Category: Uncategorized

Visually the site, Demob Happy Teacher, is simple. It is a slightly modified blogger template which I’m sure you have seen before. The colors are a soothing combination of greens. The blog is written by a teacher named Jenny who resides in lovely Wrexham, Wales, United Kingdom. The earlier blog entries are mostly about her experiences in teaching and other work related issues, more recent entries are much less work related and accessible for a broader audience. Her non-teaching topics include her garden, dog, her driving angst with the Runcorn Bridge, computers (the entry entitled ‘computers!!’ was rather funny), aging (and honest reflection on aging), spiders (big ones to by the looks of it – eek!) sheep and her experimentation with blogger code.

Jennytc seems like a good natured, fun person, and this character is reflected in her writing. Most of the entries are pretty light hearted and maintain a light, somewhat humorous tone. This is best exemplified in her entries about the many spider
invasions. ‘They’ve been reading my blog – they must have been, and now they’re ganging up on me. It’s an organised assault – on my nerves! This morning’s specimen had quietly insinuated itself into the bedroom. There it hung, swaying slightly, on the bedroom ceiling, grinning triumphantly – well it probably was. I didn’t actually get close enough to pick up on facial expressions.. The entry ‘Find your perfect mate :)’ (which is also highly recommended) is also funny. I enjoyed going through the photos she has in her photoblog section. Sheep are funny. BahhhHHH…

The author seems to really enjoy blogging. Her enthusiasm comes through in her many stories (she is now touring France) and observations about life. The blog is amusing and expressed in an open and honest manner. Clearly as Jennytc continues with her html experimentation I’m sure there will be various changes and improvements to the site. I’m not a big fan of a bunch of unconnected links and different looking banners on the sidebar. It seems Jennytc recently added a bunch of them… such as the weather pixie, phase of the moon, clock, weather and quotes. I just find it makes a site look kitschy unless you can tie them together somehow it makes a site look very inconsistent visually.

Overall an enjoyable read. I’m sure most readers would find something enjoyable reading Demob Happy Teacher. A great spirit, I’m curious as to where it will taker her.

Demob happy teacher

There’s something to be said about a site that just give off a very clean appearance. Orange Haired Boy does just that. It loads in Internet Explorer quickly and flawlessly, greeting readers with black text on a white background. Apropos, the color chosen for the many links throughout the site is orange. The site design, while it is the standard three column layout, was the first thing I noticed, and the first of many things at this site that I enjoyed.

There are the typical sidebar links – a brief about section with a link to even more details about the Orange Haired Boy named Lewis, a webcam, archives, and all those good bits of blog tidbits. For the extremely curious about this blogger’s habits, there’s even sections where you can keep tabs on how many keystrokes Lewis has taken at his computer. Dare I say Lewis might just be teetering on that line of technology-obsessed? From reading his entries, I don’t think he’d mind.

Lewis started blogging at orangehairedboy.com in June 2003, according to his very first post. From there, I just kept reading and reading. It wasn’t difficult to find myself clicking through different links in Lewis’s posts. Most of the posts are very light-hearted, and are often only a short paragraph or two of text. This made Orange Haired Boy a very quick blog to completely and enjoyably navigate through.

Spelling and grammar are strong points of this weblog, which is another aspect that probably makes it so easy to read. When he does make a small spelling mistake, his friends and readers of this blog are sure to point it out, and Lewis certainly takes it in stride.

Right now, living in Florida, Lewis is dealing with the results of the recent string of hurricanes and tropical storms that have battered the state he lives in, as well as training for a brand new job he was very excited about landing. Good luck with both of those new items, Lewis!

While the weblog portion of the site is definitely the main attraction, if you will, I would be remiss to not make mention of the rest of the site. Webloggers will definitely find the scripts portion of the site as a great addition, which include password protecting particular entries and a way to keep track of entry popularity. Lewis writes these scripts himself. I know I’m planning implementing a few of them on my own weblog.

Pop culture, technology/blog goodies, current events – there’s honestly a little something for everyone to read throughout the year and a half of archives. While this Orange Haired Boy doesn’t necessarily get too detailed about many of the things happening in his life, it is easy for readers to not only breeze through his posts, but to also feel a common connection with Lewis just as a regular type of guy.

orange haired boy

At first when I opened up this page, I was struck by the sheer stark simplicity of it. White background, black text & simple graphic line drawing. The only problem was, I couldn’t tell if what I was reading, was an introduction or their latest post.

The second thing that disappoints me is that this first post (as it turns out) was done 2 days ago (not today), and the one before that a whopping 21 days ago. Surely the point of having a blog is to keep it regularly updated so that the regular readers keep coming back, instead of clicking their ‘reload’ or ‘refresh’ buttons in the vain hope that something else, and preferably something colorful will appear. Alas, it does not.

Upon scrolling down, a glimmer of excitement grips me as I see another picture. A monochromatic map of California depting the San Andreas fault line. I find this mildly interesting for a short while, and move on quickly to find out more about this person in their archives…hmmm where are they?

Now I’m starting to feel like a mom who’s kid goes off to college and never calls…The posts are extremely far apart, and when this person does post, it’s not earth-shattering enough to make me want to come back and see more. This blog requires color, a little investment of time, and well, quite frankly a life.Revolution Dove

A pretty pink daisy awaits you as you enter this blog. The entire blog is primarily pink and green, easy to navigate and follow. It has way too many links in its sidebar (including the ever-present and grating Ads by Gooooogle and not one but FOUR “Your Ad Here” adbrite ads). As if those are not enough to clutter up a sidebar, there is a large blogroll, archives, “search this site,” credits, previous posts, logos, web rings…the list goes on.

The only thing that made no sense to me in the sidebar was the “Recent Searches” category. I assume these are things people who visit the site have searched for, but I really don’t see the need for this. Perhaps that is just me and my need to see less mess in a sidebar–it’s hard to say. However, even with all of this stuff (read: clutter), the site’s pleasantness is not lost among it. That’s a good thing.

I truly enjoyed the time spent at this blog. So do a lot of other people because you can tell this is a very trafficked site. I liked Busy Mom’s writing style (especially the family’s conversations that she relays). Check out a funny conversation called “Oh Great.” Or how about ‘the talk’ she was going to have with her daughter but her son seemed a more imminent target in “Wait, that answer didn’t follow my script.” Busy Mom has been writing for quite some time and it shows.

Even if you’re not a busy mom, you will enjoy hearing her stories, reading her thoughts, and sharing in just a bit of her life. Busy Mom Blog

My first thought before I entered The Anchor Song was, “What the heck am I going to find here?” I have never heard of an anchor song so I was a little confused. So with some confusion in mind, I dove into the site.

Now I don’t know what people’s fascination is with splash pages, but I do not like them. There is not a purpose for them. This one is a hand drawn sketch of a person, presumably the author. Clicking on the little guy takes us to the simplistic designed blog. The text is in the center of the screen with an image of a partial man under water. Ok. Not quiet sure if that goes back to that anchor man thing or not.

The first post I read was this one which was a very graphic adult posting about the author being with another male. Since I wasn’t expecting this kind of post, nor the level of detail, I was confused yet again.

Reading through the posts you really start to get a feel for who the author is, his friends and other people in his life. Almost all the posts are of the “this is what I did” type, but are told very well. Each post has a high level of detail which is amazing. I really got into how some people were just called by the first letter of their name (J for instance) while others had their full name. My impression after reading through almost all the posts was that the people who just had a one letter name were done so to protect them which I found to be a nice gesture.

My absoulte biggest complaint about this site is the lack of navigation support. Well let me clarify. In order to navigate to any part of the site (About, Contact, or Archives) you must select it from the small little drop down in the last post on that page. Trying to read the archives in Firefox is not going to happen and will result in a 404 error. To write this I had to go into IE and view it. I should note that the archives work fine in Safari for the mac. Not sure what causes this problem, but it is a huge one.

The navigation needs to be changed. This site has a great story to tell but it is ruined by the fact that you almost have to take 2 steps back for every one forward. I have changed the category from personal to adult as I believe that only adults will really get the author in addition to some graphic details of things. Overall I enjoyed reading The Anchor Song, but was disappointed by the lack of navigation. As far as what The Anchor Song refers to, my only guess is that it is referring to Sailors, but I could be wrong.
The Anchor Song