Just before I start this review I wanted to say a couple of things about these Sunday Reviews. When I first started doing these I thought that it would be a great way to introduce new blogs or blogs that I felt deserved more attention than what they were getting and the only reason I stopped doing them was honestly because I didn’t think anyone was getting anything out of them. to be sure I ran a poll to gauge peoples feelings on it and the clear choice was that people were getting value from them so without any further ado here is this week’s review.

Blog Name: Diary of a Rat [link]
Blog Author: Sprague D
Blog Tagline: The life story of a lab experiment gone very wrong…
First Post: Unknown as there are no Archives to check – at least not that I could find.
Status: Active
RSS Feed: Full Feed

About Diary of a Rat

Unfortunately this really appears to be more of an unknown blogger type of blog, as the only reason I even know the author name is because that is the name that they use on FriendFeed. There is no About page available on the blog and other than an email option no way of contacting the author.

From a design point of view

The first feeling I had on loading Diary of a Rat is that the blog design has an almost utilitarian corporate feel to it with its shades of gray and very plain simple layout. I like the separation style used for each post with it being placed in a white background within the main content area of the blog which is a light shade of gray. As well each of the sidebar items are well defined and separated again with the background color being a shade of gray. the only thing I would like with the sidebar items is for a slightly larger font size for the widget titles.

As for the post item styling I really would like to see a slightly larger font size used for the text as the current size makes it a little hard to read. Additionally maybe just a little more separation between the paragraphs would be nice. The one thing I do like about the post items is the use of graphics which Sprague appears to utilize for the majority of posts. The one thing I really do not like though is that any links in the posts aren’t clearly defined other than they appear to be enclosed in square brackets; which I find rather distracting.

From the Content side of things

Like many bloggers Sprague has a number of categories that he uses to define the types of posts on his blog but rather than the dry typical category names these are a reflection of the blog name:

• Recent Blather
• Welcome to the Maze
• Technorat
• Lab Life
• The Godless Rat
• The BEST Music video List

As you can tell from the above category names you can tell that the blog isn’t strictly about technology but I have found over the time that I have read this blog that the majority of posts do fall in the technology sector.

the one thing you can always be sure of is that when Sprague posts anything it will be very well written, thoughtful and enjoyable to read. Some of the more interesting post that he has recently written are

There Will Always Be an A-list
The Trojan Horse with a Touchscreen
A Beginner Guide to RSS (Feeds)
Bubble Wrap

Overall Opinion

I have to admit that at first the very name of the blog is what caught my attention. After all how can you possibly pass up checking out a blog with a name like Diary of a Rat. I don’t regret for a second adding the blog to my feed reader because I can always be sure that when Sprague posts something I will have read something that got me to think about the subject of his post. In the time I have been reading the blog I don’t think I have seen a single post that has been of the regurgitated news type and that alone makes it worth adding to your reading list.

FriendFeed Likes Compatibility Chart

This chart is courtesy of Felix over at #comments who put together the code to let people find out who they are compatible to on FriendFeed based on post ‘Likes’. I include this partly to let you see who else likes Diary of a Rat as well as for a bit of fun.