Category: Uncategorized

When I saw the pink my first thought was “cute,” in a bubble gum sort of way (note the irony). The next thing I searched for was some kind of “about me” page so I might get a better feel of whom the author really is. Not finding what I was looking for I dive right into the eldest of archives. I cross my fingers and hope this blog isn’t some cheesy teen blog I got suckered into reviewing.



Much to my surprise, Stephanie is a wonderful writer. She ventured to blogger from a place that was once my home, open diary. Her titles are witty thus making it quite easy to find the extremely interesting of the entries. I noticed, however, that even when I wanted to skim I ended up reading the whole thing. Her older entries mirror the thoughts of a teenage girl. She quite possibly writes the same way she would talk if she were talking to a room full of friends. This actually makes the reader feel like a good friend, or long lost friend. She has her little quirks, and saying’s she writes quite often. She writes entries in latin. Mentions an awful lot of people no one else knows about. Chats online with friends she goes to school with. Overall, she reminds me of myself at her age. While there’s a lot of entries that focus mainly on the daily going-on’s in her life, there are the occasional rants that get right down to what she really believes in.



The design is very functional. Considering the blog is hosted by blogspot, the archives all seemed to work, and even links in entries from a year ago still work. The text may be a little hard to read because it is a little small. Older entries kind of run together in large paragraphs making it, at times, hard to follow. The design is simple, but where it lacks in flare, it makes up for in quality.



The author has a “comment” area, but the comments are in a tagboard-like setting. No real way to comment on individual entries. She links to a lot of sites that I’m familiar with, and she writes a bit of fiction. If you actually look around there are photos to view, and many interesting external links to check out.



I couldn’t help but feel utterly sorry for her after reading the initial post about a restarting computer. My desire to help kicked in and I offered a bit of help… or tried to at least. For the most part I enjoyed reading this blog. Its main attraction might be for those closest to her, real life friends who know of the blog’s existence, or even reader’s that fall closer to her age range. All in all, the blog is quite enjoyable. It’s filled with humor and amazing wit. Makes me wish I had a chance to relive high school one more time (but only for a short time).tangents

I wasn’t sure, since this was listed under entertainment, but I thought it might be about Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of Whatever, but it’s actually by/about a guy named Wes Ferguson. Oh.

This is a plain Diaryland template, black background with white lettering, not much visual appeal. This is what he says about it himself: “Well now that I have the new page up, I don’t know what to write about, haha…Clean layout but boring! Hm, yah. Not good.”

I tend to agree. Diaryland’s beginning to irritate me, anyway. I’m pretty sure their original intent was to have a huge, active community of bloggers and make piles of money, which maybe they do, but unless you’re in on the way Diaryland works, you could be missing some good stuff on people’s blogs. These days people are wanting to “get out more,” publicize their work and attract more readers outside their online communities. What I’ve seen on Diaryland blogs makes visitors work too hard to get to the extras and that could discourage people from coming back. I did eventually find the webrings he belongs to and the author’s favorite blogs, and to me these are important in helping to figure out where a blog author’s coming from.

Most of the links here at fergie.diaryland.com link back to other blogs, also by the same guy. The home page also links around to the same blogs, etc. He’s got t-shirts with his name on them, too, by the way. After some hunting around I found the “About” section, which lets us in on the fact he’s written and developed website content, and also has a sex and relationship column for gay men I couldn’t locate at the link given.

What he’s got is a lot of diffused attention going on here. I’m not sure what he wants to accomplish with his little empire of blogs and websites. Now, presumably, since he’s a writer he’s probably using it to promote his work in some way. Unless, that is, he’s one of those writers who believes promotion is beneath him; or (yes, I’ve actually seen this happen) thinks everybody should magically already know about him anyway. Most often what happens with writers is that they just need the light to come on and recognize what they need to do themselves to advance their careers.

He’s often a darned good writer, from what I’ve seen in the entries for this blog — my favorite was the entry on the lost sock orgy. He’s got some interesting ideas on gay rights and other things that perhaps deserve a bigger audience. I just wish there was some more focus. fergie

I did the happy dance when I saw this one come up on the list! I’ve been hoping for this kind of blog to show up for review, since it’s a good example of one of the newer uses of blog technology. It’s not a personal blog, but listed in the news/links category. In this case, Bay Area freelance writer Nino Marchetti is using it as a showcase for his work, while at the same time providing items of interest in his field and the occasional editorial. It’s an active virtual resume. Great idea!

Like so many of these, where the text is the most important thing, it’s hosted on Blogspot using a template. Yes, I know, templates are anathema to traditional bloggers, as our fearless leader, Brent Todd, pointed out on Call For Help today. ;>)

This is a different kind of blog, though. Readers of news-oriented blogs, I’m finding, are mostly interested in sites that load fast, navigate easily, and have good content. The bloggers themselves are either technically-challenged, and sometimes wouldn’t have a blog at all without templates, or have time constraints that don’t allow for creating some of the impressive visual art I’ve seen on more traditional blogs. The result is a plain vanilla visual presentation, with the textual content carrying the show.

You can expect many more of these to come; they’re catching on like wildfire with writers of all kinds. This may be seen as heresy by some; but it appears to be the way things are going these days.

There’s plenty here at Nino Nano Speed to read, and links where I found new things I didn’t know about, and bookmarked for a later look. There’s a newer section called, “Stupid Criminal Tricks,” where he posts the dumb things criminals do to end up on local police blotters. I hope he can keep this feature going! The author’s been maintaining the blog since May 2002, and while not posting everyday as he should, doesn’t leave gaps of too many days or even weeks as some do. His major fields of interest have been crime and business at the local level while freelancing for a newspaper, with the occasional segue into writing on religion, food, or technology.

He’s been smart to keep his focus local and limited to his areas of expertise. Sometimes cyberjournalists try to take on the world, or at least the country, which can leave the readers wondering what the dude’s on about. In this case, there’s no confusion about what you’re going to find here.

Because he’s new at this, and writing for a variety of publications, the writing quality and tone of the blog is uneven. This is a typical problem for freelancers, but eventually it does iron itself out as the writer finds his own voice, and starts to relax with the process.

I’d like to see more of a blogroll — networking is, after all, what it’s all about!

Otherwise, this is a worthwhile blog for anyone interested in this part of the world outside and beyond San Francisco. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good.

Nino Nano Speed

I couldn’t help but drop my jaw when I saw this site. It’s actually quite beautifully designed, and while a blog isn’t only what it looks like I’d like to have hopes that the content will complement the design.



As I always tend to do, I started to read this blog from the humble beginnings. I’ve read many good blogs, I’ve stumbled along many other’s that are mediocre blogs, and a number of really bad blogs. This one falls, without a doubt in my mind, into the good blogs category. The first few entries draw in the reader. You find out much more about the author and the tiny bits of his life. The entries read like short stories with an ending that is short and sweet. It leaves you pondering, wondering what you’ll read next. This author’s entries are scattered with all kinds of subjects and while his mind wanders, he generally stays on topic. His entries are interesting and keep the reader involved.



As I said earlier, the design is beautiful. I had no problem being able to manuever through the site and read everything I needed to. The archives all work, and that’s always a good thing. The grey’s work well with the content of the site. This is also a blog that’s designed to be able to be viewed in lower resolutions as well as higher resolutions.

The author offers a small about me with general information. Nothing extravagant, but informative. He also offers some pictures so you can see who you’re reading about. He has a few webrings that he’s a part of and few outgoing links, but not many. There’s not a lot of extras, but the content definately make up for it.

This blog is not meant for the overly religious or homophobic. He talks about cute boys and various different people he’s in “love” with. This author definately talks about his life, often in details, and sometimes in metaphors. He open and candid with his reader and the reader should approach this blog with the same openness. Go, read, and enjoy it for what it’s meant to be, a glimpse into the life of another.And the Universe Giggled

My initial thoughts about this site were that I would be entering the blog of a hippy and it would be all psychedalia and good karma- after all, mythic flow has that sense to it. This was certainly an erroneous assumption, but in all honesty I am not entirely sure what I found instead.

At first I thought the layout of the site was ridiculously simple, with just a titlebar and the posts, until I discovered substantial linkage starting at the bottom of the page (though to be fair, it starts at the side of the page in the archives). Unfortunately I could find no information about the author or what the point of the blog was amongst the many, many links to be found. I did find another blog by the same author, but I ignored it as I still hadn’t got the hang of this one. The archives could have been easier to navigate too, though this maybe the fault of the blogging system (the name of which I could not ascertain) and thus out of the author’s control. The template isn’t though, and it could do with a bit of rearranging really.

Anyway, being none the wiser from my intial poke around, I had no choice but to crack on with the posts themselves. My first impressions of the writing style were good- the articles were generally amusing and the subjects covered on the front page included sport, religion, blogging and the author’s Mum- a good combination I thought! Some links were included in the postings too which all seemed reasonably appropriate.

Once I got in to the archives though, I seemed to lose my way with it all somehow. Again, knowing nothing about the author to begin with, I could find little in the posts to establish what the whole “feel” of the blog was meant to be- a link to an author profile was sadly defunct. In strictly personal blogs this doesn’t matter as you simply learn about the author’s life as you go along, but there were very few personal entries to be found. Instead there were a lot of theological and political debates, all written in a very academic style. Some were interesting and engaging I admit and the comments helped, but I also must confess that still other’s went over my head completely and I missed the point altogether.

Unfortuantely I found this weblog too inaccessable to give it a higher score, both structurally and in regard to its content. It won’t take much to get it on track- but an About Me page is a must. Once it is clearer what the aims and direction of the weblog are, it will be more enjoyable to explore what are undoubtedly the interesting viewpoints of the author. At the moment though, it is just a collection of random and sometimes difficult posts waiting for a good home.mythic flow – methinks