Mike’s Reviews

Hi folks.  After some time thinking of what I should write I decided to write reviews of people’s blogs.  This would effectively be my first non-paid website review so expect it to be as honest as possible.

Today’s blog – Benj’s Busy Blog by Benj Arriola

Site design: This blog uses Wordpress and it’s template is reminiscent of Wordpress default theme which is based on the famous Kubrick theme.  One thing that I like about Benj’s custom theme is the changing header graphic image.  Try refreshing the page and you get a different header graphic image – all of which are shot by Benj himself.

Blog content: Since this is primarily a personal blog, I expect it to be well, about Benj’s personal experiences.  The content is more or less consistent with his blog’s theme and while it is not updated often (typical of a personal blog), it does contain interesting stuff.

One more thing I like about how he writes is that he makes it a point to include photos in his blog posts as much as possible to get rid of what he calls the “great wall of text” blog posts wherein all you see are paragraphs and more paragraphs.  The photos he includes in his blog posts kinds of breaks the wall.

Ad placement: Ad placements on Benj’s Busy Blog are quite well.  He puts a banner above the posts and a skyscraper on the sidebar – 2 skyscrapers in the homepage and 1 in internal (actual blog post) pages.  When you click a blog post, you will also see another 468×60 ad at the end of the post which I think is good.  However I think it would be better if he placed a medium rectangle adsense ad their instead of the 468×60.  That way, the ads will look more like “other links” and thus possibly increase clickthrough rates.

All in all, the blog looks great and is worth reading and I give it a score of 4 out of 5.

It’s been years since I first watched Schindler’s List and now, having the opportunity to watch it again, I gave it another go and one can never make a mistake in saying that this film is great and life-changing.  I was only 16 when I originally saw this movie and I have to say that it changed my perception of what a good movie is.

Schindler’s List is a film about heroism with an unlikely hero at its center – Catholic war profiteer Oskar Schindler starred by Liam Neeson, who risked his life and went bankrupt to save more than 1,000 Jews from certain death in concentration camps back in World War II Germany.  Mr. Schindler or “Head Direktor” as his Jewish employees call him started out with very little money and a great idea in mind.  He wanted to make money but ended up making more than what he first envisioned.  He wasn’t a model person but ended up being declared as a righteous man by the Jews.  He thought of only himself at start but eventually learned to think about others – hundreds of them.

More than the good film and the perfect story, I would say that the best part in Schindler’s List is that it touched my life.  It may made start thinking more than just myself.  It shows a world where “others” exist and gave me a sense of responsibility in every action that I do.

Schindler’s List is the perfect drama I’ve watched so far.  If you don’t have a copy of this film, I would strongly recommend that you get one.