Blog Review: ‘Lair of the Bookworm: Legi Aut Mori!’

Blog Review: 'Lair of the Bookworm: Legi Aut Mori!'

Are you a bibliophile (a person who loves or collects books)? Mattheous presents "Lair of the Bookworm: Legi Aut Mori!" as a blog written by a bibliophile, for bibliophiles. As such, I expected to see a lot of book reviews and not much of anything else. I was wrong. Mattheous started the blog with very strong personal opinion pieces.

I took a look at the blog shortly after he requested the review, while he was still making changes. I'm happy to say he's done making changes and they were for the better. The two-column theme leaves plenty of room for the text, but I would still suggest widening the viewing area to take full advantage of the 1024×768 resolution (the most common). The colors are well-chosen and the text is easy to read. Black on yellow is almost as easy to read as black on white.

Less than a month old, this blog already has some great content. I especially liked his negative review of Kindle with "The Future of Books is Not Kindle". Proprietary ebooks are not the answer to "computerizing" books.

Before I finish this review, I wanted to express my admiration for this young man. I read his Blogger profile and the odds in life are already stacked against him. He's about 4 years younger than my younger son, who also has a nonverbal learning disorder. My son is in his second year of college, something that beyond my imagination when he was starting high school. I don't know what his life goals are, but with perseverance and determination, Mattheous has the capability to achieve them.

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Mattheous on 2008-02-13 at 2:13 am (Reply)

Thanks for the review!

I'll look into making the content a little wider. The reason it looks so thin is because I made it so that it could be viewed well on as many screen resolutions as possible.

And I'm doing pretty well in school. The only class I have real trouble with is math. I'm in Advanced Algebra as a Senior, and General Chem. You're supposed to take Chem as a Junior, but I couldn't because my math skills were lacking, something my classmates who see me excel in everything else never let me forget.

If you want more information on Cystinosis, you can go here: http://www.cystinosis.org/

Mattheous's last blog post..Review: The Well of Lost Plots (by Jasper Fforde)

RT Cunningham | Untwisted Vortex | Philippines on 2008-02-13 at 4:40 am (Reply)

Great! Don't worry about the math part. Unless you plan to be an accountant, consultant, or IT expert of some kind, you won't put it to good use anyway. I sucked when I was in high school, barely passing pre-Algebra. Yet I've written complex algebraic code for computer programs. I guess I wasn't inspired until long AFTER high school.
2. Mattheous on 2008-02-13 at 4:52 am (Reply)
  
  Good point.
  
  By the way, any way that I can make my template more unique? I've read about doing it on ProBlog Design, but he seems to talk about WordPress mostly.
  
  Oh, and 'Legi Aut Mori' is Latin for 'Read or Die'.
  Mattheous's last blog post..U Comment, I Follow: What Does it Mean?

Troy on 2008-02-13 at 7:13 am (Reply)

In my opinion, the text width is good the way it is. A little wider wouldn't hurt, but too wide and it becomes a chore to read. That's not my observation, but I can't remember where I read it

One thing I'd do is remove that blogger bar. You can do that using these tips and it makes the blog more unique:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-10-blogger-hacks-and-tips/

Mattheous on 2008-02-13 at 7:28 am (Reply)

Thanks for that link, that should help!

But I can't seem to find the tags. Could you help me?

Mattheous's last blog post..U Comment, I Follow: What Does it Mean?
2. Troy on 2008-02-13 at 8:20 am (Reply)
  
  I'm not sure if I understand your problem, but I'll try to help you if you can be more specific. From the page I linked:
  
  All you need to do is add the following CSS to your template under edit HTML. You need to put in anywhere in your template between the tags.
  
  #navbar-iframe { height:0px; visibility:hidden; display:none; }
  2. Mattheous on 2008-02-13 at 8:25 am (Reply)
    
    It says to put it between the tags, but my template doesn't seem to have them…
    
    Mattheous's last blog post..U Comment, I Follow: What Does it Mean?
    2. Mattheous on 2008-02-13 at 8:56 am (Reply)
      
      By 'tags' I mean the ones with < and style.
      
      The comment edits it out if I type out the actual tag.
      
      Mattheous's last blog post..U Comment, I Follow: What Does it Mean?
      2. Troy on 2008-02-15 at 1:29 am (Reply)
        
        My guess is you can just do it like this… replace the *s with s and put it somewhere in the HEAD section:
        
        *style type="text/css"*
        #navbar-iframe { height:0px; visibility:hidden; display:none; }
        */style*
        
        Let me know if this works
        
        Mattheous on 2008-02-15 at 5:18 am (Reply)
        
        Thanks, that fixed it!
        
        Mattheous's last blog post..Review: The Anti-Valentine's Day Handbook (by J. More)
RT Cunningham | Untwisted Vortex | Philippines on 2008-02-13 at 7:28 am (Reply)

Troy, I think you read the same thing I did, but it's not a chore to read, it's a chore to scan. Most people scan first, read later. If they can't scan it well, they probably won't read it.

Anyway, you have to maintain a balance between sidebars and the main content area. Extra width comes in handy for sidebars. The main content area doesn't need to be beyond about 640 pixels. [Yep, the oldest resolution was 640 pixels wide, and this is the reason why.]
2. Troy on 2008-02-13 at 8:25 am (Reply)
  
  That width problem is exactly what I'm trying to overcome in my own blog redesign. Right now it's only about 640px (actually I think a little more), and has one sidebar. Serious limitations on what I can put there above the fold, which is why I still haven't got a blogroll among other things.
  
  Soon 'twill be fixed and I'll be a WordPress user

Missouri Casenet on 2008-06-27 at 6:29 am (Reply)

The Lair of the bookworm looks like a really cool site. Blogging and internet marketing is a really fun way to make a living. I am going to be a full time internet marketer very soon.

My latest blog post: Missouri Casenet - Court Records Site

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Blog Review: 'Lair of the Bookworm: Legi Aut Mori!'