Here is my review from Utter-Views. I'm going to do things a little differently and insert my own comments and reactions in bold within the review itself so I can address things "point by point". I do have a couple of major gripes I want to get out of the way. The first major gripe is that I originally requested Mandy and not Nine to do my review.�

I have to assume that this was an inadvertent mistake, but still in my eyes it was a major oversight because my request was specific. For any review site that allows it, I always select the reviewer on the based on the level and detail of analysis of previous reviews, the age and maturity of the reviewer and whether he or she has had any experience and background designing layouts, especially for his or her own diary. I went back to check the guestbook where I logged my request but it seems that particular entry was deleted, which is another bad idea.�

The site owner should leave all requests in the guestbook. I realize this person may be just trying to be neat, but it's good practice to maintain a record of these things. I really wish that I followed up and pointed out this oversight before my review came out so Nine didn't have to waste her time reviewing my diary and I don't have to waste my time bitching about this oversight, but still it's not my job to keep track of things, I had the assumption that if I put in the request that it would be followed though without a hitch. I guess in this case I was unfortunately mistaken.

If that wasn't bad enough I never received a notice that my review was completed, nothing in my notes, nothing in my guestbook and nothing in my email. I'm not sure what the policy is on utter-views, but every other site I have gotten a review from I have also received the courtesy of a notice either from the review site or from the reviewers themselves that my review was completed. If I didn't do a random follow-up of my pending reviews to see how far along the list I am, it could have easily been a week or longer before I would have known. This is definitely not a cool practice to follow. I mean what good is requesting a review if the person requesting would never know when it that review was completed? I would like to think that this was just another inadvertent oversight so I'll just leave it at that.

So now onto the review and my commentary:

liquid-mojo
07-20-03

liquid-mojo- liquid-mojo | v.liquid-fade.1.7.3

Navigation/Layout (B-) I like it conceptually. At first I was wondering what in the heck that big blank space next to the entry was, but then I saw that it was an interesting fade-y thing. And your banner thing was cool too. And then there was a dirty fade-y thing, too. Navigation was excellent. Overall, your layout was far too busy. You could benefit from making one focal point and trying to center the page a little bit more. The fading is nice with your "theme" but does get tiresome.

• I'll take this at face-value. Nine liked the concept and the navigation and some of the effects but there were a few things that didn't seem quite right. It was "busy" and the fade effect eventually got "tiresome" to her. All that is her opinion which she is entitled to and I could live with that. She also gave some constructive advice on how to improve the layout. For this particular layout at least, centering the page didn't look quite right. I'll consider re-arranging the focal point and perhaps I might look into increasing the opacity� of the main picture, if possible so it doesn't look quite so "invisible" at first.�

Contact (A) Guestbook, Guestmap, Notes, E-mail, Aim. Good!

• I did my best to include as many contact options as possible so cool. :)

Extras (A) Photography/Art (was pretty good), Reviews, Quizzes, Quotes (should actually be "Quotations", "Quotes" is a verb), About Me, Ethnicity, 100 Things, Philosophy, and, of course, your martini thing.

• I'm glad the reviewer liked this part too, I put alot of work into it and I'm glad some people, especially the reviewer noticed it. Thanks for the correction too, I must have fell asleep during grammar class that day, but I'm glad this reviewer didn't. Kudos for being the first reviewer and the first person to point that error out to me. I'll add that to my list of things to change on my next layout overhaul.�

Updates (A) If not every day, then every other day.

• Cool, very cool... :)

Content (C) Okay, know what? You're entirely too obsessed with sex. There is more to life than sex, fellah. I'm a big fan of it myself, but dayum. You remind me of a guy I was dating for a bit and how much he annoys me now because he's always like "This girl was hot and that girl was hot and blah blah blah hot." Yes, there are hot people in this world, and there is also sex in this world...but those are far from the most interesting things around us. Your nonstop discussion of these two topics makes you appear one-dimensional, shallow, and just plain boring. And I know you are capable of more than that. I would like to see entries like this one really go someplace. I think that you know this, too. So just cut it out with all the sex, okay?

• Since this portion is based largely on personal opinion, I guess I'm going to have to give some leeway to the reviewer for this especially since this is where I always seem to take the largest hits score-wise with most reviews I've been having in my diary. I know that sex, or at the very least the way I write about it in my diary, is not something that the casual reader particularly endears to.� I don't think it's fair to compare me to your "bad date/ex-boyfriend" however. Another reviewer did that to me but at least she threw in enough humor that I kinda laughed with it. I know that there is more to life than sex. If one reads my diary carefully enough one will find that my diary is really not about sex, because I haven't really been getting any. There is probably only one entry that I would qualify as "erotica" and that buried deep into my older weblog entries. My diary is actually about my struggle and frustration with not only being unable to achieve sexual gratification, but perhaps even deeper forms of intimacy like caring, love and companionship. It is also an exploration of my psyche as I try to sort out the jambalaya of thoughts that are swimming through my brain. Sometimes I go somewhere with my thoughts and other times like that entry the reviewer pointed out I actually don't. Of course if one only "skims" through several entries for the purpose of quickly completing a review, all that is totally going to go over one's head and I'm sorry it did for this reviewer. Still, I would like to thank the reviewer, Nine for her opinion in this matter and for whatever valuable time she spent looking over and evaluating my diary. If anything I am getting a feel at what some of the more casual readers, ones who may not always relate to my sexually oriented content, might be thinking of my diary. As for the suggestion about "cutt[ing] it out with the sex" I'm sorry but no. As long as those thoughts exist in my head, I will continue writing about it. Perhaps, someday I may evolve my writing to some other subject, but that would require a profound life altering/evolving event, something that has not happened as of yet.� Anyway instead of going on and on about this and trying to re-invent the wheel I'll refer to this entry where I go into detail about it.

Errors (A) Everything worked well!

• To the reviewer, thanks... :)

Grammar (A) Grammar is really pretty great.

• Thanks again, I do try my best to use proper English...

Estimated Percentage 82% (B-)

• Ugh, yet another mediocre review...

Reviewed by Nine.