Author: admin

I can’t tell you how pleased I was to see this blog on the list of ones to review. I’ve been reading this blog for a few weeks now (it’s even in my RSS feeds list, and it takes a lot for a blog to make it to that). I love this blog… of course this posed for my first impression.

The layout looks very simple at first glance, but it isn’t really. It’s simple enough to not draw attention away from the writing, but it’s got images sprinkled in it so that it’s not the same old everyday template we see ten million times. I don’t like how there are so many posts on the front page, but I’m willing to live with this.

The entries are great, and vary widely on the topic at hand. There are posts about Ellen’s daughter Anna, her husband, herself, and other bloggers as well. There’s quite a bit of content to make almost anyone happy.

As far as extras go, I am quite happy to inform you that there are NO Google Ads. This is great. There also aren’t ten million things in the sidebar, which is also good. If we go all the way to the bottom we see where the extras are hidden. There are 80×15 buttons galore, as well as what appears to be a broken Amber Alert ticker. Other extras are more for statistical or just user-friendliness reasons, such as the ability to subscribe or see how many people are online at a particular time.

All in all, this is a good blog. It’s a bit cluttered for my taste, but it’s the perfect blog for reading in an RSS reader. The content is interesting and Ellen is obviously someone who takes time when writing her posts, in order to make them enjoyable rather than the plain and usual jumble that most people churn out. I’ll give The Reign of Ellen a 4.5 out of 5… Definitely worth reading, and most likely bookmarking as well.NULL

I found myself enjoying this blog the more I read it. The blog itself is on a nice easy template, white background with black text and the comic sketches that were found around the blog itself, I found them fascinating and very cute. I really like the way Ellen has drawn up sketches of all her blog friends instead of just having the basic blog roll, it makes you want to have a look at what the other blogs are like & if the sketches relate.

My expectation of this blog was that it was going to be another personal blog about day to day life. Further reading though pleasantly surprised me. Ellen has given lots of thought to her blog and has “cards” that she uses to interact with her readers, which I think is a wonderful idea. Her posts are mostly personal entries, well written and quite easy to comprehend. She’s drawn some cartoons that she posts up every so often. I really enjoyed Ellen’s about me section written by her husband, it really gives a greater insight into the author from someone else’s perspective and again, I thought it was something that was different and interesting.

I found all the links to be working in the blog, the design does compliment that blog, the author’s writing more than makes up for having a white background and less clutter as I found the blog to be more than enough, as in, I believe that Ellen’s writing & entries are enjoyable enough that it doesn’t need to have a complex & brightly coloured background to detract.

I believe that this blog is something that Ellen might be writing for her own benefit. I found the link to her own “depression manual” an eye-opener. She’s a new mum, who is staying at home and dealing with life as it comes day by day and reporting it with humour. I found Ellen’s blog an interesting read, whether that is because I found her struggles and daily gripes and humorous entries perked my interest or if it was just because of those cute cartoon drawings. It is definitely worth a look at. So what are you waiting for? Go look!
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I knew right away what I was going to get with this blog by its name. Women’s Bioethics Blog is a pretty self explanatory name. For those of you who haven’t guess what this blog is about, let me give you another clue: it’s about women and it’s about bioethics and it’s all in a blog format. Oh and for those of you who don’t know what bioethics means: The study of the ethical and moral implications of new biological discoveries and biomedical advances, as in the fields of genetic engineering and drug research.

When I first got to the site I saw a pretty standard blogger template with a customized header. Finally someone got the fact that you can actually modify the blogger templates for your own needs. The blog is kept minimal so that you focus on the content. By this I mean that she doesn’t have all the hundreds of things in the side bar; instead there are just links, previous posts, and archives. At the bottom of the page she has a couple of other things, but nothing out of the ordinary for a blogger.

The posts are a bit to take in if you are not familiar with or interested in this topic. Being a sociology minor, I found a lot of her posts insightful and wish it was around while I was in class. While the posts themselves seem to jump around a bunch from topic to topic, there is the underlying principle of women’s bioethics.

This blog gets 4.25 from me because it has stayed its course. I was afraid this was going to be another advertising blog, but thankfully it was not. The posts are informative and some are very interesting. Personally I cannot see myself looking at this blog every day, but I now have a good tool in my toolbox for when I need to brush up on women’s issues. I suggest everyone check this blog out at least once so they can learn something they didn’t know already.
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Um excuse me, does anyone here know what the hell zazzafooky is? Is it a thing? Is it a place? Is it something all the cool kids are doing and I just don’t know about it? To many questions, and I have to get this review done.

When I first got to zazzafooky the design was missing. At first I thought the author just went back to simplistic times of websites in 1995. But then the first post said how that if the site doesn’t look pretty to click a link and it will be all better. Sure enough, click the link, and bam you have a well designed blog.

The design of the site at first looked similar to a blogmoxie design; however I didn’t see the bm link anywhere so I was impressed with the author’s ability to have a custom look. I then noticed a skin me feature, but unfortunately that doesn’t work. The blog is a standard 2 column layout and in the sidebar there are all sorts of goodies.

I quickly noticed the “What is she?” link and figured this was a good place to start. Turns out zazzafooky is a made up word that means crazy unexplainable and is a verb. I am now determined to shout out the word zazzafooky in verb tense sometime today. She then goes on to talk about how she studies quantum theory, but that won’t be in the blog. Instead it will be other personal stuff.

The first post that I read that I knew I was going to like this site was one about her daughter. Since the age of 4 the daughter has watched scary movies and laughed at all of them. That was until recently (3 years later) when she saw Jeepers Creepers and now the author won’t let her live that down. This post was entitled “Bad Parenting” but I laughed it up as “Good lesson, just took too long to get there”.

Other posts talk about her job, her living situation, her daughter and well pretty much anything you want to know about her. I laughed through most of the posts that were supposed to be funny and took in the more serious posts. I enjoyed the pictures she posted to accompany some of her posts as they gave us either a little more insight on the post, or proof on a previous post.

I don’t know how in all my years blogging I missed a gem like this one. I had a good time reading this site, and I think you will to. There is something here for everyone, which is very rare in a personal blog. The fact that TJ is able to keep me entertained and not bored with a personal blog is warrant enough to give it the 4.75 that she deserves.
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Seeing the title of “Antique Mommy” gave me the impression that this blog was about an older woman who’d had a child. I wasn’t far wrong in my initial impression. The blog is written by a 44 year old who had her first child, there seems to be no about me page, and the brief user profile that blogger allocates doesn’t really tell you much about the writer. Seeing this blog listed as humour did bias my judgement a bit, in so much as I was expecting the blog to have funnier content.

The only entry that mildly amused me was the “Part-Time Pet” entry and that’s only because I seem to have a morbid amusement with people that have phobias in regards to animals, which I can happily add I am one too! I do believe that this blog would be better placed under the personal blog category as I just can’t find the funnier content in there.

The blog itself is a simple blogger layout. Easy to read and navigate. The links all work as I had no trouble using the archive links at all. There are a few links down the bottom of the blog that relate to different sites and the usual blog list of friends. The good news is that there was no other clutter, which was nice.

Antique Mommy is sometimes amusing and sometimes not, I think the more the author writes in her blog, the more she finds herself and her own writing style, it’s nice to see the development through the entries.

But the blog is basically the journey of the author who is mapping her child’s life online. Some entries are funny, some make you smile and others seem like they are just entries of day to day happenings. It’s interesting reading as there are not many blogs out there that I’ve come across that are written by older mothers who are experiencing motherhood for the first time. I only gave this blog a 3.5 because I just found that it is quite like all the other mum blogs out there, except the different being the author is older. But still it is a worth a check out, see if you like it.
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