Author: admin

Eyes For Lies is a blog about a “wizard,” or one who has the innate ability to TELL if someone is telling a big fat goober of a fib.

Our author takes a look at big stories in the media where people are looked at closely, mostly murder mysteries or missing people cases, and she examines video to show points where she personally believes they are not being 100% truthful, or are downright lying.

I fell asleep on Monday at 7pm and woke up at 11, and couldn’t get back to sleep. I figured I’d come in here to find a blog to review and ended up reading Eyes for Lies until about 2:45 am when I had to force myself to stop and go to bed.

Admittedly, I love a good media sensationalism story and the media circus that surrounds a lot of the modern Whodunnits. Eyes for Lies takes events in the news from said media circuses in the form of video testimony and news reports… from JonBenet Ramsey to Natalie Holloway, from Anna Nicole to the Duke Rape Case, and really examines the people involved. She studies the the dead give-aways and so incredibly subtle the average bear would miss them clues that abound, and she interprets what SHE thinks is the truth.

The blog itself is a blogspot site, that links back to her official URL, and on occasion I lost myself trying to get back and forth between the blogspot site and her About and other pages inside the official site. It took me a little while to figure out the gianormous eyeball was the “home” button in the blog, but once I did the reading through the archives began to flow very easily.

Sometimes, Eyes for Lies states the painfully obvious, like Howard K. Stern is full of malarkey and Larry Birkhead is the baby daddy of Anna Nicole Smith’s little cherub. Like anyone didn’t KNOW that. That one was almost a “duh.” But she goes into other media cases that I didn’t even know about and really peels back the onion skin layers, asking why the person is chuckling at certain questions and explaining why that is a big ding-ding-ding revelation moment for her. She even at the early part of her blog (2004) has an entry about how she knows when her husband is telling a lie. God help the man if he just wants to go out and play poker with the boys. Heh.

The only real complaint I have about the blog is that on the less “superstar” kinds of cases she doesn’t start with a short blurb about who the person and the case are. I had no idea who Adam Saleh was, nor Daniel Wade Moore and Ryan Ferguson. I think that when she is writing about someone less stellar than say, Anna Nicole, a brief synopsis of the person and the case at the beginning of the entry would be helpful.

Eyes For Lies explains a lot about how she sees what she sees, gives the reader insight so they too can read a liar’s eyes and see their traits. She also takes time to show us her garden and tell us a beautiful story about her 20 year old tortoise shell kitty who passed away a few years back. All told, this is an interesting read, and I wonder if she thinks the whole Rosie/Elisabeth thing was staged or not. She invites readers to ask her questions about what is going on in the media and what her opinion is… perhaps I’ll drop her a line and ask this.

Because Eyes For Lies kept me up until ungodly and ugly hours of the morning, I shake a fist at her. And I give her a 3.5 rating. Adding the brief synopsis and posting a little more frequently would push things up a bit for this reviewer. In the meantime, I’ve bookmarked her to come back and see who else is a BFL.NULL

Being a dad to be I knew I had to review this site. The name of Daddy Daze is pretty much what I have been in since I found out I was going to be a father. Some days are good, some days are scary, and the worst part is that the baby isn’t even here yet.

Daddy Daze is written by three dads. Each gives their perspective on what is going on in their child’s life as well as their own. It is unique in the fact that there aren’t very many daddy blogs out there, where as there are a ton of mommy blogs. Dads think of things differently, and this site proves it.

My favorite section has to be the pictures and the stories behind each picture. All three dads have uploaded some pictures and a great story behind it. Most of it is very funny and I tend to relax a bit knowing that is what I have to look forward to. Every now and then though that little voice inside my head freaks out based on what I read.

The design of the site is a simple 2 column layout with a customized header. Archives are done correctly with a monthly break down and each month lists the number of posts which is a bonus. There are also reviews of some products that they were asked to review which is a good thing.

I really cannot get into too many details about the blog without spoiling the good time you will have reading it. My guess is that this blog will be attractive to any parent, any soon to be parent, and anyone who likes kids. I have enjoyed reading it, and I know most of you will too.NULL

Ok so the first review of this site I mentioned how there wasn’t a blog and that there needed to be one. The author quickly sent me an email asking me to review the blog portion of the site. The blog can be found at http://fusioncharts.blogspot.com/.

One thing I kept in mind that the blog is not listed off of the main product page like I suggested in my original review. This is something that should change very quickly.

The blog is short. Very short. There are 3 posts. All 3 posts happened on May 1st or May 4th. So that makes this pretty easy to review. The blog helps explain what the product does and how to use it. But it isn’t very engaging. It reads more like a bad sales pitch or a power point presentation.

The author really needs to figure out the purpose of this blog. If it is a sales pitch site, then it needs to do something to spice it up. If it is more for tech support then they need go that route. If it is more for showing off the features of the product, again go for that. Personally I think it should be used for all of those and then also showcase sites that are using the product.

Overall I can’t rate this blog very high. The blog doesn’t do anything for me, nor for the product it is trying to sell. The lack of posts may just be due to the relatively newness of the site, but even if that is the case, it hasn’t been updated in almost a month.NULL

Cars, trucks, or vehicles in general don’t really fall into a bucket of things I want to learn about on a regular basis. Anytime I’m around my younger brother, however, I learn a little more than I’d ever wanted to know. He’s got opinions of every car and knowledge of car parts that cost more than the actual car itself. I felt qualified to give Car-O-Focus a fair review, despite not being as big of a car buff as my motorhead of a sibling.

The archives go back to December 2006, making this site about six months old according to the posts I could find. Each post is three or four very small paragraphs that make up the first part of the post. Readers then have to click on a link that takes them to a completely different URL for the rest of the entry. This would become increasingly annoying if one was reading the site through an RSS reader.

The layout of the site is extremely distracting. Red is one of my favorite colors, but having so much of it on this site drew away from the actual entries, which were also a bit tedious to read at times with white text on a dark gray background. There are so many Google ads thrown all throughout the site that readers will have a hard time distinguishing between a link the author suggests or an ad of some sort. There were often up to 15 separate ads on any given entry.

In the “about” section of the blog, the author explains that he wanted to start a site that had a particular niche. He does do a good job of staying in the niche he’s chosen.

I didn’t particularly find this blog as one I would return to anytime in the future. I didn’t even find the need to pass it along as a link of interest to my brother, who, as I mentioned before, loves anything to do with cars. It’s just another blog that happens to be out there and ready for someone to accidentally stumble upon when searching for a BMW review, but not one I could see winding up on too many lists of “blogs one must read or their life will not be complete”.

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First things first — I feel suddenly very, very old.

I’m 40. Should I be reviewing a site that focuses strictly on music that I am not listening to? I mean, I like to think I’m slightly more in tune with what is going on musically than the average 40 year old housewife who thinks Kenny Chesney is just so effin’ HOTTTTT in his wifebeater Ts, straw cowboy hat, pookah shell necklace, flip flops and swim trunks (insert swoony noise here).

I feel almost guilty giving this one a go. But that’s not going to stop me.

Kids Pushing Kids as a site has a decent layout. The colors are interesting and reminded me of the very first layout I had for my very first blog entry in 2001. The greens, the white, the overall simplicity. Nice.

The site has an “about” page (and I always head there first to gain thoughtful understanding of the mission the writer/s have in mind) and was happy to realize that I just read about Danielson in Rolling Stone recently… and I went to iTunes to get some of their music… so I didn’t feel too incredibly out of touch and felt somewhat at ease going through the site.

Kids Pushing Kids hopes to share mp3s of bands the author/s enjoy/s and I have to say that it is nice to be exposed to some new music. There are embedded YouTube videos, and embedded links to songs so the reader can listen while looking at the review. The site writer/s don’t let on where they are located geographically, so I am not sure if there is a specific local scene that they are into, or if they are trying to build an national audience.

I liked the mp3s and absolutely loved the music player, similar to the one I play when I listen to Guster concerts on Archive.org (yes, I am unbearably lame but proud of it, shut up) to help make the pain of my undeniably horrible workday lessen. But hated that when I went from page to page to read the archives in the sit the music stops. Feh. A standalone player to listen to the ten items on the playlist while flitting around the site would be a great improvement.

And I knew three of the ten artists on the playlist. You go ahead and guess which three. Be proud of my nineteen sixties born ass.

As for entries, mostly they focus on a band with an mp3 and an opinion. As I write this I am listening to Pterodactyl’s debut on Brah Records — “Esses.” It’s not bad, but I feel it falls apart at the end and bores me.

Other entries are “Shortlist” content which consist of a series of links and pack a few news items in for a punchy entry. (I love Human Giant too, so it was fun to read the little blurb about them taking over MTV). There are industry links and news items and not every entry is an opinion piece on a song or a band. So that’s nice. And unlike other mp3 sites, this one hasn’t had a lot of time to develop into a really heavy duty “oh we’re too smart for YOU and YOUR pedestrian allegedly indie tastes” kind of sites, where they discard the music of anyone other than their friends and mock mock mock like Paris drives drunk. But they do link out to those sites (Pitchfork was mean to Guster back in the day!!! and I’ll never forgive them!!!) so it is good to get a lot of different portal-esque coverage of the music scene.

Two criticisms. First — there are sadly not a lot of archives. I enjoyed the visit to the site, but felt like it should be reviewed in about a year. Perhaps a re-review will be necessary as the site grows beyond May and June archives.

Secondly, I immediately cringed at the Ads by Google at the top of the page(s) and the Amazon videos on the right navigation area.

It is hard to look at a site that focuses on up and coming music with a big fat ad at the top calling out for 2007 cutest kid of the year and 3d educational games.

Everyone needs to make money but … feh.

Now, my favorite indie bands are Dealership out of California, and The Knockout Drops out of Brooklyn NY… The Knockout Drops are as of this moment doing a kick ass Off Broadway show called Escape From Bellevue. Check them out! Consider me a kid pushing kids. I went to high school with lead singer Chris Campion. He rocks harder than any 20 something I’ve ever seen… and that’s saying a lot for a 41 year old man from Long Island.

I wish this site well, good growth, great success, and have added it to my personal blogroll.
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