Author: admin

Entering Autumnleaph’s page, I instantly got the impression that this girl has a darker, deeper side. The all black background with purple headers and dividers coupled with the very introverted b/w photo (I’m assuming that this is the author)gave the entire site an eerie feel. Prominently displayed at the top is the headline “I’m only whipped in the bedroom.”

The bio information, although brief, is conveniently located on the left hand side of the page above assorted links and such. She’s a twenty three year old living in Pennsylvania. I began reading the first page and, remarkably, this blog has ended. She has given a link to her new page which I decided I’d visit later after reading her old one.

On the left, there’s a drop down menu of the archive, which dates back to August of 2003. The menu, however, had choices dating back to 1999, though there were no posts at that time, so it took me a minute to locate the beginning.

The writing itself is an interesting mix of introverted thoughts that speak of depression and anxiety to musings on general social experiences: Her boyfriend, sex, friends, etc. As I began reading, I was at first put off by the tone, but I found myself reading this blog for over an hour. And there was plenty to read with postings occurring several times a week, if not everyday. One thing I really liked about the posts is that they’re peppered with well-written poems and I enjoyed this creative outlet of hers.

The writing is very attention holding, and the only thing that stopped me from reading more was the white type, which was placed on top of black or alternating colored backgrounds. This really hurt my eyes after a while and I had to stop.

All in all, Autumnleaph’s blog was a thoroughly interesting read, even though the subjects were dark and introverted. Sadly, she put an end to it. With the last post, she gives a link to her new site and announces that she’s getting married. I visited the new blog briefly and, to my surprise, found a much lighter, easier to read layout. Perhaps with this engagement things are turning around for Autumnleaph. I’ll be checking up regularly to see how she fairs. Autumleaph’s ramblings

“Youngest of One.” (The blog that hardly ever gets comments, no matter how desperatly it tries). Those are the headlines at the top of the page. As for the main blog title, I really can’t figure out how the title “Youngest of One” is connected to the entries.

When I first entered the weblog, my first impression was that it looked like another one of those ordinary templates you see on blogspot, but with a bit more color to spruce it up. That’s when I looked up in the address bar, and saw that it was hosted on “typepad. Judging by the archives, (not the largest amount), I assumed the blog hasn’t been around all that long. That was until I clicked on one of the authors links on the left hand side, and discovered that the author did in fact have a weblog on “Blogspot” at one point. It was merely just switched to “typepad”.

Finally I dug into reading the entries(which most of , were extremly long)and came to realize that the blog was basically about the authors everyday life at school. I read every post (except for maybe 2 or 3), which seemed to be about the authors school classes, school dance/fun night ect. The reason I said Almost every one, is because the author strayed away from the subject of classes for a few of the entries.While the author is talking about his classes, classmates/friends are included in the subject,who I might add have some of the strangest nick names I have ever heard. Names like , cheeseburger, Penguin, Lips, Pies, and those are just to name a few.

In the posts where the author doesn’t talk about classes, he talks about seeing a movie with his dad and playing video games with his friends. But as I said, basically the entire blog focuses on his school classes. I wanted to know a little bit more about the author to see if I could get a good idea of the purpose of the weblog. What I mean is, to find out why someone would write so much about their everyday school life. With that thought in mind, I clicked on the link to his “About Me” page.
What I learned from there was , the author was a 14 year old from “Queens”. He spends a lot of time in front of the television and has an interest in movies.

I wasn’t really sure what rating I was going to give the blog at first. I kept an open mind and started thinking. Here is the opinion I have come up with. The author is 14 years old. Basically there is not much for a 14 year old to write about except for school and school activities. To me, this explained why he has written so much about his classes. He has said in his entries, that he hardly ever goes out.

But judging by the authors entries, he seems to enjoy writing. Like I said, a lot of the posts were extremly long. I am sure that in the future he will have several different interests that he will post about. That is if he decides to keep the blog around. Once again, you have to keep in mind that the author is only 14 years old.

I did check out the links on the left hand side, I also saw that the author has an on-line store, where there are many different items for sale such as housewares, mugs, t shirts ect. I found that link to be an added bonus.

To conclude the review, however, I do have a couple of complaints about the blog. The first one being, on the “About me”, page, there wasn’t very much info to tell me who the author really was., except for his age and where he was from. Also, the title “The youngest of one”, really doesn’t match the entries. As he said in the headlines, (The blog that hardly ever gets comments no matter how desperately it tries.) Maybe the author is just trying too hard . To make it more simple, maybe the author is concetrating more on getting visitors, than he is on writing about different topics. It was not a blog that I really enjoyed reading. It fits more into a “teen ” category. As it stands right now, it is not a blog that I would visit on a daily basis. But it is something a teenager might enjoy.Youngest Of One

I went to review this site, not exactly knowing what to expect. I smiled to myself as I noticed the possible reference to “Fast Dedi” Felson character played by Paul Newsman in The Hustler and The Color of Money but I was not sure how this would correlate to the subject of the site.

The subtitle however relates more closely to the actual bent of the posts: “Epoisses (Cheese) on the Web”. It is a collection of his thoughts regarding subjects as varied as the sad state of education to a contest where pictures are post of bloggers bums and you guess which ones belong to whom.

Once there I found that I liked the background color and found myself questioning his locale, since his banner included what appeared to be some sort of lighthouses. I looked for a few seconds and realized that he is located in Belgium, which makes this the first Belgium blogger I have run across.

There are also two authors a male (zeno) and a female (kimberlee) who seem to be friends. As you read through the posts you quickly discover this since one moment they are discussing men’s urinals and a little farther down is a thankful post about how blogging has gotten the author through being separated from her husband.

I noticed that each post seemed to have comments, which usually translates into traffic. The comments on his site appear to be from the same core group of folks which can be a good thing. It means that he is keeping their attention over time.

The posts are for the most part, lighthearted and funny and seem to revolve around a circle of Internet friends and fellow bloggers that they know. Not a lot in the way to politics or religion but it is a good, fun read. Think of it as the blogging equivalent of a sitcom.

They seem to have developed a few standards in there posting repertoire. There is a Tuesday ChoosDay where readers are asked a series of “would you rather this or that” questions. There is also the aforementioned Blogger’s Bottoms game.

The site is laid out in a three-column format using Movable Type, with two smaller columns to the right stuffed with information about the author, comments, and the obligatory list of links. They are using the fairly standard tools, such as the TTLB Ecosystem and SiteMeter. They also have the list pretty standard list of archives and such. The site has a list of books but does not use Amazon plug-ins or MediaList so they do not link to anything other than the book cover image which is a little sad since they appear to be interesting books and it might be nice to look them up and get a synopsis for them.

The text that it used through most of the site is a light color and works well with the background. The only thing that might cause some users a bit of grief is the very small font used for Permalinks, Comments, and Trackbacks, all of which are setup.

The only real thing I found wrong with the site was the layout. It does not look balanced when viewing and I would like to see more screen real estate committed to the actual posts. But this is more a personal preference and does not diminish the humor of the posts.

On the whole this site is a good, fun read. It is not political for the most part although there is the occasional post regarding Blair and Bush. For the most part it is the stories, poetry, and ranting of a couple of very good writers who have an interesting take on the world. It is a fun read and hopefully you will find yourself smiling slightly as you read, just as I did.
fasteddiesbullet….

I was excited to review this weblog – I have never reviewed an interactive novel before and it seemed like an innovative and ideal use of the basic weblogging format. At least I wouldn’t have to read about someone’s pet cat for one review, at any rate.

Unfortunately though, Génécrypt is a great idea waiting to happen. My optimism was slowly crumbled away by a series of disappointments. The first was how the site appeared. Now I figured that with a novel, the reader is coming to read the novel, not look at pictures of pet cats or find out what the author’s favourite weblogs are, so a certain lack of traditional template features would be acceptable under the circumstances. However, this is the first Movable Type weblog I have encountered which uses the Standard Template with no adaptations at all (and the standard template is VERY dull). I find it hard to comprehend why someone would go to all the trouble of installing MT (a feat which is beyond the ken of a lot of people, me included) only to make little or no creative use of the features available. The most infuriating of these oversights was that the comments didn’t actually work (or at least they didn’t for me- I kept getting “An error occurred: Invalid entry ID ‘XX’” when I opened the pop- up window.) Kind of defeats the purpose of an interactive novel if you cannot actually interact with it. Evidently the comments did work at one point because I found a total of five throughout the entries, though what these comments were and how they affected the plot of the story will have to be left to the imagination, as they have been lost somewhere in MT cyberspace hell.

Ok so the template could do with some work. How about the story itself? Well it is pretty good I guess, or at least what’s there. Unfortunately at present this isn’t much. The archives go back to the end of January and although there is an entry for most days in February, there is only one in March. Technically we don’t have to review a site with less than three months worth of archives, so it only just qualifies. And what happened in March and April? Author get fed up and decided he couldn’t be bothered anymore? Again, makes me wonder if a review is needed really, but hey- ho. On a technical note, don’t make the mistake I made and assume the order of entries are the same as most other blogs (i.e. newest first). They are the other way round- just a heads- up for those who are as unobservant as me and wonder why the story seems to make no sense!

Anyway, once I started reading the story from the beginning, I found I quite enjoyed it, especially the ideas behind it. It only took me about half an hour to get through but I was keen to read what was there. It is a sci-fi story set in the future with some really inventive (and occasionally funny) ideas. There are occasional typos, grammatical errors and no real paragraph structure, but I liked the plot. Once again, the only downfall though is that the story finishes before it has really begun- scene setting and a little introductory action scene finish in March and the reader is left none the wiser as to what happens or where it is going. I for one, wouldn’t mind finding out.

I have given this blog 2.5 out of 5 purely because it is a great idea for a weblog and I enjoyed the storyline itself. Given some work (i.e. continued work on the story and fixing the comments for a start), there is some great potential here. Unfortunately at the moment it is sadly unfulfilled.

• Génécrypt • The interactive novel…

“fasteddiesbullet”

Upon entering this site, I was greeted with an outstanding and a very professional looking blog. The only problems I could really find with the blog was:

(1.) There was no “About Me” page which could tell me a bit more about the author.

(2.) His blogging space was too narrow for the posts.

I myself like the blogging space to have more than 2 or 3 lines. Other than that,
3 lines. Other than that, it is a really nice lay-out.

The background is a plain blue, he has a cartoon picture of Superman up in the left hand corner, which gave the page a nice touch. The author has several links on the right hand side, including the archives.

When I first heard the title “fasteddiesbullet”, I really
didn’t know what the posts would be like.
To me, it just sounded like something
from an old gangster movie. Just not my kind of read.

As I started reading, the entries were completly different than what I had expected. They were simply about a guy and his everyday life. The entries are very
well written. When he writes about his every day events,he even tends to write a lot of them in a way that has a touch of humour. There was even an entry in his archives, where he had people email him pictures of their ass, and he actually posted them on his blog. On some occassions, he would ask the readers to guess who’s ass it was. That was just an example of his humour.

A lot of his posts had me laughing. It’s just the way he would go about telling of
his events for the day.

All in all it is a very good blog. Very entertaining. I am still a little confused about the title though. But if you have a couple of hours to spare, you should really stop by “fasteddiesbullet”. You won’t be disappointed.

fasteddiesbullet….