BlogShared: Mission

Having had the opportunity to review Laila's A Journey Through Life some time back and having won a considerable amount of BS Dollars, I now have the opportunity to undertake a second review with the possibility of winning a Premium membership to BlogShares or a variety of other prizes.

Here's Laila's introduction to her blog:

"A lifelog of a well-travelled single parent who had a life extension in 2000, blogs indiscriminately about her journey through life fulfilling unfinished business and promises, searching for the missing pieces that will soon complete her existence..."

I find her introduction doesn't really give you a true picture of her Journey Through Life due to the use of the word indiscriminately in her introduction. "Why do you think that?", I hear you ask? Because Laila's blog is anything but indiscriminate: Laila tells us, throughout her blog, of her journeys - both literal and metaphorical - in an honest and open way, so that's why I wouldn't use the word indiscrimnate to describe her Journey Through Life.

Take this, for example:

"I have been in a desperate mood for the last few days but the excellent news that the World Health Organization on Wednesday removed the Philippines from a list of countries with recent local transmission of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome made me feel better. Health officials said there were still four suspected SARS cases under observation in an undisclosed government hospital, but all the patients showed symptoms after returning from overseas trips, not because of local transmission. And we had no new cases of SARS for the past 20 days--twice the maximum incubation period. Meanwhile, the financial crisis at home prompted me to think twice of selling my house. We are in a difficult situation that I must make a major decision soon and live within our capacity and means. I wish I have 'my other half'... deciding matters as a single parent has not been easy."

That's not indiscriminate: it's telling life as Laila experiences it.

As I reviewed Laila's Journey earlier, I thought it might be useful to go back and have a look at the things I didn't like about Laila's layout and see what had changed:

• As a user of FireFox, Laila's blog at time jiggles when using mouse over links (e.g. Monthly Archives to the right of her blog posts. This is most disconcerting whilst trying to read the blog but it doesn't - at least for me - when I power up IE (which I am loathe to do). Fixed - doesn't happen any more!
• I find the static image (i.e. the flowers) to decrease the readability of the posts without having to scroll up and down for particular paragraphs. A lighter static image could help with this difficulty. Fixed - Image has been clipped and moved to the top right of the screen. Not only does this make the blog easier to read on my screen, I can also read the blog easier regardless of the size of my browser window.
• The boxes that appear on mouse-over are easy to read in FireFox but difficult in IE: a good example of the various implementations of CSS across platforms. Doesn't matter - as I never use IE to browse blogs these days.

Looking back at these comments of mine, Laila has done an excellent job of increasing the readability of her blog - good one!

The final area that I need to discuss is how Laila is doing as the top BlogShares player, so have a look at this to see Laila's placement on the ladder of BlogShares capitalists:

1. Laila*
(B$982,407,022,945,849.00 total value / B$25,537,185,685,530.80 cash balance)
(2.84 % growth for this month)

and compare it to my place on the ladder:

217. Rantzalot (Sir)
(B$564,187,381,291.80 total value / B$525,669,872,683.75 cash balance)
(0.95% growth in net worth this month)

All in all, I'd say Laila is doing a rather excellent job at blogging, at being a BlogShares player and at being a single mum*: congratulations and keep up the good work!

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How can a mother look younger than her oldest child? That always amazes me.  ¶ 04:59