Author: admin

My first thought before I entered The Anchor Song was, “What the heck am I going to find here?” I have never heard of an anchor song so I was a little confused. So with some confusion in mind, I dove into the site.

Now I don’t know what people’s fascination is with splash pages, but I do not like them. There is not a purpose for them. This one is a hand drawn sketch of a person, presumably the author. Clicking on the little guy takes us to the simplistic designed blog. The text is in the center of the screen with an image of a partial man under water. Ok. Not quiet sure if that goes back to that anchor man thing or not.

The first post I read was this one which was a very graphic adult posting about the author being with another male. Since I wasn’t expecting this kind of post, nor the level of detail, I was confused yet again.

Reading through the posts you really start to get a feel for who the author is, his friends and other people in his life. Almost all the posts are of the “this is what I did” type, but are told very well. Each post has a high level of detail which is amazing. I really got into how some people were just called by the first letter of their name (J for instance) while others had their full name. My impression after reading through almost all the posts was that the people who just had a one letter name were done so to protect them which I found to be a nice gesture.

My absoulte biggest complaint about this site is the lack of navigation support. Well let me clarify. In order to navigate to any part of the site (About, Contact, or Archives) you must select it from the small little drop down in the last post on that page. Trying to read the archives in Firefox is not going to happen and will result in a 404 error. To write this I had to go into IE and view it. I should note that the archives work fine in Safari for the mac. Not sure what causes this problem, but it is a huge one.

The navigation needs to be changed. This site has a great story to tell but it is ruined by the fact that you almost have to take 2 steps back for every one forward. I have changed the category from personal to adult as I believe that only adults will really get the author in addition to some graphic details of things. Overall I enjoyed reading The Anchor Song, but was disappointed by the lack of navigation. As far as what The Anchor Song refers to, my only guess is that it is referring to Sailors, but I could be wrong.
The Anchor Song

The Sum Total of Me opens with a generic blogger template. While it is not a fantastic template, the template works very well for this blog. Something that few templates can do. This isn’t known until about halfway through all the posts, so please don’t let that get to you.

The Sum Total of Me is about True Willow. It wasn’t until the last post I read (the first post of the blog) that I fully understood the title of this site. TW says Like an irritable child I asked her why, and I will never forget what she said, “Because we are the sum total of everything we have been through in life.” She goes on to dedicate this site to the person who told her this quote and the first post was very moving for me.

The blog is just what it says; the total of the author. The posts range from childhood memories to current events happening within TW’s life. She talks about her children, her friends, and her family. She is a teacher, and her words are well chosen. I was amazed at how quickly I was drawn into this site.

This site is hard to review without just pulling quotes from the site. I read each post and genuinely felt emotion with each. Sometimes I laughed, sometimes I almost cried which is a first for me as a reviewer, and sometimes I was scared for her, just as she was when telling a story. This site reads like a great movie with flashbacks in key points to give us that much more character development. To say that this is a story is kind of misleading, as each piece makes up a different part of the puzzle. I enjoyed my time here, and look forward to spending more here.
The Sum Total Of Me

There’s nothing like stumbling onto a blog (well, in this case I had to stumble upon it) where the first post is about a recent night of passionate sex. I felt dirty reading it, but I couldn’t help myself but continue reading thinking that there may possibly be similar posts. Well, I didn’t find any more posts like it, but that’s fine. “This Anchor Song” though did keep my attention through several months of posts, which is a definite plus!

“This Anchor Man,” also known as, Joephet, is a gay, late twenty-something who lives in Manhattan. His blog tends to focus partly on being a law student which to me seems insane, but that’s only because I can’t imagine studying law. He writes about his experiences with school and also the stresses of life, such as relationships, losing someone and so on. He also talks about what’s going on in the news sometimes and interesting conversations or encounters with friends.

His layout is very simple and clean which I like. When you first come to his site, you are greeting with a little caricature of him you click on to enter the rest of his site. Once you enter, at the top of his blog is an image of him (I’m guessing) underwater with part of his face cropped out. His about page is fairly short and to the point, which has his interests, what he likes reading, listening to, etc.

For the most part, I liked “This Anchor Song.” There is something about it that makes me want to continue reading. It might be Joephet’s writing style, his experiences in life, or his free attitude and thoughts about whatever is going on at that moment in his mind. My only request is it would be cool to see more of his photos since he mentioned his interest in photography on his about page. The only downside I really found to be a problem was viewing the archives in FireFox and Mozilla. You’ll have to use Safari or IE to see them.

Needless to say, I think it’s something worth reading at least once.

The Anchor Song

I came to “Jenny Doesn’t Like Bombs Mr. President” expecting some type of pundit blog about Jenny’s dislike for the U.S. President’s destructive policies. Instead I found a confusing weblog that doesn’t have any point, no original content, no binding message nor groupthink.




During my initial perusal I suspected the posting functions were intended to fashion a community. I was wrong. If this was supposed to be a community it wasn’t obvious. There were no threads. All posts were disconnected. There were no categories or any logical groupings of the posts. None of the posts had any themes in common. There wasn’t even a bi-line, catch phrase or weblog description for the blog.

The “JDLBMP” weblog is based on a standard modblog template that includes posts by others, Chatterbox, an indecipherable poll, some usage stats and random links. While I initially saw possibilities for creating a community I couldn’t find any theme or central reason for the blog.

If the theme and goal of the weblog is random thoughts and comments from friends, then the site might be considered successful. I clicked away totally clueless.

Jenny Doesn’t Like Bombs Mr. President

It’s always an enjoyable experience when a weblog can be read from its beginning to its current state without any desire to stop. The Danz Family blog, however, is one that falls into that category.

As the site finishes loading, which is does quite quickly, readers are met with an image of the American flag. A precursory glance around the site brings up what has become a standard Blog Moxie weblog design. The sidebar gives links a navigation area where readers can peruse the rest of the Danz family website. My personal favorite portion of the sidebar is definitely the random adorable photos that rotate in and out of little Drew, who is a focal point throughout the entire weblog.

The navigation part of the site leads readers into several different aspects of what Don, the author of DanzFamily.com, enjoys and finds interesting. Different portions of the site are filled with video clips and pictures garnered from the internet, clips from speeches Don’s found worthwhile of sharing, and huge collection of links from all over the Internet. It’s a nice collection of add-ons to make this site more than “just a blog”.

Don covers a huge array or topics with the blog portion of DanzFamily.com. He’ll throw out updates on the status of the domain – new updates or new stats he’s found interesting. Pictures – mainly candid shots of Don’s family or of the beautiful flowers in his garden – are a regular feature in the day to day posts of this weblog, and by doing that, it gives readers something light to look at and breaks up the constant text that can sometimes overwhelm a new reader to a site.

Like so many other weblogs this time of year, politics has been a heavy topic of blogging for Don as of late. He’s also very well informed enough to touch on several current events or issues that have been brought up in the media, not only giving readers his own opinion, but relaying specific topics they may be learning about for the first time by visiting his weblog.

There’s not a lot I would change about the Danz Family blog. New visitors just finding this weblog will be able to jump right in without feeling lost. Frequent visitors regularly leave comments on Don’s posts and seem to have found a home with this weblog.

Danz Family