Author: admin

A nice, clean, well-organized blog, Travel the Home Exchange Way is written by Lois Sealey and is an excellent source of all things ‘house swapping.’

Lois began the blog in late 2004 and using two other home swapping sources (Home Base Holidays and Home Swappers Newsletter), she regularly compiles useful links and information on the subject. After a request from a reader, she began including photos of houses that are available for holiday swap. She also posts homes ‘wanted’ in certain parts of the world and lists things you should know before doing a home swap. I think any and all of this information would be invaluable to those looking into this type of vacation.

This is a very short review for this site, but suffice it to say more informational blogs like this are needed for niche markets such as the home exchangers. What a great way to get information and be able to leave feedback on your experience. Well done, Lois.Travel the Home Exchange Way

The title bar stated “Mama Jama LIVE” and I figured that this blog was mainly about music. The main layout was black and white and not much to say about it. And the first entry I read was about Jaco Pastorius and that strengthened the idea that this blog was a music blog.

However, I was mistaken. Though some of the entries are about the author’s band and his experiences as well as the people he has met on the way. But he talks about other things too – family life, thoughts and ideas and of course, some witty entry about one thing or the other.

One thing that I found particularly good about this blog was that it had categories into which his entries were, of course, categorized to. There’s the “Just Stuff” where I think the miscellaneous entries were placed. The “Tech” category had entries that was relatively about technical things.

So, that said, I would recommend this blog to anyone who is interested in the going ons of this person’s life, music, travel and just some random stuff. I suggest anyone visit this blog at least once for a quick laugh.
Mama Jama Live

At first thought I was praying this site wasn’t some mathematical blog. No I haven’t found of those yet, but its bound to happen. Thankfully when I got to Pattern Recognition I was told that the author was a former poet, and now a blogger. Poems have patterns, thus I was happy it wasn’t a math blog.

I’ll start with the design and say that it is just a blogger template. A good one mind you; but it is still a template. It’s the dark and light brown one that looks kind of like I picture parchment and it works well for this author. It almost feels as if this template was designed off of this author’s words, but I know that isn’t true.

Now for the fun part: the weblog itself. The best way I can describe this blog is that friend you have who is always full of energy and has a positive outlook on everything, and talks really loud and fast, and just keeps going and never shuts up and you want to get a word in edge wise but you just can’t and … Ok. I will stop now. Sorry about that. But seriously, this blog reads like a good friend who just likes to talk.

Aisha doesn’t really have a set topic yet that she focuses on so there is no way to say well it is a poetic blog or it is a political blog or all this blog has to offer are those “what type of ____ are you” blogs. Her posts read well together, but taken in can almost seem sporadic. Again this isn’t a bad thing, it is just a quality of that friend we all have I described.

The thing that annoyed me the most was trying to figure out what Dashboard Dashing was. At times she would abbreviate it to DD and of course I though Dungeons and Dragons, but knew I was wrong. Finally in November she explains what Dashboard Dashing is. See in your dashboard for blogger there is a list of recently updated blogs and it is hard to catch yourself on the list because about 10 blogs a second are updated. Dashboard Dashing refers to the blogs on either side of you on this recently updated list. Make sense? This led me to some interesting sites, and if I still used blogger, I probably would be inclined to try my hand at this little game.

Finally we come to the name Pattern Recognition. While originally I thought it was about Math, and then realized it was about poems, I was wrong on both accounts. See Pattern Recognition is a book that she read in July and when she googled the author she found he had a blog, and she didn’t know what one was, and well now we are left with her little blog on the web.

Overall I had a great time at this site. The site read very quickly and easily which was refreshing. I think the fact that the site does read like the friend we all have makes it that much more unique as it comes off as more natural and more real rather than mundane. My only real complaint is that Aisha doesn’t update on a daily basis, of course that could be a bad thing if she did.
Pattern Recognition

I admit it, I wanted to review Mama Jama Live simply because the title sounded cool. I even said it under my breath a few times, giving it a rhythm and everything – which was ironic, since “Mama Jama Live” is the weblog of (from what I was able to garner from www.mamajama.com) a reggae band member. One of the band members, J. Gladstone, up keeps the weblog portion of the website with personal entries about music, his band, and his life.

When I came to the Mama Jama Live weblog, I noticed the very plain layout, which bordered on ugly. It was a little disappointing, but I quickly pushed onward and begun to read the actual weblog, itself, and immediately found myself engrossed in J. Gladstone’s words. He certainly has a talent for story-telling and weaving words together! His voice was matter-a-fact and, maybe, a little playful and I quickly found myself floating on the imagery his words conjured when he used phrases like “dunes of snow” and “cloister inside and spin smoothies.”

Yes, the layout is plain and the text is small, but I enjoyed reading the entries nonetheless. I especially liked the entry on Jaco, which was extremely touching, and the play on an infamous person’s name in “Inaugural.” Mama Jama Live has wonderful writing, and I’m definitely going to visit again.Mama Jama Live

I love the name of “Not Well Planned” for a blog. It is great. It creates a thought of randomness that is a blog. It also has a sense of honesty as it takes an honest person to admit that something is not well planned. This is a good name for this blog as you will see.

The first thing I noticed was the bright pink template. I am not a fan of templates, but know that they serve those who cannot design a site on their own. I am glad that this is not a bad template, nor is it one that is overly used (probably because of the bright pink nature). While the template did nothing FOR the site, it also did nothing AGAINST the site.

So I started reading the site and I had a hard time getting into it. It read as if I wasn’t the target audience. I am a male, in the US, who runs a blog review site. After some more posts I started to enjoy it a bit, but still something was amiss. Then after the month of December I realized what it was – this is the blog equivalent to a chick flick. The bright pink, the stories of family, the stories of ex’s and friends, and well you get the picture.

Once I realized what this blog was about it was a lot easier to read. The stories are definately targeted at a female audience, but reveal some great things to us males. The fact that she admits she blogs about “sh***ing and farting too much is great. And that is on the tame side for this blog. This blog talks about all things on the spectrum and is hard to follow for some, but those that get it will be right there nodding their heads.

Overall I think females will LOVE this blog and most guys will dismiss it. Even if they can get some juicy info on females from it, I still think they won’t sit through the “we can’t relate posts” like burning your eye off with a home waxing kit. So this blog gets a 3.75 from me because I can honestly say it is better than average, but it is not my cup of tea since I am male.not well planned