Photoblogs

1. http://www.chrislegg.net/
This photo is holiday themed. It is a full color photo of what appears to be a store window where pastries in little holiday wrapped gift boxes are being sold. The boxes are either red or green with white bows. There are smaller open boxes as well which show a variety of little cookies with a variety of frosting. Their are big old fashioned price tags on the boxes, one visibly reads "Bath melts. Box of 16. 22.50 (pounds)". The picture creates a feeling of Christmas and old fashioned charm .
2.http://www.613photo.com/
This photo seems to be taken form a highway at dusk. There are the tops of a gas station and an Office Depot seen on the horizon. There are power lines and poles on the right side of the picture. This photo shows an setting in a serene way with the post sunset sky colors, yet there is plenty of business conveyed in the photo as well.
3.http://streetzen.net/
This photo is simply a black and white close up picture of Dennis Hopper. It is striking because hopper looks very old and quite frightening in it. It appears to be a posed picture, as Hopper is smiling into the camera, but the camera seems to have piked up every age spot and wrinkle imaginable to create a truly ghastly picture of a celebrity.

A nice place in New Jersey

In my time living in New Jersey (my whole life) I have slowly come to notice that the outsider's conception of the state is somewhat different from reality. For whatever reason, the rest of the country seems to look at the state with some level of disdain. My only hypothesis for why this is so is that maybe the perception seems to be that all of New Jersey is essentially what you can see from the other side of the Hudson in New York City. They assume that its polluted, crime-filled, urban and boring. This is simply untrue, as most Jersey residents will attest and my hometown, a little upper middle class haven called Long Valley, is an example of this. Long Valley breaks just about every stereotype that is normally associated with New Jersey. Firstly, it is a very rural area, filled with woods, farms, and relatively few buildings. In fact, there may not be a single three story building in the whole town. That's not to say that it is underpopulated, New Jersey is indeed the most densely populated state in the country and Long Valley's streets usually have substantial amounts of traffic considering how rural and residential most of the area is. Still, Long Valley tends to be more spaced out than most parts of New Jersey. There is no pollution or crime to speak of in Long Valley, either. Now, the question of what there is to do there is a slightly different thing. You must drive to a neighboring town to go see a movie. However the location in New Jersey basically puts the world at your fingertips if you are willing to drive an hour in any direction. New York City and all ts attractions are a little more than an hour away from Long Valley. An hour directly east will bring you to the Jersey shore. Six Flags, Great Adventure, in Jackson is just a little over an hour from Long Valley, as well. Combine these advantages whit the temperate climate and relatively low potential for earthquakes, tornadoes, or other natural disasters and I can only come to the conclusion that the rest of the country (including NYC, which is where most of the anti-Jersey sentiment seems to come from) only makes fun of New Jersey because they are jealous.

How Obama deals with racism

Election day is almost here and with most polls (depending on who you ask) showing Barak Obama having a lead, it seems that the issue of race might not have been a problem for him. Why is this? Is it true that the country is not as racist as it used to be? Probably, but if we examine the Obama campaign's actions we see that while Obama appears and identifies himself as black, he has gone out of his way to act "white" and non-threatening during this campaign. For example, in a Time magazine article a few months ago where readers send in questions, one question asked weather he liked a certain type of music. Obama skirted the question and said that he was "not hip" anymore but that he used to be, but can't be while running for president. Basically this means he is saying "yeah, I may like R&B, rap, or any other kind of traditionally "black" music, but you won't hear about it while I'm running for president." Also, much has been said about Obama's eloquence. This, too, is racially motivated. He needs to appeal to the white mainstream by not "sounding black". That doesn't just mean no "Ebonics" but it also means he will not talk like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson with their occasionally blustery speeches. Speaking of those two, Obama has not associated with these men at all during the campaign. This is because the mainstream media knows these men as "black activists" and people generally do not like them for that. Obama has stayed away from the issue of racism as well, for that very reason. While he constantly talks about the middle class, you will not find him saying anything about the ghetto or any other racially charged term. The campaign wants to make Obama seem like he will not put black concerns first before white concerns. Of course, the stories of his white mother are another method of this strategy, as well. We have heard her story countless times, but not much at all about his black father. The only thing the campaign would allow to convey that could be construed as being "black" is the fact that Obama plays basketball. Still, basketball is a hugely popular sport and as Michael Jordan has shown in the past, it is a way that the white mainstream can embrace and love a black individual.

Blogshare's 3 Gamer blogs

So I am an avid video gamer so the subject I chose to explore was of course, video gaming.

The first blog I encountered was called "Good Gamer Bad Gamer". It had the subtitle "Articles and Reviews +fair and balanced news...kinda". That sets the tone for this creative blog that is far from formal. On the bottom there is a "disclaimer" that says that the don't care if you copy their material, but the search engines won't like the duplicate content. Despite these seemingly amature sensibilities, the blog is layed out nicely and there are quite a few advertisers on it including google. The target audience is any gamer that is looking for fun news or reviews on the Internet. The font of the title is in a type of old school video game text to keep with the gaming theme. The background is black and the posts are light blue. On the left there is a column of alphabetical labels for those who want to quickly find an article or post depending on a keyword. To the right of that, there is a columns listing the most recent articles by title. To the right, the most recent post is opened and readable. A look at this reveals what makes the blog unique and why its name is what it is. It is basically a user review first reviewed by the "good gamer", who has an optimistic view of that game and then the "bad gamer", who only points out the game's flaws. Finally at the bottom there is a final verdict written by the writer :good bad average above average...etc. After actually reading the content of the review I can say that after reading professional game reviews, this one is quite colloquial and sometimes even hard to follow. The goal seems to be more to be funny that to sum up the game. Still, the good vs. bad gamer gimmick is interesting.

The next one if found, which confirms my suspicion that my list is not actually the ranked list, is called zOne Gamerz. This blog has not been updated since November of last year. It has a black background but was clearly created with blogger, much like this blog with little effort to add any bells and whistles. There is an archive and the other normal default blogger options but little else. From what I can tell the whole purpose of this blog is basically to have a place where some dude complains into his computer. The most recent post is an extremely length and uninteresting story about his broken video game hardware. Not surprisingly, there are no ads on this blog although there is space for one (your ad here). The only unique thing about this blog is it tells the unique story of the author. The audience is probably himself or his friends. Aside form that, this blog is pretty unremarkable.

The third blog I found is called the New Gamer. The title is written in a newspaper font but the rest is far from traditional. This blog seems to be targeting the online gamer demographic but also seems to have its own fan base as it tells allot of personal stories involving games about the writers. The main page is a bunch of articles represented by images and short blurbs all in diffenet represenative fonts for whatever teh article i discussing. The articles can be opened by clicking on the images. There are articles concerning the culture of games but also specific games. The tone is conversational but more formal that the other posts. It seems like a good amount of time was taken on this blog. It's visual nature and unique anecdotes make it different than other blogs. There are room for comments and several given, showing the blog's popularity. even the articles are filled with visuals. This blog acts like an online magazine of sorts.