Category: Uncategorized

My initial impression was, “My goodness. Not another wordy what-is-life-about blog.” As I read on, I am glad to say that I was wrong. This is a group blog, where a team of 3 writers – Sam Kleinman, Chris Knittel and Peter McCabe, share their thoughts and individual lives with the readers (though the main contributors are Sam and Chris). The meticulously written entries, though not without the occasional spelling error, could get wordy at times but these entries brought me into the writers’ lives. While information on the writers is barely there, I learnt more about them as I continued to read the blog.

It’s quite a pain trying to find out more about this blog and its authors. The heading of the blog, “TealArt.com: Don’t worry, we don’t know either“, just gave me a bigger headache. However, a description of this site could be found on the sister site, www.collectivearts.net (which I only discovered through the email addresses listed), “TealArt is a site featuring a log of thoughts, reflections, and introspective essays relating to art, literature, writing, books, and the creative aspect of the world around us.”

The very first entry on the archives, Unsung Heroes, is a tribute to unjustified crimes committed on September 11. It’s a very poignant entry, which tells of Victor Jara, a Chilean man who was executed for singing and writing political songs and poems. Not all entries are of such serious content. Perfect Notebook Bliss is a humorous entry on Sam’s search for The Perfect Notebook, while Chris recounts his experience on being a teacher in a public school as part of a community service program in A View From On High.

The design of the blog is functional, practical and user-friendly. If you don’t like the current layout, you can easily change the skin (an extra which the creators added into the site). On the common blog, you usually only get archives for the posts, but on TealArt.com, you get archives to the quotes and links that were ever posted on the site. Another plus point is that, all the entries are categorised into sections, so you can choose what you want to read.

In conclusion, I really like this blog. It’s highly intellectual, professional and yet manages to remain personal. This is a blog that grows on you as you continue reading. I highly recommend it to readers who appreciate writing that has substance.
TealArt

As the ‘about page’ goes, Jacob met Julie in a chatroom, fell in love and moved from Denmark to live with her in the USA. I’ve come across several sites telling very similar stories and as cheesy as they may sound, they are pretty interesting, firstly because they give original insights into a county’s cultures, and secondly because the people often seem as normal as they come, and how many non-crazy people have you met in chatrooms recently?

Jacob’s about page is pretty comprehensive, which I found useful as it was only in October that he started blogging in English. As I don’t speak Danish I felt like I was missing a lot, and I like to see how a weblog began. Luckily the about page filled in most of the gaps.

So why am mentioning the about page so early on in the review? To me it was of the most interest. Jacob says of the page, “You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to but it will make the content in my web log make a little more sense.” It certainly did. Most of the entries to the site are about day to day life. Nothing dramatic, just mainly work, films/movies and eating out. I think you can get much more out of it once you know where Jacob’s coming from.

The layout of A Dane Abroad is nicely done in blues. It’s not too adventurous but this is not meant to be an adventurous site so it works well, giving space to the writing. There is also a well laid out gallery with lots of pictures ranging from cooked turkeys to kittens [fortunately not cooked].

The only problem I had with the writing was that for a personal weblog it didn’t get personal enough. The writing always seems a little detached from the author, and details such as the latest videos watched or the weather are given much more often than feelings or opinions. Of course this is just a personal preference of mine, my own inquisitiveness. I like personal weblogs to divulge everything, and some authors don’t want to do that, which is fine and doesn’t mean for one minute that the site is any less readable. Jacob still gives us a fascinating insight into his life and it’s well worth a look.
weblog from a Dane abroad

Tales from the City, written by a guy who got stuck with a 646 area code while the rest of New York City has the 212 area code, is a real treat to read. The fact the he doesn’t have the “cool” area code didn’t phase me once! 🙂

I started at the very beginning of this weblog, reading each entry, and I really didn’t want to be disturbed while reading it. I found myself very easily reading through post after post, looking forward to whatever it is the author might post about next.

The layout’s a basic layout – the journaling content on one side, and various outside links on the other. Something that jumped out as unique to me, though, were the different phrases the author uses for the comments people can leave after each entry, giving the site a little more of added New York-esque feel to it. If nobody has commented, you see “silence in Manhattan”. With only one comment, you see “One car alarm is going off somewhere”, and once the masses start throwing in their two cents worth to his posts, the particular number of comments left give you the number of “people are waiting with me on the subway platform”.

The different topics the author touches on are on a level of understanding and entertainment that just about anyone can enjoy. Some of the posts I enjoyed the most were the great experiences he’s had meeting absolutely everyone from reality TV stars to being Anne Heche’s assistant at an awards show. And as if his own website wasn’t enough, I can’t tell you how sites he’s linked in various entries that I visited and thoroughly enjoyed what I found there, too.

Know what this site didn’t have? An “About the Author” section. This, however, is one of those rare weblogs that can go without because every day and with every entry you learn more and more about the author, and find out more of how he is and what he is then you ever could in a autobiographical description.

With Tales from the City, I can live vicariously through the author, meeting all of these famous people I know I’d never meet in a million years. That’s what good weblogging is all about, isn’t it?

tales from the city

The interesting title sparked my attention from the get-go, and that made me ultimately curious to do this review. The first thing I noticed was the quite by Ghandi, “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”

She’s a wonderful storyteller in her blog entries, which makes for a pleasant read. She has a wonderfully light sense of humor (dressing up cats and Engrish). She posts links to things of interest, and I mean really, honestly interesting. Her entries are plotted like mini-stories, and you can’t help but find something touching and real in them.

The design is very pleasing to the eye, and easy to read. Though she may not have done all of the design work herself, it’s a unique layout that flows very nicely with her quote. The colors seem to promote a sense of tranquility, which you find in her writings as well as the other parts of the blog.

She provides a commenting system, which is always great for reader interaction. She also has a second “sideblog” (April 16) that seems a bit more random than the Dim Sum Diaries. Archives only go back to mid-March, though you’ll find some very touching entries (March 20) that appear to be fiction; only they’re very real. There is a balance between the funny and ironic, and the touching and tender moments.

The author links to many great sites that I found interesting and thankful to have had a chance to experience them as I read through the site. Her site is poignant and alive with her writing. Her about me page explains why she started a blog in the first place.

Everything flows together like a well-written novel, and that makes reading countless entries all the easier. She’s an asset to the blogging community and a joy to read.The Dim Sum Diaries

I started looking at “Hi. I’m Black!” and was looking forward to a good read. Almost every blog I’ve reviewed here has been filled with well written posts, and an interesting perspective. Most of them have had a nice design/layout.

The design of this blog is nice. It’s Moveable Type, with some nice personal touches in color and placement. The navigation is easy, and the color choices are nice, excepting the mouseover color. It blends in to the background too much. The rest of the look is a nice blend of contrasting colors making it easy to read.

I can’t say enough about the content of “Hi. I’m Black!”. Really, I can’t find the words to say much of anything about the site.

Oh wait, I have a few: bland, boring, uninspired, weak, uninteresting…

The author makes a few pointed statements, but doesn’t bother to back them up. For example, in a post called “I’m Angry”, he just rants about his co-worker who ratted him out. He never makes a point other than that he has finally learned his lesson with this person. There are several short articles about a Team Blog he wants to start which are probably better suited to email. In an article called “Whoa!”, he starts to talk about the situation in the mid-east, devoting three paragraphs to it, summing it up in his third paragraph (actually two sentence fragments connected with an ellipsis) by saying he likes the writing of the author of the site where he read about the problem. It makes you wonder if he actually has an understanding of the problems there to give an informed, well written opinion.

In one of the better written articles on baseball, he starts talking about facts and figures, even mentioning the National Leage MVP from 1998, without mentioning the name of this person. It is an attempt at journalism from the site’s author, but not well done. If you’re going to tell me about someone’s accomplishments, at least tell me who that person is.

Another article mentions his disgust for the emergence of a new product. The product is a bobble-head doll of Justice Rehnquist. As of this sentence, I’ve written more about the entry, than the author of the site wrote about his disgust. You’d think someone could give a little more thought to something which gets him hot under the collar.

The site’s author puts it best in his site design, where it tells you about who made the entry. Instead of the typical “submitted by” or “posted by”, it very aptly says, “babbled by”.

To be fair, you’ll find a few posts where the author finds something to write about, and does really dig his fingernails into it. However, those posts are few and far between. Reading some of the older posts from when he started, you can see the learning curve he went through. It’s nice to see how someone can grow and learn, and it appears as though the author reads his own work since there are signs of improvement from the early days of the site.

This blog is not worth your time. However, if you’re the type of person who sees a dead rat and is morbidly curious, you might find some fascination with it. Sadly, it will take some time before this site becomes one worth reading on a regular basis.

I’d like to come back to this blog in a month or so and update this review to show me how wrong I’ve been about the writing. Seeing the improvements the author has made on his own, I hope he takes this review as the impetus to make improvements in his writing. Here’s to hope!Hi. I’m Black!