Sunday, September 10, 2006

It's Funny How I Find Myself...In Love With You

There are times when I read blogs when I simply cannot believe what I'm reading, for various reasons. If you can't spell, Blogger offers a spell-checker. If you can't put a nice template together, you can find out how by doing some simple Googling of either coding or looking for some template sites. Either way, what I'm looking for in a blog is a clean, well-presented look AND some grammar/spelling skills. The ability to tell an unbelievable story is also a gift I respect tremendously, so yeah, maybe it's too nit-picky on my part to ask for all this, but hey, it's what I like.

So, that brings us to It's My Life...as uninteresting as it may be!. Firstly, the title. Erin, your life is interesting, or it least it should be to you. If YOU feel like you're interesting, you will be to others as well. If you shorten it to "It's My Life", I'd like it a lot more, despite the fact that the Bon Jovi song makes me break out in hives. Okay, so let's look at the template. It's girly, but clean-looking, so I like it. She's got one sidebar, neatly organized, although I'd like to see the archives rolled up (if you'd like, ask our own Kitty Kat how to do it, she's quite the code mistress these days). Here's the thing that weirds me out about some of these templates. Why not center it? There's a great white expanse of space on the right side of my browser that's just sitting there. It bugs me that this blog isn't centered.

She's a self-described SAHM, which I Google to find out the meaning. Ah, it means Stay At Home Mom. Well, I'm sure that can't be easy, so kudos to you. She lists one of her favorite movies as Less Than Zero, so I immediately fall heavily in love with her. That fucking movie still makes me avoid drugs at all costs.

Let's talk about her posts. Her first post is apparently part of a project of bloggers remembering victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks. It's well-written and simple, and she quotes some stories about the person. The anniversary is Monday, so big ups to being part of the process of remembering the victims. As I read on, I discover that she has apparently been in an abusive relationship, and has the balls to blog about it. I'm liking her more and more. Her commenters really seem both smart and caring, and I'm again reminded of why a lot of us blog. The outlet of seeing people's words and reacting to them is powerful shit. So, here's the thing. She makes some grammatical and spelling errors along the way. As a reviewer, it drives me insane. As someone who thinks it's courageous as hell to blog about this situation, I can live with it and STILL make the suggestion to use Blogger's spellcheck.

So, what are the recommendations for this blog? One, see if your template designer can center your blog, and maybe skin the background so it's not all white on the borders. Secondly, use Blogger's spellchecker. Thirdly, roll up your archives listing, as it will definitely clean up your look.

I give you for having a shitload of courage to blog about your relationship, and the fact that you like "Less Than Zero". No explosion fingers for this blog, but like I said, a few upgrades and you're on the way to awesomeness.

Cheers!

3 comments:

  1. Hey Thanks!! I really appreciate all the comments you gave me. All the things you mentioned are things I would love to do. I have been trying to center this thing for months, but people say it can't be done, although I have no idea why. Its driving me insane!

    As far as rolling up the archives, I'm going to hit up kitty kat for some advice! Thanks again :)

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  2. It's a Caz template, his templates are fixed because he uses images to create the boxes. I think there may be an option to download the template formulated for a higher screen resolution, but I'm not sure about the orchid one.

    Like I did for Ms. Des, I can try to help you come up with a template you want, although my webdesign skills are limited because IE hates me :)

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  3. Thanks for the info Kat... I didn't know that is why no one could change it. I'm going to look to see if I can download it in different resolution, but if not I will certainly take you up on your offer to help me with a new template! Thank you so much for offering! I know you must be pretty busy over here :)

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Grow a pair.