Category: Uncategorized

At first thought I was praying this site wasn’t some mathematical blog. No I haven’t found of those yet, but its bound to happen. Thankfully when I got to Pattern Recognition I was told that the author was a former poet, and now a blogger. Poems have patterns, thus I was happy it wasn’t a math blog.

I’ll start with the design and say that it is just a blogger template. A good one mind you; but it is still a template. It’s the dark and light brown one that looks kind of like I picture parchment and it works well for this author. It almost feels as if this template was designed off of this author’s words, but I know that isn’t true.

Now for the fun part: the weblog itself. The best way I can describe this blog is that friend you have who is always full of energy and has a positive outlook on everything, and talks really loud and fast, and just keeps going and never shuts up and you want to get a word in edge wise but you just can’t and … Ok. I will stop now. Sorry about that. But seriously, this blog reads like a good friend who just likes to talk.

Aisha doesn’t really have a set topic yet that she focuses on so there is no way to say well it is a poetic blog or it is a political blog or all this blog has to offer are those “what type of ____ are you” blogs. Her posts read well together, but taken in can almost seem sporadic. Again this isn’t a bad thing, it is just a quality of that friend we all have I described.

The thing that annoyed me the most was trying to figure out what Dashboard Dashing was. At times she would abbreviate it to DD and of course I though Dungeons and Dragons, but knew I was wrong. Finally in November she explains what Dashboard Dashing is. See in your dashboard for blogger there is a list of recently updated blogs and it is hard to catch yourself on the list because about 10 blogs a second are updated. Dashboard Dashing refers to the blogs on either side of you on this recently updated list. Make sense? This led me to some interesting sites, and if I still used blogger, I probably would be inclined to try my hand at this little game.

Finally we come to the name Pattern Recognition. While originally I thought it was about Math, and then realized it was about poems, I was wrong on both accounts. See Pattern Recognition is a book that she read in July and when she googled the author she found he had a blog, and she didn’t know what one was, and well now we are left with her little blog on the web.

Overall I had a great time at this site. The site read very quickly and easily which was refreshing. I think the fact that the site does read like the friend we all have makes it that much more unique as it comes off as more natural and more real rather than mundane. My only real complaint is that Aisha doesn’t update on a daily basis, of course that could be a bad thing if she did.
Pattern Recognition

This blog makes a great first impression. Jay-B from Texas has photos of himself at the top and the tagline “The only ridiculously opinionated college student you’ll ever need.” Made me laugh.

Jay-B’s blog is only about 6 months old. He started with posts about songs he was listening to and liking. (He is, after all, in college. New music is part of the daily routine in college.) He moved on to other topics about the college highjinx of himself and his friends, for example how his roommate butchered his own hair with clippers (complete with photos) or the saga of his friend Tommy buying cereal with coupons. Again, made me laugh.

The design of the site is mostly clean and well thought out(something I like a lot), but I groaned to see those Google ads at the very TOP of the page. Argh! Move these annoying things, Jay-B, please. His sidebar is well organized, and I liked his search tool that he calls “Snoop In An Organized Manner.” He also lists other blogs he has which include “Jay-B Gets Someone Coffee,” detailing his life as an intern.

Jay-B submitted his site as “humor,” but it is most definitely a personal blog and pretty standard college guy fare.Jay-B Says

When I read the name of this blog was Constant Trek I thought please don’t let it be a Star Trek website. Thankfully it wasn’t. I was informed of this with a splash page which I am not a fan of, but this one caught my eye as it said “A walk from London to Cape Town” and while I don’t know where Cape Town is, I do know where London is so I could try to imagine.

After clicking the splash page I am greeted with what I think should be the splash page and that is the intro page. This page explains that the blog is about Gary and Paula Constant and their long walk – hence the name Constant Trek. Now when I think of a long walk, I think a mile, maybe two. Not for Paula and Gary. They are walking 10,500 miles. Take that in for a minute. 10,500 miles. That is insane.

So by now you can figure out that this blog is about their little walk and is updated at random points along the way. At first I couldn’t figure out how they were going to do it. For some reason I imagined using a solar powered, works everywhere, cell phone with them calling into some place and it recording their posts. Then I came across a post that said something about not sure how long until the next post as we are unsure of the internet cafes. Well that solved that problem.

The posts are about the differences in cultures that they face, the things they see, the things they do, the food they eat. It reads like a very good novel and I found myself caught up in the posts.

Now while there are flaws to this site (splash page) and some design problems I still must give this site a rating of a 5.0. This site is amazing. It reads like a great story and you know it can only get better. My only complaint is also a good thing – they are still on the first part of their trip. Which means little to read now – a lot to look forward to. Good luck.
Constant Trek

Initially, I could not get a handle on what the weblog was about. There did not appear to be a theme. It seemed to just be ramblings about life. The title of the weblog, “zazzfooky.com” turned out not to have any particular meaning but was a random word that the author invented. She does, however, use “zazz” as the name for her family and “fooky” is related to “hooky” and the f-word. That’s fine, cute, and a tiny bit clever. Unfortunately, since I am a stickler for correct grammar and spelling, a bit fat typo was almost the first thing that caught my attention when I read the most recent post. It was the classic “your” instead of “you’re” mistake. When reading the entire history of posts (which didn’t take much time since this weblog was launched in March 2005) I found several errors of this type, such as “their” for “there” and a few instances of clunky grammar and syntax. The problem with these types of errors is that they create a distraction for the reader and make it harder to focus on the substance of the posts. The weblog would most definitely benefit from proof-reading.

The posts that had a humorous take on everyday events were the best. Examples are the stories of the author’s reactions to her daughter’s grades and bathroom fun time with her dogs. These are the themes the writer should stick with as her observations are succinct, humorous and unusual. Her more serious posts are somewhat less compelling. Generally, the writing is good, if informal and colloquial. This writing style is common in the “blog-o-sphere” but the author’s voice is clear and original. You get a sense of her personality from her writing style. The posts are a random collection of the author’s musings and often recount a humorous event from her day. The events discussed are a mix of work, family and cultural commentary, but the emphasis is on family life. The author clearly cares about what she is writing about. The purpose of the weblog seems to be as an outlet for the author.

The design of the weblog is excellent. Considering that this is a brand new weblog, the author obviously put a great deal of thought into how to arrange the page. The fonts and colors are pleasing to the eye and designed for ease of reading. The format is easy to use and all the links work. It is very easy to navigate around the site and return to the home page.

She has quite a few pictures and background things that add interest to the blog. Her “100 things” list is not very substantive but does tell you a bit more about the author and it is amusing. The bonus features include pictures of her pets (the cats were especially cute) and pictures of her daughter. There is also a link to her daughter’s weblog. While I’m not that interested in reading the not entirely coherent details of an eight-year-old’s day, it is kind of sweet. Overall, the features add to the “big picture” of the weblog.

Since this weblog is in its infancy, it cannot be stated with certainty if it will grow into a good site to visit. You can get a sense of the author and what her take on life is, which I find to be one of the main reasons to read personal weblogs. Personal pages are an opportunity to learn about the world from another person’s perspective, and “zazzfooky.com” provides such an opportunity. I am not sure who the target audience for the blog is, but probably other people like the writer: mothers/wives/professionals in their 20’s-40’s dealing with life’s little ups and downs. If you are interested in humorous takes on everyday events, you might enjoy this weblog.

My rating for the blog is 3.5. The site is mostly well-written, but there are a few too many spelling mistakes. The design is excellent, but there is not much substance yet. Until the author finds her focus and builds up a few more posts the rating should stay at just above average.zazzafooky

‘It’s Share Time’ is a personal blog brought to you courtesy of Sean Lee. I must admit that nothing about this blog stands out at all. The template is a standard blogger one, and a bad one at that and the posts are quite mundane. I mean this is the perfect example of posting about everything that happens in the day when none of it was exciting.

Some people have the knack of taking ordinary everday stories, and writing about it in a humorous way – not Sean. One entry about his day, “I had my morning coffee I made my way to work. Once I got to work, it seemed like the day went down hill from there. To start off, our parking lot was full so I ended up parking next to the wall. (((((so terrible he had to blog about it)))) … Next, I get to my desk and start my day… Then I called a property … To top it off with all the time I spent on the site, I didn’t even solve the problem so I had to escalate it to another tech. There was a couple of other things that happened during the day too, but I’d rather not post them on my blog ((((could that be the interesting things that would make reading this worthwile? ))))

I hate giving bad reviews, and this is my first, but really, this blog is just boring! Just because it is a personal blog doesn’t mean you have to run through every small detail of your day. Are you going to want to look back a year from now to see that you couldn’t get a parking space on Wednesday Mar 23, 2005?

Overall, the thing I liked most about this blog was the opportunity to rate Sean’s picture on ‘Rate me Hot or Not’. I know that sounds like an odd thing for me to like best – but well, that’s the only thing positive I could think of to say. What I liked the least was a tie between the dry unintersting posts, the lack of any other content, and the design template.It’s Share Time