adastra.me

adastra.me

****- (Rated by 8 people, viewed by 225 people)

Just a personal blog.

Added by adastra in Personal

adastra.me has 8 Reviews

Below are the reviews left by other members on adastra.me. Jump to review form?

  1. [img: avatar]
    Aisling gave it ****- on 24th Nov 2008 and said:

    I still enjoy this layout after all the time that it's been up. There's something very calming about it. After all this time, it maintains its originality, still. The navigation is clear, although the hover is maybe a little bit too subtle. It would be nicer if it was just a little bit more defined. I especially love the sharp blue in the footer.

    The Dailyfratze thing is very cool, and something you should definitely be proud of. Your pictures are very cute!

    Your media log is also a very nice feature. Very interesting.

    The woodchuck bit at the beginning of your About page doesn't really make sense, unless you know the skogarna means "In The Woods." (Which I only know because I remembered from back in the day.) This page is very well written, and provides plenty of information about you.

    Your links page is nicely organized, and very full. I love long link lists, and I love finding new blogs to read! :D

    The authorization option is kind of cool as well. :)

    Wow, this review is really short. I suppose there isn't lots to say, really. Although I would LOVE to see something new from you, what you have going on seems to be working well, still! :)

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    adastra's Response:

    Thank you for your review! :)

    My about page actually has random quotes, so when you reload it you'll probably get a different quote than the woodchuck one. They're all quotes I like or that somehow fit me.

    I've been thinking about a new layout since this one is getting old, but I just love it so much that I can't really let go of it ;) Oh I don't know, maybe I'll come up with something new, now that I'll have more time for this stuff again...

  2. [img: avatar]
    Muse gave it ***** on 23rd Nov 2008 and said:

    Okay, now this is unique. I honestly wasn't expecting too much, but—

    Your site seems to have this Aztec theme going on, and there are these soft, subtle textures in the header, footer, and navigation...and comment area...and I'm in love with all the quirky, squarish-y Aztec symbols you've got all over the place. Originality is ten for ten, definitely. It's gentle and not too forward with the soft greens and blues, and it's perfect. I really can't find too many flaws, because it seems you've carefully looked at all the details. The little arrows in your navigation, for example (I love them). However:

    Those lovely dividers in between posts—I feel they should be equally spaced between the previous post and the next, instead of being closer to the previous post.

    Near the top of your navigation—it looks a bit messy, because you have the header that says 'Adastra', and then little stray pixels of blue around it. You might want to clean that up?

    The odd misplaced reflection of 'to the stars'—this is probably the most glaring. Why a reflection? It makes no sense, considering the style the rest of your site adheres to, to have such a popularly overused effect there. It doesn't match with anything else.

    Not about graphics, but your site title—it says 'skogarna.org' on every single page. I submit one acronym for your consideration: SEO.

    One slight gripe concerning your blog posts is rather political in nature, so I've gone and commented on it. ^^ I must say, you're one of the rare few who write something worth commenting on, and that's probably the greatest compliment I can pay.

    Also, 'ad astra' means 'to the stars' in Latin (and I know this because of my times spent reading and rereading the huge Wikipedia list of Latin phrases). In my book, clever usage of Latin merits mention and a great big gold star for awesomeness.

    So I've exhausted my criticism, and will move on to the effusive paying-of compliments. I love the little images next to each of your post titles, and the icons near the comments link and tags. I managed to read your about page without wincing at any grammar mistakes and actually enjoyed it (and the changing quotes). The strip of Flickr photos was helpful in breaking up the monotony of a huge mass of text. And I'm especially glad that on your links page you included icons next to the links to your profiles on other sites (under 'Elsewhere').

    I also think it's cool that you're basically teaching yourself Spanish and sharpening your Swedish. I'm quite interested in languages, but much lazier. But this has nothing to do with reviewing. =P

    In conclusion: very little to complain about, but I will be subscribing to your blog. This review is short of any useful advise and rather long on praise. Sorry! ^^

    (P.S.: I wish I could rate you 4.5. That seems more fitting, but I decided to round down.)

    UPDATED 23 Nov 08:
    All right. ^^ That clears up a few things, so obviously my advocating proper SEO isn't really important here. But I still don't like the reflection—if you want, you can try using a sort of very faint drop shadow so there's a little fuzz of darker green around the letters? Feel free to disregard my advice.

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    adastra's Response:

    Thanks for your review! :)

    My blog isn't SEOd because I don't *want* it to be found by search engines. It's my personal blog, and I'm not comfortable with just anyone finding it in Google when they search for "Rear Window" or something. My robots.txt forbids all search engines to index my site and therefore I didn't really put much of an effort into most other SEO stuff, like adding dynamic page titles.

    I added the reflection in the header to give it a little depth. Otherwise it would all have looked very flat and I think the reflection is so discreet that it's barely noticable anyway.

    And I didn't clean up the stray pixels in the 'Adastra' header because it gives it a little more structure. It's weird, I know, but I didn't like it as much without the pixels... ;)

  3. x3maria gave it ***** on 22nd Nov 2008 and said:

    THEME: Original is the first word that comes to my mind! I love your theme, especially the little details that really pulls it all together. The colors go well together, and I really love the way you organized it- simple and easy to navigate.

    UPDATED 22 Nov 08:
    THEME: Original is the first word that comes to my mind! I love your theme, especially the little details that really pulls it all together. The colors go well together, and I really love the way you organized it- simple and easy to navigate.

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  4. [img: avatar]
    Nina gave it ****- on 22nd Nov 2008 and said:

    1. First thoughts: Great theme, love the colors and headers you choose. The coding looks pretty good so far, but you have 3 warnings which is ok I guess. The way you organized the theme is very clean and smooth, I'm loving it so far.

    2. Sidebar: The picture on the left looks ok, but I don't understand the language you have under... So maybe you should change that to English since everything else is in English.
    The navigation looks fine.
    I like the Media Log you have, unique and interesting... Very good :)

    3. Page (About): Great introduction, no grammar mistakes, and no vocabulary mistakes either. I like the photographs you posted, but I don't see any copyrights... You should consider adding it if you don't want your photographs to be stolen or re-distributed!
    Overall great!

    4. Page (Links): I like the list of commenter's, very unique! Everything else is fine.

    5. Page (Authorize): Strange but cool.

    6. Overall: Great theme, great blogs, and good information. The only thing your website lacks is a little something extra, not sure what it is... But it's missing something :S
    Everything else is amazing, and I wish you all the best.
    Keep it up!

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  5. [img: avatar]
    Diana gave it ****- on 22nd Nov 2008 and said:

    I like this layout! I really do. I'm usually not a fan of teh green, but it works here. I especially like the little adornments like your background image.

    About--I enjoyed reading it, and it's nice and descriptive. You're teaching yourself Spanish? That's cool!

    Links, Archives--they're so organized! I really have nothing more to say, good job!

    I can see that the design and blog are the focal point of the site, and you do a nice job illustrating that :)

    I do, however, wish there were more. Maybe more about pages a la blog.haley.nu or a site page?

    But overall, I enjoyed your site!

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  6. [img: avatar]
    Happyland gave it ***** on 22nd Nov 2008 and said:

    1)FIRST IMPRESSION
    Pretty good, decent stuff! All the text is clear and easy to read, the navigation is easily pinpointed, the header and background unique and eye-pleasing.

    Skimming through your blogs, I see you post quite often, and about a variety of things. Yay!

    2) ABOUT
    Great page! It's been a while since I've seen an about page as detailed, but not agonizing-to-read as yours. A bit of explaining on where you got the site name from might have been good, but everything else is excellent!

    3) THE REST OF THE PAGES
    Nothing to complain about - very direct, clear and precise.

    4) OVERALL
    I can't believe this, but I can't really suggest anything to improve on. Your site is very well done! However, you might like to add an option of changing themes, since you seem to have a knack of creating nice layouts. And I've not seen any page talking about your site: its history, domain info, and past layouts! Other than that, GREAT JOB :D :D Five stars!

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  7. [img: avatar]
    Shadow gave it ***** on 21st Nov 2008 and said:

    First Impression

    Wow, this is cute! I'm not a fan of green, but this scheme works so well. It's also very simple. I don't think we'll see another layout like this in a while. Yes, the little guy on the background is easily missable but it adds a nice touch to it.

    Blog and sidebar

    I love how the sidebar's background color isn't another shade of green. The bullets are too cute. Everything's spaced perfectly. And it's not cluttered! That's a breath of fresh air.

    My gripe with the blog is simply the length of them. You have 4 blog entries on that page, and they're very long. Which stretches the blog section a lot longer than your sidebar. Since you have long entries, I would suggest to put a "read more" link after a paragraph or two. That way, it's won't be neverending scrolling.

    The other pages

    About: Adastra is a very unique name with a really pretty meaning. This is a well-written, very informative section. Your pictures are gorgeous. I'm just throwing this out there--skogarna: Swedish?

    Links: Haha, nice disclaimer! A pretty long list of other sites and where we can stalk...erm...find you.

    All in all...

    I skipped coding because you clearly have a grasp of coding. I don't see what could be changed in terms of that. Your site is like a breath of fresh air. You write very well, and that's a plus for me. Great job!

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    adastra's Response:

    Thanks for your review! :) I know that 4 entries on the front page are a bit much, but I'm not a big fan of "read more" links, because personally I dislike those when visiting a site. However, I could probably change the front site to display only 3 or 2 entries per page.

    skogarna is indeed Swedish, meaning "the woods". I used to have that in the header instead of "to the stars", but I've been thinking about changing the domain for a while, that's why I changed the header at some point. I'm not much for names, it's just a blog anyway.

  8. [img: avatar]
    Roxy gave it ****- on 21st Nov 2008 and said:

    Wow is the first word that comes to mind. I'm in love with the color scheme you chose and am visually impressed by the overall layout and design. Very clean and unique, well done!

    Your icons and even divider graphics are very cute and clean, did you make them yourselves? My only "issue" is the graphic floating to the right of the page. Since I'm viewing your site in a wide screen, I almost didn't see it. I don't have a problem with it being there, just that it might get lost with visitors who have wide screen monitors. Just a heads up!

    Before I continue, I'm confused by one thing: your site's title and the URL of your site! I'm sure this will be explained in the content? let's see...

    About: Straight to the point and organized. OK, I get the "into the stars" name now, but what about Skogarna? Where does that fit into all of this?

    The rest of your pages are very organized and well written. Nothing is overly done or out of place.

    Overall, I love your design and find your site to be inviting because of it. Your blogs seem to be of good quality also as I see they are not one liners. Information about you and your site is enough and keeps me interested. Well done over all...sorry I didn't have much more to say as I see no flaws with your site! =)

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    adastra's Response:

    Thanks a lot for the review! Yeah, I made all of the divider graphics and details myself. I also know that the little graphic on the right looks lost on widescreens, but it's really just a gimmick. Nothing crucially important to the rest of the layout ;)

    The name skogarna is out of date, I guess. I've been thinking about changing the domain, but it would involve having to disappoint all my readers by making them have to re-subscribe to my RSS feed, and I honestly haven't thought about names that much since I didn't have the time lately.

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