Author: admin

I wasn’t sure, since this was listed under entertainment, but I thought it might be about Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of Whatever, but it’s actually by/about a guy named Wes Ferguson. Oh.

This is a plain Diaryland template, black background with white lettering, not much visual appeal. This is what he says about it himself: “Well now that I have the new page up, I don’t know what to write about, haha…Clean layout but boring! Hm, yah. Not good.”

I tend to agree. Diaryland’s beginning to irritate me, anyway. I’m pretty sure their original intent was to have a huge, active community of bloggers and make piles of money, which maybe they do, but unless you’re in on the way Diaryland works, you could be missing some good stuff on people’s blogs. These days people are wanting to “get out more,” publicize their work and attract more readers outside their online communities. What I’ve seen on Diaryland blogs makes visitors work too hard to get to the extras and that could discourage people from coming back. I did eventually find the webrings he belongs to and the author’s favorite blogs, and to me these are important in helping to figure out where a blog author’s coming from.

Most of the links here at fergie.diaryland.com link back to other blogs, also by the same guy. The home page also links around to the same blogs, etc. He’s got t-shirts with his name on them, too, by the way. After some hunting around I found the “About” section, which lets us in on the fact he’s written and developed website content, and also has a sex and relationship column for gay men I couldn’t locate at the link given.

What he’s got is a lot of diffused attention going on here. I’m not sure what he wants to accomplish with his little empire of blogs and websites. Now, presumably, since he’s a writer he’s probably using it to promote his work in some way. Unless, that is, he’s one of those writers who believes promotion is beneath him; or (yes, I’ve actually seen this happen) thinks everybody should magically already know about him anyway. Most often what happens with writers is that they just need the light to come on and recognize what they need to do themselves to advance their careers.

He’s often a darned good writer, from what I’ve seen in the entries for this blog — my favorite was the entry on the lost sock orgy. He’s got some interesting ideas on gay rights and other things that perhaps deserve a bigger audience. I just wish there was some more focus. fergie

This isn’t a blog, strictly speaking. What we have here is a blog inserted into a Homestead website. I know about these, because that’s how I started out. For those not familiar with Homestead, they are a great solution for those of us uninclined to coding and more concerned with content. There’s a point-and-click interface which can give you a decent-looking traditional website, and your domain, hosting, visitor tracking — the whole nine yards, are all included in the price. The problem enters when you try to drop in a blog.

In my case, it took a full 16 hours to get my first blog going, and then my visitors hated it. That’s because the blog opens in another window within the site, giving you two sliders to deal with, which is confusing for those not familiar with this kind of configuration. Any links within the blog also open up in that little window. What I eventually did was to get my blog hosted elsewhere and link back from the free-standing blog to the Homestead site for the rest of my ‘zine.

The blog contains only a portion of their journal, which focuses on their travels across North America since May of last year. A link marked “Journal” takes you to entries on traditional website pages. Once you get in to the “Journal,” it’s hard to get back to the blog. There are also articles which are apparently not part of either the journal or the blog. The effect of all this back-and-forth navigation is that the reader is never quite sure where she is. The pages and blog look different, and the entries on both are written by two different people. A bit more cohesion and organization in this project would go a long way to help, because it has plenty of potential to be well-read and frequently visited.

I’d also like to know more about Geoff. He seems to contribute a full share of the writing, but I was unable to find out as much as I’d like about why he’s part of the project, or if he’s just along for the ride. Perhaps there’s something there in this maze of links I overlooked.

The writing in this ‘zine is excellent, of near-professional quality. I’ve done a lot of traveling myself and enjoy reading about other people’s trips. The content is never boring. It’s the kind of thing you can read in bits and pieces during a busy business day, and be transported to the wilds of Alaska or the Colorado River rapids for a little while. It’s very easy to like these kids and wish them well on their journey. The entries themselves almost make up for the technically-awkward presentation.

Shine a magazine of Adventure

First off, I have to warn you about Damn The World. This site is offensive. Not just a little bit either, but full blown, I want to piss off people, type of offensiveness. Now this wasn’t my first expectation with this site, but I did expect a lot of rants when I would get to the blog.

The weblog itself is very new. It just started in September, and well has a lot of ground to cover if they really want to get their name out in the blogging community.

Even with the infancy of the weblog, we have a weblog that does what it is supposed to do; offend almost everyone. Posts range from Boycotting places, people, countries, to Movie Reviews, and well there are worse things that I cannot even mention.

One of the more interesting things about this site, is you have to read the entire post to understand it. Yes, the posts are obnoxious, and talk about things that you normally would not talk about. But, on quite a few posts I kept saying to myself that this couldn’t be true, it just can’t be. And of course the last line of the post explains it very clearly.

The quality of the writing is just average. The authors do like to swear a lot, and use all kinds of phrases within their posts. However that isn’t a bad thing. It goes along with the site and the goal of it.

The design is nothing to worship as it is a basic two column design. The logo unfortunately does not go with the archives, but then again, there are only one month’s worth of archives. Each post has at least one image with a caption of some sort to sort of help set the mood for the post itself. I found a fair number of these funny, but then a fair number of them were repulsive.

Honestly I could not justify giving this site above a 1.5 at this point in time. The site is still too new to be able to do much of anything. Granted, what they have tried to do is for the most part accomplished. While the small amount of entries did their job, they just didn’t do anything to keep me coming back. I have seen sites similar to this one, but they execute the humor and the posts a lot better. This site is not for the weak of heart, and should not be viewed at work, or around little kids. I also cannot say I would visit this site again. For this site to really bring back an audience, they need to put more work into the look and feel of the site.
Damntheworld.com

Every once in a while it’s nice to see something with a bit of gentle whimsy, not overly sophisticated but not self-conscious about it, either.

Riftlands Cafe was built by hand by a guy who has a genuine interest in brushing up both his web design and writing skills. Its no-nonsense design and quick-loading extras make it a nice place to visit. There are tons of wedding photos, pix of the family, vacation shots, recipes and etc. I would like to see a few external links permanently displayed. For me, external links give a sense of who this person’s friends and interests are and help round out the “experience.”

Eric puts down his thoughts on a daily basis and you’re glad he did. What makes it stand out for me is the clear glimpse of life here. These are hard-working, honest people who take pleasure in uncomplicated things like cooking and gardening. No, it’s not boring, at least not for me, who spends so much time each day working on things like marketing and promotion. It’s good to be reminded there are still people around who aren’t thinking in terms of millions of page views and “wow” factors.

I bet he doesn’t think it’s much, this blog. But I hope he hangs on to the archives when he updates the site (as I know he will.) This will be valuable stuff in time to come; when his daughter grows up and Eric’s writing something bigger. I’m giving this a relatively high score; because although I wish these lovely people could win the lottery or something, this is the best I can do ;>)Riftlands Cafe

Damn the (insert any given object here). The number of times I’ve probably uttered that exact same phrase under my breath is impossible to count. Damn the World isn’t something I’ve ever felt the need to say, but with the topics addressed throughout this weblog, I’d say it’s certainly a title that fits.

I would venture to say the contributors of this site are going to be hard pressed to find readers that won’t be offended by at least one post that’d been made. Catholics, French, Canadians, Americans, and nearly anyone else that hasn’t been mentioned will find at some point in this weblog’s early existence that they, too, have been put in the spotlight of demeaning comments and often overly exaggerated hatred. But that’s just the way Damn the World operates.



The authors’ take on the new signs created by the US Department of Homeland Security was one of my favorite entries and probably one of the least offensive. This entry also serves as an example of the types of things they touch on here. While the latest current events is generally the subject matter at hand, it’s not exactly a site that’s going to be providing readers with anything even remotely close to an unbiased opinion.

While reading this weblog, it’s easy to see that the time that was put into the writing and finding pictures on the web that offending captions can be added doesn’t nearly match the time that was taken on the design of the site. It’s a basic Movable Type template with nothing more than a different banner image added to the top. Design is something that I’m almost certain isn’t something Ryan and Sparky, the authors, are too concerned about.

The authors here do have points to make, but unfortunately, it seems like to actually find that point you have to wade through the frequent tirade that diminishes any hope of credibility in the writing to find it. Rants can be entertaining, sometimes even informative. The entries, here, though, which all typically fall into the Rants category in one fashion or another, aren’t really worth digging through to find the real meaning. It takes a huge amount of patience and understanding to be able to read through each entry without finding yourself to be sometimes fumingly angry what’s being said, and that doesn’t make for a weblog many people will want to come back and visit.

Damntheworld.com