Category: Uncategorized

Pink is probably one of the most difficult colors to use well, and the author’s use is average at best. I wasn’t sure what to expect, due to the bland nature of the design.

The articles listed on the front page were pretty lifeless. I browsed through some of the archives to get a better feel of the type of articles she wrote. I had a difficult time finding more than a handful that really got in touch with the author. It appeared to be mostly day to day type stuff (“I dropped the kids off and stopped at the bank…”, etc.) and the occasional link here and there to friends of hers. She sometimes talks about projects that she’s working on, but the entries about them are almost apathetic.

The site itself has a pure CSS layout (maybe a little too “simple”) that looked not quite right in my browser. A quick look under the hood explained why Netscape 4.x can’t even load it and the content to the right (nav & ‘rings) looks funny in Opera: multiple body/head tags. The visited links are difficult to see, since they blend in with the body text. I do have to admit that the design fits the log entries, though.

Overall, I was disappointed to see that someone with such a witty “about” page would have such a dull log. I would guess that only close friends or family would enjoy her entries.Work In Progress

Read Nonfiction is an unassuming, perhaps even slightly obscure site, providing a slower-paced alternative to the cacophony of the warblogging / antiwarblogging side of the political blogosphere.

The site is devoted, simply, to quoting and referencing media items with light commentary, placing it solidly in the media-link-and-commentary subspecies of weblogs. Recent topics have ranged from Oscar Wilde on socialism to an assessment of Zionism, and the site generally focuses less on the news-of-the-day than on more thoughtful analysis pieces found in publications such as The New York Observer and The Atlantic.

I might have tried to characterize the author’s politics, but handily, he’s already done so himself by taking a little online quiz. He reports his results as “leftist and somewhat libertarian.” Judge for yourself, however, from this sample of his commentary from his review of Wilde and socialism:

“It has always been my belief that if one attains more than what one really needs, sharing this surplus becomes a moral imperative. This is not about forcing a reduction in the divide between classes (which is a side-effect, no doubt), but about improving the quality of life for the lower classes. Surely, a better distribution of wealth will result in more members of society existing more comfortably than they are now. The flaw in this, of course, is that no man will voluntarily admit to having a surplus of private property.”

The site layout is a clean, simple Moveable Type template, and is fairly easy on the eyes. My only quibble would be the choice of fonts for the body text — the site appears to be using Garamond or something close to it for both the quoted passages and commentary, which is not the world’s most readable font. And distinguishing more clearly between quoted passages and the author’s commentary wouldn’t hurt either.

Update frequency is fairly low for a straight link-and-commentary site; averaging a post every few days. (May 2002 had entries on 5/1, 5/3, 5/10, and 5/28). While for some weblog forms infrequent updates should not be viewed as a negative, a site so totally devoted to following the media might benefit from a more frequent publishing schedule.

Overall, I’d recommend Read Nonfiction as an occasional stop for those who want to ensure no interesting media stone remains unturned in their reading universe, and as a supplement to a more regular diet of the more frenetic and compulsively updated news sites.

read nonfiction

Flombaum.com opened up to a nice display. I’m a big fan of people who know how to use color without making it look garish or disgusting. The nice varying shades of blue was a nice entrance that made you feel somewhat welcomed into the life of Avi Flombaum.

Sadly, upon venturing through the blog itself, it was less on quality content as much as it was big on trying to make itself seem as funny and entertaining as the writer himself would like us to see him.

There are only two blog entries under the “Daily Dose” column. For something that is supposed to be a “Daily Dose,” it’s odd that almost two weeks past between the only two entries on the page. In fact, if the link to the archives is supposed to be active it’s not. There are just the two blog entries – the second of which apologizes that he has not written more often.

There are plenty of places to go on the site. From Flombaum’s own writing (The Mystery of Bathrooms was a fun read) to his artwork (I loved that yellow flower picture) this seems to be the heart and soul of Flombaum.com. Perhaps this should be more of an artistic blog where our author focuses on his creative endeavors with the occasional shout out to let us know what is going on with his life.

Other links include Avi’s webcam which I did try but no picture came up. In fact, the window that should have popped up at least show me that nothing was on didn’t even active. Perhaps it’s my slow as molasses PC.

Overall, the design of Flombaum.com helps override the lack of blog content. Once our intrepid author decides which stance he wants to take on this site, I think it deserves another review.
Flombaum Dot Com

BrianHayes.com is an odd conundrum of links, poems, musings, thoughts and links. I was a little nervous when I first went to the site and was greeted with a yellow hyperlink, which led me to believe that a long load time for a flash application was awaiting me, but thankfully I was spared from that. It wasn’t a flash application but a background that needed to load.

I really can’t describe the site enough to classify it into one category. The blog postings are intermittent with the author even stating in one that he is not sure if he wants to write that day. Some posts are jokes or useless facts while others provide nothing more than links to sites the author found interesting. When the author does give his own personal commentary, the writing is light and fanciful and sorely missed on the rest of the site.

There are links to poetry by the Mr. Hayes which is okay, but that is a heavily biased statement (something I own up to immediately) because I am not a big poetry person. Therefore, other people may enjoy it more than I did. There is another link called “house” which takes you to a site with various other links that for a garden design or a “mantle” or “direct vents.” There really seems to be no reason for this unless the author is building his dream home. If he is, it would be nice to have that written somewhere on the main “house” page to let you, the reader, know that.

Even more annoying was the box where the links to the various sections of the site was located. It could be that my screen wasn’t large enough to prevent it from covering a logo for the site. I could tell that there was writing under this box, but never got to see what it said until I clicked on “feedback” and the box dropped. I was expecting something grand to be behind there (perhaps more links) but I was disappointed to find nothing of real interest.

The links are nice, but I would like more original content.
brianhayes.com

Scott and Ellen are the folks in charge here, the masterminds behind this whole site, if you will. They’re a happily (from the looks and sounds of it) married couple who find solace and some type of entertainment value in posting their thoughts and meanderings to the world wide web via amcgltd.com.

Between the two of them, they post with both quality and quantity, a feat not achieved by many weblogs. And their posts compliment each other so nicely. The slight banter that may happen to go back and forth between the two in their posting doesn’t reflect that of a feuding family, but more of an entertaining and casual repartee that adds humor to the posts.

The site design is the classic three column layout, but it certainly works in both a functional and appealing manner for this site. There’s tons of information – link, pictures, contests, recommendations, etc – that fill both side columns.



Not only are the archives set up in a monthly category, but also by the different subject matter at hand, ranging anywhere from Naughty Bits to NASA Follies and from Science Fiction to, of course, cats. Just from glancing at the variety of topics, you can instantly tell there will be something to grab your interest while visiting this site. I really like how each entry has an icon that corresponds with the archiving category that the entry falls into.

Reading through the archives, I got to follow along with Ellen and her new found passion/obsession of belly dancing and her adoration of cats. And I got the chance to read Scott’s long-winded (but insightful!) tales, thoughts, and personal essays regarding a great deal of various things.

Digging into the highlights that Scott and Ellen have distinguished in the upper left hand corner of the site, I read quite the assortment of entries. The humor in the story of how Scott made it through math in school (mightily scary, I might add) contrasts so much from his very perceptive essays on the situation going on in middle eastern countries.

This is a really great site. It’s hard to categorize the type of weblog this is. Perhaps it’s a personal site, since some of it is the happenings that go on in Scott and Ellen’s life. Or perhaps it’s a news/links type of site with all of the links that the tag-team authors provide. One specific reader’s ideas of what this site is mainly about will probably greatly differ from the next reader, but both will be pleasantly surprised at the huge amount of great content they’ll find at this site. There’s not a single thing about the site I didn’t like.AMCGLTD.COM