This winner of a MyBlogLog Sunday review is a clever twist on a cat lover's blog, as it is written by the cats themselves. So, dispensing with the human element, without further ado, who are Tigger and Samantha, your hosts?

The bloggers

Samantha is a black Tuxedo Cat, four years old (28 in cat years), very cute, very opinionated and knows much more than an ordinary feline. Tigger is a "Mancat", a 7 year old grey and orange tabby. The blogging pussies live together with their owner in Florida, near the beach, no less.

Cat content

In a very short time, less than 3 months, the frantic kitties have taken time off from mousing and logged up nearly 100 posts, attracting quite a few comments to each post along the way. (For grins, guess when post number 100 is due)

In terms of length and depth, the posts themselves are more scratch and catchy than Tolstoy, but they are definitely 100% in the vein of cats: blogging when they feel like it, rubbing up close to their niche and making contented remarks to a potentially enormous target audience.

Sidebar content makes me purr

Another positive is the content in the sidebar. Cat profiles, cat related blog roll, Carnival of the Cats, Kat's Cat of the Day badge (although the animal does resemble a rat at first glance!) Cats helping Cats and so on & on. If you are into cats, this looks like a useful directory.

Ed's choice?

Personally I am not an über cat fanatic, my love for the beasts having been tainted by a couple of animals that have been systematically spoiling my favorite jacket, but I don't bear grudges, and don't impose my will on anyone else either. For instance, this isn't my blog topic of choice, but I put Mrs Ed onto it and she digs it and has enjoyed browsing the blog, probably more frequently than she reads the Pisstakers, goddammit.

One minor criticism is that the webmaster fine tuning the pussy cats' blogging platform needs to nail the art of linking images in the side bar. I noticed the Potato blog review image plus others have a separate text link? Or is that a cat tactic to draw atttention to certain logos?

In conclusion

To summarize, the meme-heavy content is light reading and the photos are cutesy cat shots that definitely cater to feline fans. As long as they live and mew, the two furry bloggers will have plenty to offer.

And as a fitting end to this review, the owner of the two star cats offers an ear to anyone with a family member suffering from Alzheimers. A nice human touch from the top of the tree.

We've linked to several web search engines offering random payments & prizes! Click the icon & search a keyphrase MyBlogLog Sunday. It is a win-win, perhaps!

Welcome Callie to Blog Interrogation. 5 snappy answers to 5 simple questions, just what was asked for..



Scrappin for Life. Probably my post from April 27, 2007 It is labeled My Crazy Busy Day. It talks about current events in my life.

Nothing, probably plain nothing. I am very content with my site at the moment.

The only thing that will ever get changed is the year. Scrappin..... For Life in the year of 2007 will have to be updated to reflect current times, of course.

It takes one writer around a couple hours a day and they earn around $356.00 an hour.

An article on a web site. hmm What a question. So much impact in this question. Still thinking..... Fox News.com. I would talk about my political thoughts.... That was weird I had no idea I would like that. That's is what sprang into my head though.

Thanks for the privilege of being involved in this survey Thanks Ed
Have a good Week!!

Ed extracts the bones from the blog interrogation

Thanks Callie for those succinct answers. You did indeed have a crazy busy day in that article you highlighted, and if the rest of your blogging is anything to go by, the craziness didn't end on that particular 24 hours.

For the good of your health, you sound pretty cool with how things are going with the blog theme, so you are probably right not to make changes when nothing obvious needs attention. Besides, why rock a boat that is coining in over $700 a day!

The Fox News dream may have more significance you might imagine. Geraldo is getting a bit tired in his ways and there may be an opening for a fresh face on assorted spots in the schedule. As long as you don't offer more of the same, ie moustache, heavily greased back hair and an insincere grin, you may as well go for it and send in your resumé.

Thanks to you and hope you are recovered from the op. Blog on.

Many moons ago, Claire won a review of her site, A Little Piece of Me, and today is the day she gets to see it. Well, maybe she will, maybe she won't. It depends on whether she can get online! Read on, and you will understand what I mean by that semi-cryptic remark.

From the top down

The banner to Claire Pitt's blog is a clever mix of text and graphics, (why are Brits so innovative?) and once you take the time to look over every pixel, there is no doubt about what to expect of her.

It seems from the pictures that she lives in the north end of England where the countryside looks like a mix of grassed-over slag heaps, hazy moors and sunlit dales. It never rains and everyone walks everywhere. From the text, she is a carer studying counselling and has an infamous beaver affiliation which unfairly but obviously she has to deal with on a daily basis. (That is actually, one clever way to attract attention and gives her plenty of opportunities to feed off of snide remarks that inevitably arise whenever she mentions the b word. These bloody Brits are smart!)

More About Claire

Digging even deeper, she supports Everton, likes her rugby hard and fast, and enjoys drinking down the pub. When sober she also says she likes to cook. Would that be hearty English fare like chicken tikka masala and steak and kidney pies?

Anyway, this is a review of Claire's blog, not an analysis of her mind, so skipping over the cries for help after the stress of blogging without internet, and studying way too late (as well as late into the wee hours), let's look at the content.

Memes

Wordless Wednesday followed by Thursday Thirteen Saturday Photo Hunt and back to it on Manic Mondays that brutal routine has most of the week covered. But just for good measure, there are other sundry memes too with some pretty funny and amusing posts.

Random postings

So, memes plus Beavers to attend to at least once a week, (as well as supervising camps and first aid badge tests and toggle tying practice) what time can possibly be left to blog about anything else? Well, Claire seems to have the capacity not to sleep for several days at a time. It is the only explanation for how she has accumulated 31 Pay Per posts, 28 personal posts, and an exposé of her counseling studies.

And her blogging frenzy it isn't just concentrated on the classic written word. Claire has posted assorted photos (on any day other than Wednesday and Saturday), plus videos and even a poem, which I am reproducing without her permission!

" When i asked you to listen to me and you start
Giving me advice, you have
Not done what i asked.

When i ask you to listen to me and you begin
To tell me why I shouldn't feel that way, you are
Trampling on my feelings.


When i ask you to listen to me and you fell you have
To do something to solve my problems,
You have failed me, strange as that may seem.

LISTEN! All I asked was that you listen,
Not talk, or do- just hear me."

A good message for men especially?

In summary

Claire has a great sense of humor, and has a high level of literacy (she understood perfectly the meaning of Pisstakers without needing to look it up in a dictionary.) She even blogged about goings-on on this site and highlighted my dislike for pure and simple blogrolling as a means of link building. I think though that Claire has a better tactic than me, because she has loads of entries in her blog roll and has an Authority ranking in Technorati of well over 600, which makes her quite a big shot and me a minnow. So I bow to her blogging prowess.

I say that tongue-in-cheek, because let's face it, what sort of superstar Technorati (almost) A-lister blogs without internet?

So peruse her every post and delight in a couple of side bars to keep you occupied for hours. There are plenty of pieces of Claire to view.

We've linked to several web search engines offering random payments & prizes! Click the icon & search a keyphrase MyBlogLog Sunday. It is a win-win, perhaps!

Welcome Hari, with much anticipation to Blog Interrogation. Judging by your answers to 5 simple questions, you are going to be a handful.



I really put a lot of effort into the name. At first, I came up with the brilliant and highly original idea: "Hari's Blog". It was too good to be true and perfectly reflected what it was all about, giving instant brand recognition and recall. However, I realized that I needed something a bit more subtle and spiritual, so I went with "Hari's Corner."

The "Corner" is a metaphysical concept which illustrates that nobody is the centre of anything except in a very relative sense. It is closely connected to Einstein's Theory of Relativity (and all that jazz) and is very deep, because it shows the futility of futility and the meaninglessness of meaninglessness in a meaningfully futile sense. The ever-changing, dynamic and refreshing content on the front page is the flavour of my blog. Characteristic of most blogs, the arrangement of content is in reverse chronological order which illustrates the need for standardization in structure, if not in thinking.

Choosing WordPress. Since 2.0 it's become too feature rich now. Looking back I would have preferred a lesser known and more bare-bones blogging system. That doesn't mean I like either bare or bones separately, but put together, it makes a cute, descriptive word.

No. I consider several alternatives. None of them reflect my content in its broadest sense. I am an extreme generalist. If that makes sense, you have a twisted sense of humour, otherwise... you don't.

One, myself. I get paid zero dollars/rupees/pounds/euros/yen/rial/ francs/pesos ... per hour. The biggest advantage of this payment is that it requires very little effort to convert from one currency to another, don't you agree?

A spider's web. Because as far as I know, nobody has ever published an article on a spider's web and it would be unique in the annals of history. I would go down as the first person to have ever published an article on a spider's web. Isn't that a honour worth striving for?

Ed extracts the bones from the blog interrogation

Thanks, Hari. Never let it be said you don't know your own mind, but do you know the URL of any articles on your own site? For the record you are the first blogger to promote their website under interrogation without including a single link to their best post. Congratulations!!!! So, for the record, here is Hari's most amusing post, proof that he doesn't even know Tamil either.

As for criticising Wordpress, how dare you. Have you any idea how many bloggers reading this post know exactly what you mean about bloaty blogware but have to battle on regardless, smiling and scratching their heads? Don't be so insensitive, please. (By the way, Rapidweaver is a little known blogging delight. Or you could try Notepad to get totally down and dirty.)

You clearly know far more about tech than the average person, and if that is your home in your banner, I can see it has done you no harm. How big is your basement exactly? Or should one ask, how deep is it? The further underground the geekier the inhabitant, so I believe. And what are the corners like? Did you get inspiration for your clever spider's web publishing dream by looking around you as you blog?

Having been a little pisstakery with you, I would like to heartily applaud you on your responses, and if we ever meet I will buy you a drink, which you may consider as your first ever blog-related, zero fee, untaxable income. And lastly, I love that you hate avatars. (Who can think of a more worthless, band-width sucking waste of disk and screen space than avatars: those annoying little images that members choose to place below their nicknames?) Bravo. If you ever have you anything to add to my Zwinky attacks, send 'em in.

So, who is next up? Callie Ann braved her wounds to face an interrogation, and she did OK, seeing me off without even breaking into a sweat.

George and Rob have their answers waiting in the aisles, and then we are looking for more brave hearts. Please don't think your blog is too serious or too trivial to provide the answers to the 5 questions. Everyone has a story to tell and the interrogation is a good measure of your understanding of your blog. You get backlinks amidst real content and you can be as whacky as you like for good measure too.

Welcome Denise to Blog Interrogation. Show us where you are coming from and where you want us to go when we get tired of working. Just 5 simple questions.



The name of my site is Tired of working? Take a break! The idea behind the site is to provide a place where people can leave their crappy jobs behind and pull up a good article or two and read and relax. What better article to share than the inspiration for the site: My tombstone read I was an excellent employee

I only get one answer? Holy cow, I'd need about four hands to rattle them off to you. Hmm, I'd have to say if I had to do this again, I'd take more time in putting together the look of my site. In three months, I'm on look number 3.

I'm not sure about the passing of time, but if I wanted to rename my site I might consider something like, "please help me find traffic.com"

I'm the only has been on my site, it's all me. You mean I can make money doing this? Huh, I'll have to alert Google to that one.

Any site with traffic Ed, any site with traffic ...

Ed extracts the bones from the blog interrogation

Thanks, Denise. You certainly have a great premise for a blog hook and should have about 98% of the working Western world interested in coming to read you.

All you need to do to get started on the path to attracting several hundred million visitors is to continue writing content in an engaging Denise way about topics that make us feel good when we are not working. That would be hard for most people, but man, you can write pretty good prose, so you are well underway, and judging by your list in the sidebar you have a few hours' worth of content accumulating.

You have the next base mostly under control too - somewhere inviting to post your content. You have quite a nifty banner to make first time visitors feel like they are really, really tired. Moving on down you need to pull out some stops, though. Judging by how much effort you must have put into 3 themes, I presume you have inexhaustible patience and stamina and knowledge to work with HTML and CSS? Bottom line, you could break the text up better with some bold or sub headings maybe? Or little squiggly bits? Blockquotes to die for? And drop some links in there. And there must be some plug-ins to activate to encourage interaction? Turning your comments on your star post would be a good start! (These site tweaks are all part of a plan for building traffic.)

You may have been joking but Please help me find traffic dot com sounds like a domain name worth some money! Check it out with internet entrepreneur, Tyler Cruz, or be cheeky and ask him about domain name buying and selling. That way, you make money off the internet, and delay the day you have to desecrate your blog real estate with Adsense!!

And finally, you want to know some more tricks to get traffic to your blog? Don't ask me, I am a lightweight right now, with not enough months behind me to know which bits are really working yet, but check out an A lister blogger who actually has something useful to contribute!

Best foot forward and write and promote what you write. I do know a couple of tips, actually, Use MyBlogLog, and go take a look around Polliwog's Pond, Are we there yet? and a few other writer bloggers with plenty of inspiration to offer. And always have fun. Stick at it for a couple of years and then see what is going on. I reckon you will do alright.

Hmmm. I think you turned the interrogation on me and made me do all the hard work !! You should go far. And everyone, add this feed to your reader and keep Denise on her toes!

So, who is next up? If I read it correctly through one eye, and a drunken one at that, Hari has a futile meaningless website whichever angle you look at it, but we really need to hear all about it, especially his Einstein theory of relativity blogging - before dismissing him for being way too clever for The Pisstakers readership.

This could be you under interrogation later in the week. Please don't think your blog is too serious or too trivial to provide the answers to the 5 questions. Everyone has a story to tell and the interrogation is a good measure of your understanding of your blog. You get backlinks amidst real content and you can be as whacky as you like for good measure too.

Welcome Renal to Blog Interrogation. Let's hope your machine keeps you alive long enough to complete these 5 questions.



My blog is called Renal Failure. It is the blog of Wild Fabrications and Outright Lies. To illustrate this, many posts are about my friend Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat, Ninja Vicki, and crippled superheroine Crimson Paraplegic. And we drink a lot.

If I had to redo one decision for Renal Failure, I probably would have brought it to Wordpress sooner. Renal Failure started as a personal writing experiment, and after a year I finally brought it to a proper blogging platform for more eyes to see. But all of that's up there too. So technically I started a new blog this January with a year's worth of material already on it.

I would not consider changing the name. I figure if you're going to name something, it'd better be built to last. I only wish parents took this lesson to heart. It would save a lot of years of pain in school.

Renal Failure, much like such great works as Mein Kampf and the Unabomber Manifesto, is written by one person. Except I don't have facial hair and I dress better.

www.barackobama.com - Can you imagine the amount of female tail I could get with a Renal Failure posting on Barack Obama's official site? Four. That's how much.

Ed extracts the bones from the blog interrogation

Thanks, Renal for an exhilarating trip through your off-beat world. If it is any consolation I salute you on the naming of your characters. Marvel should know where to look for ideas for the next big freak show cinematic shoot out.

I was wondering whether to take the piss or console you on your decision to go to wordpress. Did you not think to go to wordpress and host it with your own domain name, cause that is the next obvious step I would have taken to get from what you had before to where you might want to go for blogging nirvana. Are you going to be able to entrust that next major transition to half cyborg paraplegic helpers, or is the idea to have a quick upload and have your material in triplicate online?

I love your choice of favorite site to get published on. It has a strange symmetry with the previous answer involving Adolf and other lovely beings of our time.

For anyone in two minds about reading the Renal Failure blog, just do it. It is really funny, and dry. Anonymous Doug getting annoyed that nobody remembered to call him. Brilliant. And the side bar is really clever and made me laugh out loud. I do hope that when, or if I suffer with my renals, that I can still laugh at some of the headings. Good luck and your blog is one to bookmark and watch for sure.

So, who is next up? The truth be told Renal barged ahead of the queue in his excitement to be highlighted here. But tomorrow, really, really, the delightful Denise reveals her need for traffic and recognition. Let's see what we can do, folks..

This could be you under interrogation later in the week. Please don't think your blog is too serious or too trivial to provide the answers to the 5 questions. Everyone has a story to tell and the interrogation is a good measure of your understanding of your blog. You get backlinks amidst real content and you can be as whacky as you like for good measure too.

I think that quite by accident I have developed a Pisstakers review policy that should please everyone. I have been a bit snowed under with reviews for contest winners, plus bloggers sending me a link and Review Me please emails. I really can't cope with that much work, and as I think the reviews are quite a good feature here, and I don't want to make promises I cannot keep,I need an alternative plan.

Full reviews
I am going to keep the full reviews a la Bobbarama specifically for winners of the MyBlogLog Sunday traffic contest. These take me a while to compile, so one a week should be within my grasp.

Main reviews
To satisfy all the folks requesting reviews, I am going to focus on the Blog Interrogation format. This requires a bit of give and take!

Website owners should email me their answers to the 5 killer questions - be as witty whacky or straight laced as you like. I will publish them, do a summary based on the answers, and generally do my best to point readers to the best parts of your site.

I had 2 instant replies to this idea last night, so I will take that as a sign that this is a good option for fair-minded website owners looking for a platform on the PR4 review section.

Mini reviews
These 4 liners of action-packed info will remain the backbone of MyBloglog Sunday, and periodically in the week I will throw out some info on any good blogs I come across.

This seems to be a fair compromise and a system I know I can live with. So, let's see how it goes and I will obviously keep an eye out for what transpires. As Digg owners said, roughly speaking, "At least if we go down, we go down trying to do the right thing!"

If you want to be reviewed in the Blog Interrogation format, answer these questions and email them to Ed via the contact form. Thanks

Welcome Larry to Blog Interrogation. Time to go Hmmm and tell us about your blog and your approach to blogging.



The name of my weblog is Larry Hnetka Goes HMmmm.I checked my archives and in one of my first posts back in June 2004, I said I couldn't come up with a clever blog title. That statement still holds water today, don't you think?

Headlines were never my forte so I took the egotistical route and used my full name in the blog title (hence, the Larry Hnetka portion). The "HMmmm" was supposed to be the clever part. I had Googled the phrase things that make you go hmmmm and was shocked to find over 1,500,000 hits for the term. The one that stuck out the most was HMMmm: the Newsletter of High Mountain Mensa.I figured if those brainiacs could HMmmm so could I. Scan through the entries in my Journal category. You'll get more flavour about me than you'll ever need or want to know.


As I'm not a perfectionist, just anal-retentive with a dash of anxiety disorder on the side, the one thing I might change about my site is to add a second sidebar. I've deleted many sidebar buttons and widgets over the last while trying to leave important links or information. Right now, my solitary sidebar is too long and disorganized. I'm surprised I can find anything there, let alone someone who lands on my weblog without any warning.

Short answer: nyet to changing my blog name.

Long answer: I used to beg my parents to change our surname to Smith or Jones, anything but Hnetka. My mother's response was always, "you could have been one of the Karpuke's or Mazapuke's or (gasp) Yaddamaminski's -- be proud of your name."

Although I have an uncommon surname, bloggers have confused me with some "Harry Hnetka" fellow, much to my disbelief, My surname is of Ukrainian origin and so if you're a Hnetka, you're one of the family. I've had one or two relatives ticked off at me for using the surname because I Google ahead of them. I've even had an inquiry from one of my uncle's old girlfriends who hadn't had made contact with him for 40 years. She wondered what ever happened to him. My response was short. He had married twice, had several children but unfortunately dear Uncle X passed away accidentally some 25 years ago. He died in his car in his garage with the car engine running and the garage door nailed shut from the inside. She never replied back. Those moments make me tingle with the sheer HMmmmness within them.


I am the one and only great HMmmmer penning all the yadda yadda blah blah yadda on my blog. I have not earned one Canadian penny from my blog. Besides I couldn't afford what it would cost to hire myself to write all this stuff anyway.

Haven't really thought about asking another website to consider publishing an article from me. That concept is more typical of the old submission-for-publication to hardcopy magazines and the like.

Having said that, I have found some weblogs who've stolen my content verbatim without any reference that the content came from me. Unfortunately, it's never the big guns who take your copy. It's usually the new bloggers who copy and post without linking. I look forward to the day when some high traffic poobahs come and ask me if I will consider posting their content on my site. That's when I will throw back my head and laugh ha ha while collecting the cash from them and HMmmming all the way to the bank.

Ed extracts the bones from the blog interrogation

Thanks, Larry, for going into such depth about your blog.

I am amazed that anyone would copy another writer''s work verbatim, and expect to get away with it , especially if they are trying to promote their blog. Der. And why anyone would copy your work, that really dumbfounds me!

Joking aside, I am forever grateful for your expansive responses, this has come right when my own pen has dried up temporarily. As for your suicidal uncle story, sorry, but that made me laugh out loud. May he rest in peace and I hope they didn't damage the garage door too much trying to pry it open to get to him.

And don't worry about not earning from your blog yet. It all comes to he who waits. Cheers.

So, who is next up? Denise will get the stage to herself tomorrow.

Please don't think your blog is too serious or too trivial to provide the answers to these questions. Everyone has a story to tell and the interrogation is a good measure of your understanding of your blog. You get backlinks for good measure too.

Welcome Mike to Blog Interrogation. Generating something out of nothing is your area of expertise so let s see what you can do with 5 questions.



Our site is called Generator Land and I think the best illustration of our site, and perhaps, our mild psychosis, is "The Froo Froo Menu Generator" which creates random and largely inedible menu items like "Pan-Fried Musk Ox with a Pneumatic Risotto."

Good question. We've only been around for about a month and we've been doing fairly well, but I think our biggest mistake was not involving a designer from the beginning. Joe's a programmer and I'm a writer and marketer. If anything on the site looks attractive, it's purely by accident.

Mike neglected to answer this. Sorry if it was too upsetting :)

We have one writer, me, and I pay myself mostly in pints. Although I sometimes spring for buffalo wings. Basically, our programmer and me go out, drink, kick around ideas, forget to write them down, and then start over the next day with whatever we remember. It's not a great system, but it seems to be working so far.

I guess Wired.com for the exposure and the fact that after all these years I still find them essential reading.

Ed extracts the bones from the blog interrogation

Thanks, Mike, for being the first to answer 4 out of 5!!!!

I think it is accurate to say that programers tend not to design well, and writers can't program or design, but somehow you guys have developed a theme that seems to work. Or does it look good because I haven't got IE7?

Congratulations on your name generators, they are priceless and I am way too sober right now to even attempt to match some of your psychotically funny terms.

You also have a perfect modus operandi for brain storming which should take you to the top of your chosen tree. I wish you every success with Generator Land and don't change your creative routine in any way, because I have just bought shares in chicken and Coors.

By the way, folks, Mike is a real dynamo and is designing a logo to go in the ad box stage left on The Pisstakers site. It could well end up inside out and back to front, but it will fit.

So, who is next up? Witty guy, Mr Larry Hnetka, went mad and has provided enough material to keep you informed and grinning for at least 48 seconds.

Please don't think your blog is too serious or too trivial to provide the answers to these questions. Everyone has a story to tell and the interrogation is a good measure of your understanding of your blog. You get backlinks amidst real content for good measure too.

The power of the pen is nothing compared to the impact of the imagery at Innings blog. The messages are usually on the darker side, but the bottom line is, one visit will make you think, ponder and remember.

Rather than bumble through life taking hits on the chin time after time, you can contemplate and analyse and act accordingly to effect change. Peter at Necessary Skills gives you plenty of clues about how to think and make the best of the one shot at life we have.

If you like to gape in awe at the depth a writer can go into about tech stuff, check out Daring Fireball. It is no exaggeration to say that after 5000 words on which way a menu item should open, you have a fair idea, and then some, about the topic in question.

Jon Swift writes extensive posts too, and when he gets political he really lays it on thick and makes political illiterates like myself feel really stupid. I should respond positively to the revelation of my inadequacies, and go to university, or something like that. Instead I choose to limit my research to reading his blog posts at irregular intervals. The result of this approach is not good. He has not posted a politically-motivated article in a while and I remain eternally illiterate, politically speaking.

And number 5 blog to make my grey matter greyer than my hair, is ... a joint sect. If you ever read Lord likely or Ominous Comma, you will get a flavor for really flowery prose that says in a hunderd words what others say in 20. The difference however, is that after 100 words from these two, I am shaking my head in awe at the mental somersaults these guys must go through to come up with their material.

And there you have it. If you want to write about some blogs that think, write about them. Norman Roberts' 5 thinking blogs are listed here.