review of my blog

my blog had been reviewed by the blog critic. i copy here her/his remarks (in brown text), with my response below.

Lucia Lai has been blogging since Sept 2003 and is still dedicated enough to blog practically every day. That is a big plus in my books. She blogs about socio-political and current issues and although her English isn’t very good, she gets the message (and her opinions) across well enough.

yes i try to blog everyday…. if i have the time. i guess one of the reason i am trying to blog everyday is i’m too addicted to blogging! sometimes if i don’t blog, i feel that there is something missing. well these coming weeks i won’t be able to blog often during the weekends as i have to work during the weekends.

to continue reading, please click on ‘more’ below.
warning! long post ahead. continue at nodding-off risk! 🙂

yep! me england no good one. more of its grammar (and spelling), i suppose? whenever people said my english is no good or good or boleh tahan, i always like to bring up the fact that while in school, i enjoyed essay writing, and used to get high marks for essay writing. when i was in form 2, my english teacher (who happened to be my headmistress) once wrote in my essay book – “your style is very good, you ideas are very good, your vocabulary is good but your tenses (grammar) is dreadful.” haha. dreadful, see. not ‘no good’. then when i went to upper secondary, i took up english 122 (communication english), where the english teacher like to stress to us – “in communication english, i don’t teach you grammer. so if your grammar is no good, don’t blame me.” haha. ok i no blame you. i blame myself.

However, the blog layout is where Lucia loses points. It’s a Blogspot blog which has been customised, hence the garish header which might have looked all right except that the background contains the words ‘Mental Jog’ multiple times, in bright blue font. Plus there’s some coding on the left (tr>).

you are telling me!! i try so many times going back to my blog template to look out for the elusive (tr>) mark to delete it off but i just couldn’t find it. i did try to delete off some of those tr> mark i saw but when i preview the blog, that stuborn tr> still appeared. i’m at a lost how it appears, and knowing me to be html challenged, i just can’t figure it out.

hmm… now that you mentioned ‘the garish header’, yes i notice it is garish. well i do have a few others headers that are less garish, which even kind of fit in with my template design (blue colour lah!). maybe i should use those instead.

as for the ‘mental jog’ words that occurs at the background, you think that is not appropriate? well for that, i know how to remove them. either i change to other words or i don’t have anything at all. i thought the background words wouldn’t be too much of a distraction and is ok.

This is a 3 column layout, each of which contains images and colourful fonts, creating a busy, confusing atmosphere.

‘busy confusing atmosphere’. ahhh… yes, looks like it. i did not really realise how confused and cluttered they look until an anonymous commenter drop a comment in my blog here. s/he wrote “Topic posted here..interesting but with all the distraction on either side make it very distressing and not able to concentrade on the reading. Too many stuff all over.” i suddenly then began to picture how a first time visitor would see my blog. centre main post… right and left, text, text and pictures. for me since i’m used to my own blog (but of course) each time i’m in, i only concentrate on the centre and it’s like the right and left columns are invisible to me. (though i always use the right column, the ‘local weblogs’ part to go blog hopping). i realise that for new visitors, when they come in, yes they would see everything, and yes, those stuffs on right and left might distract them from reading the main posts.

well, it is because i have so much info to put up that i need 3 columns…. and to fill up the 3 columns. left column is basically about me and my blog and right column is for visitors’ info. at the top right hand is stufs that are ‘current’ – news or buttons – which will change as time goes by. i don’t know… i just felt that i have to put up all those stuffs (on right and left) for visitors to read as i felt they are basic info. i suppose i could do away with some.

Google ads after every post.

well, that can’t be help. not that i place the ads after every post, but the ads comes automatically after every posts. actually they appears in only 3 or 4 latest posts, not ALL posts. i did make it so that the ads will appear after a post, and google let it be after 3 posts. someone (perhaps the
adsense guru, lcf) suggested to me to put the ads here to attract people, so i did.

The images in the post are mostly small, but they are sometimes placed on the left, sometimes the middle, and sometimes the right, making the whole column look haphazard.

well i thought it provides variety. 🙂 ordinarilly i wanted to have the images on left only but i thought that would be pretty boring so decided to have some on right and some (esp. the wishes) in the centre. well, if you think this makes the column haphazard, i guess maybe you are right. i’ll go back to my original intention to have them only on the left.

The multitude of colours only makes things worse.

eh? where? i thought my blog is not colourful enough. you only get to see lot of blue. i don’t quite understand what you mean here. do you mean the links (live, visited, hover and so on) colours?
if you mean like this… quoted text (and the click more text) i put another colour, well i have to do it since there’s no other way i know how to do it. i prefer to quote text say in a rectangle, or to put a horizontal line across it on the left but i don’t know how to do it.

There’s just too much going on and it distracts from the main content. Lucia, I think people will come to your site just to read what you have to say.

good advise there. like i said earlier, i wanted so much info inside my blog, thinking visitors would read them but i guess they are first and foremost interested in the main content and many might not give a hoot to what appears on the right and left.

Get rid of the distracting bits (like your ICQ and Gmail address which you can place in text format, the ads, the site counter images, etc) and your blog will improve tremendously.

well i think i will get rid of the ducky icq (yeah which is so childish! hehe) but gmail addy no, i will leave it on. i like the cute bookworm site counter image and would be quite reluctant to let it go, though i don’t mind letting it go. one thing for sure i cannot let go is the google adsense ads! no no no! no way! i want to earn money lah. i don’t think they are kind of distracting (esp. if after i remove other stuffs).

After all, your blog is of a serious nature, and it deserves to have a layout that’s less cluttered and distracting, not one that looks like it was created by a teenager.

haha. teenager. i’m way past teenage years… very very past, so i guess you are right. i shouldnt made my blog look ‘teenagerish’. again this is a good advise, when you mentioned since my blog is of serious nature, it deserve to be less cluttered and distracting. yes, i will beat that in mind when…..

…..when i start a new blog! yep, i will be starting a new blog soon, probably using wordpress. i already bought the domain and now only need to buy web host. i guess since i am going to start a new blog soon, i will just leave whatever i have in this present blog as it is. i do hope i will really get down to start it soon. i had been saying i wanted to start it since months ago. haha. procrastination is my middle name, see. initially i had decided to choose again a 3 columns layouts for my wordpress blog but now after hearing what you said, i think i might go for 2 columns.

thanks a lot, blog critic, for your review. i appreciate your frank opinion and you had hit the nail on most parts. i will certainly bear in mind your suggestions/views when i created a new blog. ok wish me luck (gonna need it being html challenged and non techie savvy).