Category: Uncategorized

Upon arriving at Graham’s Page of Stuph (Stuff) I was greeted by an uncluttered, clean page with some wonderfully subtle graphic enhancements. The page was easy to read with its white, gray and blue color scheme and it was complimented with a functional two column layout.

So? What kind of stuph will you find here? Well, Graham is a ‘musician, dancer, bibliophile, perpetual student, and an employee of Blogger at Google, not necessarily in that order. He has been blogging since September of 2002 and his blog has well over 700 entries… so there is a lot of content here. (For a change..) His blog is about his day to day life. Work. Loss of work. Dance. Books. Music. Piano. Housemates. Cooking (well sort of). Computers. Movies. Family. Blogs. Blogging. Blog Design. Ana Ng (which I like too) Naturally as a musician there are many references to this aspect of his life. He plays the mandolin, piano (and always wants to play the piano more) and has been known to teach music as well. The author is a family oriented guy. There are many references to his family and friends, and he never seems to miss a happy birthday wish.

The writing is very matter of fact. I found my interest varying between the many entries. Some entries were very esoteric but others were exceptional. Especially the entries when Graham was reflective and introspective. Such as these:
eknath, life lessons. There are numerous interesting links (You can come across some really silly links when you spend all day looking at random people’s blogs.) which I enjoyed.

Simply put it, a nice blog about a nice guy.
Overall Graham’s Page of Stuph is a very solid blog. I enjoyed the little touches such as a rotating ‘about me’ pic and custom bullets (even if they are from some template?). Huzzah!
Graham’s Page of Stuph

The title didn’t have me brimming with enthusiasm for this review. Predictable. I then got to the site and it was pink. Oh dear. The welcome statement didn’t indicate that my first impressions were at all wrong. “For those looking for something deep and meaningful, you may want to look elsewhere.” Help.

But hold on you highbrow snob, be objective here.

As well as being pink the design just really doesn’t do it for me. The blog is in the www.deardiary.net format. The first one I have come across and I hope the last. I didn’t get on with it at all well. It just doesn’t look right – whatever right may or may not be, this ain’t it.

The first entry was December 2001 but the archives (index) only allow you to get to August 2003. There is an extended upper panel which allows you to move around the site. I found this journeying difficult and cumbersome. There was also a left side panel with some links to a dictionary, a translator and some drums corps bits and pieces. There are links to her brother’s and sister in law’s sites which are also using this deardiary thing. Allimom and I come from very different mystical spheres…

There are links and a comments facility which you can “show” or “hide”. This is used often and folk appear to be engaged in allimom’s world.

So to the posts. Was I gonna be surprised? Unfortunately no. Allimom writes about her world as a wife and mother. Domesticity and errand running. The trials and tribulations of bringing up three kids with ADHD. Attention deficit disorder in which hyperactivity is present. Blimey… I have an opinion here which I’m gonna skip right over. Hubby was and is (?) a soldier and well behaved (in a moral sense) drunk. He is also a genius…

“Son, what happened last night?”

“Well Dad, you came home after 3 A.M., drunk and delirious. You broke some furniture, puked in the hallway, and gave yourself a black eye when you stumbled into the door.”

Confused, Joe asks, “So, why is everything in order and so clean, and breakfast is on the table waiting for me?”

“Oh, that”, his son replies. “Mom dragged you to the bedroom, and when she tried to take your pants off, you said, “Lady, leave me alone, I’m married.”

The posts really do nothing more than catalogue life in the nuclear family and how that might make a girl feel. Mostly it causes her to threaten to reach for duct tape to stifle her children further than the medication she gives them does. Her brother, father and chocolate also come in the picture from time to time. Brother is a gun lover. Sheeks ;(

The final indignity for me is the constant haunting presence of Mr Wolverine Van Helsing smiling above a row of well built fireman and a couple of Dalmatians. Every page??? Why??? I know certain women have this thing for a “famous hunk.” What does this fantasy do for their mental health?

I am gonna give the site one and a half out of five because she does write well and it does seem to hold some interest for fellow travellers of the “being a mum and having a family” thing. Warning: if you’re not one for hanging over the back fence detailing the minutia of your life steer clear – my pink half of the drainpipe separates me from you…A Day In The Life

giencke.net opens to a very peaceful and clean looking blog. The pale colors go with the blog very well. When I first enter a weblog, I like to see something that tells me a bit about the author, not to mention some insight on what the blog is about. Well to my satisfaction, I found exactly that info at this blog.

This blog has been around from October, 2002. The author “Pete” is a college student from the university of Minnesota. He has a love for playing softball among several other hobbies etc. Now on to the posts.

I have read several entries in Pete’s blog. It is of a personal nature, but not too personal. He basically covers his everyday life but nothing too personal. He speaks a lot about his friends, where he and his friends go and what they do. Things like that. A lot of his posts are just one line , and several of his entries just have a quote etc. from a song.

Even though his entries are not too much of a personal nature, somehow they give you the feeling that you know him somewhat and they make you want to know him a bit more.
His entries are very well written. He has a way of telling a story that makes you feel as if you’ve been there at the time. He even lets you see the emotional side of him as he talks about the “Reagan” funeral coverage on tv.

Pete’s blog is a two column lay-out. He has several links on the right hand side which all seem to be in working order. He has several links to photos in his entries as well. The design is very clean and as I stated earlier, the pale colors go very well with the entries.
To conclude the review, I couldn’t find one fault with Pete’s blog. I found it to be very interesting and entertaining and I would recommend it as a good read. So Pete, keep up the good work and I hope you continue to keep your blog going for a very long time.
giencke.net

Fat Eye For The Skinny Guy. The page is sharp looking with a pleasant dark background with lighter colored lettering. Works well. The three column style is not my favorite, but what are you gonna do, lots of people have them. Seems to me that it might make more sense to put your excess linkage on another page and let your writing be the focus. But let us not quibble about the little things.

The big thing I want to quibble about is that our author has written his own Weblog Review already. (Why didn’t somebody tell me this site had been reviewed? I would not have spent the last two hours reading and making notes!) 😉 Here is a list our author has kindly provided of reasons why he thinks his blog is the worst of them all:

“1. It’s not funny

2. My life is pretty pathetic

3. My About Page is all false

4. Everything I talk about is stupid

5. My layout is boring and uninspired .”

Interestingly enough, this is a good example of an underlying theme of his blog. He makes fun of himself, before anyone else can do it.

Only thing is, while he is doing this, he is pretty darned funny. His writing is sort of a cross between Rodney Dangerfield and Don Rickles. If something bad is going to happen, it does when our hero is around. From not being able to go to major league baseball games for various and sundry reasons, (even though you have season tickets) , to having the whole cheerleading squad turn snotty on you, he seems to end up on the short end of every stick.

There must be something in the water in New York City that everyone seems to end up so….. grumpy. And just a warning if this kind of thing bothers you, the author has a severe case of potty mouth. (Not that there’s anything WRONG with that.)

As he freely admits, his About page is pure fiction, so we won’t go there.

One entry I submit for your consideration is June 3rd 2004 entitled “Fat Dude Loves Summer Pt. 1” I couldn’t find part 2, I don’t think he has written it yet, but I want to read it when he does.

This is a raunchy blog, almost exclusively grumpy, (check out the Friday Rants), contains a lot of “guy” humor, and is a pretty good time.

Fat Eye For The Skinny Guy

Monoblogue opens to a visually uninteresting background of very fine, closely spaced gray lines with tiny generic fonts. The first entry on the page that day was a small paragraph about an apple computer site, followed by a huge blank space that perhaps is supposed to contain an image, I’m not sure. I searched for some information about the author and found one paragraph:

the author lives in los ángeles and in good company . he was born in 1970 , started reading grown-up books altogether too early and stopped playing with legos a bit late . he is now just a tourist in two cultures •

Okay, that was informative. I began browsing through the most recent entries and encountered a disjointed mix of liberal politics and computer related subjects, along with the occasional, out of left field bit of trivia, such as the link to a site for “Psychiatry for Mishandled Toys”.

Political blogs are so pervasive that in order to stand out, one needs to really do some homework. And in my opinion, this blog does not stand out in any way. I don’t get a sense of the author’s thought processes, only a regurgitation of tired finger pointing slogans that are frankly a dime a thousand these days. If you want to persuade someone who might disagree with you, show me your gut feelings, write about how you have struggled to understand the world from your point of view. Try to convince me with sound reasoning. Don’t just post a link to MoveOn.org and another link to where I can contribute money.

Elsewhere on the page there are links to our author’s family tree which was fairly well done, and a travelogue section with some very nice pictures from Ecuador that is worth taking a look at, and some original line drawings and Photoshop digital art that might be of interest. As far as I can tell, all the entries are from August of this year. There were no older entries that I could find.

Overall, I found this blog rather uninspiring. The entries don’t seem to hang together with any real coherency. Perhaps if the author revealed more of himself in his posts, I could have connected with him. Since this seems to be a very new blog, it is possible our author is casting about trying on different things to see what fits. If he succeeds in finding his style, this blog has potential to improve.

mono[b]logue