Reviews

Krebs Recycle Climbing Rope Dog Leash Review

Our dog Porter is a big boy…at his last vet visit he weighed in at 95lbs! Before you start fretting about his weight, though, mid-90s is about the right weight for him, given his height and breed (labrador/chesapeake bay retriever mix). It does mean he can be a handful on his leash though. 90% of the time he is docile and happy to trot alongside us, but if he encounters a squirrel or one of the dogs he has decided are his nemeses, it requires lots of leash pulling and wrangling to keep him in line. We used a simple…

Reviews

Oberon Design Sienna Cover for the New iPad Review

In the earliest days of bookbinding, when handmade and handcut parchment pages were sewn together and bound inside richly colored covers made of leather, it was common to see elaborate hand-tooling and metalwork on a book’s exterior. Books were rare; their contents were important and often considered precious. Decorating a book’s binding was one way for an artisan to show off his skills while honoring the importance of the book being covered. Over time, like so many other things, books became mass-produced. One of the first casualties of the publishing industry was the artistic leather binding that had once been…

Game Diary, Reviews

Jane’s Zoo HD for iPad Review

Jane is back, and apparently while on vacation in Africa she saw the plight of the animals and needed to step in and intervene! So she create’s … Jane’s Zoo! Another in the line of time management games from G5, Jane’s Zoo has been out for a while on iPhone, but has just now crossed to the iPad. Let’s see what it offers! The Hype: Help Jane feed and care for wild animals in this Time Management hit with millions of fans! Jane is trying to save extinct animals and keep them thriving across 3 continents. You will travel to…

Reviews

aPen A5 Digital Pen Review

Many wise women have said “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” If that were a universal truth, this review would end right about… now. However, it is important for a review to clearly explain what was good or bad about the product being reviewed, so my apologies in advance, as I have very few nice things to say about the aPen. Dan- But first, let me interrupt this review to explain how the aPen came into Carly’s possession in the first place. I am a lefty with a good degree of “palm drag”…

Game Diary, Reviews

Jane’s Hotel 2 Family Hero HD for iPad Review

Time management games are a love/hate proposition for many – the frantic pacing, the evolutionary gameplay mechanics, and the basic scenarios mean that aside from the core challenge there isn’t much to hang on. Yet for other G5 games like Stand of Food Supermarket Management it works perfectly well and provides loads of fun. Jane’s Hotel was a rather basic entry into the franchise, which I didn’t find lived up to the other games I just mentioned. Will the sequel impress? Let’s take a look. The Hype: Restore your family chain of hotels in this sequel to the famous strategy…

Health and Fitness, Reviews

Go Caddy Water Bottle/Gear Pack Review

Last week we posted about the importance of staying hydrated. We won’t reopen that kettle of fish but I will say that on more than one occasion I let myself get dehydrated while working on archaeological excavations in Israel and it wasn’t a whole lot of fun. So while there may be differences in opinion with regard to how much water one should drink, we can all agree that drinking water is a smart thing to do. Right? And we can all agree that drinking water beats sugary soda or diet whatever. Right? That’s what I thought. So when we…

Reviews

Ten One Design Magnus for iPad Review

Ten One Design has a relatively small portfolio of products, but each is designed with a great deal of thought. Today we’re going to take a look at one of their newer and more unusual products – the Magnus for iPad. The Magnus is a stand for the second or third generation iPad that seeks to make its mark by… well… not making its mark. In other words, this is an iPad stand that seeks to be as minimalistic as possible while still being quite useful. Did they succeed? Let’s take a look and then give one away! From Ten…

Reviews, Vehicles & Gear

The 2012 BMW 650i Coupe Connects with Drivers’ Emotions

Over the course of an average Gear Diary calendar year, I drive more than 80 new vehicles for review. During that time, there are many vehicles I will not shed a tear over when it is time to relinquish the keys, as they’ve fallen just a bit short of making any sort of emotional connection with me. And then there is the BMW 650i Coupe. “I can’t find the keys;” “BMW called and said I could just keep it;” “The dog ate my homework.” (Wait, saving that last one for school this week. Sorry.) Alas, the week was over all…

Reviews

Tom Bihn Cache Sleeve for the MacBook Pro Retina Review

If, like Judie and me, you got a MacBook Pro with retina display, then you know it is a lot of computer and can easily serve as your only computer. It is for Judie and me and, save for the 512GB of storage, there is zero compromise involved. And if you have a MBPr you also know that while it is still significantly heavier than Apple’s MBA line it is the most portable 15″ MBP they have ever released. That means you are likely taking it with you most days and want a good way to protect it. Tom Bihn’s…

Reviews

iShower Bluetooth Water Resistant Speaker Review

I’m a guy who needs constant input. Whether it’s sport talk on the radio or music from Spotify while I’m working or a television droning in the background while I’m fixing supper, I always want something to entertain me. So the five minutes I spend in the shower every morning is problematic. I do have one of those old shower radios that had a television tuner as well so I could keep up with the Today Show while I completed my morning ablutions. But once digital tv pretty much killed over the air transmission, that eliminated the usefulness of that…

Music Diary, Reviews

The iRig Stomp Guitar Controller Review

Anyone who played guitar (or bass for that matter) in the late 1970s or early 1980s will immediately recognize the outline of the iRig Stomp (get it here)- because they had at least a couple they needed to transport everywhere with them. This involved making sure short patch cables worked, 9 volt batteries were on hand, and quite often carrying around a home-built wooden pedalboard if you were a guitarist with several so-called ‘stomp boxes’. Then came multi-effect digital pedalboards, and even microprocessor-based digital multi-effects … and along with them came prices reaching up over $400 for units from Boss…

Game Diary, Reviews

Madden NFL 13 Review for PlayStation 3

Electronic Arts expands their annual U.S. pro football video game with several new features while raising the replay value to new levels in their latest football simulation game Madden NFL 13. The Hype Developed around the powerful, all-new Infinity game engine, Madden NFL 13 delivers a more engrossing, complete and realistic gridiron experience than any game before it. Key game features include: graphical presentation reminiscent of national television broadcasts, gameplay improvements such as a new pass-ready system, improved play action, and the all-new read and react defensive AI system, Madden social/play functionality, multiplayer support online and offline, and the ability…

Reviews

Kanex Sydnee Smart Recharge Station for iPad Review

Our new computer lab will be ready for our students when they return this fall. That means our pre-school will have four or more iPads and our grade school students will, eventually, have access to a dozen or more iPads. That’s all good and well except for the fact that all those iPads need to be recharged. Sure we could get a power strip and put AC adapter and cable after AC adapter and cable into it but that would be bulky, ugly and inconvenient. The alternative would be a multi-iPad charging station. A few exist but most are big and…

Reviews

The RHA MA350 Noise Isolating Aluminium Earphones Review

We’ve looked at numerous headphones over the past months; many are priced rather high. In fact, with headphones now serving as a fashion statement as often as they are a music accessory, it is not uncommon for them to run $150, $200 or more. So when RHA reached out and offered us a pair of their $35 MA350 Noise Isolating Aluminium Earphones we figured we would take them for a spin. After all, with students now returning to school, inexpensive headphones that won’t break the bank, let alone bring you to tears when they get lost, just might be in…

Outdoors, Reviews

Thermacell All-Purpose Swivel Light Review: Adds Light to Their Mosquito Control

A must-have for all hunters, especially in the south is a Thermacell Mosquito repellent appliance. In fact, I actually cannot even hunt without one during the spring turkey season or the early bow-only deer season here in Texas. Our mosquitos can practically carry a man during those months. Read my review on the Thermacell appliance here I wrote during turkey season.

Reviews

DRACOdesign EVO for iPhone 4/4S Review

We recently reviewed DRACODesign’s Cleave Crystal case for iPhone 4/4S (read the review). It is a nice, bumper-style case that avoids the issue of signal degradation thanks to its non-metallic construction. As the company puts it By using polycarbonate as base material, the bumper is hard on the surface to prevent from scratch with elasticity around the frame of the bumper for shock absorption to protect your iPhone4/4S. CLEAVE weights only 9 gram while keeping the same aesthetics and mechanics design ingredients of DRACO IV. The amazing contours and curve lines of CLEAVE is a masterpiece of craftsmanship with ergonomics engineering…

eBooks, Reviews

Babbel (and others) and the Advancement of Foreign Language eBooks

A lot has happened in the past few years in foreign language instruction. It’s a global world and thanks to the Internet, you can be taught a foreign language by native speakers from anywhere in the world. You can converse with them and other learners from the comfort of your own home with just a minimal investment in hardware and software. For a number of years there have been computer apps and, more recently, mobile apps that have dramatically improved and enhanced the instructional process, but they don’t necessarily replace the need for good instruction in basic grammar or other…

eBooks, Music Diary, News & Features, Reviews

Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust, Book Review of Ken Scott’s Memoir

What is it that you want from reading a music industry legend’s memoir? If what you are looking for is basically an expanded Wikipedia entry with a more detailed listing of events and characters … then stop reading now and just stay away from Ken Scott’s Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust. If on the other hand you are looking for something that has you diving for your vinyl record collection, trolling through your MP3 library, and hitting up places like Slacker and Spotify to provide the musical soundtrack to the stuff you are reading … then check this out. The…

Reviews

The Safetag.me Review

Have you ever lost your keys and not found them? How about your cellphone? Safetag.me aims to make it easier for you t connect you back with your misplaced keys or phone or anything else you can attach a tag to. Does it work? Let’s find out. The Safetag.me kit comes in a kit of two decals and one tag you can attach to your keys. When you get your kit in the mail, you go to the Safetag.me web site to register your tags. When you do, you will indicate what the tag is attached to and whether you…

Crowdfunding, eBooks, Reviews

Seven Poets and the Assassin’s Secret Is a New Kind of Novel

When I heard about the iOS app Seven Poets and the Assassin’s Secret, I couldn’t help but be intrigued. It is a unique, real-time serialized novel centered around a fictional terrorist attack on the Olympic Stadium in London during the closing ceremony. Content runs from August through October, when real-time serialization will end. Seven Poets tells the story of seven children who are able to escape the terrorists and their struggles to survive in a new and different world. The app, which features in-app purchases for each new portion of the story, went live at the beginning of August and…

Reviews

JetPens.com’s Kaweco AC Sport Carbon Fountain Pen Review

In a world obsessed with texting and emails, it’s so very refreshing for me to be able to put away my electronic devices and use something that doesn’t require electricity to convey thought. Oh there are No. 2 pencils, mass-produced and disposable pens galore that I’ve used over the course of my lifetime, but for me the ultimate tool for fine writing is the venerable fountain pen. Directly descended from the first simple cut reed pens and bird feather quills that gave way to metal tipped dip pens, reliable fountain pens began emerging in the mid-nineteenth century and became the…

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