I chose Kristin’s post for Task 8 to compare for my next linking assignment submission. I have wanted to write about Kristin’s blog space for quite some time so I am happy that I am finally getting the opportunity now. The design of her blog space is inviting and organized in a visual way that helps guide the reader of her site to where information might be accessed. She has picked a relatively large font size for her posts, which helps to read her posts more easily than my own site allows I would say. Although we both chose grey as our font colour, her darker choice and bold font type again aids the reader. She has also made use of categories on her blog with labels displayed in all capital letters. I feel as if the contrast to my own site where my categories combine capital and lowercase letters, allows one to more easily navigate to relevant content on her site.

It was quite interesting to see how we have picked similar one line descriptions for our blog sites. On Kristin’s site, she mentions that this is her site of exploration whilst my site uses the word adventure. In a sense it feels as if these words carry similar sentiments and as such this might be part of the reason why I have felt a strong affinity to always go over Kristin’s new posts- we potentially  share a similar outlook in the course and our MET studies.

Why I really wanted to include her blog site in my linking assignment though is the true blog feel that is present on her site. Kristin has the ability to present her tasks in such a way that one always feels as if you are part of her personal journey. She weaves elements of her daily life quite effortlessly into her tasks and this has allowed readers of her blog to get to know Kristin on a deeper level than just through discussions of course work. In this task in particular, she structures her post in such a way that you travel with her thought process as she made her song selections. It’s almost as if we are following her internal dialogue.

It was fascinating to follow her thought process and in comparison to my own, we clearly had wildly different methods for our song selection. Where Kristin had included an 8 odd step process of elimination, my own criteria was summed up by a single sentence- choices were to be made on emotional reactions. Interestingly though, this task and the subsequent task of network analysis ended up revealing that we in fact had chosen 9 similar songs! A happy coincidence? Or did our one line descriptions of our sites elude to more similarities than what meets the eye?