Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

I suppose it is a bit like playing Solitaire. A pointless repetitive activity that seems to achieve nothing.

Oh hang on, I'm supposed to be plugging Blog Explosion to you lot aren't I? Because how else will I start to clamber up the ladder of BE's pyramid scheme? (Although possibly it's more fun than this alternative pryamid scheme which showed up in the referrals list).

It can be quite enlightening to notice trends in what influences one's impressions of a blog. Working from a purely stylistic basis the following ensure GO gets hit as soon as it appears [for those not used to BE, one has to wait 30 seconds on each blog before moving on, in order to gain referrals to one's own blog)]:
- Anything flashing. Graphics which scream "Me, Me, Me" [usually from link site such as BE] are associated [in my mind at least] with the very worst of banner ads and pop-ups, hence I try to block the out, and anything near them is tainted by proxy.
- Pop-ups [occasionally they out fox Firefox].
- Too much advertising. Especially when it isn't positioned as it should be.
- Needlessly large graphics. We may all have broadband now [can you imagine BE from an old modem?], but that still isn't a reason to have many large pictures of random things. Especially when they can't cope with Firefox and the wrong resolution monitor. [And now I'm worrying about this being a pot and kettle situation, not having tested this site recently].
- Layouts which prevent the recent post from showing above the fold/bottom of the screen.
- Intentionally unconventional layout. The reason that top and left dominant pages occur is because that is what we are used to. I know vernacular is boring, but it the reason it is so damn common is that it works. Change it, and most people react with confusion. Which means the site loses mental points for humiliating them.
- Tag boards or open comments. Surely the point of having a personal blog is to enable people to read the author's work? So when the first legible item is a nonsensical string showing the tail end of a conversation between two unknowns, well, it just distracts from the impact of the page.
- Colour schemes and fonts which just aren't easy on the eye. One blog I found has yellow on white as the primary colour scheme. There was supposed to be a background image, which presumably provided a better contrast, but that redexed on me [ok, not not a real red-ex as I'm not using IE, but you get the point].

Looking at many blogs in BE, how come so few authors were paying attention in the module on effective communication? (What do mean they didn't all go to the same university, nor do the same course as I did?). Ok, so maybe I break the rules on narrative length, and paragraph size, and sentence length and convolutedness, and effective application of grammatical rules, but other than that I'm ok, right?

Admittedly I tend to think of my blog as looking like the "create a post" page on Blogger, and often forget that it isn't quite that same.

Anyway, this is all a round-about way of saying that of the BE sites I've blogmarked, they all appear to follow the model of someone from country A writing about being in country B. And two of them could are in the sidebar at GfB, which means I needn't have bothered going through the diverse array that BE provides.

Wow, an entire post about Blog Explosion and not one mention of kittens, or knitting, or Jesus, or Texas.

Nearly.

Anyhoo,