Regular readers of Irish blogs will have noticed that, just as the number of committed bloggers has decreased as the medium has matured, so too have signs of a herd mentality been emerging. "High-profile blogger A said it was true? Well, then it must be true."

Fortunately there do seem to be some new blogs coming on stream which don't fit into these established norms. One of these is Sabrina Dent's personal blog, Pixel Pushing Ireland.

Dent describes herself as a freelance web designer, internet marketer and sometime journalist, living in Cork "with one dog and a husband".

Dent and a friend, who inhabit Second Life as Sabrina Doolittle and Salome Strangelove, co-publish the Second Life fashion and shopping blog Linden Lifestyles (yes, there are fashion designers in Second Life). With more than half a million page views a month, Linden Lifestyles has at times been the second most popular blog in Ireland, a nugget Dent finds amusing as neither she nor the blog are particularly Irish.

Her personal blog has only been active again since November 2007. Dent seems to be weaning herself off the joys of virtual fashion and is likely to appeal to a more mainstream audience interested in design and the web. She posts on everything from the recent controversy over Robert Scoble trying to suck his friends' data out of Facebook to tools that she finds useful in her work, such as the Remember the Milk application, which ironically she admits to never being able to remember the name of.

Dent also takes the trouble to illustrate each post with a unique image she designs herself, which means her blog is best appreciated by visiting in person rather than via a feed reader.

Dent has an irreverent style and isn't afraid to pin her colours to the mast - possibly as a result of her New York upbringing. It doesn't seem that long ago that there were lots of Irish bloggers of a similar ilk.