“MaFt” originally started “a new thing” in July ’04 to, as he wrote, document what new thing he learns every day, an idea that he borrowed from his brother who never followed through with the plan. A weblog that’s actually written for the purpose of learning something was honestly not a concept I’d ever seen or enjoyed.
With my American grammar upbringing, I found it sometimes difficult to adapt to the word “learnt“, but that is one of the great joys of reading weblog from all over the world. Each time MaFt posts, it’s about something that he’d learnt that day, whether it be something like the exact definition of the word learn, as he did in one of his earlier posts, or something more enhanced and deep like … well, there aren’t any of what I would call deep or prophetic tidbits of information that’ve been posted to date.
It only took a mere two weeks before MaFt was worried he might not learn anything new that day, but, lo and behold, he learnt the price for a pint of beer at a new bar. The things that are learnt on a regular basis are rarely things that can be discovered out of a textbook or through some type of studying. Finding out that someone has an infection in their leg, discovering that a pack of ketchup was made in Holland, and learning the words and music to a song are a few of the many different examples of things the author learns and posts about daily.
The layout of the site is quite drab. It’s done in a black font on a gray background, with the only hint of real color being a bright green in the logo that’s shoved in the top left corner of the site. Running along the sidebar are the obligatory links to other sites, the archives that are listed by the week, and a tagboard for random visitors to leave messages.
As a reviewer, I always feel it’s important to find one thing about a site that would make readers want to come back. With “a new thing”, I was unable to do that. The posts are written in a very choppy manner, where it’s often hard to fully understand what the author is talking about or exactly what he means. The things he does learn aren’t really things most readers will find educational or even enjoyable, because these things pertain solely to the author’s personal life or experiences.
Some weblogs aren’t meant for the general public, simply because they don’t draw readers in and make them want to return. Weblogs like “a new thing” are better suited for people that know the author on a personal basis and know the background information on so many of the topics he does discuss.