Thursday, April 16, 2009

Thursday Flashburn: Al Bruno III

Today's Flashburn is brought to you by Matthew McFarland, who is visiting San Francisco. Since I'm trying to cram in lunch with Matt and studying for the CBEST, today's post will be short and sweet. You can look forward to a longer post tomorrow.

As for today, please have a look at The Wit and Weirdness of Al Bruno III, a writer and roleplayer who hangs out on RPGnet under the alias Ab3. The blog has a slightly... unfinished look to it - perhaps one of my more technically or graphically talented readers will be inspired to lend Al a hand? - but I can vouch for Mr. Bruno's wit, weirdness, and writerly... um... wexcellence. He's the author of the infamous RPGnet rants (apparently they can be found at the blogspot blog linked above), where Al gave somewhat (I hope) fictionalized accounts of his early days as a roleplayer, dealing with some interesting characters. By which I mean his fellow players. Who were universally horrible people.

Check him out.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

His blog a bit busy, but he's got a lot of links & "stuff" on the side bar.

He may want to consider a different layout (new colors/fonts/tone down the stuff), or blog platform, Wordpress might be a good choice.

A final thought: just b/c you CAN have a cool widget does not mean you HAVE to.

Anonymous said...

me again,

he could also benefit from using cuts... "click to continue reading" and such, so his page loads faster & more information can be seen on the initial page. no one wants to scroll through tons of stuff, photos & video, if they care they'll "click to read more"

said...

Wow. It is amazing what you find when you do a vanity search for yourself via Google!

(There's some porn star named Al Bruno that is always stealing my... thunder?)

Anyway I'm am glad you folks like what you're reading I am sorry that I may have made the actual reading of my work painfull. I am going to try an use some of the ideas I read here... one of those READ MORE links have been added. Apparently I can't make them work retroactively but I like the idea and will use it going forward.

As far as the colors and fonts and other layout stuff goes... I am not exactly a visualy... what's the word I am looking for here?

Competent? Coherent?

I have decided to make everything a bit more organized and less busy. We will see how that works out.

Anyway I am still learning and always appreciate input from folks.

Take care!

Anonymous said...

@Al Bruno III

me again, looks better w/the widgets towards the bottom. as for fonts/visual stuff, for starters, pick a less busy background...

then check out the following links for inspiration:
http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/what-makes-good-blog-design/

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/28/45-excellent-blog-designs/

don't be afraid to tinker around with it! you'll do fine.