Category: Uncategorized

The first thing that strikes you about this site, as you scroll down the first page, is a real sense of insouciance. At first I thought I was in for another dreary neo-conservative brain bashing experience that was similar to holding on to an electric fence wearing wet clothes.

Do not be fooled, this is no hard-nosed cynic; this dude has a sense of humour. Actually, as one begins to delve beneath the surface, there’s a whole lot of optimism and astute observation going on here disguised as something to make you laugh. There is a lot of copy and pasting and linking to other sites, however one sees it is mostly in a vein of thinking, yet it does leave the reader wondering what is his writing and what belongs to other people.

There is some deft sentence construction here. The writer reveals his mind and ideas using a particular brand of humour that not every writer is capable of. In the post ‘First’ where he is revealing encrusted fingernails and the depth of fatherly love, he does it with a wry sense of levity and a wide sphere of reference including Freud and Jung. I must also say I was impressed with the use of vocabulary. It is rare to find blogs that have more than a run-of-the-mill vocabulary, and the use of ‘rent’ in a sentence was appealing. It provided me with a delightful reading experience.

The design is sparse, and economical loading very fast in my chosen browser. The sparsity of bells and whistles though allow one to focus wholly on the writing, and is very easy on the eyes. The linkage is in a reliable left navigation menu, yet when hoping to dig deeper, methodical clicking revealed every archive link was dead; all were ‘404 not Found’. This was very disappointing. All the off-site linking lead somewhere, but what I really wanted was to explore this blog’s past in more detail. Yet, I was denied!

Seeking more information, I scoped the profile page. His claimed title of ‘Sr VP Rebellion’ was interesting. One does have to wonder whose rebellion he is speaking of. He’s been using blogger for a respectable five-year period and he has a substantial word and post count, although I suspect it is from a combination of the other blogs he writes.

Back to blog: I feel I must say his ‘current grief’ is a short and cutting little paragraph about antinomianism was very illuminating regarding his overall raison d’etre regarding this blog.

I would reccommend reading this blog on a regular basis, if only for the lack of reliable archives and he does have interesting perspectives to share and when he does write originally it is of an excellent quality. You don’t want to miss some witty, brilliant piece of writing, because once it’s archived, that’s it… it’s gone, lost in the ether somewhere or hoarded in Blogger’s control panel somewhere.

I believe this blog will appeal to a more mature audience, in touch with politics and with a social conscience. A sense of humour is a must, and if you want a highbrow laugh from time to time, this is a good place to find it or a jump off point to it.http://brianhayes.com

Wow. Other than the occasional mention on the “Real Sex” series on HBO, I was not aware that such a thing as a ‘latex fetish’ existed. Boy, does it ever. And the latex subculture appears to be enormous.

3xL is a site run by a 30-something man from Copenhagen who started this blog back in 2002 as a way to tell his wife about his fetish. He says in his “About 3xL” section, “…at that time, I just didn’t have the guts to let her in on my big secret. So my goal was to learn more about myself and my fetish for rubber, so I could gain some self esteem and speak freely about the subject to my wife.” She knows now, and he said she’s even tried it herself. Ah, true love.

The site has a black background with white type and is a bit busier than I normally like. By ‘busy’ I mean, lots of links, a blogroll, sponsor ads, photos, and other links for latex movies, gallery and news among others. The busiest page is the main page, but 3xL (meaning the three “L” words, Love, Lust and Latex) has a knack for arranging this massive catalog of information with flourish. When you visit the “Latex Links” page, it does get a bit click heavy because the hordes of links are first put into categories. But hey, I’m sure the latex folks out there appreciate this. After all, there is a lot of information to go through.

I have to say that this is the first latex-themed site I’ve ever visited. And I’m happy to learn that the German Fetish Ball has just concluded. (It makes me wonder if the fetishists will only socialize with their own ‘kind’ at these things. The Latex vs. the Foot Fetishists? Is it West Side Fetish? I’m rubber, you’re glue…?)

At any rate, if you like latex, you should definitely add this site to your Favorites menu because it is an impressive undertaking.
3xL : Lust, Love & Latex!

Grand Theft Blogger. The title borders on something between “catchy” and “stupid”, but this blog is supposedly about video games, so I can let it go.

This blog is written by Jessie Lawrence, a 27 year old guy from Fremont, California. And his blog isn’t bad, but it isn’t great either. So let’s talk about the ‘why’ question.

The design is blogger. The header graphic is custom, which is nice; but the content is what seems to be lacking. Jessie doesn’t have any links to his archive pages from what I could tell, so I could only read his most recent posts. Some talked about his family, a few about gaming and the rest was personal opinion stuff. He has moments of comedy, but they are scarce.

Jessie talks about the death of his friend Angelo quite a bit; he was shot and no one has found the killer. Sad stuff. But the thing that is great about Jessie’s posts is that they are usually short and sweet. He doesn’t try to bog you down; he just writes what he has to say and nothing more. Done Deal.

I gave Grand Theft Blogger a 3.25 because of the lack of accessible content; also, it is marketed as being a blog about gaming, but I couldn’t be totally convinced of that based on what I had to read. He’s a good writer and I see great potential for this blog…but the things that I would like to see just aren’t there yet. Grand Theft Blogger

I was thinking about maybe skipping over reviewing The Captain’s Log as this is not my first visit to the site and I thought it might be a bit weird to go back as a reviewer. However, I am glad I did get the opportunity as it was nice to revisit a pretty solid weblog about a (now ex-) Canadian and his every day life.

This is a Big Blog Tool blog and when I started out as a blogger (way back in er… 2003), I cut my teeth on BBT as it was pretty straight forward to get going on. Another thing I noticed from exploring its “Recently Updated” list was that nearly all the sites which used it had absolutely awesome templates. Captain Spanky was already well under way with his blog by this stage (it dates back to March 2002) and his blog is certainly no exception in terms of impressive design.

It is a custom, two column template with a witty titlebar and stylish fonts used in the sidebar. The blog itself is tasteful and easy to read with differentiation between the comments and blog entries, the comments being displayed inline. There is no “About Me” page but there are a few cool links to be found including one to a site where the author sells his own custom car stickers and the like. You can also find out the local weather, read the archives or browse the “Recently Updated” list mentioned earlier. My only minor gripe is that the site doesn’t look quite so slick in Firefox, due to slight alignment problems, but it does not make the site unreadable by any means. I also really liked the “Front Pages” which are always clever, funny designs and add another touch of individuality (click in the top right corner to go see).

So, top marks for the way it all looks, but can the content match up? Well kind of. This is very much a personal blog about the day to day stuff going on in the life of the author. As the archives go back a couple of years, there is no way to get through them all unless you have A LOT of spare time. I decided to read the first few months, then picked a few pages at random after I got fed up with the Republican bashing which has been particularly rife in the blog recently. It’s not that I like Republicans or disagreed with what was being said, it just got a bit wearing. Other topics to be found in the blog include pool tournaments which The Captain takes part in, programming stuff (his career), some cool links, rants and some photos of social events – the usual blogging fare in fact. There is some swearing, but none of the content is really offensive, just opinionated and often funny too. Overall, it is of a high quality, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary.

So this is really a blog of the old school variety. Great design, and consistent content about a 30 something, socially adept, tech savvy American. Nothing more nothing less. As with so many thousands of blogs out there, this is obviously great for his social circle, but it is hard to think of many things which set this apart and would draw in the casual reader.The Captain’s Log

When I first entered the site of (fblog), I was actually quite impressed. It was a very clean and neat looking layout and the combined colors of orange and white, seemed to do the weblog justice.

The blog is hosted at “modblog” , (which I haven’t been very familiar with), but it was a pleasant change from the very familiar “blogspot” templates. But with that being said, it is basically the entries that are most important. At that point, I began my journey into “fMatt’S” world.

The first thing I looked for was a section where I could find out a bit about “fMatt” (the author. At the top of the page was a link to his profile among several other links. fMatt, has several tidbits of info about him in his profile. Arranging from what kind of music he likes to what kind of books he reads. Really lets you get to know him .

As I started to read FMatt’s actual posts, I noticed that a lot of them were about cricket games he has had. Well, after all, in his profile he does mention that cricket is his favorite sport. He also talks about assignments he has had in school and basically just your everyday life. After reading fMatt’s entries, I got the impression that he writes whatever comes to mind. He also seems to like playing the Sims. (One of my fav past times as well.)

The entries are written very well. The writing is very neat and very easy to read.
He has several links etc on the left hand side including a poll. He also has an image gallery which I was very interested in viewing . I clicked on the link, but to my disappointment, all the images were broken. A few of his archived pages took a little long as well. Those were basically the only faults I had with this weblog.

Keep in mind, it may not be to everyone’s taste. No weblog is. But I for one enjoyed reading it. So if you have some time on your hands, stop by and pay the author a visit. You won’t be disappointed.[fBlog]