Month: January 1970

The focus of ‘Chew’s Place’ is clearly on the words of its author, Chewie. The design is simple, with little to distract the reader’s attention from the most recent entries. At the same time, many of the usual weblog features are here, too — links, archives, credits, an ‘About Me’ page, and more, hidden by default but expandable with a click on the appropriate link. It’s a simple, clean look, and it worked for me; the posts are ‘front and center’, but the extras are easily accessible, too. Very nice.

I first took a look at Chewie’s About Me page for some insight about the author, and found that she is — among other things — an avid reader, a chemical engineer/biochemist, and an aspiring teacher. I dug into the archives, wondering how and whether those topics would come through in her writing. I didn’t have the opportunity to read the very first posts; only the past six months of archives are available, and it’s clear that Chewie was already in a ‘groove’ in September of last year. It would have been interesting to see how her posts and writing evolved during the earlier stages, but that’s a minor quibble.

The good news is that the archives are filled to the brim with content; Chewie posts daily on a variety of subjects, ranging from commentary on recent news stories to personal anecdotes to book reviews to (more recently) a ‘Photo of the Day’ feature. Most posts are substantial, covering several topics; the monthly archives are huge, with stories and links and opinions to satisfy the most avid readers.

It’s clear that the author puts a lot of time and effort into ‘Chew’s Place’. Those looking for a new weblog to try out should be very happy with this site — with a wide variety of topics and links, there’s a bit of something for everyone here. And if Chewie has missed a day’s posting in the recent past, I didn’t catch it. It’s that commitment to delivering the goods that sets ‘Chew’s Place’ apart. I give this site 4.5 out of 5.Chew’s Place

The Waiting Place intrigued me from the beginning. It’s tagline, “…Contemplations on those who left, by those who were left behind.” The image of two women, one veiled, increased my curiosity. Reading a few entries, I learn that this is a “warblog,” of sorts, but isn’t easy to categorize as so. The writers aren’t your average armchair pundits, in fact, much the opposite.

Trish and her daughter, Eva, have been blogging since April of 2003, mostly regarding the situation in the Middle East and their own deep connection to it. Meran, Eva’s husband, is a Kurdish Iraqi who emigrated to the United States in 1992. There, he fell in love with and married Eva. Last year, he was called back to Iraq to translate for the Department of Defense. I found this to be a powerfully human and eye-opening story, and the blog is an eloquent expression of it.

The entries, though far from regular, are full of details, and easily read. This blog focuses more on the human aspect of the Middle East conflict, and this is marvelously refreshing. The authors speak of the situation facing Kurdish natives of Iraq, very personal to them. Be sure to read the poem on the left of the page, as it helps to give cotext to the rest of the blog. Eva writes about life as an American Muslim, both stateside and abroad. Despite its somewhat ethnic flavor, this blog has incredible universality.

By far the most enjoyable part of this blog is the occasionally-posted letters between Eva and her husband. These are truly touching, and give readers a portrait of a genuinely loving marriage, and what happens when two people who love eachother are torn apart by circumstances. Amid Meran’s sweet missives of love to his wife, we learn of his experiences overseas and the job he does. I was most moved by Meran’s dutiful assurance to his wife back in the states, “I am a man of this century and the next.”

Be sure to follow the links in the right-hand column, to other blogs and complimentary sites. Beneath the picture, Meran’s name is linked to a page showing the Kurdish area of Iraq and an brief bio of him by Trish. The sheer quality of the blog itself makes up for any design issues. However, the page appears somewhat off-kilter. I would move the main picture to directly beneath the title. Also, on my screen-resolution, there is a horizontal scrollbar. This isn’t a big deal, and could probably be remedied by cropping the edges of the photo of Meran and Eva in the right-hand colum.

This blog is a must-read for anyone in the blogosphere wanting to be well-informed about the war in Iraq. In all honesty, however, the blog is not about the war in Iraq. It is about a woman, her mother, and the man she loves. For that reason, I recommend this site to anyone and everyone. The Waiting Place

I am so glad I got to Buzzstuff before any of the other reviewers. This is one of those sites that made me sit up and take noticed the first time I wandered into the domain of Buzz and his blog.

Naturally, one has to find out all about Buzz in his Buzz’s 100 that everyone seems to do these days, and my goodness, he’s a laugh. This little introduction plainly sets the stage for the rest of the blog which is thoroughly entertaining, though I’ll get to that in a minute.

The blog’s layout is terrific, with the default skin (he has a few) being a Humphrey Bogart themed masterpiece which just so happens to be my favourite out of all the skins available. It’s still pretty much the standard with regards to where everything is put, but the blog offers a wealth of interesting and entertaining tidbits to read – all the headers are Bogart sayings which really tickles my fancy. I was particularly impressed with the ‘Random Bogey’ pictures that appear every time you refresh the page. Very appealing that is. The colours of the blog (the Bogart skin) are also very easy on the eyes, with yellow and red on black for the most part so I didn’t come away from the blog needing to take some headache tablets.

The content of the blog is very satisfying, and very funny at times. There’s plenty to read and waste time on since the blog’s been around since January 2003, though I have to say, out of all the entries I read, Wally was my favourite.

The blog is littered with pictures of this and that – moviestars, odd things, movie posters, more odd things, sports stars, and some… really odd things. The commentary that goes with them is enough to make you snort milk out of your nose (and I’m sure the Buzz has covered that somewhere in his blog too). And I also need to mention that Buzz is a prolific blogger, so it pays to come back more than once on any given day as there’s generally more material to read and grin or giggle over. Everything that I read ranged from personal entries about friends and family, to work, to the various strange facts and weird pictures he manages to find. There’s definitely something for everyone here.

On the whole, Buzzstuff really works as both a humourous and personal blog. It’s not hard to see why he’s so popular with his commenters (aka fans). Thanks Buzz, great effort!

buzzstuff

The Waiting Place. Who is waiting? Where are they waiting? And most importantly what are they waiting for? Questions without answers unless I read the weblog.

When the page first loads I was greeted with a huge banner atop a standard blogger template. The banner had an image of two women entitled Eva and I. Great, more questions. Who are these two women? With another question in my mind, I went on to read the blog itself.

After reading the first paragraph of the most recent post I knew that I was in for a ride unlike any other I had been on while reviewing a blog. This made me excited to read more, and learn more about what was going on, so I did.

The blog is written by two people: Eva and Trish. I can only assume that the image of the two women at the top is the two of them. Trish is Eva’s mother, and Eva is the wife of a man who is currently in Iraq. This blog is their perspective on what is going on both in their own lives and in Iraq.

Trish mostly posts about what is going on with her daughter (Eva), while Eva posts mostly about what is going on with her husband. A very interesting relationship that is developed with this respect for posting on the site.

As I said, I knew I was in for a ride unlike any others. The weblog actually tells a story. One with highs, lows, and everything in between. I was amazed at how moved I became while reading this story. I particularly enjoyed reading about the trip Eva took to Iraq to see her husband. Even though there were a lot of hardships it was composed very well. Now (read more current posts) it seems as if they are just waiting on Eva’s husband to return to the states. Again, the story of how Eva is still moving on with her life without her husband for the temporary time is very moving and one that should have a very happy ending.

I only have three minor problems with The Waiting Place. My first is there is no about section. It took me nearly 3 months worth of archives to figure out who was who, and what was going on. My second complaint is that there seems to be some gaps in the story not told. This could be either an intentional thing, or something caused from Blogger. Finally the lack of total posts for each month is on the low side, but given the circumstances of how this weblog is told it is expected.

Overall I enjoyed the story told at The Waiting Place. I recommend reading this blog to get a completely different perspective on how the war in Iraq effects people. As I said, this was a great ride to take and I plan on continuing to see where it goes.

The Waiting Place

The B-Zone “world of bits, bytes, birds, bollocks and booze” belongs to Bjoern, and if ever a blog lived up to its tagline this would be the it. The reader is immediately presented with a colourful striped design principally in blue, beige, and white . I’m not sure whether it is intentional but it has a very retro feel about it, and against all my expectations I found it actually worked well with the content here.

A brief introduction to the author resides here, providing details about likes, dislikes and occupation in list format. What stands out for me is his hobbies, listed as “everything creative – writing, fine arts, photography, music; coding; dressing up & going out” – you’ll quickly learn that a lot of what you find on this site are arranged around these items. There is in fact a lot to this site, blog aside there’s freeware for downloading, exceptional artwork, and music. There is a section entitled coding, which unfortunately was offline the three or four times I visited this site for writing this review.

The weblog part of this site was added to an existing site in July 2003 for the express purposes of highlighting software releases and writing the odd titbit about his everyday life, and that is ultimately what you find on these pages. There’s a lot to see, and a whole range of subjects covered – obviously programming and computers is a central theme so I expect this site to appeal to fellow geeks such as myself. Bjoern writes well, short concise entries quickly becoming longer and more detailed as the blog ages. Not everything held my attention, but on the whole I did enjoy what I found here, especially the references to his programming endeavours. That is once I managed to drag
myself away from Solitairy Bjoern, which was strangely addictive.

The design as I said is based upon a vertical striped background. The colours work well together and despite my initial beliefs was not at all hard on the eye. It suit’s the content, and I believe the personality of its owner very well. The site is easy to navigate, with the added touch of a ‘top’ link on every post – a small detail but actually very helpful in navigating this site. All in all the design worked, there were no serious navigational issues and the only real draw back for me was the unfinished areas – there is nothing so frustrating for a visitor than finding an potentially interesting area of a site, only to discover “Content will be back within a few hours, please check later” especially when it happened to be significantly longer than a few hours – each occasion I visited over the span of a few days it was offline. It’s not really good design practice – if a section isn’t finished or is under construction don’t upload it until such time that it is finished.

There is a lot of see at the B-Zone. First impressions of the tagline led me to believe that the content of this site would be a little ‘laddie’ but this was not the case. Well written entries covering IT and everyday events, excellent examples of freeware for download, and really exceptional artwork all make this site a worthwhile viewing experience. Completion of the unfinished areas and this is definitely one of the better personal weblogs.The B-Zone