Romsky's

“Wild and Inspired but Ultimately sweetness itself” is how the author of http://www.todaytrip.blogspot.com describes herself. Elle or ‘Romsky’ as she is better known, literally revels in the reality-TV-type style of blogging. Her header succinctly reads, “Today I put away my many faces, take me as I am” which epitomizes the exact sentiment of this blog. Romsky has been blogging with amazing regularity since September 2006 and has attained platinum blogging prestige within her extensive online circle.

Background: Written by a Masters Media student at UKZNP this blog covers almost every aspect fathomable, from random chirps about university life to breath takingly morbid yet poignant poetry, there isn’t much from the deep recesses of Elle’s mind that isn’t given a virtual life. She documents her daily existence with award winning honesty, much to the delight of her legions of followers who are occasionally appreciatively mentioned: “I Found out today that I have fans… I feel so special, Yay”. The content on this blog range from the hilariously mundane to the intensely political, ‘the impertinence’; ‘BA-Bsc…the debate is the issue’; and, ‘Nice people – it ain’t right’ are among the over 200 posts documented on Elle’s blog. The constant traffic and comments on this blog is almost self perpetuating, perhaps the most interesting debate to have been posted was the ‘Religious chat’ that yielded a total of fifty comments:

Nic said...

Im really sorry to say but I agree with Angry 100%. Religion should get no special treatment. I personally believe that anyone with faith who has never challenged their religion is not faithful at all but ignorant and blind.

hetty said...

Religion is not bondage. The collective is not the enemy. I am sorry you can’t see that!

Presentation: Elle’s blog is possibly one of the most well rounded, aesthetically pleasing creations on the blogosphere. It has evolved from using a standard template provided by Blogger.com, to a personally constructed template that the author has edited using the dreamweaver programming systems software. Among the plethora of technological effects present, this blog boasts a c box, search engine, flickr, del.icio.us tags, by-country hit counter, rss news bubbles, a virtual pet Tiger called tig, and a blogroll a mile long. Although Elle’s blog is in perfect functional order it has had a history of minor script errors: exported html codes were dysfunctional and the news bubbles were not bubbling. However this has since been remedied much to the relief of the various restless natives.

Verdict: http://www.todaytrip.blogspot.com is the cumulative definition of blogging. Romsky’s is a hive of activity that has attracted Internet folk from every nook and cranny of the c-g world. For insight into the overt life of one of the most interesting individuals in virtual space, surf on over into Elle’s blog. Elle, you have my blessing. Go forth and Blog!

Binky's world

Off centre seems to be the theme this issue and nothing is more hilariously warped than www.sleepingkittty.blogspot.com. The author of this blog is Binky who describes herself as “a glorious specimen of the feline species”. Binky has been blogging in random bouts of productivity since March 2006 with the dedication and commitment of a lazy, egomaniacal, fat cat.

Background: Written by a student here at UKZN, Binky’s world chronicles the life of a Tiara Wearing Fat Cat often with painful humour and remarkable poise. Her daily adventures include philosophising over the greater uses of kibble with her flea friends Billy and Betty and chanting “love me, feed me, never leave me”. She is constantly at odds with the unobservant world and revels in lamenting the shortcomings of her human counterparts. When Binky isn’t severely brutalized by being treated like anything less than the Lord of the Household, she concerns herself with the paramount and insurmountable task of deciding her culinary requirements. After a break from the blogging world, Binky returned this year with the following message: “Ok, so it's been ages since I last wrote. But seriously, what do you retards think? That I'm at your beck and call for your amusement? I'm a cat for God's sake, not a drooling mind-dead dog!! But I know that my legions of fans have been calling for my return, so here I am.” She has since put out one post titled “I piss on you and your new smell,” which is an invaluable gem to any aspiring cat keeper, also possibly the most amusing post Binky has put out to date asserting and entrenching her authority as a vain, conceited feline.

Presentation: Binky’s world is the absolute height of laziness. It has a background, a foreground, a themed colour scheme and one sidebar widget. Originality is not its forte. While there aren’t any script errors or html code errors, it is equally true that there isn’t aesthetic appeal. Binky is admittedly an anti-social creature and accordingly hasn’t put out a blogroll, nor does she subscribe to any rss feeds, pictures are somewhat too burdensome and therefore absent – her presentation is amusingly standard.

Verdict: www.sleepingkitty.blogspot.com is ostensibly about a cat, however on closer inspection one will discover that it is really about the trials and tribulations of a sublimely over active imagination. It is blogs such as Binky’s world that reaffirms my faith in the weird, bizarre and uncanny individuals who are essential to balancing the often morbidly serious blogosphere. With a few aesthetic tweaks Binky’s world could very well be the George Orwell of our time.

Mushy Peas on Toast

“Hook-ups, break-ups, cover-ups. I cause my own chaos,” is almost an adjective for http://mushypeasontoast.blogspot.com . The author, who is only known as Mushypeas, has been blogging since December 2004. This veteran blogger provides the blogosphere with regular pieces of entertainment that has earned her a South African Blog award for the best blogger and was also the second place winner of the ‘great South African Blog Off’ competition.

Background & Content: The content is inspired by the daily happenings in Mushy’s life that provides valuable insight into a world seen from the eyes of what seems to be a truly uproarious individual. Recent posts include “Spidebution” (a play on the words ‘spider’ and ‘retribution’) that details Mushy’s side-splitting battle with spiders: “like a mad woman, aqua-blasting the vermin abode and all the arachnids therein while whooping in hedonistic glee and imagining she’s actually holding a fully-loaded machine gun loaded with spider ammo” and “Dear Peas on Toast” that is seemingly an agony-aunt-like post set to uncover the mysterious questions of “What do women want? And following up on that, b) Can men ever give this to them, and following on from that, c) do they really know what they want?” Individuals who delight in reality TV shows will find the constant posts, specifying every detail in excruciating humor, completely addictive.

Presentation: The layout is undoubtedly user-friendly and first time bloggers will encounter minimal difficulty. The yin-yang as far as layout is concerned, it that while it is incredible that this blog has a regular flow of reader, the enormous conversation threads often leave one felling slightly cross-eyed. The matching pink RSS-feed news bubbles work brilliantly and Muriel the virtual animal adopted by mushy from the Bunny Heroes lab is alive and disturbingly well.

Verdict: http://mushypeasontoast.blogspot.com is worth dedicating a few of your surfing minutes to. Those blog browsers who are disinclined to random perversity will find causal references to four letter words unpleasantly surprising; but those who enjoy such articulation will be tickled pink. Individuals who take pleasure in magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Glamour will revel completely in this blunt, eloquent commentary of life, love and almost everything else. Mushy Peas on Toast, you have my blessing, go forth and blog!

3 Job Blog

If you can operate a keyboard you are important enough to have an opinion. The blogosphere (blog community) merely provides the previously oppressed with a voice, incidentally loud and interesting enough to begin a mass following. According to wikipedia, the online Moses, a blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order. All that this jargon means is that a blog is your very own online diary, where the publishing process of web articles is made more feasible to a much larger, less technical, population. Like the latest Pokemon craze, every entity on the planet has a blog. This column is therefore aimed at combing the blogosphere to poke fun at the truly dull, lame, and uninspired, while; accolading the brilliant geniuses of the virtual world.

www.nicharalambous.com is possibly one of the most impressive specimens in the blogosphere that I have recently had the fortune of browsing. Nic succinctly describes his blog as: “My world, my views, my opinion” and rightly so.

Background & Content: This blog has recently morphed from being called “shutterview” to “3jobBlog”. The content remains hilarious and independently informative, the only change seems to be that there is a slight concentration on Nics personal life, which makes for amusing yet touching browsing. Blog Urchins will find Nics earlier portrait posts stimulating and thought provoking. “Township smiles” in particular, will live in the dusty vestiges of my sentimental mind for some time to come. Nics recent posts vary from truly hilarious to truly mundane, all with the lighthearted sincerity of a true blogger. Also, information in many posts featured on this blog is very often referenced which is a commendable feature indeed. There is brilliant commentary and helpful links to sites such as: Breathing Earth (fascinating and threatening is this planet), Hello Peter, Pbwiki, Gregoogle, etc. Nic combines his journalistic skills with his keen technical dexterity to provide the blogosphere with quality posts for instance; the online relaunch of Time magazine was timeously (mind the pun) documented much to my great excitement.

Presentation: Decent graphics and a very user-friendly layout. Although I must admit, from an aesthetic perspective I prefer the “shutterview” theme to the “3joblog” theme; but, the font in the current theme is grand – so an even compromise perhaps. Moreover, apart from the recent change of urls, my time spent on this blog was serenely unproblematic. All links work and I’m lead to believe that script errors are non-existent.

Verdict: www.nicharalambous.com is something I would subscribe to and pay actual money for. For the same reason that we watch shows like Bridget Jone’s diary and passions, the blogosphere will eternally be addicted to blogs such as this one. Readers of this column you will do well to spare just a few of your precious surfing minutes to give this blog a browse. Here’s to keeping it nice and clean Nic. Thumbs up buddy. You are in the land of milk and honey as far as virtual nirvana goes. You have my blessings, go forth and blog.