Kayak

The Third blog I have chosen to blog on is titled:
Kayak Paddle Tales . This site appears to be by definition and self description, a blog. The entries are short and are more of a recollection of the creator (Peggy's) day. She does not go into detail about her whole day however. This blog is meant to chronicle her kayaking excursions. The genre of this blog would definitely be a journal hobby. It does not collect facts and news about kayaking, but instead gives daily recounts of her day ( Yang 118). This is not the only hobby she had started a blog for. Listed in her profile page are two other blogs. A lot of the pictures taken while kayaking or hiking are kept on her other blog Photo Bucket's homepage.

On the kayak site she makes a note of previous turtle pictures, but does not link to them, any reader who has not seen what she is talking about may feel left out or curious enough to search through the rest of the site. When she does not know the name of an animal in one of the pictures she asks the audience to correct her, so the picture can be labeled.

Each entry describes what was seen that day on the water, the conditions of the weather, animals to be seen in the area, and other details of her outing. I almost feel like I am talking to a local guide about the best place to kayak in the area and in a way I am. I wonder how effective it would be to use a blog search in order to learn insider tips on a place before visiting it, since not everyone is going to write about local places of interest and if they do they may not share the same interests that I do. What type of a Weblog, filter, or aggregator would make it possible to search for such information? Perhaps you know?

Back to the blog at hand, after searching through who left comments on the blog, they all shared similar interests with the creator of 'Kayak Paddle Tales'. These interests were one or more of the following, kayaking, camping, and photography. People remarked that they enjoyed the site, or photography. Someone even commented that they would check out a spot mentioned the next time they were in that area kayaking.

The comments were opened in a smaller separate window. I liked that this feature allowed me to still see the article I was reading and when I was done I could just 'x' out, instead of hitting the back button.

Besides the above 2 blogs she also keeps a camping tent tales blog, but that does not appear to have been updated since Nov of 2006 This site, like the kayak one gives information and pictures relating to camping trips taken. Visitors to each of her sites are also directed towards the creators web page if they wish to contact her.

The World Wide Grab Bag is a web page, or more like a filter. "I think of the old-style site organized squarely around the link" (Blood 7). This filter does not have one specific topic for its links though. The links are broken down into categories and like the title suggests, there is a while grab bag variety to choose from.

Kayak Paddle Tales has been around for a year and a half. Part of what Blood says helps to make blogging more enjoyable and a long lasting activity is ' if it is an extension of one of your existing activities' (Blood 36). Peggy has taken her three hobbies; kayaking, photography, and camping and uses blogging as a way to connect with others who share similar interests. I suspect the camping blog died out because there were no more camping tales to tell. The kayak and photo blogs will more than likely continue as long as the author of the blog has enough time for not only her hobbies, but also for blogging and sharing them with the rest of us.