Blogging me, blogging you

I'm intrigued.

Ever since Mandy brought up 'good blogs' vs. 'bad blogs' on her blog. I've been really interested in what makes a good blog from a reader perspective. I've spent some time cruizin' blogspot and this is what I've come up with:

Stuff I figure is pretty universally important:

1.  Regular updates - I'll only pop back so many times when nothing happens before I lose interest.
2. It must be personal - noone reads those nonsense news / shopping/ sports fixture blogs unless they are part of a tiny interested minority.
3. You must, as a reader, have some clue wtf is going on. Arbitrary comments about Sandy's birthday or 'the book' etc. just are a turn off. If you can't follow it you won't read it.
4. Some form of direction. It doesn't have to be much or very specialised but if the comments are from all over the place it loses the flow.
5. THE DESCRIPTION - if your description is just a list of words to help you get hits off search engines, I'll just keep clicking. If I don't know what to expect I'm not gonna go to the effort of reading it to find out I'm not interested.

Stuff that's important to me:

1. Not too much 'fluff', clutter makes a blog really hard to follow. I sometimes can't find the archives due to virtual pets, adverts and other paraphenalia and if I have to look too hard I lose interest. I also READ blogs, not LOOK at them, so I figure some attention should be paid to making reading comfortable ie. black backgrounds for coloured text is BAD. Pictures behind text - BAD. Animations that cause my eye to wander - BAD.
2. I'm a fan of Journal-type blogs. I like blogs to tell a story about someone's life and plans. Random thoughts and rants are great, but only if I can tie it up with a mental picture of the blogger - so I love details like where the person lives, what their home is like. A little 'setting the scene' works wonders.
3. Variety of experience. I'm not interested in blogs that are only written when a person is angry or depressed or happy or feeling intelligent. It feels shallow and one-dimentional.
4. A couple of pictures are great, particularly odd ones, like "The inside of my lunchbox".
5. Something to ride. I think of this as 'coat-tails'. There needs to be something 'ongoing' in the blog to carry the reader along. "Ah yes, Medical School' is a good example. He talks about all sorts of stuff but the underlying topic is, well, his journey to become a doctor.

All this makes me think I need to add some stuff to my blog that I would like. I figure, you won't ever get a blog with truly universal appeal, but you can definately appeal to people who like what you like.

PS - All this study of blogs is just my way of avioding studying for "Hell Week' starting Monday. My brain is fried.