I have read many personal blogs. These are the blogs that don’t have any true focus since the posts are what the author has felt like writing at a specific time.
I enjoy reading some personal blogs as they can provide quite a break from reality. This week I review a personal blog, that is geared more towards the college crowd.
Web Site: Tetsujin’s Blog
Description: It is about college life, general life on the internet, and random technology, it is a lot of personal blogging fun.
Design 
When I read the e-mail requesting the review I never clued in that I have seen this blog before. When I viewed the blog I instantly recognized the image in the header of the blog. The header takes up quite a lot of real estate on the blog, but the image will be associated with this blog.
Below the image is a menu consisting of links to a forum, suggestions, the “about me” and “contact me” pages, and a “One Buck Review” page. More on the “One Buck Review” later.
The actual content portion of the blog is split into three columns. The left column contains the Entrecard card, the BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog widgets, and recent posts from other blogs. The content is in the middle with another navigation bar on the right.
The right navigation bar contains the subscription link, sponsors and category links, favourites, archives, a calendar of post dates and other personal links.
The columns should be switched, with the blog related links on the left so the visitors can easily navigate the blogs. The BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog widgets, as well as the advertising should be moved to the right navigation bar. The personal links could be placed below the links on the left to make the left navigation bar a one stop shop for the links.
I’m not a fan of the green coloured text, especially against the light background. A darker colour would make it easier to read, especially if the text was also larger.
The design could use a few modifications to make the blog better to allow visitors to easily navigate and read the blog.
Focus 
It is always difficult to rate the focus of a personal blog because there usually isn’t one. That is true in this case. There is no true focus of Tetsujin’s Blog but it seems to be more geared towards college life.
Content 
The content of Tetsujin’s Blog ranges from long posts to relatively short posts. The author doesn’t post on a regular basis and can sometimes leave large gaps of time between posts.
The author does include some appropriate pictures to enhance the point of a post. Some images, however, can be quite large and take some time to download. For the most part the images are small and download quickly.
In the top menu there is a link for “One Buck Reviews”, which I’m guessing means you buy a review from the author for one dollar. The reviews are small (about three paragraphs), but for one dollar it is a good investment if you want a backlink.
I did enjoy reading some of the content, which has a college feel to it. If you do like reading these types of blogs, then you may like reading this one.
Spelling and Grammar
There are a few spelling and grammar mistakes that did cause me to reread sentences a few times. All posts don’t contains sentences like this, but those that do definitely take away from the readability of the post. A spelling and grammar checker would help in such cases.
Overall
Tetsujin’s Blog is a standard personal blog in which the author writes about anything they are thinking about at the time. There are several issues with the design of the blog that could make it difficult for visitors to navigate or read.
The focus of the blog, like many personal blogs, is almost non-existent, but the content is interesting. It would be better if the author wrote on a more regular basis as large gaps between posts could stop people from subscribing to the blog.
A spelling and grammar checker would help correct some of the errors that appear in some of the posts.
Overall the blog is a good blog with a few minor flaws that could be easy to fix.