Two blog reviews that is…

The first one you may already know about (well, if you’ve been reading this blog in the last week you WILL know about it) and that is the battle/review over at Maximum Awesome known as Blog Thunderdome. I should probably add that if anyone from here wants to “vote” for me on the comments at the Blog Thunderdome page then feel free to do so. I should also add that although the judges say that voting does have an effect over the total outcome I wouldn’t expect it to be that much. After all the guys from the Blog Thunderdome are in it for the laughs and nothing should be allowed to get in the way of a good joke.

Having said all that I have to say that some of the comments there make me laugh quite a bit. Two I particularly like were:

“The People’s Republic Of Paradise (my competitor in this bout) is a friend of mine, but I think it would do the world good if she didn’t blog for two months.”

And…

“The Speckled Band doesn’t feel like home to me, it doesn’t feel like you’re really getting a feel for who they are as a person and leaves nothing to the imagination. It’s too organized and hardly creative.”

….which kinda surprised me actually? Then again I shouldn’t be that surprised as it just gets down to friends, favorites and more than a little foolishness. After all there were some pretty weird comments made about the first bout as well!

I guess that it’s a bit much to actually READ a blog sometimes before making a decision either way. After all reading takes effort and if you can’t be assed to “get into” a blog then you’re pretty much just gonna stick with what you know. It’s the same with everything in life really, and I do the same thing sometimes.

Unlike Kachina’s blog A Whiter Shade Of Pale, where the content was interesting, often compelling and well written, I’d have to say that I can’t actually find much in TPRoP to get excited about? That’s not to say that it’s not there, I just mean that I can’t physically actually see it! I’m not sure if it’s a browser thing or whether my firewall is blocking stuff that it feels may be advertisements, or what, but I’ve used three separate browsers now and still nothing? I just can’t see much of anything at all? Some one or two sentence posts with an occasional longer one, some “buttons” or images of friends (I think) and not a lot else? There is a nice graphic off to the left hand side though but, apart from that, everything seems rather plain?

Now I’ve not asked anyone about it – mainly because I kinda feel like a fool for not being able to see anything myself – but I have reason to believe that there’s a whole lot of really good stuff happening there at TPRoP? The reason why I think this is because of of the comments I’ve been reading at Blog Thunderdome. Comments such as these:

“TPRoP is what I think I blog should be: mysterious and able to let the reader draw it’s own conclusion about the writer and the writer’s exploits. It’s personal without having to regale us with boring story’s about friends and what they’ve done during the day. It’s visually pleasing and has a great amount of style and class. It’s the winner, hands down.”

“On looks alone I would go with the people’s republic (though I hate those colors together, go figure). I was just hopping through PRoP and her sudden shocks of creativity made me go back and actually READ her blog. Her posts are like little bites, and honestly I’d take that over real content everyday.”

And…

“While TPROP is beautiful, what is beauty when it is meaningless? While this project may be an intriguing read for those who know the author, it is utterly boring for the rest of us.”

Mysterious is right? I’m going spare just trying to work out why I can’t seem to see what apparently everyone else is seeing? Especially when it gets to the “visually pleasing” and “beautiful” bit? Sure, the template itself is OK and legible, but I would think that’s got more to do with the program used than anything that’s been “created” for it? It is a nice layout but it is also a little plain……and nothing like the kinda work that the Web Divas and others produce? And I’m not understanding the whole “sudden shocks of creativity” thing either? I mean apart from the button icons of her friends, there’s a page with calendar months on it and nothing else…..well nothing I can actually see anyway? I mean it did take a little while to find the archives but, so far, they’re more of the same – two sentence posts punctuated with the occasional longer one. Aye currumba!

I guess I’m just gonna have to wait for the “report” from the guys at Blog Thunderdome to find out more…

Now on to my second review of the week which you can see at Best Bloggers Award. It’s short but it’s not horrible – and I didn’t actually come away with a gong because the reviewer felt that I needed to have my banner link back to the home page and lose a few of the buttons in the side bar as well. Now while I wasn’t that concerned about either comment – after all I had far fewer buttons than most blogs (only about ten in fact) and I’ve never had any aversion to using the “back” button on my browser – I did feel that, for others, the comments did have merit. I tossed out some of the buttons that weren’t “working” for me in terms of traffic, money or whatever and then made the top banner graphic linkable back to the home page. While I was at it I also put a back link at the end of my comments page.

I imagine I’ll be getting rid of one or two more of the buttons in the side bar but, for the moment, they’re under evaluation. It’s good to get constructive feedback and, if it makes your site/blog/whatever better, then it’s worthwhile. It’s all just a matter of evolution….

So now I’ve just got to wait for “The Big One” from the Blog Thunderdome. It’ll be interesting to read – certainly funny at least…..though I can also imagine getting a “twinge” here or there when it gets down to more personal stuff. Still, it is what it is. If you put it out there it can come back to bite your butt!

And about the two month suspension from blogging if I lose? Well I think I have that just about worked out as well.

I love WordPress!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 15th, 2005 at 9:13 pm and is filed under Blogs, The Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.