Category: Uncategorized

Chuck is a surfer and Pongo his dog, and this is their blog. Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a mess, certainly design-wise. From the first page, and a warning about malfunctioning JavaScript, to wondering where the links lead and if there’s any discernible hierarchy, the site is a struggle. Which is a shame, because it’s not often you have a blog written by one man and his dog. Hell, there even used to be a TV show called that here in England.



Once you get as far as the blog, things do brighten up. The design is lacking, but the blog, the focus of the site yet sadly hidden behind an unassuming link, is worth reading and is entertaining. The posts are occasionally comments about news headlines or links elsewhere, but a refreshingly large number are more than that.



It’s a shame the design is so chaotic, but if you can look beyond it, there is a decent site underneath it all.

Chuck & Pongo’s Organized Anarchy

The writer at Chicks Dig UNIX is a guy called Cliff, who is honest enough to admit to not wanting to be a web developer. It takes a brave man to say that these days. Instead, he’s studying to become a systems administrator.



The blog itself is mildly interesting, although he has a tendency to rattle through unimportant details (eg “I bought and ate a slice of pizza on the way home even though I have a pizza in the freezer.”) whenever he doesn’t have anything more important to say.



Design wise the site is okay, but not particularly inspiring. I don’t think the layout fits the content: the posts are too long to have so much page width devoted to them, and that coupled with the lack of gaps between paragraphs leads to tired eyes a little too quickly.



There is some good stuff, and feeds from The Register and Slashdot help spruce things up a little. chicks dig unix

A quite strange blog in itself, it bases most of the content around one theme: computer stuff. Unless you are a tech geek, it gets pretty boring. It’s sad, because when the blogger strays from the topic, the posts are…good. The design is good, easy to get around, and simple. Simple being a good thing. The score would’ve been much lower, if not for extra content, which I found at least somewhat entertaining.grep computer(s)

Use Before 02/01/01. Not sure what

the name was all about, but the

author’s weblog was an honest,

wide-open tale of his everyday life. At

first I was a little turned-off by his

pessimistic outlook, not to mention

his terrible spelling. But after

reading through his weblog entries, I

was left feeling as if I knew him

better.



This one was one of those weblogs

you find yourself interested in for no

explainable reason. Perhaps it was

the unabashed glimpse into

Americana: the lifestyle of a regular

Joe, not the typical depressed ‘artist’

or techno geek that usually

maintains a weblog. Perhaps it was

the fact that I was reminded of

myself. Whatever the reason, this

weblog triggered introspective

thoughts in my head, causing me to

compare and contrast my life to his.



As for other aspects of the web site,

there wasn’t too much to speak of. A

typical bio about the author, and

some links to other people and

places on the internet were offered.

The design of the site was rather

bland, but that was probably

intentional. I wasn’t too hip on the

color scheme, but that may have

been the way it looked on my Mac.







USE BEOFRE 02/01/01

Unless Microsoft Word is lying directly to my face (Microsoft lie? No!), confessionalism is not a real word. Therefore, it must be either a typo, or a creation unique to this website (assuming they got there first).



It doesn’t really matter anyway. The posts have little to do with confessing, which is a good thing because it would be harder to consistently entertain with that kind of content.



This is a good site; the posts are long enough to be considered in-depth and involving without being convoluted or merely filler, and the majority of what I read kept me reading; the point was kept and consistently developed within each post, and after reading a couple of weeks’ worth of material you end up with a good appreciation for the site.



However, it does fall into the trap that unwary bloggers fall into with alarming regularity: the uninspiring design. The high calibre content is not quite matched by the template-driven layout; the site could do with a bit of an overhaul and perhaps should be made simpler if anything. Nothing should divert attention from the core resource here, which is the blog, as it is worthy of attention and should not be ignored simply because the site looks amateurish.



The score of 3 I have given could easily have become a 4 had the design been just that little bit more focussed and developed.

Confessionalism