Product review: Music Piano Tote Bag Waterproof

This bag is 12.75 inches tall, 11.5 inches wide, and has sides that open up to be 2.75".  The handles are 5 inches long (not long enough to put it over a shoulder).  The bag is made out of waterproof synthetic fabric.  The material is not cotton canvas but some less sturdy fabric which has been made waterproof.

The bag is best suited for light items.  It has piano notes design on both sides and looks cute.  I use it to carry a cushion to sit on during concerts - the size and the theme are a perfect match for this.
You can find it on Amazon by following this link.


Ali Julia review ★★★★☆

Product review: BestSounds Cotton Tote Bag- Music G clef

This heavy cotton bag is 14.75" tall, 13" wide, and the bottom opens up to provide width of 2.75".  The top closes with a zipper.  The handles are 7", just long enough to snugly fit around my shoulder. The bag is made out of heavy duty cotton canvas and is sturdy.  I use it for grocery shopping and it held up well for fairly heavy shopping loads.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.


Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Book review: Friends with the Scale: How to Turn Your Scale Into a Powerful Weight Loss Tool, by Laurie Spangle

Are you a person that blames your scale for your weight problems? Then this book is for you.  The title of the book is not just a cute way to talk about weight control, the author really really relates everything she says in the physical object - the scale.

I am no stranger to dieting, but I had trouble relating to the main premise of the book: breaking the pattern of hating/blaming/being afraid of the scale, so the content did not resonate with me.  The entire weight loss experience in this book is being related to the scale, so if you do not have scale "issues" you probably will have a similar dissatisfaction as me.
You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★★☆☆☆

Product review: Smart Plug Wifi Outlet with Energy Monitoring

The smart works well, it was easy to pair with the phone and it has not failed to turn on or off the plug since I got it. I used it both within the house using WI FI as well as while being away from home using an external network.

The smart power plug requires no hub, it has a built-in hot spot that can be paired with a phone or devices like Alexa and Google Home.  Once the plug is paired one can turn the power strip on and off using the phone, as well as set up a schedule and count down timer for when the outlet will be turn on  and turn off.  It also shows power consumption of the device plugged into the outlet.

The app is called Smart Life and is available from Google Play.  There is also a version for an iPhone.  The app is simple and intuitive to use.  The only thing that I thought could be made better is that the password only accepts letters and numbers, it does not allow any special characters.

The plug is fairly wide, but narrow, so it can be placed next to other regular sized plugs.  I show the smart plug on 1/2" grid in the photos.


You can find it on Amazon by following this link.


Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Product review: Soothing Styles Handcrafted Folding Teak Shower Mat

The teak mat is 27.5" Length x 19.5” Width x 0.3" Thickness.

This teak mat is very attractive. It is made out of nice looking teak slats, they have  a typical teak color.  I am using the at on tile floor and it does not slip. This is because the reverse side has non slip grips. The grips are glued on and they are black in color, so the mat is not reversable.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.


Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Product review: Kenruipu Power Bank 24000mAh

♦ size: 6.5" x 3.25" x 0.75"
♦ weight: 15.7 oz
♦ number of out ports: 4
♦ capacity: 24000 mAh
♦ number of in ports: 2 (mini USB and lightening)
♦ charge indicator: digital display
♦ flashlight: yes
♦ pass through charging: no (i.e. the battery can charge while being charged itself)
♦ cables: 1 charging cable and 1 AC cable

This battery has a large capacity (24000 mAh) and four ports.  This capacity and a large number of ports works well for traveling.

One of the things that is important to me is how quickly the battery charges my phone. To test how well the battery performs I use the same phone, at the same level of charge to compare the current draw for each external battery I test. This corrolates to how quickly the battery is charged. This allows me to do a relative comparison of different external batteries.  The battery performed at a good rate, even though it was not the absolutely optimal I have seen.


I also tested to see if the battery supports pass-through charging (i.e. whether the battery can charge mobile devices while it is being charged). This battery does supports charge through charging. It continues to charge the phone while the battery is being charged, but does so at slower rate than when the battery is not being charged.

Finally, I check if the cable that came with the battery is a charging cable (i.e. capable of charging at full AC rate) or a data cable (charging the battery at USB rate). The cable that came with camera charges at AC rate.

The battery has a flashlight, but it is quote dim.  Never the less it could be helpful in an emergency when you need to light a small area like a keyhole.

Samsung Nexus phone:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
port 1: 1.02A/5.06V (excellent comparing the performance of the same device with other chargers)
port 2: 1.00A/5.06V (excellent comparing the performance of the same device with other chargers)
port 3: 1.02A/5.06V (excellent comparing the performance of the same device with other chargers)
port 4: 1.00A/5.06V (excellent comparing the performance of the same device with other chargers)

(for comparison the best charging monitor result for this phone is 1.00A/5V)

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.


Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Product review: Birkenstock Betula Licensed Womens

My first Birks and they do not fit as comfortably as I expected.  I ordered 7.5 (they arrived labeled 38 using European sizing) and they fit fine in length and width.  However when I walk the way the heel area is shaped rubs me the wrong way and gets painful after a few hours even with the socks on.  Also one of the straps rubs my foot in a way that starts to hurt even after I tried different adjustments of the straps.  The sandales are nice looking and feel like a high quality shoe, just not up there in comfort.  I am disappointed as I hoped they would be the most comfortable shoes I have based on the "legend" of the shoe.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★★★☆☆

Product review: Smart Plug Mini Outlet Compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, TECKIN Wifi Enabled Remote Control Smart Socket

The smart outlet works well, it was easy to pair with the phone and it has not failed to turn on or off the plug since I got it. I used it both within the house using WI FI as well as while being away from home using an external network.

The smart power plug requires no hub, it has a built-in hot spot that can be paired with a phone or devices like Alexa and Google Home.  Once the plug is paired one can turn the power strip on and off using the phone, as well as set up a schedule and count down timer for when the outlet will be turn on  and turn off.  It also shows power consumption of the device plugged into the outlet.

The app is called Smart Life and is available from Google Play.  There is also a version for an iPhone. There are several apps by the same name, I am attaching a video of the app I am using. The app is simple and intuitive to use. 

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Product: Boncare Heating Pad with 40-Mins Auto Shut Off

This heating pad is 12" wide and 24" long. It comes with a removable polyester sleeve cover. Inside the sleeve there is also a thin insulation pad for one side of the heating pad. If you want more gentle heat or wet heat you can use this insulation pad dry or wet.

The controller has three temperature levels and an off position.  The hearing pad does not stay on contiously it has an auto-shut off after 40 minutes.  I would have preferred not to have a shut off but they must have added for some legal reasons.

The polyester sleeve is soft on one side, on the side it has printed legal disclaimers which make it rough to touch.  I hope the writing will rub off with time as the sleeve cover is washable.

The power cord is 6.5 long and ends in a regular size plug with two prongs without a ground.

When I set the switch to "hot" the hearing pad became warm to touch in 2 minutes.  The heat was distributed fairly evenly through out the pad.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Product review: Compression Packing Cube for Travel

I love traveling with travel bags to keep my luggage organized.  These bags are a little different from the other bags I own:

1) My other bags have mesh on one side, these bags are made out of solid nylon on all sides.  Nylon works better for comparision purposes as well as containing smells (so they would be good for dirty closing as you travel).

2) They have two zippers. One zipper open the opening where you insert your stuff.  The second zipper lets out 3" of height of the bag (similar to a feauture of some soft side luggage).  Then once you fill the bag you can use this zipper to shrink the bag and get a little big of compression. 

In my video I show before and after compression. The compression is small compared to vacuum bags, but every little bit helps when you need to fit a lot of stuff.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.


Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Product review: USB Bluetooth 4.1 Receiver Adapter for Car Audio Stereo

This Bluetooth adapter is a receiver, which means you attach it to audio device (car stereo or any other speaker) and pair it with the device that produces sound or music (such as a phone or MP3 player).

To make it work you need to plug in the device into AC source (could a USB port in the car or an external battery). And then connect its audio port to the car's audio port.  The dongle blinks slow blue light when you plug in, press the the button for a few seconds and it begins blinking faster. As it blinks faster the phone detects it as UKIT Bluetooth device.

Note: It is not the right  Bluetooth dongle to add Bluetooth to a computer that does not have Bluetooth.  If you wanted to  play music on the computer and listen to it using Bluetooth headphones this is not the right dongle to get.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★★★★☆

Product review: Blazedrive Wifi Hard Drive Enclosures for 2.5" hard drive

What attracted me to this disk enclosure that it allows an external disk to be accessible in three ways: WIFI, USB 3.0, and via Ethernet cable.  Unfortunately, I could not get it to work at all. I am an engineer by profession, and have dealt with numerous wireless devices at work and at home.

What you get is an enclosure for a disk, the disk you need to provide yourself.  I purchase a 500G Seagate SSD drive to use in this enclosure. The drive has to be formatted in either 32 FAT or NTF format, so I started with mounting it directly in my computer and formatting it. I was able to access  without any problems when it was mounted directly in my computer.  However, I was not able to detect the drive when it was mounted in the enclosure.

The drive supposed to show up as Blazedrive in WI HI hot spots. Per manual I installed the app called "Blazedrive" from Google Playstore.  The manual said that this app should be used to detect and configure the drive (e.g. change password from the default provided in the manual).

The app was not able to detect the drive.  I was not able to see a Blazedrive hot spot neither in my WIFI network connections nor via the app.

I have tried:
1. I fully charged the drie and tried connecting when running from battery.
2. I tried running the app and connecting while the drive was plugged into AC source
3. I tried rebooting the drive and rebooting the phone
4. I tried the reset button located next to the charging port


I also tried connecting the enclosure with the drive to USB 3.0 port directly to the computer, then to USB 2.0 PORT directly to the computer and then using an Ethernet cable.  None of the attempts worked.  I returned the drive and received a replacement which worked exactly the same way.

I also want to add one other piece of information missing from Amazon description and the manual, but listed on the back of the enclosure itself: the detailed specs for the interface:

WIFI 2.4G/802.11 BGNL 300Mps

I have both 2.4G and 5G hot spots in my house and I made sure my phone was connected to 2.4G network.

Final note:  When I attempted to use the app without being able to connect the drive I was prompted to download an update from the vendor directry, not from Google app store.  Such updates are not safe as they have not undergone Google security checks and I did not take it as this is this is the safe computing practicing if one does not want to install software with viruses and spyware.  If the vendor has a safe update there is no reason why they would not put it in the GooglePlay store.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★☆☆☆☆

Product review: Magtoe Women's slippers (terry cloth with Velcro closure)

The best feature of these slippers is the Velcro closure.  I can adjust them to be very comfortable no matter whether I am in bare feet or wearing thick socks.

Magtoe lady slippers are made of terry cloth like material and a Velcro closure which allows one to adjust the fit of the slipper.  The sole is made of memory foam, which makes them soft to step on.  The soles are totally flat, no arch support.

The sizing is true to size, and the width is adjustable with the help of Velcro. Since they have open toes my feet do not get hot in super hot weather. The foam bottom absorbs the sweat.  They have been perfect for the hot summer weather.


Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Product review: Plant Stand 18430 Down Under Plant Caddy, Terra Cotta

These are the best plant stands I own.  They roll well, they fit a variety of sizes of large pots, they aged very well (I have owned them for 3 years).  I store them outside during the winter and they have not rusted or became britle over time.

I am using these dollies on the deck so the pots do not rest on wood and cause damage, and they work very well for that purpose.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Product review: Head and Shoulders Green Apple Anti-Dandruff Shampoo

My hair dresser informed me that I need to take action as scalp on the back of my head is dry and flaking. Head and Shoulders shampoo has changed since I last used it. It comes in many different scents and I purchased "green apple" scent. It smelled very nice (no old unpleasant scent) exactly as what I expected "green apple" to smell. I have been using it for a number of weeks and my hair dresser told me that my scalp looks significantly better. So, it is effective and smells good - I am pleased with it. Amazon Pantry has a very good price when they offer an instant coupon, the coupon deal does not run all the time but it is repeated often.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.


Ali Julia review ★★★★★