Category: Uncategorized

“Its better to have tried than not at all. The finished product might suck, no one may like it or you, but at least you tried and that means you will at least have a foundation for you future success.” Those are Cliffords thoughts on his newly created weblog on November 18th. Personally, I didn’t think it sucked at all.

Clifford’s Weblogsite is fairly new, just about two weeks old, and this site probably would fair a lot better had the author waited a little longer to submit it. I very much did like what is there though. The author writes that he is using his blog as memoir and it has certainly started out that way. His second entry deals with a situation he is in where he is taking a girl, that he’d rather not, to a city wide winter formal. That post in itself is worth a trip to this site, its both hilarious and very intropsective.

The site design is probably one of the most unique I’ve seen. At first I thought it was kind of cumbersome, but the more time I spent there, I started to realize that its design is really user friendly. When first arriving at Clifford’s Weblogsite you are met with the latest entry (and a pretty handy headline telling you when the site was last updated). To see the other posts you have to follow the archives where you are met with a sub-directory where each entry has a brief description and a ranking on how entertaining or important you might find each post. The author was pretty accurate with his rankings as far as I am concerned. When you go to a particular entry, and the subject of the entry is a fairly long one, the author summarizes the subject and than give you a link if you want to read more about it. Sounds cumbersome at first, but pretty handy once you really see how it works.

There’s daily thought section to this blog, and what looks like some other sections such as links, essays and musing, photos, that haven’t been yet created. There’s an interesting section called “ads” where the author puts those required links when you use a guestbook or other service. Thats a pretty nifty idea.

I’m giving Clifford’s Weblogsite a 2, I wish I could give it a better rating, but there is just not enough there to earn anything else. In my opinion the author should have waited a little more before submitting his site, and I hope he resubmits it in the future. I enjoyed the little that was there so much I’ll probably keep tabs on this jounal and rereview a couple months from now. 2 stars, check it out.

Clifford’s weblogsite

There’s a lot to read here. Most of Will’s entries are very long. They’re detailed, and you know exactly what he’s talking about. I could easily see, though, if a reader isn’t interested in what the author may be talking about at that particular time,

Reading the entry about the time just days ago that Will spent with his girlfriend in Minneapolis and how much he cherished that small amount of time they spent together was just one of the many entries that really forced anyone reading the site to be able to form some type of personal connection with Will – feeling his pain of leaving her, his joy of just being close enough to touch her, and all the other emotions described those few paragraphs.

My first thought of this site was on its appearance – it seemed to dark and dreary as it loaded in my browser. However, the different shades of blues and purples that are used compliment each other very well and it does make for a serene appearance.



Of course, it would have been nice to get an idea of who this “Will” guy was. He’s a student and we find that out right away, but I still have tons of unanswered questions about this guy and would have loved to learn more about him personally.

This is still a relatively new weblog. I could only find archives dating back just a couple of months. As time goes by, I can only see more and more people become regular readers of this particular weblog.

Will’s Journal: Blankness, nothingness, everything

Anie is your typical angst ridden, why-me, hates-the-world, miserable teen who expresses her misery quite well in her blog. In spite of her constant over the top melodrama, her blog is honest, emotional and full of entries like this:

“I wish I could go back and relive my life. Life used to be so good. Now I don’t see the use for living. Life is so depressing anymore. I used to be so happy. I used to say I wanted to be so grown up. Now I look back and say I want to be a kid again. Life is too stressful. I miss the days when I could hang out with friends and we didn’t have anything to worry about. Now there is so much to worry about, and I fear my worries will lead to walking pneumonia (or pneumonia).”

Many entries are of the “I’m depressed” sort and they get tiresome real fast. Some entries contain a little more substance when she adds a political quote or rants about abortion, occasionally she has some poetry… but usually she is just depressed. She is always depressed. I think she should see a doctor or choose her words more carefully. Depression is a serious illness and tossing the word depression around for sympathy, attention or effect is wrong.

I think this is a blog other angst ridden teens might want to read, perhaps they could relate. The rest of us, however, won’t find this blog too satisfying. There aren’t many entries either, the archives go back barely two months. (Just enough to avoid the TWR 2 star archive crunch) The comments to her blog entries (and her subsequent responses to the comments) are fairly interesting:

“everyone acts slightly different around different sets of people, it’s not you, it’s just the effect those people have on your personality, you might just show one side more than others around different people…don’t fret
kate | 12.24.02 – 3:41 pm | #”

I guess, but… …just so dramatically???
I guess it’s part of being “enthusiastic personafied”… …or maybe I’m just depressed. Hmm…
Anie | 12.26.02 – 11:32 pm | #



A few things…Edit the contact code it reads “mailto:enter your email address here”. It makes a poor impression. Admittedly I use Word’s spell checker a lot. My spelling is awful. Why can’t others cut, paste and check their entries? Anie should learn this skill as well. Typical teen angst. Grrr. OI-vey.
OI

I’m such a big fan of the names of weblogs. That’s usually the key factor that drags me into checking one out, and “Urban Scrawl” just had that catchy, must-see flair for me. After entering it, I noticed that this was a site I’d reviewed only months before and at that time was going by “Demon Blog”. “Urban Scrawl” fits this site much better.

There were very nice resource links to other website that have some extremely helpful tools for the rest of us involved so heavily in webpage or weblog design. And once again, I spent entirely too much time digging around in the games section of the site. I spent a good two hours playing Pac Man, Yahtzee, Tetris, and Mini-golf, so that portion of the site is yet another reason to stick this in your bookmarked sites.

Since the past review, it seems like the good things are still there – the random quotes between each entry, the extensive informational link about the author and the site, definitely the links to the uber-addictive games.

Marcus is a great story teller and because of this gift, it makes each of his weblog entries enjoyable to read. While they may be several paragraphs long at times, they read very quickly and quite conversational. Posting, as of late, has become a little sporadic, but every weblog goes through those stages.

The design of the site is completely the opposite of what it was before. In the previous review, Marcus used black and white to make his design statement. Now, thanks in part to the opening graphic on the site, you’re met with white text on a black graph-type background that gives it a very sleek appearance.

Urban Scrawl was a good site before, and it’s a better site now. The more I read, the more I like. That, at least to me, convinces me that this is a weblog worth coming back to over and over.

Urban Scrawl

This is a normal weblog of a 19 year old normal girl named Brenda living in Alberta having a reasonably normal life. No huge drama, no big long stories of how so-and-so told so-and-so this or that, and nothing that makes you roll your eyes in disgust as you try to figure out why this person is sharing everything with the public. The content of the weblog, however, is anything but normal.

I was able to read through Moot Point very easily. Brenda’s posts are short and to the point, but still manage to add in a big of personality with each subject matter. There are days when you can find several posts, and there are times when the author goes a few days at a time without posting. This just goes to show that Brenda doesn’t just throw words up on a screen for the sake of posting, but just posts when it’s something that will either entertain or inform the people that are always stopping by her site.

There’s no way I would have guessed the author of this weblog was 19. It’s so well written. I know there are 19 year olds out there that write well, and Brenda is, by far, one of those prime examples. She knows this, of course, and while her dream of being a literary standout by the age of 20 is only a few months away, I personally feel like there’s tons of talent with Brenda’s writing. If readers enjoy her posts as much as I did, then there’s certainly potential for much greater things.

I found a post about grey that was kind of interesting, when looking at the layout of the site. Maybe this is when the current layout rolled out? The quote was “Dull grey day. Dull grey pants. Dull grey job.” And the only thing that was missing was a mention of the dull grey background use for the site. While the color of it may be dull, it’s actually a very sleek looking layout. The white text reads well on the background. Brenda went for a complete simplistic look with this design, and achieved that very well.

This is a site I can easily see readers becoming a fan of. Brenda keeps Moot Point entertaining, whether it’s by posting specific song lyrics that relate to the kind of day or situation she’s dealing with, or just by sending us to a link she’s found on the web somewhere that’s interesting enough to share. Check this one out. After all, “everything else is just a Moot Point”.

moot point