"Torn Paper" layout is in need of some serious fixing in 800x600 res.

I can't say I'm particularily fond of any of the layouts except for the default "Clean."

Your blog is very good though, I enjoyed the one about the Aetheist. Even more-or-less being one myself.

Posted: 05/10/2007

The potted plant layout was what came up... Very... interesting and original, but odd. :P The doodle skin is kind of messed up... The doodle sticks up randomly amongst the polaroids. The rest of the ones I looked at were--erm, functional, but kind of plain. I suppose they are nice enough. Simple and clean with matchy color schemes. However, no matter which skin I chose, the sidebar took AGES to appear. The sidebar on the piano layout was way out of place. There's a big black gap between part of the image and the content. This is where I expected the sidebar to appear, but it came up like 50 feet below.

The About page was absolutely horrible! Put the information about your site on a different page now!

After I got over THAT heart attack, I read the section about yourself. Very amusing and informative, all of it.

You have loads of original content that made me giggle. The continue the story thing was great, but I can't begin to invent what happens next. Wonderful photography, and the "Reccommended" list was original, but why do some of the books, etc. have bullets before them...? The advice things were odd. Very odd. But, again, amusing. :) The conversations: EVEN ODDER. I'm not going to continue.... Wierd, odd, crazy, amusing? visitor content. It kept me extremely entertained. Everything was entertaining. I will be revisiting. ;)

Posted: 07/17/2006

Because you're running some Linux distro or other I expect you to have a better understanding of user interface and the point of a website, and I was not terribly disappointed.

Designwise, this is fine. I myself find the notebook thing overdone, but that is strictly a subjective issue. What you've got here is well-executed for the most part, and compliant across platforms. Links are readily obvious, as is navigation. There are no games like "Figure out what's a link" or "Increase your text zoom by 300% to read anything" or "Decipher my unintelligble menu system".

Content. You've got it. I gave it a cursory glance at first, and saw that there was more there than "Tee hee, I havent updated in a while!" and "I redesigned, tell me what you think!" Your staying away from such vapid garbage was good enough for me -- you've got a point to the site, and in the end that's all that matters.

However, what I'm more interested in is somewhat beyond the scope of this review site, and that's your writing. For someone your age it is pretty polished, and definitely several cuts above what I would expect (especially recalling the nonsense that was passed across my desk when I was 14 and we had to proofread each other's papers). There's a lot that could be improved upon -- but don't misinterpret that, since any writer, no matter how experienced or gifted, can improve. I think with a bit of guidance and editorial feedback your skill would grow considerably.

And coming from me, that is high praise indeed.

(Hypothetically I would be glad to assist you to some degree if you want editorial suggestions. You know where to find my email and other contact information.)

Posted: 08/29/2005

I didn't know you're only 14! I thought you were older than that. (This happened to several online people already ... I guess you guys seem to know much more than I do!)

Anyway ... Eek, notebook layout! =D I love the spiral binding, I made something like that for my old guestbook layout, too. I can't help but notice that the binding's shadow for the right page doesn't match the left, though. It should be a little ... lower. (Later, I noticed the binding can be a bit "snaky" too, parts of the it are shifted to the left and right.) And since I'm a bit picky with "realistic" graphics -- the sticky tape should be more transparent. It looks very dark grey. And the pretty image of the birdhouse could use some spicing up. Like ... maybe the edges could resemble a Polaroid picture, or make it torn, like you tore it off a magazine, just something to match the "scrapbook"-ness of the design.

And the title, "The Migratory Mushroom" seems a bit plain.

I'm not sure I agree with the header backgrounds for the sidebar (is that a leaf?). Black doesn't quite show up against the green. Also, perhaps you might want to try different fonts for headers? I find that using a different font (sans-serif if you've already used a serif one for the content) makes them stand out a bit more. And come of your headers are exactly the same colour as your links, right? That might be confusing, plus the Categories and Archives sections in the sidebar look very ... one-coloured? And the grey that you use for the top- and bottom- borders could be replaced with a nice brown from the birdhouse image, I think it would widen the colour scheme slightly since your text is already near-black.

This might be just my taste, but the bottom border when your links are hovered seem gigantic. It almost touches the line of text below it, like in the Navigation and Most Recently Added/Updated Content. (That's a long title, maybe Added isn't necessary?) A 1px border looks enough. (I seem to like traditional underlined links, though. And I've heard that differentiating links only by colour might be a problem to colour-blind people...)

Down to the bottom of the page, maybe you should make all three "Vote" links the same. (i.e. using text links for all of them.) It looks neater. Another thing I noticed; your paragraphs are only indented at the left and doesn't have a big margin at the bottom. Perhaps if you add a nice big margin (as if you clicked Enter twice), it would be easier to read.

I have a feeling this will be a long review. (Sorry. XP) I haven't even touched your content! In the comments area, the background colour for your input and text areas is definitely too dark. Try this page [http://juicystudio.com/services/co lourcontrast.php] for checking background and text colours. The second line of the XHTML allowed tags thing seem to run over the left edge, it isn't the same as the input areas. It would be neater if it was pushed inside a bit, no?

About section now.

I think it might help if you have title="description here" for most of your links. Like in About, I don't know where the "Want to learn more?" link brings me, because the URL just has numbers. Just put "go to the About Me page" as a tooltip, that would help.

I think there needs to be a separator between the link and description in your sub-navigation, e.g:

"Awards - What? I won something?" instead of
"Awards What? I won something?"

You can use colons, semicolons, whatever you like.

And how come Guestbook and A History don't have any descriptions? Poor them. ;_;

You might want to create a separate page for Site Reviews too, since it'll surely be a growing section. I think the arrangement of your navigation could be re-arranged slightly, like A History at the top, then the reviews, survey, awards and gifts, ..., and lastly the guestbook. It's probably the order the visitor would want to visit the pages.

Is your guestbook supposed to have the sidebar links at the bottom, and a very odd colour scheme?

Your blockquotes could use a border or different colours or something to differentiate them slightly from the regular paragraphs. (Since the paragraphs are indented too!)

In your To Do List, the ticks look a little messy... Perhaps there's a way you could change the bullets to mark the "done" ones instead? Just a different class with a different bullet.

(Oh wait, I forgot to resize my window just now -- this layout isn't very 800x600-friendly, is it? X| )

At first I thought the Music section was empty, and then I noticed it was just divided into different sections underneath it. Ah. Well then -- maybe make the sub-headers different, so we can immediately tell that Playing, Listening and Writing are underneath Music.

I don't review writing or language that much, so unless I have something important to complain about, I won't comment very much.

Amusements section; Continue the Story is interesting, though I think it's a bit long to have to write 100 words. Maybe erm, a sentence would do? People would feel less lazy to contribute that way. ;) The "by Super Martha" column looks a bit out of place (and a waste of space), it would be easier to just add a header above the part that you wrote:

By Super Martha:
blablabla
By Next Person:
yadayadayada

Perhaps Advice From Hi and Advice From Seth (does the F in "From" need to be capitalised?) could use some explaining/descriptions.

Ask Fred is very entertaining, I've asked him a question a while ago too. (Does Fred know which one is mine? ;) )

Eeeek, Graphics gave me a FATAL ERROR. O_o

Your second wallpaper is ginormous in size (KBs)! I find that wallpapers take up so much webspace, I used to have them too, but took them down since they're always such big images...

In My Favourite Toe, the little column of explanation looks messy, it's too close to the left column. I think you could just introduce them above the interview.

The format for your questions for each interview also seem to vary; one interview has numbers, another; the questions are just bolded, and then the questions are headers... And then the questions are both headers with numbers. Uniformity, my dear! =P

Hmmmph, another PHP error in Quadratic Equation Solver.

In Strawberry Liquado, maybe add another header saying Instructions or something? Since "Fill the blender ...." isn't an Ingredient.

Heh, I've never liked (or done) any of those long surverys, but perhaps some people do.

Of the Web section.

I skimmed through your tutorials... I still think people should leave (X)HTML and CSS stuff to the HTML-help sites, but you seemed to put in a lot of effort in explaining them, so I guess they will help some people anyway. In How To Make a Good Website, under The End, you might want to change the address for CS Reviews. (It's review-you.net now, right?)

Yet ANOTHER PHP error in Calendar? *faints*

Superness section; why is Quiz: Are You Super repeated? It was in Amusements already, right? In fact, since this section is rather small, maybe you could consider merging it with Amusements?

I skimmed through your Written section, just so I can say that I went to every page you had. =D

Links section; perhaps you could just use either text links or buttons for all of the links? (For uniformity, yes.) Text links might be neater, I think. Eek, I'm there too! (I used to make such ugly link buttons, though... ^^; Here, grab a new one: http://aneesah.pixelled.com/hideawa y/link-buttons/)

I think I am done! Oh, sheesh, another error, Super Martha! Contact Me page, from the sidebar. Oh, gee, I haven't really checked out the sidebar stuff. Your other themes... I'll make this quick.

Berries; hmmm? the "sidebar" becomes boxes at the bottom of the page? O_o Or are things just messed up? The header image seems narrow enough, and the content area has a bunch of empty space around it... Argh, me dunno.

Clean looks very nice (pretty colours! Wheeeeeee!) , only the left side of the content area could use some more padding. And the lack of any link hover states is kinda odd. =(

Mezzo Forte and Piano; looks very wide. It's 800x600-friendly, though. So are Berries and Clean. Then why aren't Bird Notes (which is the default, right?) and Ooh, Look at all the Pretty Colors? =/

Ooh, Look at all the Pretty Colors; this one I've seen before. I think the content area could be lighter. It's especially blinding to look at the light blue of the dates in your blog.

Symphony in Orange; a little too bright and glaring for my taste, but everything else is fine.

Okay, I'm done! Done! Yay! So, in conclusion, you do have a ton of very original/unique/super/silly stuff that helps me give you a high rating, but I also complained a lot; the errors were especially annoying. Just fix the few stuff that I typed about and maybe I can give you a 5. Until then, a 4 from me. =)

Posted: 08/29/2005

'tis copied from the review request on my site; sorry if you came going "oh boy! New review!" :D :P

I’m onto my iMac with firefox to review this site. My resolution is 1024×768. Huzzah :D

design points
Anyway, I think the one sort of ‘flaw’ I noticed when loading your site was the colour situation. The blue against the green and the black against the green were both less-than-perfect to read. It wasn’t an eye killer, but it was an eye… annoyer. I could read it, but I kept focusing on how “It’s so close to the background!” so my brain kept getting distracted. I almost feel like a lightish grey background might work nicely or something. I’m not 100% sure.

The contrast between the navigation links and the background was also a bit frustrating. The blue against the yellow actually was an eye-strainer. However, I liked the setup of the navigation itself. It might look spiffy if the entire background of the ‘box’ changed on hover (kind of like at the css zen garden where in some templates the links to the different designs change background-ish)

I don’t know why I’m feeling so negative, but the image isn’t doing all that much for me. It’s not an eyesore, but if you removed it from the layout, my brain really wouldn’t care all that much :P It would still be a nice, functional layout (I really like the functionality of your site. Very straight-forward)

content
The about page has a lot, which is good, but it’s organized a bit weirdly. You have info on you… then site info links… then more info on you. I see how you have the anchor link, but I still think it might work out better if the ‘more info on you’ was on a separate page or something.

You have some great books reccomended :P I’ve read quite a few of them, and they’re super-fantastic. Maybe have a bit more of a description or something, and more spacing between each book? Other content was also good - lots of fun ideas… More recipies could be nice, etc etc. I’m one for quality over quantity, but I still think some quantity is good. If you have a recipies section, there should be more than one recipie in it :P

Survey… Grand, but it’d be kind of fun if you have a form that we got to fill out. I love doing those things; I have no idea why. It must mean I’m self-centered or something.

I’d random on about your oodles of different writing things, but they’re good and amusing and I’m not going to go on a wild review of every single one, because I am lazy like that.

I feel like this review is too short, but I’ve pretty much covered all the things I noticed when browsing… So there ya go!

Posted: 08/04/2005

this site definitely is super. not much of a review, but i think that says it all. i also responded to your site survey, so you may already know i am pleased with your web home.

Posted: 07/20/2005

I like your site name so I\'m waiting and waiting and waiting for your layout to load. I'd get irritated but it gave me time to grab a soda. Eh, the skin I'm seeing looks, well, half-assed. Did you take the picture yourself? Its a nice pic but besides looking half-assed the layout is boring. I'm changing it to the red one though the green one looks pretty. While I'm waiting for the red layout to come up I'll suggest something to perk up the default skin; make the side column a color in the girl's scarf. That would make it less bland and more fashionably simple.

Hmmm, the red one looks weird. Maybe if you took away the roses which are too startling a contrast to the tasteful picture they cover. Is that an Islamic temple or some sort of religious building? Its very pretty. If you only had that without the white border between the side column the layout would be classy and fancy in that way website reviewers love but never do. ;)

So, while I\'m waiting for the trippy looking layout to load how did you get the name Migratory Mushroom? I like it. Reminds me of my old art teacher whose office smelled like pot. He was so cool. Now, that it is loaded, I have to say its pretty bland but acceptable. I really like the top picture though. You have a knack for having good ones but not quite working with them right. Just do what you did with the Sushi one and they will be great.

Le sigh, when you click a link it goes back to the default. I\'ll make some toast or something during the wait. OK, I\'m in the about section and you like cheese. Excellent. Daniel Pinkwater weighs 400 pounds! Crazy. I agree about the War in Iraq and the worst thing about it is that it was planned like a bad game of \'Risk.\' Your about section is intriguing and you are now in my fave files. Though the sad thing is that I if it wasn\'t for all the God stuff and recent pissing away of the treasury I would be a republican (in the old school 1920s way) because I believe in fiscal responsibility but I don\'t mind paying for good investments like EDUCATION. That is why I\'m an Independent.

I submitted to be SOTM but I think my first few paragraphs messed up my chance. Damn, you have original stuff in your Amusement section. I dig it. Now, I stopped lying and put you in my faves file. I request more wallpapers. Your Long survey is a killer; apt title. You\'re tutorials are special like you. You ought to write one about hiding Llamas in your shoes because now I\'m interested. They are funny... Are they supposed to be funny because they are?

I\'m skipping superness, its not you, its me. I\'m already way too super. Almost to the point where the song \'Too Sexy\' is me with super before sexy or instead of sexy depending on your orientation and species.

In the written section I like but I have to point out that they interned members of the American Nazi party and Italians. How the situation was described on the history channel sounded like a bad racial joke. But, yeah, that always bugs the hell out of me and you are right. The only people they really had any right to intern were the Nazis. Though after the inappropriately titled Zoot Suit riots it might have been safer for the Japanese. Doesn\'t excuse it though. The advice from Hi and Seth is pointless; I really need to know what to do if Mr. Spoon doesn\'t want to dance with me. Finish your spoofs and I\'m done with written. Tip: add more political, historical, and fiction stuff.

Links are sufficiently link-y. Though I don\'t like buttons but that\'s me and not you. And with that I\'m spent. Excuse my wordy-ness and constant off-topicness.

Posted: 06/17/2005

First of all, I very much like the sushi skin. I don't know -why-, it doesn't seem like something that would ordinarily appeal to me, but it does here. It's very clean, it's readable, it's organized. It took a minute for the image to load, though- it's way ginormous at almost 300k! Even if you saved it in the highest quality setting in JPEG format it would still register at half the size of the png, and it would look great. Moving along... : )

The welcome message is fully visible below the image for me, in 1024x768, but what about 800x600 viewers? I checked your site stats (i'm wicked like that :P) and 12% approximately of your visitors use 800x600. Moving it above your navigation might be a nice switch, because it would then level the positioning of the navigation and content (though, I admit only in this skin as I'm not using the others).

I'll just say, straight-up, you have a weirdo visitor section. No bones about it : ) I enjoyed reading your web-related things, though I didn't look too thoroughly into the skinning article- for some reason, your skins do not work for me in FireFox : ( I have had trouble with other sites being skinned before due to my settings, so I don't know if it's my fault and won't take any points off, but it's something to look into (not that I can be helpful in any way since I don't even begin to know what the problem is, but the result is that it doesn't attach itself to a skin but somehow hops back and forth through them).

I'm having trouble with my internet connection so I'm going to wrap this up- the welcome message says that this is a site consisting mostly of your writing, and it delivers. There's 'visitor' content which allows for repeat-offenders, I mean, passersby to check out more things they haven't in between updates. Though I'm still scratching my head in regard to the conversations *hmm*. You should write more. ~bosses

Posted: 06/15/2005

Dude, I seriously think we're twins sepparated at birth. I read your about you page and.. uhh.. yes. Or maybe you're just so cool that I'm wishing i was your twin. Either way.

Layout:
Sushi! Mm... the picture is very tasty indeed, but it seems kind of flat against the solid boxy fonts and background thingys. I'm not to fond of any of your skins, but they're easy to navigate, functional, and lacking in ugly. I'm also kind of biased towards you for being so awesome.
Oh! Ooh! I just noticed something; on the red-rosey layout, your font is black... and you can't see your font. Unless.. you're.. going.. for .. some sort of invisible effect. Ka-pow!

Content:
Well, well, Your content is very entertaining. You seem like a very witty, fun, person to know as a friend. However, some of it seems to be mainly for people who know you in person. Anyways, it's interesting to read. Yay!

Posted: 06/14/2005

[edit] Aw bunnies. I really like this new layout. :) The green is very nice as are the bunnies. :P[/edit]


Intresting name you chose for the site. I like it, very unique. I'm not too keen on the layout, but your content more than makes up for what the layout lacks. You have some very entertaining reads. :)

Posted: 05/12/2005

I like the image up top, you did a great job for your first try! And your blog-ish area is well organized. Not a huge fan of the colors, but that's a personal choice :)

Posted: 05/12/2005

Hmm... well, I don't like the layout at all, but the important part is really the content, which is mighty entertaining.

Posted: 05/12/2005