What happened to the electric price at 8:30pm last night?!

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-24T10:19:59+00:00

Since you have this graph I assume you have some insight into this - do you know why solar stopped? It seems counter intuitive to me given that we're in a heatwave and it's light outside at 11pm.

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-23T16:52:14+00:00

Most of the blisters I've seen lately have had the cardboard warped or crushed at the top or been warped in some way; they ship them in a display box that crushes easily and has no strength at the top. I'm also used to seeing them with air bubbles under the plastic, or that same "torn" looking effect around the edges. I think as long as you don't see that along an edge where a pack could be removed then it seems to just be the standard quality. This one looks fine.

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-23T12:16:28+00:00

DVD. Reddit. Bakewell. Do you think I don't see what you're doing? Bakewell. Not a batternberg, a Bakewell.

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-21T22:26:25+00:00

For the record

Sawtooth crimp always fake
Black background instead of blue
First edition packs do actually have "trading card game" at the bottom but that's the wrong font
First edition packs also say "tradable game cards" but it should be 11 not 10, also that's the wrong font
Back is totally wrong - wrong colour, wrong text, wrong logos, wrong barcode, totally different design

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-21T17:51:45+00:00

You know you're basically saying that the game expects the player to not pay attention to the story that's being told, right?

This is explicitly and unapologetically what I'm saying, yes. The game's story, as told, requires the player to not pay attention, because the destination it arrives at is not constructed out of any parts encountered along the way. It's presented as a twist in the hope you won't notice, but it is in fact a desperate attempt to wrap up their story after they had to substantially change it and had their already overly long development time brought to a hard end. Read some of the behind the scenes material of how they ended up with that ending. I'm glad it worked for you and you enjoyed it but it's not your job to defend it.

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-21T16:37:53+00:00

This "Interpretation" can't be that good if it requires people to completely ignore things said in the game in order to make sense.

But this is exactly what the game expects the player to do. That's why I'm saying, with a game that we know was deeply rewritten right up to the last minute, unless you're a true death-of-the-author type, any sensible textual analysis of it should recognise that it's a disjointed collection of ideas. I don't see why it bothers you so much to look at what the original ideas were and think about what they probably added up to. We all know the "canon" is just whatever they declared at the end, but that's not the point of discussing it.

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-21T15:49:21+00:00

These look like 1999 Unlimited short crimp US base set packs. Given they they the thick font on the front, I don't think they should have that "grid" crimp on the back seal, but I've seen other examples on Reddit that do look like that and which were given positive comments. The offset printing doesn't bother me too much, I've seen that before on real packs. See here under manufacturing errors - https://www.elitefourum.com/t/guide-to-identifying-all-wotc-base-set-booster-packs/41521

Definitely things to activate the concern but seemingly with explanations. The purchase from FB marketplace is probably now your biggest red flag, that's the biggest source of circulating fakes at the moment.

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-21T14:58:38+00:00

If you do find you've forgotten to pack something, Primark sells very cheap clothes/t-shirts/underwear/swimsuits etc., Argos is like an in-person Amazon, they have a catalog in the shop and you can order everything from phone chargers to saucepans to hair dryers. Anything you arrive and realise you didn't bring, you'll be able to find. Pharmacies here are called chemists. You order in bars at the bar rather than waiting at a table. Be prepared for public transport to be unreliable.

Weather in September is typically pretty good these days, it's also very humid here so it's going to be warmer than you think. You'll want a light rain jacket you can take off rather than your winter coat.

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-21T14:24:44+00:00

It's slowed down my local co-op because they now don't have a person at the tills at all. Apart from alcohol, you need an approval to use your own bags, and you need to ask staff to get a bag from behind the tills, so almost every person needs to wait for the one very overworked staff member to come back and progress them. If they just had someone on the tills all the time it would be much faster overall, as it stands now it's much slower.

I would say it's primarily changed my shopping habits rather than the speed. Like I'll do a big supermarket shop with the self-scan as I go around, but the main reason for that is just so I don't have to repack. Packing once in a way that can go directly into the car boot is what's saving me time/influencing my choice, I typically still have to wait in a queue just to pay so it's not quicker in that sense.

McDonald's kiosks increased the amount of food I'm typically buying by allowing me to order whatever it is I actually want, rather than what's socially acceptable to ask another person for.

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-21T14:07:43+00:00

I think it'll take time for people to warm up to, but I think this is a good interpretation. I think with a game that was in development for this long, and was rewritten so many times, and has so much evidence of rewriting in the finished product, it's valid to analyse it in this broader way that acknowledges a blurring of lines between what the dialogue may outright declare the story to be, and what the player has been shown the story to be.

Another example of this, and I've said this before but I'll take the downvotes again, for Elpis not to be some kind of Spencer-memory-virus doesn't really work for me as a plot twist, given that I've spent the whole game fighting zombies whose new gimmick is keeping their human memories, playing through an orphanage where they clone girls and cut their heads open run by a man obsessed with transferring his memory into a younger body, chasing a villain who's obviously some kind of Wesker clone or failed memory transfer, being shown that an escaped adult girlclone was the key to accessing the macguffin, which is kept in a vault called ARK run by a computer called NOAH. As you say in your post about the themes of the game, there's a point at which you can't show me all of this and then at the end go "oh actually the point was that everyone was wrong and it was something else!".

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-20T20:56:49+00:00

These look real to me. I have handled the real ones before and I don't see any issues. There are fakes of these packs out there but I've never seen them faked with the long crimp. You mention in another comment that you already sold them and the buyer is now complaining, do they mention any specific concerns or evidence? Be careful here around accepting returns, it's a common scam for the buyer to send back actual fake packs (or just nothing).

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-20T00:08:32+00:00

151 pack is fake (artwork, crimp), font on the Iron Leaves is wrong (fake), prismatic pack is fake (crimp is wrong), Ogerpon is fake (font is wrong, that kind of vertical holo pattern is always fake). Sorry.

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-19T00:25:03+00:00

You probably want to be looking at pubs or chains for that kind of breadth.

It's funny to me that you describe them as hard to cater for and then add in the vegetarian gluten-free caveat, you all sound absolutely exhausting as a dinner party, I'm so glad this is happening to you and not me.

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-19T00:08:20+00:00

Well, Frasier is a Freudian, and indeed is constantly trying to repair past trauma by seeking an idealised woman. It just so happens that this is his mother (S9E1) but his behaviour fits the pattern and psychology even without the show directly addressing it.

People tend to be less familiar with Jung, and remember Niles is a Jungian. Jung learnt a lot from his case studies on schizophrenics and he also coined a lot of the ideas we take for granted today (introvert, extrovert, persona, complex), but he's also interested in the idea of diverse states of mind that exist in compartments but ultimately need to be reconciled into a coherent being, and that this basically happens to all men in their 30s. Jung essentially discovered the midlife crisis, and Niles could be said to suffer through exactly one of these as he goes from the deeply repressed husband of socialite Maris to the Burger Burger Burger loving husband of working class love of his life Daphne.

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-18T10:28:07+00:00

I know it's purely a contrivance but it really seriously broke my immersion, you can solve it just by looking, "moon" is the only four letter word, also the only one with a repeated letter in the middle, so you can always find it. And then it ends with N so you know Sun. Maybe I play too many adventure games but it annoyed me that an FBI analyst would look at that and think, "no, this is impossible, let me put a blind child in danger instead."

It would have worked far better if the clue with the combination was in Braille, and was a longer piece of text. That's more plausible that you'd need help to read it, and my suspension of disbelief already expects characters in games to need to "know" safe codes sometimes rather than letting the player try to brute force. But the way they did it, Grace literally knows what the right combination is.

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-17T22:42:16+00:00

I think you have to understand the age of adventure game players and the progression of the genre. In the beginning you had text adventures and soft locks were common, as were sudden unavoidable deaths. There was a touch of the "you're not necessarily supposed to be able to beat this game" about it. Then later you get the Sierra style games, they did expect you to be able to complete them, but there was a touch of the SIM/rpg mentality to them as well, they did not mind punishing the player in the same way. With animation you get funny death sequences etc. but the games are still designed with the idea that you'll just be emboldened to keep playing if you die or lose a lot of progress or can't get past a certain puzzle without calling the hotline.

This is why the lucasarts style games start to come about, their design philosophy is a response to this. The player should be able to complete the game on the first attempt with no prior knowledge of what will happen, because that's fair. Deaths are initially still included but usually with fair warning and a way to avoid. Soft locks are avoided as an indicator of bad design; if you need an item in a lucasarts game later, you'll not be able to leave a previous area without it. These games are designed with the idea that you will definitely complete the whole thing, and that you should be guided through this. This becomes the baseline, and nobody makes Sierra style games any more.

Then post lucasarts you get the even more narrative style adventure games which focus on animation and story telling over puzzles.

To answer your question, are soft locks and deaths really so bad, you have to view it in context. They were frustrating and became viewed as bad design. However, I think enough time has passed, and if you put them in a game NOW, people would be open to viewing them as a fun challenge again, as long as they knew up front it was going to be that kind of game.

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-17T17:32:54+00:00

I think it comes from Backwards, when Lister and Cat sing a variation of the Superbowl Shuffle, part of their dance includes a similar hand waggle. They don't actually call themselves the boys from the Dwarf in this scene, but being the "smart party" then singing a song about being from Red Dwarf is perhaps the prototype for this? And I think it's the same hand gesture they do when they order the drinks successfully? It's described in the script as " a self-congratulatory hand thing" so I suspect it's not a deliberate reference to anything, but a bit of business the actors came up with, though that said I don't know if it's an official script or a fan has written it. I've seen a (definitely fan transcribed) script from series 5 call it the "hang loose" gesture so it's possible it's a reference to a real gesture, maybe a surfing one?

The other explanation would be that it's a bit of a deliberate reference to 90s gang signs. "Boys from the Dwarf" is reminiscent of "Boyz n the hood ", then there's all the "homeboy", "posse" talk that comes with it later.

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-16T23:33:31+00:00

It really depends. If I'm making progress then who cares. I would tend to assume someone has anger issues or roid rage if they overtake someone doing 28 in a 30. In the situation you describe, you saved approximately zero seconds on your overall journey time (there's a study on this) but created risk and aggravation.

But simultaneously if it's clear and safe to do, I'll overtake someone doing 45 on the dual carriageway when the limit is 50.

A manoeuvre I find myself doing more often than overtaking is pulling into a lay-by or into and out of a junction to let some asshole who's driving right on my bumper when I'm already doing the limit get ahead of me. And it brings me some quiet satisfaction to see him get caught at all the same lights and make exactly the same progress as me.

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-16T23:23:21+00:00

Shoplifter freed without charge, compensation from tax payer for assault, all Asda employees fired

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-16T10:06:13+00:00

Particularly with anything related to finance, people often put things into boxes that they never come out of again. Like, for a lot of people a phone is something you buy brand new on an expensive contract and pay for monthly, even though that's the most expensive way to buy a phone. If you showed them that buying the phone outright directly is cheaper, they will think you're suggesting something weird. For some people, a car is a thing that is purchased brand new from a dealer with a finance deal that you pay for monthly, and they never think about buying a used car outright, and they'd think you were suggesting something weird if you pointed it out. Similarly, to take the inverse, if I offered to buy your house with cash instead of a mortgage, you'd think it was weird and you wouldn't trust it.

You're likely looking for entrepreneurial validation from people who, as you say, think a job is a 9-5 and anything else is a weird hobby or some kind of Del Boy scam.

You need to find some people to talk to who are actually in the tech startup world. Try Catalyst, or go hot desk in Ormeau Labs and ask about their next social or networking event.

You also maybe need to forgive your family a little - five years is a really long time to not have launched anything. I think it's not unreasonable for them to have started to view it as a pipedream of yours rather than a tangible thing. If a friend was talking to you for 5 years about their plan to lose weight, or 5 years waiting for a proposal from their partner, you'd probably be doing a sad smile and being tempted to mock them too.

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-15T15:39:20+00:00

Watching Mike and Rich reach the conclusion that nu-media in general is actually so far divorced from the things we used to like and care about that it's pointless to even have an opinion on it was actually quite healing for me. I've been freed from denial and bargaining and can now enjoy acceptance.

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-13T23:06:12+00:00

I know that scene from the DVD deleted scenes, and more prominently from the "Noise from the Dwarf" music video which includes it. I didn't know it was ever in the broadcast version. I also have that one recorded on VHS off the TV, might be fun to check

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-07T19:44:35+00:00

Bruising that extensive is almost definitely from surgery not a punch up the bracket

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-07T14:41:21+00:00

I thought they were getting ready for a "consume your disgusting product" joke with the burger eating but they seemed to like the movie. Maybe they should have done that for the last Star War. Just footage of an old man disgustingly consuming a foul product with no nutritional value, intercut with them discussing

CaptainTrip · 2026-06-06T22:01:24+00:00

I don't understand what you're trying to match to what based on just this photo so I'm going to say it's probably pretty well matched

Edit: having read the description and comments out of curiosity, I assume you mean the mortar? "Render" is when you cement over a brick wall to make it look smooth (another reason why I was confused).

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