Category: Uncategorized

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

My initial impression of this blog was good. Very good. The crisp, clean layout was a very welcome beginning to my time spent here. The second thing I noticed was the incredibly proper grammar. Yet again I’m reminded of how we here, in North America, have butchered the English language. It was obvious from the start that this blog was not written by a North American.

The content of this blog isn’t anything overly new, different or out of the ordinary. However, it managed to keep me completely interested, to the point that I had to force myself to stop reading in order to write my review. iMark, the blog’s author, is witty, funny, observant and descriptive. The combination of these results in a wonderfully friendly reading experience that makes you laugh, smile and think, which is always a welcome side-effect of a blog, in my opinion.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading through the ‘100 things’ page, as well as the ‘interview with an iMark’ page. I laughed out loud on several occasions while reading that one. The option to skin the site was a nice addition, which, admittedly, I played around with quite a bit.

All in all, I found this site to be flawless. No design, spelling or grammatical errors to detract from the content. iMark obviously takes great pride in his blog. A pride refelcted in every little detail. I absolutely loved reviewing this blog, and I will most certainly be returning.

iMark

I was greeted to an eye pleasing aspect upon entering ‘Pharyngula’. Considering the absolute encyclopedic list of information that is crammed onto this page, it was a minor miracle! The backdrop for the page, I at first took to be bubble wrap. But upon investigation, found out I was looking at Zebra fish eggs. Before I went another step, I had to find out what the title of this blog meant. The author had politely provided a link to do just that. Pharyngula, I read, is: “when vertebrate embryos of all species are most similar to one another.” I had just stepped into the world of science…. or so I thought.

The author is a professor of Biology at the University of Minnesota.

As I began to read the most current entry, a curious mix of science and politics emerged. Drawing from a myriad of sources, he weaves an astonishing web of comments on all things scientific and political. The writing was very clear and concise, with a liberal spattering of quotes from all over. He seems to be VERY well read.

There are notes to his students about recent tests and complex biology essays on subjects of interest to the author and his readers. Evolution is a common topic. He writes some very thorough rebuttals to Intelligent Design apologists. If you are interested in the evolutionist’s point of view, this is your blog of dreams.

The author has archives that go back to June 2003. In the archives I found book reviews, excerpts from student papers complete with illustrations, photos of mating frogs and an absolute plethora of scientific information, side by each with some very frank political opinions. If you are of a scientific bent, this website should be right up your alley. And is a rich, if almost overwhelming source of jumping off points to other science related sites.

He is not shy in voicing his opinion, nor does he apologize for his politics. Here is how he describes himself in one entry: “I am a scientist and a biologist. I am pro-evolution. I’m an atheist. I’m a liberal. I’m left wing. I’m, ummm, blunt.”

Now to my rating. If his stated intent was as he describes in an “About Me” section I found, “I created these pages to describe some of my past and current research and to support my teaching.” . . then he has succeeded. For I have never seen quite such an astonishing collection of scientific information in one place.

However. (And I must emphasize the ‘however’ here), if I have one criticism of this site, it would be that both his science and his politics would be better served, were they located on separate sites. I found the transitions between the two subjects quite jarring. Though his scientific analysis was comprehensive in the extreme, and he elucidated his politics clearly, they seemed to fight each other on the page, thus substantially diminishing both in my opinion.
Pharyngula

BIG WARNING: THIS IS AN ADULT BLOG. IF YOU ARE UNDER AGE, DO NOT VISIT THE SITE. IF YOU ARE OFFENDED BY ADULT MATERIAL, DO NOT VISIT THE SITE. TWR DOES NOT AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH WHAT IS POSTED ON THE SITE.

Mandy’s Sex Life. Could this possibly be an adult oriented blog? I think it might be.

The design of the site is a boring template. Weird shades of green, a two column layout, yeah I think I have seen this one before. The page loads to a huge picture (drawn) of a female with some rather interesting things going on.

At the top of the page, there is the premise for the site stating that she started her own adult pay site and this blog was a companion so to speak. Maybe it is giving us an inside look at what is going on with running the adult site?

The blog itself is made up mostly of pictures. The blog is very green (just started in April), and doesn’t contain very many actual posts that require reading. The posts that do require reading are about how horny Mandy is, and what she is looking for in a partner.

The blog itself is just a big ad for her adult pay site. There are a ton of links back to the adult site, a lot of “special keywords” placed through the blog, and a lot of pictures.

Unfortunately this blog was rather boring to me since there was very little content. I was really hoping that it would have been different based on the title, or even more of a behind the scenes look at how to run an adult pay website. But instead, I got a big marketing campaign about why I should go to this adult pay site. This site is not worth visiting, and could be so much more.
Mandy’s Sex Life

Upon arriving at Graham’s Page of Stuph (Stuff) I was greeted by an uncluttered, clean page with some wonderfully subtle graphic enhancements. The page was easy to read with its white, gray and blue color scheme and it was complimented with a functional two column layout.

So? What kind of stuph will you find here? Well, Graham is a ‘musician, dancer, bibliophile, perpetual student, and an employee of Blogger at Google, not necessarily in that order. He has been blogging since September of 2002 and his blog has well over 700 entries… so there is a lot of content here. (For a change..) His blog is about his day to day life. Work. Loss of work. Dance. Books. Music. Piano. Housemates. Cooking (well sort of). Computers. Movies. Family. Blogs. Blogging. Blog Design. Ana Ng (which I like too) Naturally as a musician there are many references to this aspect of his life. He plays the mandolin, piano (and always wants to play the piano more) and has been known to teach music as well. The author is a family oriented guy. There are many references to his family and friends, and he never seems to miss a happy birthday wish.

The writing is very matter of fact. I found my interest varying between the many entries. Some entries were very esoteric but others were exceptional. Especially the entries when Graham was reflective and introspective. Such as these:
eknath, life lessons. There are numerous interesting links (You can come across some really silly links when you spend all day looking at random people’s blogs.) which I enjoyed.

Simply put it, a nice blog about a nice guy.
Overall Graham’s Page of Stuph is a very solid blog. I enjoyed the little touches such as a rotating ‘about me’ pic and custom bullets (even if they are from some template?). Huzzah!
Graham’s Page of Stuph