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VirusHead Reviewed by The Radical Blogger

VirusHead Reviewed by The Radical Blogger

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The VirusHead blog has been reviewed by The Radical Blogger!

Rating 9.5/10

Site Name: VirusHead

Site URL: http://www.virushead.net/vhrandom/

Genre: Blogging

Look and Feel:

Very colorful three column blog using two right sidebars. Very little in the way of header – just the title and a nice meet the author style photo. Very welcoming landing page.

Content:

Very well written articles. The content covers a broad range of topics and represents a cross section of the writers private life and their views on the world around them.

Ease of Use:

Fast loading clean look with easy to access and understand sidebars. The content starts from the top in a comfortable color, font and font size. Access to subscription services are well signposted and above the fold.

Suggestions:

It is hard to find any areas of criticism on this site. The criticisms I do have are only minor – more in the nature of tweaking. The subscription services and the join me sections may look a little better if the icons were centered. The only other criticism I have is with the header and I am really in two minds here. I like the clean look that the page provides. Load it up and everything is there. However I feel that I am starting on page two, not on the front page, Perhaps taking the top one inch, where the title and photo are and converting them into a header with the green background may work. I just feel that something is missing from the top.

Conclusion:

This is a very attractive and easy to read site with very well written material. I feel like an intruder reading the top article as it is an obituary dedicated to the writer’s father. A very touching and compelling read. The rest of content is also a great read. I highly recommend this site. Rating 9.5/10

review of VirusHead

I’ll be working on incorporating this feedback on some of the design issues. I prefer not to have an across-the-top banner image, but there are other ways to address that concern. As a poet, I tend to condense everything; there probably needs to be a little more white space, what my hubby calls “airing it out.” I’m trying to balance these sorts of design issues with the fact that I really want to focus attention on the post itself (never mind the pretties, start reading).

One thing I want to adjust in the stylesheet is the way that links are handled in the sidebars. I’ve been meaning to do that for about a month (smile).

Please comment if you have additional suggestions!

My Ninja Army

My Ninja Army

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I have a new “zone-out” activity. I crank my iPod and play Pirates vs. Ninjas on Facebook. It’s a simple virtual dice game, on which you wager a specific amount of “gold” per play. You can attack individuals on the other side, and you defend against them too.

After accumulating over a thousand plays as a Pirate (I told you I used it to zone out), I had gained and lost an enormous amount of gold. Someone with a lot more gold can wager up to half my amount, and take it all in a couple of big bites – and this happens a lot.

I had no idea about the background story when I accepted the invitation to play. When you attack, you can send a brief message, and after a few volleys of this sort with a very sweet woman, I decided that I was really more of a Ninja than a Pirate. You can only switch once (and I didn’t realize that you lose your experience points when you do) but evidently the new affiliation agrees with me. Since I switched sides two days ago, I’ve accumulated almost 4000 pieces of gold and only dropped by a couple of hundred points a couple of times.

If you add me as a friend, be prepared to get invitations to vampires, zombies, werewolves and slayers too. I love these little games, and I get points just for inviting you. No worries if you don’t feel like playing.

5 Questions about VirusHead

5 Questions about VirusHead

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Lin at Telling It Like It Is has shot me right in the head with what she’s calling a 357 magnum meme. Assembled over at Home with Heather, this one asks some basic questions about blogging. Far be it from me to refuse such a sweet request from a fellow former JW… so…

1. How long have you been blogging?

I started blogging four years ago (November 2003). I actually had a couple of other blogs – one at Blogger and one somewhere else that I’ve forgotten – but this is really the only one that counts. My domain – woo-hoo!

2. What inspired you to start a blog and who are your mentors?

There wasn’t any one reason that I started blogging. I wanted to bookmark things that I enjoyed, mark life events, comment on politics and culture and so on. My first posts were a couple of poems, a celebration of the birth of my nephew, a collection of funny religion products like the Huggy Jesus, an ex-JW take on Michael Jackson, thoughts about Bush’s campaign discourse, and wondering if snipers had “nests” before Oswald. So it’s always been an eclectic blog.

Mentors? None, really, not for blogging. I’ve enjoyed many different kinds of blogs, but I just do my thang. Where I’ve needed the most help is for design and coding issues, and fortunately other bloggers are very generous with information and assistance – too many to name.

3. Are you trying to make money online, or just doing it for fun?

Neither. Once or twice a year, I get enough commission from Amazon to get myself a book. Not for the money, then. On the other hand, it’s not just for fun. There are a lot of different reasons that I blog. It’s a ritual that helps me stay grounded and in touch with myself and the worlds that I inhabit (and that surround me). It’s a personal journal – although somewhat censored – about important events and thoughts. It functions as outreach to other former JWs and people who are dealing with various issues having to do with Jehovah’ Witnesses – and that is very healing to me, too. It allows me to have the feeling of having some small voice with regard to what has happened and is happening in the United States, and to support activism, however small.

4. Tell me 3 things you LOVE about being online.

Three things? I love meeting and communicating with people I would never have known otherwise. There are at least a dozen people that I’ve met through this blog that I consider to be good friends, notwithstanding the fact that in most cases we never have met off-line.

I love reading other blogs, and I feel strongly that blogging has encouraged a wide variety of people to do more writing… and thinking. This encourages me and contributes to a feeling of hope about the future. Even when I vehemently disagree with someone’s thoughts, the very fact that they are writing means that they will do more writing. The more you write, the more you think, and the better you become at both.

I love the social aspect of the internet. I’m a little isolated these days, working part-time as a consultant, being a mom, and now without my own car again. One of my last close girlfriends here just moved out of state. Through the blog, Facebook, Care2, MySpace, and so on, I feel like I’m keeping up – at least a bit – with friends, old and new, and they each have extremely fun things to do beyond social networking. I digg Digg. I love to StumbleUpon things. I love to find things on YouTube (see Salvadore Dali on What’s Your Line – of course he’s an artist, but also an author, and according to him, an athlete too (hee-hee).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXT2E9Ccc8A[/youtube]

5. Tell me 3 things you STRUGGLE with in the online world.

The main thing I struggle with is having time to do all things I love to do. I sometimes have trouble with just playing around instead of writing something substantial in the blog.

I also get overwhelmed by how much information there really is – news items, blog posts, political actions, petitions, votes, bookmarking, weighing different viewpoints and perspectives. Sometimes I have trouble keeping up – even with just the things that really matter to me.

Last, as you may have seen in posts before, I struggle with being fair, ethical, compassionate, caring. It’s a high value for me, but it is sometimes very difficult to hold myself to my own high standards.

Ok, so that’s how it goes.

Now, as far as tagging five more bloggers, I’ve become a bit hesitant. On the one hand, a link from this blog to another blog is almost always a good thing – it gives you another little bit of reputation at Technorati and it might bring more readers to your blog to see all the other cool stuff you’re writing.

On the other hand, some people are tired of the memes, have too much else to write about, and so on.

So we’ll do a win-win. I’ll tag 10 people from 9 blogs – only people I’d really be interested in knowing more about and who haven’t already answered these kinds of questions as far as I can tell (that lets you out, Todd, and Jolly Roger, it’s up to you). “The tagged” are then completely free, with total diplomatic immunity, to participate or not. No worries.

Now, just because I haven’t named you doesn’t mean you can’t participate!

Visual Bookshelf on Facebook

Visual Bookshelf on Facebook

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My friend Amanda innocently suggested that I join her in adding the visual bookshelf application to my Facebook page.

Little did she know that it’s just the sort of thing I would latch onto when I’m bummed out. I guess it’s better than some of the alternatives.

I’ve already listed well over a thousand books that I’ve already read, and more than a hundred that I want to read. It’s ridiculous, because that doesn’t even begin to really address the sheer number of books that could be listed. I still read about 5-6 books a week, and I’m not a kid.

I don’t think I quite realized until just this moment: I am – truly – a complete bookworm nerd.

What a strange collection it turns out to be.

My Car Accident Today

My Car Accident Today

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Ok, I’m an idiot.

I left work early today because I still had a pounding headache. At about 12:30, I was backed up in a line of traffic, at a full stop, for a red light across a busy intersection.

To my right was a scruffy-looking guy that looked to be the right age to be holding a sign saying “Homeless Vietnam Vet.”

(You may start the bleeding-heart liberal jokes at any time.)

I rolled down the passenger-side window, and waved a couple bucks. As he took them from my hand, my foot slipped off the brake.

I’m driving an older Geo Prism. My brother donated it to charity – me. The idle is set high.

When my foot slipped off the brake, I immediately ran into the white Ford Expedition in front of me. I didn’t even have a moment to process. The guy looked at me pityingly and said “oh, no…”.

If it had been a different sort of vehicle, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. Unfortunately, that truck was big and so high off the ground that its back bumper slid into my hood.

The hood buckled in half. The driver’s side lights broke, the passenger side door won’t open, the engine fan was tilted back, and the edge of the hood looks like it just touched the radiator.

The driver of the truck – a nice woman who is going to study nursing at Emory – pulled into the fast-food parking lot on the other side of the intersection. I followed.

We drove by two policemen in the parking lot, and they came over to talk with us. They said that they were on their way to a robbery. They advised us – with the understanding that they “weren’t here” – that we should call 911, state that it was a non-emergency call, and file the report with the officer on duty. That way, it would have a case number and would go to our insurance.

So then they went back to the patrol car for twenty minutes and ate their chicken sandwiches. (sigh)

We called, but there was no officer on duty. They said they would have to send someone out.

We waited an hour, then she left. She gave me all of her information (and called me later too to ask if I was all right).

After another half hour, a patrolman arrived. He asked why I had called, since there were no injuries and no dispute about fault. I told him what happened. He apologized for the “unprofessional behavior” and said that if he filed a case report he would have to issue me a ticket. He was very nice and advised me just to call the insurance company and do it that way. He also escorted me part of the way home to make sure that the engine wouldn’t overheat.

I made it home, but I couldn’t find the insurance information. Now I have to wait until my hubby gets back from teaching to call. I did talk to the woman I hit. There was no damage to her vehicle.

I feel like a total fool, but what worries me is the comparison between the value of the car and what this might cost to fix. I never take this car on the highway anyway. Obviously now I know it’s as though it were made of tissue paper, and I would be toast in a real accident. But I always knew it was really an about-town sort of car anyway.

If they decide to total the car, I will be left without any car at all. I was a prisoner to this house and my workplace for three years. I couldn’t take that again. I hope it all works out.

To take up what I am sure is a totally outdated phrase, I’m really bummed out.

My Free Will Astrology

My Free Will Astrology

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I like to read the Free Will Astrology reports. I have to post this week’s forecast because of the Halloween costume suggestions.

Aries (March 21-April 19)
For all we know, in your past life you were a virgin who was thrown into a volcano to appease a fire deity. But whether or not that’s an actual fact, we can say this with certainty: At some time in your current life, you made a great sacrifice in an effort to pacify a person whose anger or violence or manipulativeness you were intimidated by. Now I say unto you, Aries, that it’s an excellent time to fix any distortions that were unleashed in your life because of that sacrifice. You’ve got the personal power and insight you need to set the healing in motion. Halloween costume suggestions: the mythical phoenix; a virgin-turned-warrior carrying the severed head of the fire deity; a fireman, firewoman, or firedancer.

I’d love to be a phoenix, but the costume planning is too daunting. I don’t know anybody I could borrow a fire-fighting costume from, and I have no idea what a fire dancer would wear.

But I did do something like the the virgin-turned-warrior carrying the severed head of the fire deity once, if you count Judith‘s beheading of Holofernes.

12 When the people of her town heard her voice, they hurried down to the town gate and summoned the elders of the town. 13 They all ran together, both small and great, for it seemed unbelievable that she had returned. They opened the gate and welcomed them. Then they lit a fire to give light, and gathered around them. 14 Then she said to them with a loud voice, “Praise God, O praise him! Praise God, who has not withdrawn his mercy from the house of Israel, but has destroyed our enemies by my hand this very night!” 15 Then she pulled the head out of the bag and showed it to them, and said, “See here, the head of Holofernes, the commander of the Assyrian army, and here is the canopy beneath which he lay in his drunken stupor. The Lord has struck him down by the hand of a woman. 16 As the Lord lives, who has protected me in the way I went, I swear that it was my face that seduced him to his destruction, and that he committed no sin with me, to defile and shame me.”


Judith and Holofernes

Read the Book of Judith

Back in Iowa City, my graduate student friends and I dressed up as religious figures and went trick or treating to our professors houses (in the sleet). I made a plaster cast of my face and painted it. I carried it around the whole night, although the strands of the black wig kept getting caught on it. Note the pink tee shirt with the painted nipple. I’m not sure why Judith is represented with the one breast showing, but I did the best I could.

Can you guess who everybody is (other than me)?


Heidi Bev Glenn Nicolae

But hey, I can’t do that again. Ben wants me to be a witch. And besides, I doubt our pseudo-christian conservatives here in Georgia would recognize the reference or approve of the depiction…