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“I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.” This quote, allegedly said in the 1890’s by States Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver, sets the tone for Jim Howard’s ShowMe. Jim Howard, ladies and gentlemen, is going to show you.

Jim Howard describes himself as an “old man”. His blog is a mixture of political views and memories from his past. ShowMe is all written as if Jim is thinking aloud, merely typing whatever thought pops into his head. This can make the posts somewhat difficult to read, as they often repeat themselves or are not grammatically correct. However, if you put in a little effort, you can read about some interesting things.

In the past couple of months, the blog has become more political than anything else, with Jim Howard constantly commenting on the war, CNN, airport security, ect. However, digging back in the archives, ShowMe used to be a very personal blog and with this. In Jim’s more personal postings, he lets his dry sense of humor shine through–

“Hilary and Jimmy are home from the trip to the casino. Hilary lost $150.00 and Jimmy lost $450.00.That is the most Jimmy has lost in a long time..That is a lot of money for him. It maybe good however..He said the other day that he had a dream and that God told him to go each week and he would win $300.00 a week. If Jimmy had won $300.00 it might have been very bad. Maybe he will come down to earth now.”

In addition to the blog, Jim also runs a webcam that can be an interesting journey into voyeurism. It’s worth a look.

ShowMe has an odd design. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be much of a design going on–only some randomly colored tables with yellow-on-black text. There is no table for the archives, so you must rely on reading Jim Howard’s posts in groups of fives in descending order. Navigating the site can be tricky.

Overall, I think perhaps the writing style and design of Jim Howard’s ShowMe could use some tweaking. However, in it’s current state, it can be a good read for those interested in politics, for those interested in the good ‘ole days, or for those who are just interested in Jim. Let him show you.Jim Howard’s ShowMe

I wouldn’t associate the word ‘Drakulita’ with the Rainbow Brite girl, however the author has decided to use her as the main site image imposed on a kitchen tablecloth-like background. My first impressions on the layout are good; colourful, structured, organised, easy to navigate, however I have an unnerving feeling that it may be one of those ‘candy pop-teen sites’ that dominate the web these days. I read through the first page; its not that bad, but its not that good either..

The first post I read states that she’s away for a week or so, and following that, a few non-substantial brief posts including links to quizzes, threads and also a page of ‘100 things about Drakulita’. A great vehicle to discover more about her. I skim read a few & they illustrated the life of a normal teenager; aspirations, music and quotes.. from artists; namely Alisha’s Attic and Norah Jones. There are also quite a few baby pictures of her which are also sweet, but I can’t say that there was anything there which particularly drew me.

The blog is laced with a few animated emoticons which makes a difference and goes well with the theme, however they can be slightly annoying after a while. In attempt to view the March archive (the other archive pages seem fine), I got a bunch of gobbledy gook before the actual entries, which implies that something has seriously gone wrong with the template or publishing program. This put me off reading the entries themselves as the format was destroyed but as I continued I realised that much of the content was the same. Obviously its all focused around the author and her friends however a visitor may find it difficult initially to settle in with the content as she mentions several different people with little indication of who they are at times.

I finally take a look at the ‘about’ page, and learn she’s an 18 year old girl called ‘Raquel’ or ‘Quel’ and where the peculiar name ‘Drakulita’ came from. (Some of this info is on the main page anyway, however this is in more detail). The page also contains a variety of group pictures & baby pictures and proves rather interesting. Also appreciate the basis of her layout ’18 and counting’, which I’d advise reading. I guess its easier to relate to her finally ‘becoming’ of age and expressing that on the layout by illustrating it with old and new pictures of herself and her friends.

General impression I have of this site is that although she’s come of age, she’s holding onto her childhood memorabilia, which is brilliant. In the future I’d like to return to the site and see some evidence of maturation in both her writing and layout. The blog proves great communication to those who know her (on and offline), but for any external visitor it’s not necessarily an incentive to return or even get involved in. Unfortunately some of the subjects I’ve read, I may have related to about 5 years ago, but now it is of little interest.drakulita: eighteen and counting.

The first thing I noticed about Digitalbranch.net is the strong Christian lean that’s evident from the introduction
splash page. The weblog describes itself as “One man’s thoughts, poetry, and writings – an attempt to reach
humanity and the people of God” and there’s a quote from Jeremiah as well as several Christian oriented webring
memberships. The site is owned by Mark Jedrzejczyk and it’s been online for quite a while.

The archives dates back to October 2002, but the “first” post on the 8th of October goes into the hosting
troubles that Mark has encountered, resulting in the site being offline for a period of time. The pre-October 2002
archives are not fully up yet, but Mark has done a good job in re-posting several of the more noteworthy entries.
He’s also clearly marked the re-posts as such (usually with a header detailing the original post’s timeframe) and
I found this to be a nice touch.

The blog posts are mostly about issues related to Christianity and Mark’s poetries and stories, which also
tends to have a biblical motif, from my subjective opinion. This can limit the site’s potential audience, but I
found it interesting to read about Mark’s struggle with depression during the end of 2002 and early 2003 (from
what I can see) and his ways of dealing with it within a Christian context. Mark might take exception with this
though, as he mentions that “sad” would be a better adjective and “wanderer” an even more suitable one in his 9th April 2003 post.

I’ve also found his commentaries to be interesting, particularly the one in February 2002 regarding
“apostolicity” and his views about atheism and the meaning of life in May 2003. I consider myself a Christian and
I’m fairly familiar with the scripture, so I can relate to Mark’s posts, although his views are slightly more
fundamentalist than mine. Unfortunately, the blog does not get updated very often, each month averages about 10
posts, but most of the posts are well thought out writings, and that somewhat makes up for the irregular posts.

Besides the main blog, there’s also a sidebar with links to articles, poetry and stories that Mark has
written. There’s a very nice feature in those individual categories where the “last updated” date is listed on the
top. This is a good way of telling if the menu items have been recently added to, and it certainly seems to be
something that will be appreciated by the readers.

The articles are further subdivided to General Writings (issues related to Christians), General Textual
Studies (Mark’s writings on various books in the bible), General Topical Studies (history of Christianity and
other related issues), and Mark’s senior paper. There is an article in General Writings titled “The Problem of
Christian Apathy” which I felt was a very interesting read. I can see that this is a common occurrence in many
Christians today, including myself, and I was moved by this article because of the strong resonance the subject
has with me.

Revelation is my favorite book in the bible (as can be seen from my site’s URL) and I enjoyed Mark’s studies
on that book entitled “Exegesis of Revelation 13:1-8” in General Textual Studies. Most of his writings have a
bibliography at the end, which is another nice touch as interested readers can follow up the topic based on his
citations. The poetry section is nicely populated as well, but I can’t really comment on poetry since I don’t have
any background in this. The stories section has a couple of stories, and I recommend that interested readers take
a look at “Anguish”, which I interpreted as a metaphor for life after death.

The other links from the right hand sidebar is a Recommended Reading list and a message board. I actually read
Mark’s recommendation on C.S. Lewis’s “A Grief Observed” before reading his blog, and that was where I first
noticed Mark’s experience with sadness (to use his term). I have heard a lot about this book, but unfortunately,
my readings of C.S. Lewis’s works is limited to his Narnia series that I read during my childhood. The message
board is a good feature, but it’s not being used much by the readers of the site. The final items on the sidebar
are links to webrings, an awards section (where Mark lists the web awards his site has acquired) and a search
feature.

The design of Digitalbranch.net is clean and efficient, I liked the small sidebar and the “directory style”
browsing feature. By this, I’m referring to the hyperlinks that appear at the top when browsing into the
categories (eg Articles / General Writings / How to Pray). This allows for fast and easy navigation even when
browsing “deep” into the menu items. This is a very nice touch indeed.

The site is also optimized for users with a lower screen resolution, which is a rarity nowadays. The only
“flaw” I could find in the design is that I was expecting the large banner on top to be clickable and I’ve clicked
on the static image in vain several times before realizing that navigation to the main page is provided by the
“Home” link in the sidebar and also the top of blog pages. Design is not my forte, but I feel that the large
banner would be an ideal anchor to the main page.

Well, the site’s emphasis on Christian related issues would limit the appeal to readers who’s interested in
those issues, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Mark has thought about expanding the site’s focus to include
more subject matters, but decided that doing that will involve writing about “issues are not generally near and
dear to my heart”. I respect Mark’s decision and I agree that having a strong focal point on Christianity has its
appeal to similar minded readers. I recommend that everyone clicks through to Digitalbranch.net if you’re even
slightly interested in religion (and even if you’re not). At the very least, it’ll be an insight into Mark’s
devotion, which I’ve found to be nothing less than impressive. I’m giving it a 5 for the unique content and the
interesting articles and stories.

Digitalbranch.net

For most of us growing up in the late 80’s and early 90’s we had the Simpsons. I remember when they were still on the Tracy Ulman show and the drawings were rough and choppy. And today they are what they are, and there’s a huge fan base… How can you not love a site that has Ned Flanders when you first come to view it!?! Not to mention the quote of “Where there is nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the short coming’s of others.” Though I suppose you’d have to have a good sense of humor to actually find that funny or amusing.

When I first started reading the blog to do this review, there was a post about censorship in textbooks in school, and the ridiculousness of the severity to which the publishers are now going to maintain the “politically correctness” of those books. This post was. highly. intriguing. He’s a writer, and shares the new chapters with his readers, which makes things completely all the more interesting to read his every day posts. I don’t know if it’s me, or just the writer in me, but I find that people who are writer’s or aspiring writer’s actually have some silly and strange stuff to say on their own blogs. And this author is no exception to the rule.

He has the occasional rant about things we’ve all been ranting about before, but Rob seems to say the same things we’ve all said with a different kind of pizzazz and spunk. When I first started reading I was sure that this guy was like more people my age, considered generation x-ers, but he’s actually a little bit older than myself. I saw a lot of the same things you’ll see on the “younger” generation blogs. Not a bad thing, since this author actually has a laid-back mentality, which shows in his writings. But that didn’t take away from his insanely real and humorous writing style. He has a sense of humor only other sarcastic people might understand. People might actually find him offensive to a degree. I, on the other hand, find him ingeniously entertaining.

As with any other blogspot blog, there are a few problems with loading and archives actually showing up, load time and things of that nature. Its sites like these that make me want to offer subdomains for nothing, and just host for the sake of putting really good blogs out there to share with the world. However, once you do get the archives to work you’ll find some serious gold there (May 8 #3 & #15).

The design works well. The only problem that I ran across is that if the font appears to be too small, you can just make the text size of the browser bigger in order to read it better, you’re basically stuck reading the small print.

The majority of this blog is filled with witticisms and hilarity overflowing. If you want something real and yet still amusing, this is the place to go. I found myself highly obsessed with menial things like his driving for 10 hours and all he had to say about work. You’ll find fun for the whole family here, only if you have a good sense of humor. The New Empire Lounge

Stennieville.com was enjoyable and certainly taught me quite a few things about movie appreciation. The author, Heidi Sackerson, is definitely one of the more genuine movie gurus I have met. Online, that is.

This website has 2 main blogs. One is a movie blog, which was renamed “Black & White World” after Heidi noticed a similarity between the original name and another movie blog’s name. “Black & White World” basically contains reviews on movies and links to other movie related sites, and it goes hand-in-hand with “Movies” – a list of movies she has watched. The “weblog” is a collection of daily thoughts and chuckle-worthy events jotted down by Heidi (check out that entry where Heidi laments about her coffeemaker breaking down on her and the other entry where she muses on men promising to fix her broken kitchen drawer).

The layout is simple, quite user-friendly and easy to navigate around. There’s a collage of photos used for a banner with the blog title “Stennieville.com”. The blogs are updated regularly and the “weblog” has a weekly “surveys” (i.e. Monday Mission, Friday Five). The writing is pretty smooth, and at times, the drama portrayed in the writing is most apt.

On the whole, I would recommend this blog for true movie fans (think “Chicago” and “It’s a Wonderful Life”, not “Crossroads” or “Pluto Nash”). It makes a good personal blog too, so if you’re into both movies AND literal voyeurism, this blog is a double delight with a cherry on top.
stennieville