Author: admin

My initial reaction to this site is the pink. Very rarely do you see a pink on a blog when it’s not some godawful bright pink. I see the pink ribbon and it immediately brings to mind breast cancer support. Good thing I paid attention to that little detail too, because it seems this blog is one woman’s struggle from finding out that she has a lump to getting treatment.

The blog itself if very touching and emotional. I, personally, have been fortunate enough to not have had a family member get breast cancer, so this is an entirely new experience. The entries aren’t filled with grief and woe-is-me’s, it’s actually filled with real emotion about the anticipation of the results of the various tests. I can’t help but feel compelled to read every entry from start to finish to read and understand the struggle that it must be for the author. Even the short entries leave you wondering how you’d handle a similar situation.



I’ve read themed blogs before, y’know the kind, where people write about a certain subject or experience. I have to say that this is one of the better of the themed blogs. The author writes from her heart and it’s evident as you see her struggle with how to tell her mom and sister. Her worries about what may or may not happen. The strength she gains from the few readers who leave her kind notes, and the support she gets from family and friends.



The design of the blog is done well. My only complaint is that the links are a very light pink and hard to see, even under the best of lighting. Otherwise the blog flows well.



This blog is compelling, to say the least. I couldn’t help but read through each entry, and felt the pangs of sadness while she was in the hospital awaiting her surgery. The author kept up the writing, even while being admitted into the hospital by means of handwriting her feelings, which were later added to the blog by her daughter. It’s well worth a read for anyone who has had a family member diagnosed with breast cancer or otherwise. It’s an intimate blog about someone’s journey through cancer. What more can be said? I wish the author much luck.Beyond Contestation

Out of a long standing habit, looking for an “about the author” section is the first thing I always do anytime I visit a weblog for the first time. I was so happy to find one here, and to find one that explained exactly who was writing this weblog and why they were writing it. Beyond Contestation is a weblog that belongs to Mizmo (the pseudonym she’s adopted for use on the internet), and through this weblog, she’s able to jot down her thoughts about her current diagnosis of breast cancer.

Mizmo starts journaling her experience with her recent diagnosis as soon as it happens. January 9th, 2004 is the first date in the archives, and it’s also the day that Mizmo initially found the lump in her breast that would eventually lead to a chemotherapy treatment. The site is updated very regularly, providing readers mainly with the status and details of what Mizmo is going through on a daily basis for the past three months.

The layout is very clean and crisp. It works well in three different browsers, and is never distracting from the actual content of the weblog. While pink is not my personal favorite color at all, the method in which it’s used at Beyond Contestation is a very calm, soothing manner. Of course, the use of pink is also very symbolic of breast cancer awareness, which is also represented by the pink ribbon in the top of the layout. Using pink as the color of the hyperlinks on the site was something that I found a tad hard on the eyes from time to time, but it was definitely something I overlooked once I became involved in Mizmo’s writing.

Dealing with the effects of finding the lump in her breasts and the trials and tribulations that come along with this type of a serious matter, Mizmo does her best to give just the basic facts of how she’s dealing with things. Of course, like with any person, this type of situation isn’t one that can be portrayed as happy or silly the majority of the time. However, when reading this weblog, I mainly felt the positive vibes that the author emanates, along with the positive comments from her regular visitors. While dealing with such a serious topic, the author does an excellent job not bringing down morale of people that might just happen to stop by for a quick read around her weblog.

Mizmo does a great job with Beyond Contestation. She updates when she can, and when she has more news or further developed feelings on the issues she’s dealing with right now. Readers will either find themselves drawn to Mizmo due to her dynamic writing style, or they just won’t find any interest in a weblog of this nature. Unfortunately, there’s probably no middle ground to that. Beyond Contestation is definitely worth a visit to see if Mizmo is someone you’ll enjoy reading about from day to day.

Beyond Contestation

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

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

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