Review 2292

Right from the start ‘man.ik-di’pres.iv had a lot to live up to. Having manic depression in my family means I almost knew what to expect. This was familiar territory, perhaps too close to home, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see it in a weblog. But the first post made me smile: a hi-fi war. You have no idea how many “hi-fi wars” I live with.

Of course reading about something familiar to me is always going to be of interest to me (and this man even shares my love of Home Alone and The Sound of Music), but ‘man.ik-di’pres.iv presents a quirky writing style that could suck anyone in. It was interesting to read a weblog by someone outside of the US , especially a post about the measures taken at the author’s work place, in response to the highly publicised SARS.

Although I never found anything in the weblog that explicitly stated the author is a manic-depressive, I’m assuming he is due to the title. The writing certainly seems manic. One minute we are told, “life is divided into the horrible and the miserable,” and the next, “each moment of life is precious.” All the posts are short enough to hold your attention and a post that brings you down will usually be followed by one that has you laughing.

The layout of the site is very dark: white type on a black background with a few black and white pictures. This works well for a site called ‘man.ik-di’pres.iv where moods fluctuate from bright to gloomy. The site is on Geocities, which I know would put some people off, but the layout works as well as any standard Blogger template. Some of the non-blog pages, such as the front page, seem a little chaotic and unordered, but as it’s the weblog I’m focusing on here I can say that the diary page looks fine.

‘Man.ik-di’pres.iv has been going for three months now and I happily read through almost every post. The subject matter is a fascinating one and Alex obviously has a skill for writing for an audience. The entry page has a paragraph that says, “welcome to a peek into my mind. I hope it doesn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth.” It didn’t. I’ll be stopping by ‘Man.ik-di’pres.iv in the future, and I advise paying a visit.‘man.ik-di’pres.iv