GIFs seem to be the main content of the site. There is very little else. The posts (which I could only read by dragging the cursor over them) only date back to April 11 and the last one was posted on April 23. I only counted six entries, four of which simply stated the progress of the site’s start-up.

The left hand column consists mostly of flashing links to pages about tv, movies, sports and music that the twin authors like. However these, as with the rest of the site, are unfinished and you’re faced with a lot of “coming soon” GIFs.

The enthusiasm that was obviously pumped into the site’s initial construction shows that ReMo Stylz could have gone somewhere. The site has a nice, family feel, being run by twins who say that they “sometimes think alike,” and with an opening post that wishes their cousin a happy birthday. Aside from that there really is nothing there yet to recommend the site. The flashing, twirling GIFS gave me a headache, and with so few posts it looks like this weblog’s been abandoned.ReMoStylz

“a tear in the fabric of spacetime”, is what Rachel, the creator of the site calls “just the random musings of a girl”. I’m still a little unclear on where the title came from, as it literally refers to scientific theory and this weblog doesn’t really relate to anything of the nature.

The layout is one of Blogger’s generic templates, with the colors slightly altered to different shades of purple. The site still seems to be in the beginning stages, with Rachel still deciding if she wants to post on a regular basis or not. The archives date back to March 9, 2003. If you’re lucky, you’ll find two days in a row where the author has posted, but more often than not, you’ll see days go by without a post.

This site is only a weblog. There’s no way to contact the author, or leave a comment about a particular entry. You can’t learn more info about the author through other links or anything of the nature. Anything you learn about the author or her life has to be found in each entry that’s made.

The writing style and content is really all over the board at “a tear in the fabric of spacetime”. For instance, one paragraph in the weblog’s first few days of being reads like this: The things we know as facts are really just crude approximations of reality. The laws of physics we know apply to “ideal” conditions that can’t actually be reached. We can make them reflect reality as closely as we want by adding in more and more terms. When we get into more “fuzzy” areas, like how people behave, what we say is a fact will actually be extremely skewed by our perceptions.

On the the other hand, there were two weeks of posts about procrastination, including sites Rachel had found about procrastinating. And there are other posts talking about trying to match the same pitch as squeaky furniture or making the decision on what college to go to.

While this review may seem quite empty, it’s only because the weblog at “a tear in the fabric of spacetime” is the same way. It’s a very generically written site. I’m sure the weblog makes sense to the author and to those that actually know her, it leaves anyone else that would happen to stumble upon the weblog in a haze of knowing nothing. I couldn’t find one reason throughout the entire site that would make me want to come back again.

a tear in the fabric of spacetime