Friday, 27 February 1998:

Journal Points

Every so often I check out the latest set of journals added to Open Pages to see if there's anything interesting. After checking out a crop tonight I've noticed that there are certain qualities to an on-line journal which will almost always drive me away before I explore it very deeply:

  1. Typing in all lower-case (or all upper-case, for that matter) will almost always drive me away. This trick is so painfully cliche by this point that I can't believe anyone bothers. And I guess if these people can't be bothered to use their SHIFT keys and type proper sentences, then I don't feel much like being bothered to read what they're saying.
  2. Small fonts. Anything smaller than the default font size is generally too much for my eyes to take. I generally leave my browser set to accept whatever layouts each page I look at is set up for, since I want to try to get whatever effect people are trying to convey on their Web site. But if the concepts being conveyed mainly seems to be "eye strain", then I usually give up, even if it seems interesting on the surface.
  3. Sound files will make me leave any site on the Web immediately. Aargh!
  4. I generally skip journals written by teenagers. Of course, I've noticed that a large proportion of these seem to be written in all lower-case, too, so this may not be a coincidence.
I tend to prefer journals with a fairly basic layout, written by people between the ages of 26 and 40, and with some basis in science fiction or the programming biz. And I definitely lean towards journals which are updated several times a week (in fact, I think Fresh Little Puddles is the only one I read that isn't).

These aren't litmus tests, but they do seem to be trends.

I received the soundtrack to Riven in the mail yesterday, and spent much of today listening to it over and over. It's not nearly as good as the soundtrack to MYST, and I've lamented previously that there wasn't enough of it in the game itself. But it's okay. The themes and melodies are kind of muddled and not as varied as those in MYST; that's the big problem.

I am still a little ill - mostly congested and sneezing. I'm not nearly as tired as I'd expected I'd expected after a full day of work, so I think taking yesterday off was the right idea.

But I am too tired to be much more inspired in this entry. More tomorrow.

Previous Entry Month Index Next Entry
Back to the Main Index
Michael Rawdon (Contact)