Category: Uncategorized

When I read the title, Passport to the Third World, I figured I would be reading about third-world politics. I was close. The blog is about someone who grew up in a third-world country, and is now living in a first-world country, namely, the United States. I can usually tell when a blog is serious by the template, and this is a very serious blog.

This blog is about politics, as many of the news blogs are. Nuno, the sole author of the site, talks about the presidency and recently, the war on Iraq. What I like about Nuno is the fact that he gives the facts, rather than only biased opinion. Many of the news sites I have been reading recently are extremely biased. Nuno usually just gives a link to the original news site, and will sporadically comment on it. The links come from a plethora of sources such as the BBC, Reuters, and CNN.

Nuno is the only author at Passport to the Third World and I think he does a good job giving the reader news without biased opinion, for that is the way news should be. However, more often than not this site has commentary, and you do get a feel for who Nuno is. That is what sets it apart from other news blogs that just give links to other news sites.

The template used at Passport to the Third World I can only describe as “news-y looking.” There are links to other news sites such as Reuters, The New York Times, and CNN. Also appearing in this blog are links to other “War Blogs.” Everything is in fine working order.

If you are sick of hearing about the war, I wouldn’t suggest reading Passport to the Third World. If war news is your thing, then I think you should take a look at this site as it will educate you on the current war proceedings. This site is definitely a well-written educated site and I will be looking back on it whenever I get the urge to read about war.passport.to.the third world

The Daily Post… With a name like this I expect a lot of news stories. Some political, others entertainment, and every now and then one of those strange but true type of stories. Unfortunately and thankfully this site was not a news recap sort of place.

What we have at The Daily Post is a group blog. While there are only two primary people who post, there are others who will drop in with their own opinion. With all group blogs I either expect a lot of interaction between the members, or hardly any at all. This site defies both of those and has a nice mix of it all.

The posts themselves are not based around what others have posted about, the comments are. And the comments are mainly left by those who are authors of the blog. The posts have a nice mix of things from politics to daily life to books being read. Nothing stood out with this blog except for the blogathon section which we will get to in a bit.

The design of the site is a very simple two column design. The information you would expect in what is typically called the navigation column is all there. I wish there were links to outside places – more specifically if the authors have their own personal blog a direct link would be nice.

There is a nice about section which helps to glue some of those missing pieces together as well as individual pages for each author. The blogathon section looks to be an interesting one with a theme of what I am assuming is “What would you do if you were world leader?” Should be fun.

Over all I think the site is just average. Nothing is drawing me into this site to want to keep going at it, but at the same time nothing is pushing me away from it. This is a good site to read when you need to just sit back and kill some time. Not a daily read, but one you want to check out.
The Daily Post

The first thought that popped into my head upon viewing Spivak’s Razor was “middle school computer lab”. The green courier text on a black background threw me at first. It seemed unsophisticated and old fashioned, but as I delved into the site and learned more about the author, the design began to make sense. (More on that later.)

Spivak’s Razor has been around for quite a while. The archives go back as far as September of 1999. I looked around for an “About Me” page of some sort on the author, hoping to get some background information before digging in, but none was found. Through reading the older entries, I discovered the author was a New Jersey man in his late twenties. The name “Spivak” was the name of a character he used on LambdaMOO. LambdaMOO, along with other online role-playing games, figures prominently in his journal. Indeed, some entries are clearly meant to be understood only by other gamers, but these entries are few and far between. Spivak is a prolific journaler. His entries are long, detailed, and for the most part intensely personal. He doesn’t mince words or censor himself. His brutal honesty is admirable, although there were passages that were a bit uncomfortable to read (entries detailing various bodily functions, for example). There was also a subtle bit of racism apparent in some passages that bothered me, although Spivak owns up this and offers explanations.

Some of the author’s entries are detailed and wordy to the point of becoming tedious, and it’s tough to get through them all at once. As a reader, I could do with a little more quality instead of so much quantity. There is some genuinely lovely writing to be found here and there, however. His descriptions of being outdoors on a cold winter’s night, his love for animals, and his struggle to overcome depression and self-hatred are particularly evocative. He also has an impressive imagination, and can be quite funny.

As I wrote earlier, the design of Spivak’s Razor is reminiscent of the old days of computing when text was all you had. There are pictures scattered here and there throughout the entries, some quite funny and interesting, but the site itself is text-heavy. Upon reading the journal, and discovering how into computers and gaming Spivak is, it became clear that the simple design fits his personality. He’s more concerned with the writing itself than he is with flashy graphics. His entries are color-coded according to a key found on the front page. Dreams are in purple, posts about gaming are in yellow, holiday posts are in red, etc. It’s a clever concept, a twist on the traditional category system, although some pages resembled a rainbow and were a little hard on the eyes. There were some broken links on the older archive pages.

Spivak has recorded three hundred of his dreams and nightmares and includes them in his journal, along with handy index on the front page allowing you to jump directly to the dream entries, if you’re so inclined. He also includes links to the gaming diaries he has kept over the years. These are hard to follow if you’ve never been a gamer, but I imagine they would make a fun read for someone into such things.

Overall, I found Spivak’s Razor a typical online journal. It’s a true view into the author’s life and thoughts. It was hard for me to maintain interest throughout the entire journal although there were bright spots here and there that caught my interest. A lot of the author’s writing seems to be aimed at friends and online acquaintances, and I would imagine that this is his intended audience. It succeeds as a personal diary and is certainly entertaining in many spots, but lacks the consistent quality necessary to become a daily read. I wouldn’t add Spivak’s Razor to my “must-read” file, but would check in from time to time to see how he’s doing. spivak’s razor

I wasn’t impressed at all with this blog. It’s disturbing – which is what the writer is going for, but most bloggers who write along these lines provide more for the reader other than vague half-statements and unfinished thoughts. It makes for very unenjoyable reading. The design of the blog actually changes once you hit one of the archive links and to be honest, that design suits the theme of the site better than the one you’re first greeted with (which is plain and boring).

Every entry is never more than one or two lines, or a short paragraph. There is no information about the writer which leaves the obvious questions – Who? Why? When? Where? How? The total lack of information makes for a very boring site.

There is also a distinct lack of entries with which to comment on. The blog is new, but to be reveiwed properly, you need to give the reviewer something to go on, something with which to get to know you by. This blog didn’t make the cut in that respect.

There were two entries which stood out in particular however, which I did like very much. “The Death Of A Clown (1991 – The Fall)” posted on the 27th of July and “Psycho” posted on the 20th of July. Death of A Clown was probably the saddest and poignant thing I’ve read in a blog, so well done for that entry. Psycho posed a question that I had often pondered myself. It makes for interesting debate.

On the whole, I wouldn’t recommend this blog to anyone, especially if it carries on along the same vein with little sense and(or) little information. However the more angsty-teen type people might think they relate in some way to the strange words found at the Diary of Kyramas.A Diary of Kyramas

The title itself suggested this was probably done by a little girl, maybe in junior high, for a bit of fun for herself and her friends. The hot pink background you see for some time as the site loads reinforces this idea.

This site has a lot of technical problems. It’s two colums, but the boxes and sliders everywhere are frustrating. Sometimes the archives work; sometimes they give you a Blogspot error message. If I’d just been a casual visitor I probably wouldn’t have hung around long enough to read through it. It’s graphics heavy and there’s also music, and an upper navigation bar I found eventually, as it took a full ten minutes by the clock to fully load. (Often, those on high-speed connnections forget that 50% of the online population is still on dialup modems, as DSL and cable is not available everywhere.) Some of the links in the left go to inactive webrings.

While I was waiting, I skimmed through the archives and found there were a few spotty entries since July of last year. I discovered Deb is a 20-something college journalism student, so this is probably a “fun” project. Such entries as there are have quotations found on bathroom walls, some lines (with more graphics) about Barbie and the author’s Women’s Studies teacher. If this is a parody on ultimate ditziness, I’d like to see more! This is why I hung around long enough to try and read more of the entries. Even the “non-blog writings” (also difficult to get in and out of) are downright hilarious!

It’s clear she’s put a lot of work into creating this world — next time I’m out at the college where they have a T1 connection, I’ll make a point of visiting this site again for a better look. But if I was teaching writers at her school this young woman would definitely get some extra credit for this blog.

I’d recommend it to anyone with a high-speed connection, who could use a laugh for the day. Judged on content alone, this blog would rate a 5, but unfortunately the technical problems will put off some visitors, so I’ll give it a 3.

Deb on the Web