Category: Uncategorized

Upon entering Will’s Delirium, I am greeted with the startling whispered message: “It’s gonna be okay” I sure hope he’s telling the truth! There is a black background with a stylized graphic of our author. The newest entry is displayed to the right. And there is virtually nothing else on this page. No links, no frills, no errors… well, we’ll see about the errors later. The only other thing on the page is a cryptic countdown to “Freedom”. 53 days and counting at the time of my review. This blog is the epitome of minimalism. A Zen kind of blog if you will.

I began to read the entries beginning with the present. And what emerged as I continued was a deeply introspective young man of a philosophical bent. His entries are intensely honest and very personal. He asks himself big questions and sometimes arrives at answers, but just as often does not. Frankly, this is the closest thing to a truly personal and private journal that I have thus far read for Weblog Review. These entries are more like the things I write in my really real journal, not my blog. In this respect our author is particularly interesting to me.

The writing style is clear and understandable. No obtuse references to nebulous things here. There is no “About Me” page, I found by reading that the author is in college and also works. But these aspects of himself are kept way in the background in the entries I read.
I would have read more but the rather awkward navigation began to get tedious, and finally started to balk. When I clicked on an archive date, the screen went white and it took up to a minute to reload the archive list. After about the 12th time trying to get back there, I gave it up.

The archives go back to February of 2001. That is quite a body of work. I would suggest an easier navigation function for those interested in reading more than just the most recent posts. In the older archived entries there are many graphics that no longer work, which may or may not matter to the content of the entry. I just mention it because there were so many of them.

I might check back in with this blog from time to time, to see how the author is doing in finding answers to Life the Universe and Everything. He certainly is asking all the hard questions.

Will’s Delirium

I really enjoyed reading the entries of this blog. Kevin (the author) is a college student who writes about his every day life, his friends, emotions and a dream that he continues to have.

He continues to have a dream about some mystery girl. According to Kevin, he has been having this dream for quite a long period of time. Reading his posts concerning this dream, I found to be very intriguing. It kind of makes you wait for him to have the next dream to find out what happens. Kind of like a daily soap opera.

Kevin also writes about problems he has been having sleeping, different mood changes he has which he can’t understand etc. I guess you could say his blog is like a soap opera and a mystery novel all rolled up into one. But interesting for the most part. From reading Kevin’s entries, he seems to be trying to discover who he is and what he wants to do with his life. I discovered from reading one of his earlier entries, that he applied for an internship. Hope it really works out for him.

There is nothing spectacular about the design of the blog. But it is very clean and neatly laid out. He has a little rubber duck in the corner of each post (where I don’t see that it has any bearing on the entries.) His archives and links are located on the left hand side of the page.When you click on Kevin’s archives, there are calenders for each one, which is a little different than most blogs. However, I did notice that he doesn’t post too many entries in the run of a month , which was a little disappointing because there was less to read.

If you like a bit of mystery , then this is a blog you should really check out.After these messages…

Jamesyboy has a blog named “The Future’s Bright……” and it’s busier than a busy freeway, something you see on television like, say, in Los Angeles.

Upon coming to the site, you have no idea what’s going on. What do I do? Where do I look? Look at all this stuff! There are links and photos and video links and forums and news feeds and more links and thumbnail photos of friends and blogrolls, blog rings, whew, I’m exhausted just relaying it all to you. The blog must scroll down a half a mile with all this stuff, stuff, STUFF! Jamesyboy has included a link (and/or photo) of everything he’s ever encountered in his life. Thank God he was born in 1978, otherwise there would only be more links. (I kid.) There’s a nice smiling photo of Jamesyboy in the upper left corner, so I started there.

Jamesyboy is from Reading, England. He likes music and posts some really cool music videos on his site. In fact, from what I could tell, his very first 2 posts from August 2003 were just that–video clips. I suppose they were clips he liked at the time. I quite enjoyed them as well. Recently, he’s given all his posts the name of the So-and-So Experience, as in “The GMail Experience” or “The Improving Fitness Experience.” You learn about his day to day life, commuting to and from work, his friends, their weddings and what it’s like to be Jamesyboy in Reading. While not earth-shattering by any means, I love to get slices of life such as this. And, yes, I suppose all the hundreds of thousands (I exaggerate for effect) of links he has up and down both sides of his blog ARE part of who he is.

Now if Jamesyboy would only ditch about three-fourths of the links/photos on his page, we could find his archives and read about him more thoroughly. I give his site a 2. Lose the clutter, gain a reader!
The Future’s Bright

The Transplant possesses a header that for some strange reason brought to mind the Soviet Union when first I laid eyes on it. I cannot explain, I only report my first impression.

The three column page is more cluttered than I like to see, and is overloaded with blogrolls, tootsierolls, and other rolls. And I have never understood the “recent posts” and “recent comments” lists on blogs. Because most of the time those very same posts appear on the page already. Redundancy is annoying.

I checked into the About page and found out very little about the author, except a list of things he is not. Which does narrow down the possibilities, but did very little to enlighten me.

I plowed through the archives in search of our author. Who is he? And what does he want to tell us?

I encountered some very curious entries. Sometimes I had no idea what he was writing about. Even after reading the post two times over, I was left scratching my head. There are a LOT of links. Nay, at times there are absurd numbers of links. And often when you click on them, they lead to obscure bits of unsatisfying factoids. With one notable exception. I was amused and bemused by this link and enjoyed my visit there: http://www.utilikilts.com/ Please, check it out.

As to writing style, I think our author has a certain talent. But so often the cryptic nature of the topic under discussion just tripped me up.
Occasionally however there were lucid moments, and those were quite pleasant. Our author seems quite well read, and I think is making literary allusions from time to time, but they are so vague as to be useless to the average reader. Either that, or he is writing an aside to himself, and only he would understand his tongue in cheek monologue.

I read virtually everything on this blog and found myself WANTING to “get” our author, and feeling that if he would just ratchet down the obscure nature of his writing style, I would be able to connect.

It’s a curious place here at the Transplant. Very curious indeed.

The Transplant

Scott Aaron Pepper is a Blogspot site with some pizzazz. A taupe background and rusty brown header blend nicely with the white entry fields. I like the color separation surrounding the two column scheme. It makes for a vista that is easy on the eyes.

The Google ads are a bit of a downer though.

I found virtually no information about our author. But this is not really a personal blog so I suppose it doesn’t matter that much. One is still curious about these things however. A well written about section can help make a connection to your readers.

What we do have here is a movie, TV, music and book review site.
And a very comprehensive one indeed. This blog has been around since January of 2004. In the sidebar I found neatly arranged categories of movie, music, dvd and book reviews complete with photos of same. Very appealing layout.

The entries themselves are clearly written and span an impressive array of current events in the entertainment world. Some are simple announcements of upcoming programs or movies and others are in depth reviews. Our author occasionally writes for Blogcritic also.

There is a special emphasis on American Idol. If you are a fan, this site will most likely appeal to you.

In one post he mentions a street artist that I want to pass on here.
This is worth a look, and I am happy to have been introduced to this artist. www.kurtwenner.com/

As for the writing style, I could not fault him on presentation or content, but I would be remiss if I did not mention, that many of the entries lacked …passion. They sometimes fell into the book report mode. I would have liked a more lively opinion from time to time.

But overall I was as impressed with this blog, in spite of my curmudgeonly attitudes towards entertainment in general and TV in particular. Check it out and see what you think.

scott aaron pepper