Author: admin

My first impressions of Tiffinbox were good- I always think that blogs with black backgrounds look pretty stylish and this one is no exception. There is a cartoon logo in the corner which is groovy and also a little paragraph explaining what the blog is about. Apart from this, the sidebars are pretty much made up of links and blogrolls. Whilst these are extensive, they don’t seem superfluous either; most external links seem to be on–topic and useful for anyone interested in the blog contents.

As for the subject matter of the blog, I feel it is best left for the blog itself to explain itself- “Tiffinbox is a blog (for now) that is interested in exploring the cultural fabric of the South Asian diaspora through photography, writing, art and design.” I think this description pretty well sums up the contents found within. The author is currently living in NYC but spreads his entries between NYC and Indian cultural issues and often combines both. I found this use of Internationalism works very well with a medium such as blogging. Whilst the author’s primary interest seems to be photography and related exhibitions, there can also be found lots of interesting articles related to politics, music, theatre, film – in fact pretty much every creative pursuit. The entries nearly all have this Indian/ American theme to them and are politically aware and politically “right on” too – lots of anti – war links, references to poverty and how India fairs in the global economy. It was also refreshing to hear about how many Indians have made it in their respective fields and are successfully able to take on their Western counterparts.

Archives go back to November 2003 and are extensive – way too much to be read here in one sitting. I found that most articles contained something informative though, were relevant to the overall theme and of some interest. It would have been nice to see a few more photos amongst the entries though, especially considering the theme of the blog. I also found that the category archives were particularly useful in a blog of this size, allowing me to home in subjects that appealed to me particularly.

Whether this blog has long term appeal to those not strictly interested in photojournalism or Indian culture is debatable. However, for those wishing to open their minds and learn something new about these areas, there is plenty in this blog to keep them amused. Overall a well structured blog.
Tiffinbox

Tiffinbox opens to a black background with orange text. And no, it does not bring Halloween to mind, just in case you were wondering. There is a puzzling graphic of a man who looks like a short order cook leaning on a contraption that reminds me of a device my mother had for putting food in at picnics. I have no idea what a tiffinbox is and I went in search of the answer.

Our author has been writing here since November of 2003, and this is the stated purpose of his blog:

“Tiffinbox is a blog (for now) that is interested in exploring the cultural fabric of the South Asian diaspora through photography, writing, art and design.”

While that sounds like a VERY specific target audience, the entries encompass a much broader spectrum. He writes on an impressive array of subjects in a clear style. Photojournalism, art, writing, book reviews, photography, both still and film and he also keeps his readers abreast of current trends in Journalism and all things Artsy.

This site was submitted as a personal blog, but I would really have to say it is much more like a trade journal. He regularly posts links to photo contests and other art projects open to the public, but surprisingly I did not find much of his own work posted.

There is no About Me page here at Tiffinbox. I know many of you find it annoying that we here at Weblog Review care so much about them. But just think for a moment, if someone comes across your blog by accident one day, do you want to introduce yourself and invite them to stay a while? Or do you expect them to spend an hour or so trying to find out from your posts who you are and what motivates you, where in the world you live and whether or not you hate it or love it and why? Blogs after all are a way to put yourself “out there”. If you want people to come visit you, it makes sense to be friendly by opening up a little bit. You don’t have to tell your life’s story and give us your social security number, but I would like to have a little context for the things I am about to read in your blog.

In all my reading at Tiffinbox, I did not find out what that word means. Although the answer MAY be there somewhere. I was not fortunate enough to find it.

This blog would be a very good resource for photographers and journalists to check in for the latest news in those professions. And my suggestions are to please tell us what that little man is leaning on at the top of the page, and add an About Me link for the serendipitous reader.

Tiffinbox

I liked the look of this blog when I first arrived. It is fairly stylish and put together well overall, with a colour scheme that works and an effective layout. There is a nice little sidebar section which covers various areas of the blog – a “cast list”, 100 things which is up to about 32 at the moment and some quotes which the author likes. There are also some extracts from previous blogs to give you a head start on this one which was started in March 2004.

Clearly some effort and thought had gone in to all this and I was impressed. In terms of content, the entries from the previous blog had a self-confessed “therapy” feel to them which I found somewhat indecipherable and over-analytical, but I didn’t let this put me off as I moved on to the main blog content.

Unfortunately, I quickly realised that this was a blog that I was not going to enjoy. It is a personal blog about the life and struggles of a female engineer aged about 30. And I mean struggles. There are a lot of entries regarding emotional or psychological issues which are currently concerning the author. I am sure these seem like very real problems to the person writing them and I don’t want to sound demeaning, but I found it hard to empathise with the things she had on her mind. They seemed like intangible issues to me- it wasn’t like she was in any physical, social or financial dire straits as far as I could gather, beyond being frustrated with her job. Oh yeah, and the author hates her job too. She hates it on the front page and on many pages prior to that as well. When TWR forms its own blogging police in the near future, persistently bitching about something on a blog will become a criminal offence. You have been warned. Either stop bitching or do something about it.

In the meantime, I had no other recourse but simply to get bored and depressed. There is little of much cheer to be found on the blog and ironically I seemed to learn very little about the person, (i.e. her interests, her world, her loves and dreams) despite their being 300 entries written on the subject. There are religious views (and as far as I am aware, she is only half convinced that religion has any answers), some day to day stuff, some weird dreams and some memes. In this ever expanding world of blogging, regretfully there is little here that can’t be found in a million other weblogs the world over.

Some blogs you like and some you don’t and for me this unfortunately fell in to the latter category, fair and square. It looks reasonable and has potential but the author needs to start writing about more positive, cheerful things and expand her horizons some more, for me to come back again.quo vado

Wow.

I have just emerged from a labyrinth that begins innocently enough at a page called, Fred Sez. This page is only the blog portion of his website. It is the entrance to a vast domain filled to overflowing with all things comics and pop culture.

My head is spinning.

His blog page opens to a rather garish blue and pale yellow background with the words “Fred Sez” in bold block letters. As soon as I found out that our author is a long time published cartoonist, the colors made more sense. But they are still garish!

The opening entry that I encountered was a little retrospective on the passing of Fay Wray. I continued to read and found an impressive array of writing on subjects as diverse as, baseball, his misadventures with an overloaded clothes dryer, and an account of a family outing to a Paul McCartney concert. All of which are well written (if long) essays that left me feeling that I was in the presence of a hyperactive teenager, when in fact we are talking about a full grown man. But then cartoonists must have a very firm grasp of their inner child, otherwise they would grow up and be political analysts or something.

When I finally found his home page and a links page I was overwhelmed with the sheer volume of information on this website. There are what I could only describe as historical archives of the comic genre in general, with a liberal dose of pop culture thrown in, both past and present.

There are links to his own comic book art and one section I would recommend checking out is the link entitled “Kidz”. There are full-length comic book pages there that you can read. They are reminiscent of the Archie comic that I used to read as a kid. (About the only comic I was ever likely to spend my hard-earned money on come to think of it.)

It is entirely possible that you will recognize this author, but I must admit I had never heard of him, not being a big comics fan myself. However I was very impressed with the depth of his knowledge of the subject and his amusing take on everything he chooses to write about.

Well worth a visit. But plan to spend some time here. And don’t be fooled by that deceptive opening page, there is a serious man behind it who still seems to be in touch with the magic of his childhood. And if you stay long enough, you may be touched by that magic yourself.

Fred Sez

Deathnoruk is not a word I was previously familiar with. I’m now convinced
that it’s completely made-up and unimportant, since it doesn’t translate
into a word in eight different languages. Despite that minor technicality, I proceeded
to deathnoruk.com and was quite pleased with what I was first presented with.

My first thought was, “It’s always great to see a blog that doesn’t
use a template”. The image at the top looks great and matches the rest
of the site’s blue color scheme. The interface appears wonderfully clean
at first glance. This blog is easy on the eyes.

After remarking to myself that the presentation was definitely better than
the average blog, my eyes wondered to down to the content in the first article.
In less than a second, I noticed glaring spelling and grammatical errors. Some
of the articles are actually difficult to read and entire paragraphs can ramble
on without being broken up into sentences.

Curious about the author, I browsed to the About Me page. All of Jamie’s
personal details – including likes and dislikes – are listed in point form.
This blogger is from the East Midlands, in the United Kingdom and has had a
blog for many months. Initially residing on GeoCities he later switched to ModBlog
and now maintains both http://deathrowuk.modblog.com
and http://deathrowuk.com.

Jamie writes articles that appear to be sincere and from the heart. It’s
great to see bloggers post exactly what’s on their mind without holding
back.

Looking closer at the design of the blog, I notice that the first page –
a spash screen – doesn’t have a title specified and displays the
standard “Untitled Document, oops! Attention to detail in this blog is
lacking; minor design issues and the spelling and grammatical errors are two
such examples.

This blog offers a huge number of interesting features, all of which are a
tribute to Jamie’s creativity. He allows users to register to create blogs
of their own, which are displayed on the site. There is absolutely no documentation
for this process, however, and it’s not completely clear what this feature
is capable of. I decided to be the first person to sign up for a blog, and I
was presented with this after clicking the submit button:

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error ‘80004005’

[Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver] Field ‘publicblog_users.user_favfilm’
cannot be a zero-length string.

/simpleblogreg.asp, line 78

Oops! You’d better get that ironed out before offering
the feature to your readers.

There are a number of fully functioning features, however. Using inline frames,
there are many alternate layouts, including his blog presented from a mock iPod;
this blog is merely a rendition of one located at http://deathrowuk.modblog.com.
Did Jamie code all of this himself? He should take credit for that. If he didn’t,
then he should indicate that also.

I noticed that there were a few features on Jamie’s old modblog website
that he doesn’t have on his new one. The picture gallery, the calendar
browser and guestbook are just a few examples of absent features.

It seems that this blog is not yet complete. There are technical bugs, a couple
of missing features, and some desperately needed spellchecking. I’d suggest
that this blogger perfect what he already has before creating new features.

After writing this review, it has dawned on me that Deathrowuk can be separated
into Death-Row-United-Kingdom. Death Row has content that is only slightly more
interesting than what’s found on most personal blogs. Features are meant
only to compliment the content. Features are cool to check out and play around
with, but you can only do that once or twice. Without excellent content there
is little reason to bookmark this blog.

Deathrowuk!! 100% Genius