Review of the Potato Chip Maker from Vat19

So my son wanted to spend his earnings on a potato chip maker from Vat19, he loves Vat19 and previously bought a slushy maker and was very impressed with it.  Oliver loves potato chips and this was a way to somewhat get healthier versions that could be made at home in 4-5 minutes from a fresh potato without having to turn on the oven or use a dehydrator.

The Healthy Potato Chip maker is a simple premise, it has a mandolin slicer to slice out thin potato slices which you place on a circular rack and then microwave the slices until they turn into crunchy chips.  They say 4 minutes in the instructions but for me some of the chips were hard and some were still a little chewy after 4 minutes so you may have to play with the time a little bit to find the amount of time that gives you that crunchy chip.  Just remember to let them set for about 3 minutes after the microwave turns off so they can coast cook and cool down before you start eating them.

The first thing I will let you know is everything that comes with the kit, this is a clear plastic bowl with a red lid that has a mandolin style slicer.  A white potato slice holding tray and a plastic holder which is supposed to grab one end of the potato so you don’t risk your fingers.  I will tell you that the lid gets knocked off of the container too easily, the mandolin slicer isn’t stable and the plastic piece to hold the potato is not stable for large russet potatoes.  I think this product is way to risky for a kid under 13 to use and I would be the only one slicing the potato for my son Oliver.  I will say that while slicing a thick russet potato on the slicer it takes some force to slice it straight through and because the plastic lid is very light weight and the bowl is also light weight, there doesn’t appear to be enough of a sturdy structure to properly slice a heavy potato easily.

This means I wound up having to make sure I held the lid tightly while slicing quickly and I was always worried the lid would come off of the container bowl even though it fits and slots in place, it isn’t very sturdy.  It should have had some sort of clamp mechanism to hold it firmly in place in my opinion.  I personally think all mandolin slicers are risky though, so just know what you are getting with the slicer.  It does work and you get thin potato slices as you can see in the below picture.

Now after filling the entire chip holder with potato slices you place it on a paper plate or napkin and microwave it for 4 minutes to start according to the instruction and let it sit for 3 minutes to cool down after.  I found I had to microwave it a little longer and you do have to play with times to make sure it cooks the potato slices into chips.  Even Vat19 says you may have to adjust the times because microwaves don’t always all cook at the same wattage.

Before you microwave the chips you can add your flavoring, while the chips are wet from being freshly sliced you can add a little salt, black pepper, paprika or any seasonings or spices that you like.  They will stick to the wet potato chip and it is easier and better to add them before you microwave them into chips than after when they become dry and the spices would just fall off.

Tips for Starting Out as a Tech Reviewer

I had someone reach out to me on YouTube asking how they can get started with being a tech product reviewer and I thought about it and turned out the following suggestions.  This is just a high level overview of suggestions for those who seriously want to get into reviewing products in exchange for receiving them.  You won’t make a lot of money or any money at first unless you are lucky and get a lot of Amazon affiliate or other affiliate commissions, but this is more about the thrill of getting new stuff to review and providing valuable feedback for readers and brands as well as building your own reputation.
Here are some suggestions, the Amazon tips only apply if you are in the US location.

How to Become a Technology Product Reviewer

TIP #1 Become An Affiliate ASAP

If you aren’t an Amazon affiliate and Gearbest affiliate, become one immediately. Sign up and if you haven’t ordered a product from Amazon, order one (anything) you have to have bought a product to leave Amazon reviews which many brands want.  You may also want to sign up to become an affiliate on cj.com and ShareASale.com right away as well, CJ.com has NewEgg store and you can become an affiliate there. Building affiliated sales links to every product you review will help generate you income, but also give you analytics and detailed reports you can use to show brands how you provide an ROI (return on investment) to them for sending you a product to review.  I would also take the time to become an International Amazon affiliate (amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.de, amazon.it…etc.) and use Prourls.net or Geni.us to start global affiliate linking for maximizing revenue.  Better to get established now instead of having to proactively fix your links later which means you could lose income.
Build out a full reviewer profile on Amazon and other stores where brands may ask you to leave a review, or you can leave reviews there to also help with attracting brand attention.  Make sure all your contact details to contact you are listed on all your store profiles.

TIP #2 Review Everything You Have

Start reviewing everything you own that you can, even stuff that is 6+ months old, past stuff still sells constantly. Link everything in your vids to the product pages (hopefully where you can affiliate too and earn.)  You can review tech and non-tech products, vacuums, kitchen appliances, just start looking at what you have and use and best of all create how to videos to help people figure out how to use it or solve a problem, these do well and leverage Quora and Yahoo Answers to find questions that people ask and do videos and responses to solve those problems, use Google Search to find out what people are asking/searching for and answer those questions with videos you publish as well.

Tip #3 Create an Introduction and Featured Video

Make an intro vid that showcases what you offer and set it as featured vid for your channel, this is mine for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x6ZpF1vDTY

Tip #4 Collect Analytics and Show Value to Brands

Start building analytics for your views/sales so you can show brands and encourage them, this will be very low, but start doing monthly collection of how many clicks, visits, impressions and sales and start adding to it to show brands later.

Tip #5  Start Contacting Brands

Start reaching out to brands, use an intro letter (contact them via Amazon or direct brand press page) let them know you are a new tech blogger, show what you have so far and that you want to review their product and showcase. Start with smaller known brands and < $50 products, there will be a lot of bluetooth earbuds, headsets, budget mice at first until you can show ROI to brands.  If you would like a sample reach out to contactme@dragonblogger.com and I will send you a sample.

Tip #6  Create Videos About Products and Featuring Stuff

Create videos featuring products/software/brands even if it isn’t a review. Showcase a screencast of a website, or video yourself talking about a product/brand that you want and what features you want to see. Make 2-3 vids per product you get, unboxing, review and a how-to do something with that product for maximum effect.

Tip #7  Freelance as a Product Reviewer for DragonBlogger.com

You can temporarily work for my site as a freelance, where you do vid reviews/written reviews for my site and then you can do a separate one of the same product for your site. I have helped many tech bloggers get products and use my site for their review, then they get to review same product for their site after, it helps add content to my site and get them products to flush out their channels too. Reach out to me contactme@dragonblogger.com if you are interested.

Kingdom-Com 2017 in San Diego

Fans of tabletop and RPG games will know that Kingdom-Con has come to San Diego and this is the place to be to get your role playing on as well as pick up some miniatures, games and more.  This is a hands on event where you get to try and RP the latest games, or join in on the wargames.  Kingdom-Con 2017 (April 27th – April 30th) is located at the Crowne Plaza San Diego in Mission Valley.

Kingdom-Con 2017 Vendor Hall

Here are a list of all vendors that will be there and the vendor hall hours.

The Vendor Hall is open each day of the convention.

Vendor Hall Hours:

  • Thursday – 3pm – 8pm
  • Friday – 10am – 6pm
  • Saturday – 10am – 6pm
  • Sunday  – 10am – 6pm

Below are links to the various scheduled events

Card/Board Games

Miniatures

 

Roleplaying Games

 

Does Butter Beer from Flying Cauldron Taste Like Potter World Butter Beer?

So I was at Universal Studios for Potter World in California over the past Holiday break and my whole family enjoyed the Butter Beer of course which was fantastic and a nice treat.  My kids wanted to occasionally have some (as did I) and I decided to take a chance on the Flying Cauldron Butterscotch beer on Amazon which they say closely replicates the butter beer from Harry Potter world.  The price is a bit high but cheaper than actually butter beer per bottle in Universal Studios, and a 12 pack will cost $32.90 but you get (3) 4 packs when it is delivered.

How Does Butterscotch Beer Taste?

Well, my kids and I both believe they replicated the flavor so well that it is passable and fills the purpose of giving you that sweet unique butterscotch soda taste.  The difference is it doesn’t have the little cream they put on top in Harry Potter World and it is slightly different but for my own tasting purposes even 2 months later I can’t tell you that it tastes any different, maybe if I did a taste test side by side I could say there is a difference but my taste buds don’t remember one.  I enjoyed the butter beer from Flying Cauldron tremendously and shared a bottle with my kids about one per week until we ran out.

Something else my son came up with the idea for is how to create butter beer slurpee’s and we decided to test Oliver’s Slurpee Maker he got from Vat19 with the Butter Beer from Flying Cauldron and man does this make a great cold butter beer flavored treat that works out well.  Now some people in the Amazon reviews didn’t think the flavor tasted the same, or thought it was too sweet but I didn’t think it was any sweeter than the frosted butter beer at Harry Potter world, the hot butter beer there wasn’t as sweet but the frosted was very sweet and about on par.  This is a very sweet treat and probably not something that you would drink frequently due to the calories, but it is a nice treat to have and if you are throwing a Harry Potter themed party for kids or adults then this is a great little treat to break out with your Harry Potter Bertie Botts Beans and enjoy. By the way they are packaged and shipped in a styrofoam container and everything is kept safe and secure.

Aicok Knife Set and Magnetic Knife Holder Review

Sometimes you just need a new set of kitchen knives and I have bought and reviewed ceramic knives before but was ultimately disappointed that they did lose sharpness rather quickly and in fact the tips were able to break off easier than steel knives at least in my case and my previous set.  So Aicok reached out to me and told me to give their kitchen knives a review and particularly what made the set unique was the granite block magnetic holder that way after your knife was dry you could just set it and let it be held magnetically to the stand.

The box is fairly heavy and most of the weight is the heavy stone block that the knives magnetically attach to.  Aicok includes plastic tips that you can place on each knife which is a great touch and I say is highly recommended that you use them when you are done and the knife is washed and dried.   

You get a variety of knives for just about any purpose in your kitchen, though it doesn’t include a thin filleting knife for fish.

The bread knife I found worked particularly well for baguettes and other hard breads.

The block itself is heavy and has a stand, it does take up a large amount of counter space and you cannot mount this block to a wall.  Something to note is that when you hang the knives magnetically onto the magnetic block stand you need to make sure the handles are above and slightly resting on the block top. These knives are not seated very well magnetically and I found they were too easy to knock off accidentally by bumping the counter or bumping the block with something.  This would very easily cause scoring or damage to the countertop from the sharp knife tips if you don’t use the knife tip covers that are included, so I would say make them mandatory.  Overall I would have preferred the used a stronger magnetism and made the resting sturdier for the knives and have the ability for them to be more vertical so you can wall mount the block, or simply not have it consume so much countertop space as it does have to rest at an angle and the stand behind it takes up quite a bit of countertop space.  The fact you don’t have the block where you slide knives in and when wet can cause bacteria build up in the wood is good, but it comes with a risk of countertop damage and possibly risk to children in the home if you don’t put tips on the knives you have kids prone to climb on counters.

So with that I would say, it is nice in appearance, the knives themselves work great but the magnetic stand and block was a bit of a let down. Still if you need a good set of knives the Aicok knive set works well and these knives are made with 420 German stainless steel.

Funny Retirement Home Names Part 2

One of the most popular posts here on this site is actually a funny little post I wrote after reading a funny retirement home names and thinking that there are probably a dozen or so I can come up with as a poet and player of words. This silly little post wound up being visited tens of thousands of times and all the article did was summarize and present a bunch of funny made up retirement home names and this got me thinking why not work on a sequel post with some new and fresh funny retirement home names and then invite others to share the names of retirement homes that they can come up with.

The key is to be a bit clever without being cruel, mean or so awkward it isn’t plausible for a facility or recreational center to have that name in the title. So you wouldn’t put something that would offend someone as a potential title for the home, but something that can capture time period, era, age, with some sort of dignity and grace and pair it with something that sounds enticing. Some of the names poke a little too close to being offensive I admit, playing to tropes or stereotypes a bit.

Here is my 2nd list of Funny Retirement Home Names

  1. Furlough Estates
  2. Senescent Villa
  3. Greystone Hearth
  4. Ancient Establishment
  5. Venerable Villa
  6. Rusty Abode
  7. Rustic Heights
  8. El diablo oxidado
  9. La villa de los ancianos
  10. Near Zombie Village
  11. Sunset Lillies Retirement Community
  12. Last Living Lifestyle
  13. Sunset Maple Village
  14. Antiquated Hearth
  15. Overaged Headquarters
  16. Not Ready to Rest Home
  17. Gray Domestic Dwelling
  18. Supremely Senior Villa
  19. Auld Nursing Home
  20. Shelter of the Time Worn
  21. Lazy not Crazy Retirement Community
  22. Old Gold Apartments
  23. Retire and Admire Headquarters
  24. White Squire Center
  25. Gray Lobe Estates
  26. Last Sunset Heights
  27. Villa of the Worn
  28. Veteran Sanctuary
  29. Wilted Rose Hospice
  30. Never Darkened Dwelling
  31. Silver Angels Retirement Community
  32. Visiting Sunsets Villa
  33. Sheltered Gold Heights

Here was the original post of funny retirement home names.

 

Amazon to Crack Down on List Sale Price Scams

I am no stranger to Amazon as not only I am an affiliate but I buy dozens of products from Amazon per month and I can tell you one of the most false and misleading things about the Amazon marketplace is the way 3rd party brands give the appearance that things are on sale or you are getting a huge discount on items from them when in fact they are offering the product for the same price as everyone else, they are just fixing the “list” price so that it would appear they are giving a huge discount or sale.

A prime example would be if you did a search for the Play Station VR Starter Bundle (or launch bundle) and you can see one product lists it as “Save $1,380” because it is only $619.99 but had a list of $1,999.99 and the other is simply $608 without listing any sale or discount.

Articles like the one from the LA Times recently are shedding light how consumers are being duped by the allure of “discount” or sale, when in fact they are paying normal retail premiums.  Now Amazon from what I know doesn’t specifically set the List Price for products, this is something the individual store can set and Amazon will compare the list price with other list prices for the same product and remove the list price if it finds the list price isn’t a fair match or appears to be defaulted.  But when a store is clever like changing the “Launch Bundle” to “Starter Bundle” which is not the proper and official term for the PSVR Launch Bundle they likely didn’t find another “list price” because no other store sells it by that name, so therefore the list price gets set and shown indicating a discount that really does not exist.

This is more stores that game Amazon’s system than a direct Amazon fault in my opinion, but Amazon should have been more aware of it and kill it as soon as possible.  It should have AI or algorithms that can spot keyword changes and such when a product is in fact the same thing by scanning more details in the product information to appropriate a listing match.  But this is far more rampant than you would believe, just do a search for any product term like “Bluetooth” for example.

Are we really to believe that so many stores are having sales and discounts on products greater than 35% off all the time?  No this is simply setting a list price high and then putting the actual price so that the buyer perceives that they are getting a discount and saving a lot of money on a product that would normally retail for 35% or more than the current price they are seeing.  It is misleading, it is like putting a $10 item in a store that you know you are selling for $10, then putting a big sign on it listing it for $99.99 and crossing off the $99.99 and then putting $10.00 in red to catch someone’s eye.  You never were going to list it for $99.99 and if a store front did this and was caught there likely would be penalties for doing such a thing.

List prices for Amazon products however are on their way out and will be phased out of existence very soon, between the consumer lawsuits, investigations and marketing strategy shift of Amazon I look forward to where list price is non-existent and you can simply shop on product alone and compare the different sellers + shipping costs for a final total cost of purchase.  Here are some other sources for more information related to the Amazon List price.

 

 

Haiku: Bestial

Ever known someone who has gotten into an angry scuffle or argument where they seem to border on being something primal in a fit of rage or aggression? This haiku bestial encapsulates someone almost crossing that line.

Bestial

With wild feral eyes

A mighty growl of anger

His actions bestial

 

-Haiku by Justin Germino

What Posts and Videos Will Get Popular is Still a Mystery

I know enough about SEO from working with blogs the last 8 years to know how to SEO optimize articles with keywords, header text, appropriate internal and external linking, catchy titles, using similar words and search queries in the article…etc to where one would think I have a better capture on what articles would garner more traffic than others and sometimes I can see something super popular become a trend and my site show examples of that.  One example was when Mitra covered the alternate ending in Undertale and this post traffic exploded when Undertale popularity was skyrocketing.  But there are a few topics and products that I just couldn’t expect to have so much of a trend.

One example is the Veryfit 2 smartband which I got to review from Gearbest, this article consistently has been generating 8000-10000 pageviews on this one article for the past several months, and I have over 4,000 published articles on dragonblogger.com

The second closest article is the review of the Dragon Touch X10 Tablet which Iggy did many months ago and used to have more, but it is a distant 2nd compared to the first article.  Of course the 3rd was the recent PlayStation 4 Pro Giveaway which is expected, large giveaway articles always get a lot of traffic.

The odd thing is the Veryfit 2 is a very inexpensive fitband and a product/brand name that is so relatively unknown that I would never have expected it to become such a largely searched for item.

On my YouTube Channel, a $20 gaming headset called the Kotion Each G2000 has over 123,000 video views and the most views out of any video on my channel which has over 2100 published videos.  Again this is a relatively low budget headset from a brand I wouldn’t think was well known and I can’t replicate the success of these videos and posts for other products to get similar traffic numbers.

It is so very hit and miss which products will become “hits” where many people get that product and search for issues or problems or information about that product and because it was a lesser known or cheap item, the bigger sites likely wouldn’t cover that product so I get a top spot for searches about that product. I have yet to replicate this level of success with some of the bigger brand products we review, though we get into the tens of thousands of video reviews on some popular items like video cards, PC cases and other accessories.

So being a tech blogger for 8 years, you would think I would be able to magically optimize every product review or unboxing to be popular, yet it is still a mystery what videos and written reviews will be a hit or miss and I still get completely surprised when some odd product that I didn’t even consider would be popular becomes one of the most popular posts.

How many of my fellow bloggers out there have similar examples where something unexpected became viral or popular and you were left scratching you head how and what you could do to attempt to reproduce that success?

Poem: Weeping Priest

Weeping Priest

Behold all I preach is love
yet hate fills hearts
where lips should kiss
sneers spread fear
and my piety tested
as I lie weeping
in a broken bed

Behold all I preach is compassion
yet poor are mistreated
where youth should thrive
children are enslaved for game
and my piety tested
as I lie weeping
with silent idols

Behold all I preach is truth
yet lies infect the masses
where nobility should reign
genocidal wars of hate claim
and so I lie weeping
with a silent god