February 3, 2007

La Gringa is ranting again


I use Bloglines to TRY to keep up with blogs that I like. Bloglines is not working though! Day after day it will show that there are no updates to a blog and then, BAM, 32 new posts all in one day. WTF? I'm thinking about trying out the new Google Reader.

Right now I'm subscribed to 218 blogs. How do I have time to read that many blogs? Simple answer: I don't. I'm somewhere around 7,000 posts behind. Ha ha! I'm kidding myself. Actually, a few of them are the biggies, the technology ones that seem have about 50 posts a day. The truth is, I just feel like I should read those. I never actually do.

Anyway, I'm cleaning house. Some of these blog have to go. I'm going to move some of them to a new category called "Probation." These blogs need to shape up or they are getting shipped out of my subscription list.

Blogs that I hate, er, dislike

There are just too many blogs to read and too little time to spend it TRYing to read blogs whose authors:
  • use such a tiny font that I need a magnifying glass. Why? With all the fonts to choose from, why on earth select one that people can't read?
  • use a light-colored font on a light-colored background, or a dark-colored font on a dark-colored background. Do they never try to read their own blog? Surely if even they don't bother to read it, they can't really expect us to.
  • don't know what a paragraph is. Paragraphs! Use them! Use them often. Even when the sentences aren't divided into logical groups, paragraph spacing makes the reading easier. If your article has 58 lines, trust me, there are some paragraphs in there waiting to happen.
  • use lines that are too long. It's a proven fact that short lines are easier to read. The human eye can only follow a printed line up to a certain length. There is a reason why a standard piece of paper is only 8 inches wide. Am I going to adjust my browser width for every web page − I don't think so! BAM − close window! The end.
  • have so many ads that you have a hard time ferreting out just what is material and what are ads. I don't care if people use ads − just don't try to disguise them as something else. They might inadvertently get a click from me, but I guarantee you it will be the last one. I hope they enjoy spending that .0001 cent that my click brought them.

On the other hand, I admire a beautiful and/or cleverly designed blog. So much so, that sometimes I'll read more and more, just trying to find something that interests me because I just imagine that the author must be an interesting person to have designed such an attractive blog.


Wow, all that ranting and I haven't even touched upon content! Content is such a personal thing. My feeling is that all blogs are personal to some extent and people should be able to write about whatever they want to write about. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. That's the way of the internet. There are readers for any and every topic.

You may like my blog. You may hate it. You may find it boring. But, by God, you can read it comfortably enough so that you can decide on its merits one way or another!

Done. Thanks for listening. I feel better now.

What's your pet peeve about blogs?
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