Author: admin

My first impressions of Rambling Along are not quite positive. Just finding out that the weblog is run by BlogDrive took away my high hopes of a good design and/or layout. So loading the page was done. Indeed, it was the typical BlogDrive template, but I see that there was at least a small effort made with the top image.

Later on, I skimmed, not read, his sidebar and his entries. I saw some very uninviting pictures and text which made me worry about making a review and for the first time, giving someone a score below 2.

Fortunately for Kai, the author, I thoroughly read his weblog and the procedure I did was only for the first impressions part of my review. When I finally got reading, I found out that he is as gay as his humor, which is ironic since the last review I made was that of a lesbian’s.

Well, moving on. After the not so positive first impressions implied on me, I actually found myself absorbed reading Kai’s entries. They are generally sarcastic and cynical and can even be offending at times but there’s always a good point in Kai’s realizations. Plus, for a self-confessed homosexual, he doesn’t talk about men as often as other gay people I know. Instead, he’ll blast out humorous opinions about the government, his pet dogs, a number of celebrities and even his grandparents. Most of all, with the way he puts it he enjoys his gayhood more than anything, which is a good thing because it makes his entries more personal, interesting and less sugar-coated.

And so I’ve mentioned, he uses visual aids as well. He uploads pictures and I’m not so sure if I want to know where he got them from. At first glance, you’d say they were very tasteless, but once you see the text that supports the picture, you’ll probably realize that if a picture paints a thousand words, words make them a masterpiece. If I could give the crown for “Caption Queen of the Year”, I’d most definitely hand it down to Kai.

His entry styles vary from long narrative ones, lists of whatnots and cracking one/two-liners. The good thing is that no matter what the length of his entry may be, there’s always ann added spice to it, which makes you want to read on and on and on.

Well, I have been positive for the past few paragraphs. Now let’s deal with the down sides of Rambling Along. I believe that Kai is very street-smart and wise, but I think he lacks knowledge about himself. He is very observant, and he outputs his thoughts with very playful words, but rarely do I hear him speak with more intimacy about what’s really inside. Maybe I’ve missed it but it seems to me that Kai knows more about the world around him than the world inside himself. Sure, he knows he’s gay and he knows what he likes and what he hates and what he thinks is stupid, but somehow he doesn’t push himself beyond the line of personal access or however you may call that.

Also, words, no matter how great their meaning, will not mask out the dullness of the design. Even if he moves to a better weblog provider, with his self-confessed lack of HTML skills, I don’t think he’ll be creating some journal eye-candy any soon.

Another downside is his English skills. I’ve seen lots of mispelled words (even if he says he’s good at spelling) and he has a problem with grammar too, specifically with punctuation (commas are very important, you know). Fortunately, those problems are still at a minor level and it wouldn’t distract you much as it would do with those who sPeLL diZz WaY.

To sum it all up, I’d give the thumbs up for Rambling Along. The author has a great way of sizzling up this dog-eat-dog world with the humor that all gay men, I believe, are blessed with. His lack of depth and the boring template are lapses in his weblog, but if that’s not what your there for, I’d recommend Rambling Along strongly.

(By the way, Kai, I have one of those butt washers at home.)Rambling Along

As soon as I go to the site, I had to look up one Bernice Clifton. Once I read that this was who Kai, our author, felt he was the illegitimate child of, I was done. I didn’t stop laughing from that point on, and the review took 2 days. thats a lot of laughing.

As for the site itself, it is hosted on Blogdrive, which I am becoming more and more impressed with. The only thing in this case is the placement of the ad distracts from the banner of the site, but I got over it. the layout of the site itself is clean and sleek, and I am really impressed with the use of images for links on the left hand side – something I took away as a tip for making my own site look nicer. It is easy to find everything you are looking for, including an About Me section!!!!!!

The writing within the site is very wry, sarcastic humour. It is some of the funniest stuff I have ever read. Kai is obviously well spoken and doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks about what he says. From writing new years resolutions for the stars, to telling off women in Wal Mart, he just says whatever pops into his head. I haven’t found anything yet that didn’t make me laugh.

Technically, the site is great. The links are all working, the little features like the message board function and I really didn’t hit any problems. one small annoyance was the fact the page auto refreshes – for the message board i assume. Drove me insane. But that is likely just me.

Overall, this site is fantastic. I haven’t laughed this hard in ages and over the course of the night shared the link with basically everyone I know. The only advice I have for you Kai, is don’t change a thing.Rambling Along

One of the main problems I have with blogspot weblogs is they have the tendency to all utilise similar designs – that in itself would not be a bad thing if the designs were anywhere near decent, except they aren’t. I am frequently reminded of this every time I land on a Blogspot site in order to review it, and sadly ‘Elderbear’s Den’ fails to break the trend on the design front. A brief bio of the site resides at the top of the page, just underneath the banner. It reads “Fighting to stop creeping facism! Responses to life, culture, inner daemons, my family, and work from a privileged, elitist, pragmatist, anarchist mystic with a sense of humor and outrage who finds most of the situations on “That’s Just Wrong” to be pretty OK, if not downright enlightening, inspiring, and morally uplifting” . With that in mind I head off in search of those first postings without much idea of what I really will find there.

It seems like Elderbear’s Den is actually quite a young blog, the archives don’t even extend beyond the current month (February), but that is not to say there isn’t plenty to read here. The archive formating (weekly) suits his posting consitency, and is relatively easy to navigate unlike most blogspot managed weblogs. I quickly discover that the ‘tagline’ mentioned earlier is actually a fairly accurate description of what you will find within these pages – the author touching on a wide number of subjects with the same satirical / analytical style. The quality varies, but the author never fails to be thought provoking – whether you agree with what he has to say or not. The writing style suits the shorter, sharp edged posts – clearly not someone who minces with their words when putting a point across, and I like that.

I touched on the design before, it appears to be a generic blogger template with some minor alterations, and sad to say it’s not one of the better ones. That said, it serves it’s purpose – the colour scheme isn’t offensive to the eyes, you can read the text and although there are minor read problems on Internet Explorer involving the side margin seems to work comparitively well – it just isn’t very visually appealing.

A few interesting sidelines reside in the side column – some interesting sites created by the weblog’s author, a blogroll and a few quotations.

Design aside, Elderbear’s Den looks as promising as any other weblog I have seen in their early stages. It’s mostly well written, covers a broad spectrum of subjects and is relatively interesting. A few design modifications would heighten its visual appeal, but all in all it’s a really promising start : 3.5
Elderbear’s Den

I loaded up this page and liked the simplicity of it. I think that it may be a ready made template. There are no fussy bits, nice big text section and all the links nicely filed on the right hand side of the page. Heading text matched the heading border, and there are limited text colours. It was easy on the eyes, and loaded nice and quickly. The text was nice and big so it was easy to read. My first impressions were that the main focus would be on the content so I hoped it would be good!

The clue about the content of the blog is in the title!! There did not appear to be an “about me” page, so I had to gather all the information that I could from reading the content. The blog was started in October 2003, but there was a fair bit to read. At the start of the blog there are some lovely pictures that captures Thom’s view of Verona. I was quite upset that the camera broke part way through the blog. Some of the photos are lovely and very imaginative.

The content is really interesting, especially if like me, you have never been to Verona. Thom has an interesting way of looking at the world around him. He makes some fascinating comparisons between how the English do things to how the Italians approach the same thing! I liked the different approaches to asking a girl out and how to behave on a first date!! I liked the way he noted all the differences between Christmas in Verona and Christmas at home, though I suspect he was looking forward to the cricket far more than the festivities back in England!

I think that the design of this blog is misleading as it gives you no idea of how fascinating it is going to be!! There is not a single hint that once you start reading, you will get so involved that you will read the entire blog. Yes, I honestly did read everything, I wanted to know whether thom would say, despite the lack of Frisbee teams, or last out until the summer and leave on a good note! It is, in my opinion, very well written. I was truly hooked by most of what I read. It just really did intrigue me as to how living in Italy could be via a complete starnger. I also felt quite inspired to go for a visit.

I am a great fan of simple and easy on the eyes site. So whilst I claim the design to be understating the content, maybe that is also part of its attraction. I was not side tracked by following links and being distracted. I just got sucked right into reading about Thom and his adventure. I was not distracted by quizzes and guessing what cartoon character he might be!

In my opinion, this is a very well written and very interesting blog. It is both informative of what it is like to up sticks and live in Italy, and it is also a nice insight into Thom’s world, and his feelings on his big adventure. I must say that the photos were defiantly a bonus feature on this blog, and I really hope that Thom gets his camera fixed soon so that he can carry on capturing Italy as through his eyes. I have to say that I really enjoyed this blog. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is one of the best that I have read. Superb I say! Superb.An Englishman in Verona

Infiniti… Is it a purposely misspelled version of the word infinity? Infinity: something that goes on and on and has no end? Is this what I am to expect when I get to this blog? Something without an end? I guess that is actually what is ideal with a weblog; to always be updating it. We shall see.

The first thing I noticed was the very unique layout of the site. There is a wonderful animie logo at the top. The site uses a vast assortment of the color pink which was surprising. Then I noticed some things. My mouse pointer had changed. It was now an arrow with a question mark, and when I mouse over links it changed to a double sided arrow instead of the hand I am use to. I really hate when people mess with the mouse. It doesn’t add to the experience of the weblog, and it is distracting. I also noticed that the layout wasn’t lining up properly, or at least where I expected it to line up so I fired up IE just to check, and it still was not lining up correctly.

The weblog is written by Jei and she is, wait, let me quote this directly: “i’m a vampire girl who lives in the philippines with the ethnicity of 1/4 japanese, 1/4 chinese and 1/2 filipino.” Interesting. With this said her English is very good, but if I remember correctly English is one of the main languages in the Philippines, so I wasn’t too surprised. I was however very intrigued by the vampire girl aspect and how that would play into effect with her weblog.

While I was reading each post I noticed I was actually getting further away from the author the more I read. There was something that was just pushing me away from this weblog, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. Something about the way the weblog is written, it seems oddly familiar, but what was it that was pushing me away? Was it the vampire girl aspect or just where she was blogging from? After some research I found out that Jei is only 16 years old. There is that link I was missing.

The posts read a lot like other teen blogs. What is going on in the person’s life: most notably school, friends, music, online quizzes, generic blog type posts, etc… I decided to see if it really was like a standard teen blog and re-read the posts completely out of order and it still read the same. This is a disappointment to me, because hidden underneath all this general stuff I bet are some amazing things. Some posts start to hint at this, but don’t completely shine.

I would love to rate this blog higher because I can see some great potential with in the blog. But unfortunately I have to base it on what is actually there, and not what could be there. I really want Jei to let go and really take a chance at standing out from the crowd of webloggers. If she did this I can see this weblog going places
Infiniti