Friday, 7 August 2015

Poundland DIY 8 Wood Drill Bits


Save Me The Best Bits
Price: £1
Vendor: Poundland
Description: 8 pack of Wood Drill Bits in a handy box

Ah! Today we see celebrity Bricklayer Tommy Walsh present something fantastic for only £1 and as usual he doesn't fail to accomplish his mission.
Not content with offering the standard 6 bits in a box Tommy dishes out 8 of the little beggars to us in this offering.

Sizes: 3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10
Currently I have only had the need to use the size 6 for a little mundane changing of a Window Blind job so as yet unsure of the full pack potential.
The Bit I used looked fine and seemed good quality. There were no problems during drilling what-so-ever. The bit held together well and cut a straight true hole. Job done!

You can't moan at the price and they work really well.  I dont see the point in having to search around a big store like B&Q and pay over the odds when you can get these. Cheers Tommy!

AA Mini Air Compressor

AA gadget Blows Cheapies Outta Sight!

Price: £9.99 (varies)
Vendor: Spar. (Petrol Station)
Description: 12V Mini Air Compressor/Tyre Inflater (depending which packaging you get) 3 meter power cable and an internal LED light.
What's in the Box: Main unit, 2 x Adapters for Football's and Air Beds etc.

Frustrated with having to keep popping to the local Tesco to top up my tyres with air  (I'm sure I have a slow puncture?) I wanted a quick and easy home solution . I wasn't expecting a Pocket sized solution!
Having filled up at a service station I saw these on their "crappy gadgets which are normally overpriced" stand for £9.99. Deciding to take a chance on the the purchase and took it home.
Unboxing revealed a small sized square main unit with the Valve attachment tucked neatly into the body.  The main 12V fag lighter power lead was baled up outside the device. This measures roughly 3 Metres which is dead handy as I have come unstuck with shorter cables in the past.
Along with the unit comes a little bag with a couple of Adapters for blowing up foortballs (spike/needle tip) and one for blowing up inflatable beds, chairs paddling pools (tube shaped)

The overall look of the device is smart and compact. The no  nonsence switches, nicely hidden hose and handy LED torch add a practical element to the model.
As for the performance, I managed to blow up a Space Hopper from flat in under 90 seconds which I thought was good. I don't have a leaky car Tyre just now but I will update this post as the issue arises.

Having spoken to a few people and tried a few cheapo compressors, it seems this little beggar steals the show in terms of performance and being compact in design. A terrific little pocket sized tool!

Thursday, 6 August 2015

Nestle Swiss Chocolat Brut

A Bag full of Heaven! 

"A blessing from the gods of Chocolate" is one way to describe these tasty little Morsels which waffted my way last week.  Not that I have ever seen these on sale anywhere before? It all very strange.
Curiously I bagged these at the local Quality Save, famed for their low prices and sometimes obscure or imported items. Perhaps this is one of those?

Price: £3.50 instead of £7.50 RRP.
Vendor: Quality Save
Description: 500g bag of mixed chocolate chunks (individually wrapped)  Milk, Plain and Hazelnut.

From the moment you lift this bag from the shelf in the store you know you have some serious chocolates on your hands. Not just by the sheer weight of he bag, but the quality look to the item.
The Bag has a locking style system for resealability which is handy as you are not likely to get through all these in one sitting!.
All three flavours are nice. Hazelnut being  my personal favourite. The Milk and Plain varieties are smooth, rich and velvety whilst the Hazelnut offering throws in a gorgeous subtle hint.

Overall then not at all bad for three and a half quid. I couldn't see me paying top dollar for these though as I'm not obsessed by Chocolate. I'd say that the price I paid for them was very good and more realistic than they're RRP. Judging from the size and design of the packaging you would have to say they are for "sharing". This advice is not mandatory however and as of this moment Im managing to ransack the bag perfectly well on my own thank you.


Tuesday, 4 August 2015

Work Zone Electric Glue Gun

Fantastic value if you are stuck!

Apologies for the joke, but I can back up that statement. wholeheartedly. You see, one afternoon I needed something cheap and fast to tackle a little project I had in the house. The superglue had run out and to be honest wasn't really doing a proper job so it left me on the hunt for something else and sharpish!
Taking a hasty trot through the local shopping precinct (and after dashing through Poundland) I thought I would take a look in Aldi.
Not always stocking the right tools you want at the time you need it,  I wasn't holding out any hope. Five minutes of wandering up and down the specials section I happened across the said Glue Gun! Looking down at the price I noticed it said £3.99....  Now then, that sounds right up my street. Any spare Glue sticks knocking around here too?.
Yes sir!, 24 of the littlele beggars in a neat little box for £3.99 . I took no time in picking up both the Gun and the extra Glue sticks and trundled off to the checkout.
So £8 for the lot. Really good value and a 3 year Warranty. Can't be bad!


Price:  £3.99
Vendor:  Aldi supermarkets
Description:  20W Hot Glue Gun
What's in the Box: Gun, Stand, 3x Glue sticks. Instructions.

Related Product:  24x Glue sticks (refil pack)
Price: £3.99

Both items bought together is £7.98

Monday, 3 August 2015

Maginon (Aldi) Wi-Fi Repeater Review

Aldi Gizmo is a clear winner!
Price: £5 reduced from £20
Vendor: Aldi supermarkets
Description: Plug in Wi-Fi repeater +Client+ Access point
What's in the Box? : 1x Plug in device, 1x Patch cable RJ45, instructions

Always on the lookout for a Bargain, I stumbled across this curious item in the local Aldi stealable items cabinets. The marked price had been reduced quite heavily from £20 to a fiver!

Wi-Fi Repeater what's that then?

This natty little number will happily relay your Wi-Fi radio signals to places in your house,office where there is a poor signal. Genius! I thought.
I do suffer from lame reception when I'm sat outside the house so this could be the best fiver I spent in quite a while. I read through the instructions and fired it up.
Immediately my signal gage increased on my tablet, from around 3 bars to 5 straight.

I have not tried the device on Client or Access point mode due to the fact I can't be hard wired into it with my tablet but I shall be connecting  via a PC or laptop at some point.
Overall then a working useful bit of kit for £5  this month





Sunday, 2 August 2015

Android Lollipop 5.1 Early Use

The all new Android update with problems of its own


Where do I start with Lollipop 5.1?
Well I could start by saying how remarkably surprised I was to get the signal to download this software via the old OTA route.
Nvidia had been reglecting us Tegra Note 7 users for quite some time since KitKat with no update to Lollipop 5.0 when that came out ages ago. Some might say that this was a smart move by Nvidia seeing as though lots of people had reported major bugs with 5.0 after its release.
So along comes 5.1 a little over a week ago and so for me this was a totally new operating system and for others a huge bug fix. I was excited to get Lollipop for the first time regardless of the consequences!

The main new features of 5.1 apart from squishing loads of bugs is new animations, icons and behind the scenes stuff!? They always say that!. A new power saving mode has been added to cut down on background activity when in standby. This seems to work quite well. A noticeable extra 30 mins of Battery life can be acheived if you switch this on straight after you unplug your Charger.
Another new feature worth a mention was the Encryption or forced Encryption as I like to call it.  Having no choice in the matter, the whole system was Encrypted upon first install of Lollipop.
 Whilst this is a sound security decision and could be useful if my device is lost or stolen, I would have liked the choice, especially when it now takes an extra 40 seconds to boot up!!

Saturday, 1 August 2015

Target Darts 2015 Launch review

New Releases Are Just Amazing!

Event Details:
Target Sports 2015 Product Launch. Held at Target Sports HQ, Harlow, Essex. 30/7/2015 from 11am
Presentation followed by reviewing of new products. Pro-Am contest with the Professionals. 

Guest list: 
16 times world champion Phil " The Power" Taylor, new signing and PDC pundit Wayne "Hawaii 501" Mardle, Dave "Chizzy" Chisnall, Keith "The Fella" Deller, Tony "Silver Back" O'Shea, Darryl "The Dazzler" Fitton, Ross Evans, Target MD Gary Plummer.

+ Suppliers, myself and others

A few of weeks back I was fortunate enough to get my hands on one of the ultra rare Target Launch tickets. These are particularly difficult to obtain and cannot be bought, an invitation only affair. Not wanting miss an opportunity like this I  felt compelled to attend to see all their new gear for this year. The new range will not be available to the public until early September.

As well as unveiling a whole range of new products Target invited the Team Target Pro's along! This of course would be a fantastic bonus to the event and one aspect I was particularly interested in. Being a Darts fan the possibility of meeting heroes such as Phil Taylor was too rare a chance to miss.

After we arrived we were seated at a table with a celebrity, ours was Stephen Bunting, he was a constant source of amusement the whole day. 

Target Goody Bag!
These are becoming a bit of a legend in their own right. (Speaking to participants from last year). So as I was handed a posh looking boutique style bag by an ageing old crone I started to Salivate! What was within...

> NEW Phil Taylor 8Zero (Black Titanium) 22g Darts set
> NEW Pro Grips (new size) 34.1mm Stems
> NEW Phil Taylor Power Flights
> NEW Adrian Lewis Jackpot Flights
> NEW Pro Grip Aluminium Stems
> Target Pin Badge
> Legends Team Target Poster.

When it comes to free stuff I'm straight there normally and as is common with 'free' stuff it's never really any good.
Not so with this little bundle!, specifically, a brand new set of Darts (not yet available) worth probably somewhere in the region of £25-£30 (based on the current 8Zero Darts

What's New Then? (Highlights)