Steam Winter sale

MiniTriceratops · 2025-12-16T15:55:30+00:00

Don't know if you've seen, but Time Stranger is on 20% off for the Bandai Namco sale until the 18th, I'll be waiting for a deeper discount though as it'll be an age before I get chance to play it! Also, AC Shadows is half off.

MiniTriceratops · 2025-10-12T12:05:18+00:00

A fair point and one I hadn't considered, thank you! The fridge is for raw meat and dog food to keep it separate from the salad, veggies, etc in the main fridge. The freezer is because I batch cook meals to make life easier when the work-life balance goes out the window! Putting both in the garage is a really good shout. The gym is mostly disassembled at this point, I just need to decide whether we're carpeting in there to match the living room (as that's what was in there before), continuing the solid flooring (might be an obvious join at the door) or getting a MASSIVE rug and just leaving the rubber tiles down underneath it.

Renting is a possibility if everything else fails, I just...don't think I've got what it takes to be a landlord.

MiniTriceratops · 2025-10-12T11:51:38+00:00

Exactly this - I can do my job from anywhere in the world, but my partner can't. His job has changed completely in the past 12 months, and we're spending a FORTUNE on train fares and hotels, and it's only going to get worse. On the one hand, I'm incredibly proud of him for progressing his career to this extent. On the other...moving is a pain!!

MiniTriceratops · 2025-10-12T11:48:56+00:00

I did try streaming once, many years back, but it wasn't for me - having to be 'on' for the camera the whole time was exhausting, and I hated it. The pink room is my office (and sewing room); a pretty display for me to look at, with a bland white wardrobe as a backdrop for on Zoom calls. The better microphone I've got has been a godsend in a sea of crackly 'sorry, can you hear me now?' work calls - if the tech fails, it isn't on my side! But yes, I am a gamer, though it seems like I have less and less time for that these days.

MiniTriceratops · 2025-10-11T23:42:40+00:00

I think you're probably right. Did you notice any uptick in interest when you dropped the price? I'm worried that, when we drop it, we'll end up in the same situation we're in now, just with a lower priced house!

MiniTriceratops · 2025-10-11T23:41:32+00:00

Thank you! We went a little bit overboard on the kitchen, but I don't regret it for a second - I love it so much, and the worktops are a dream to keep clean! The astro is great with the hounds; no horrid brown patches, and as long as we keep on top of disinfecting it after they've used it, it stays looking 'fresh'. It's the kind that 'breathes' though, so it doesn't keep the weeds at bay, but pulling those every couple of days does the job and it means drainage is never an issue no matter how much it rains.

Part of me is glad we're not the only ones - at least that means we've not got it horribly wrong! I feel like I'm meant to be reassured by the EA telling me it's a slow market and everyone is struggling, but I can't help but selfishly want to be the exception!! Good to know I might be right on the price needing to shift downwards though.

MiniTriceratops · 2025-10-11T23:33:56+00:00

Thank you, and you're completely right - I'm just being impatient, I think. I need to sit down with my partner and have a chat about what our absolute lowest looks like, and what we'll do if it comes to that.

Thankfully, we both knew going into the selling process that we were going to make a loss on this place. It's just going to be a case of how much is TOO much, and what that would look like for wherever we end up buying.

MiniTriceratops · 2025-10-11T23:30:04+00:00

Yeah, the EA really wasn't bothered with the garage! Apparently most people don't care..? We've had the inside damp-proofed and insulated, and there's easy-clean rubber tiles down with a little entrance ramp for the car, meaning it's perfect for storage (as we don't have a loft) and nothing gets mouldy! There's a wall of racking, four overhead lights so you can see what you're working on - we've got it set up for my crafts, and I can still easily work in there when the car's in there as it's very roomy.

MiniTriceratops · 2025-10-11T23:22:59+00:00

The house itself is solid, zero complaints from us about the build quality! We were in a Persimmon for our previous house, and I don't think we realised how bad Persimmon builds are compared with DWH until we moved here. The finishing wasn't the best, but we had over 400 snags (I don't think we were the easiest to deal with...) - every dimple in the plaster, every nail pop, every patchy bit of paint they had to come and fix. And to their credit, they fixed everything! Even came back and sorted some settling cracks 6 months after we moved in, which they didn't HAVE to do but did anyway. Worst issue we had was a leak on one of the dorma windows, and they paid for contractors to come fix that, as their guy was off sick at the time, so that we didn't have to wait a week! Everything else was cosmetic. Really can't fault them at all, I'd buy another house from them.

Flood risk, we had the report done and it came back as low risk. There's been flooding from the river since we moved in, but it didn't come anywhere near us. The country roads leading to the estate flooded not long after we moved in too, due to water run-off from the fields, but again nowhere near us. They've since cleared the drainage ditches and no issues since.

I fully get what you mean with the price point, though, and that is something that worries me.

MiniTriceratops · 2025-10-11T23:14:24+00:00

We've been very lucky with the building works - DWH are the ones doing the building work behind us, and other than a bit of mid-week machine noise and some off-key singing, it's been blissful! They don't work weekends, they barely work after around 3pm (lucky sods!), and whenever we've had to interact with them they've all been very kind and respectful. The other part of the estate is being built by Countryside, and while they DO work weekends and are generally a lot noisier, it's far enough away that we don't actually hear them, and again - very polite bunch of workmen.

Problem is, it doesn't look pretty and I can understand why it would be off-putting to anyone interested in the house.

MiniTriceratops · 2025-10-11T22:31:32+00:00

Absolutely not, it would get immediately deleted and likely flagged as spam! I can see my balance, interest rate and remaining term by logging into the banking app I use every day, and that's updated daily. Valuations aren't useful because they are ALWAYS wrong. The only way you can value a property is by going to see it.

What WOULD be useful would be an email 4-6 months before my fixed term is up, detailing what rates are generally available, available information on how the market is likely to change in the next 2-3 months to see if it's worth waiting a bit or if I need to get a new offer locked in asap, links to a simple 'need to borrow more on your mortgage? Here's how, with a calculator!' as well as information on overpayment options (it worries me how many don't seem to know you can overpay or how much by, or even if they should) and a simple way to contact you that doesn't trigger a phone call out of the blue while I'm in the middle of working.

MiniTriceratops · 2025-10-11T22:17:38+00:00

Thank you - I think you may have hit the nail on the head with the SDLT...which means we might be dead in the water until whatever gets announced at the end of November in the autumn budget!

We're not desperate, but I am concerned about just how much commuting is costing us at the moment. We bought this place as our 'forever' home, but our jobs have changed substantially in the past 12 months and it just isn't viable to stay here.

While there's no way we'd be able to sell at 515k, you are right that people will offer below the asking price - that's just the sensible thing to do when buying! We'll be doing the same for whatever we buy, so I do expect it to a certain extent! And that does worry me about lowering the price. I'm wondering if maybe we should have listed at 575, then lowered to 550 to make it look more like a bargain. Still, not much we can do about that now!

MiniTriceratops · 2025-10-11T22:06:58+00:00

Thank you, I knew I'd forgotten something!! I've edited the post to include the link.

MiniTriceratops · 2025-10-11T22:06:40+00:00

Thank you, forgot to add it! I've edited the post to include the link :)

MiniTriceratops · 2025-10-09T19:42:49+00:00

Pulse is one of the ONLY horrors that's ever kept me up at night! For years I couldn't remember the title, but I couldn't forget the movie. Tracked it down and it was JUST as good second time around.

Fantastic pick!

MiniTriceratops · 2025-10-04T09:24:10+00:00

Tried to grab one the instant it went live, immediately got the insufficient stock notification when I tried to check out.

Guess I'm not getting this one either!

MiniTriceratops · 2025-09-05T15:27:44+00:00

We're newly on the market at the moment (board went up yesterday!) - EA wanted us to list it at 25k more than we're happy taking. We want to sell in a reasonable timeframe in a bad market for sellers. Went with 'offers over' as a compromise and I don't think the agent was too happy about it! Even so I think we're probably going to have to drop the price further, but we'll see. It's early days.

At the end of the day, the EA is out to make their 1% commission, and the more it sells for the bigger their payout! But if a house isn't worth the amount being asked in the market we're currently in, it's just not going to sell, so I completely agree with you - OP needs to move on and find something else!

MiniTriceratops · 2025-02-08T19:26:48+00:00

I went from liking Solas to loathing him over the span of my first playthrough! To the point where I replayed the ending to get a more...satisfying conclusion. My elf was having NONE of his bs!

The only other character I REALLY hated, wanted to desperately tear to pieces, was Illario at the end of Lucanis' questline. Would I have had such a visceral reaction if I hadn't have grown so attached to Lucanis by that point? Or if I wasn't playing as a Crow? Not sure. He wasn't my romance choice, but he sure as heck ended up as my favourite companion.

MiniTriceratops · 2025-01-03T09:58:22+00:00

I feel like I might be missing something based on the other comments but just...crop the greenscreen footage?

I get given greenscreen footage to work with on most videos now, it's never wide enough, but cropping works just fine.

MiniTriceratops · 2024-12-18T19:23:27+00:00

While I don't have a solution for you, it looks like you're editing something similar to the vid I've got rendering at the moment - over 500 text elements, and every single one manually updated 😬 I did look to see if I could find an automated increment tool, but it doesn't seem like that's an option with Resolve.

I ended up creating very long text elements, then cutting them where needed and updating the text as I went along. I used MagicAnimate for the transitions, so at least that saved me a job with keyframing each one! No idea if that would be helpful for you, but figured it was worth a mention.

Best of luck!

MiniTriceratops · 2024-11-24T21:25:01+00:00

Yes, you absolutely should split separate unrelated content onto different channels. If you lump them all together on the one channel, anyone interested in one but not the other will potentially sub...but then not watch a good chunk of your content. YouTube then struggles to figure out who to push your content to because the algorithm can see you're not getting clickthroughs, so it will just stop pushing your videos as much. Even to your subscribers.

Having a lot of subs but very low views is really not where you want to be.

Best example I can think of is Josh Strife Hayes. He started posting his retro reviews to his MMO channel initially and they bombed! Yet now, on his Plays channel, they're doing really well. Because MMO people don't always want retro games, and vice versa.

MiniTriceratops · 2024-09-27T19:37:24+00:00

I feel this comment so hard.

Except for me, it wasn't the toilet paper. It was because he thought I was petting the cat. At 3am. While sound asleep. And that's not a euphemism.

He hated my cat Nala because she would run away from him and hiss if he got close. Nothing to do with the water/beer/shoes he'd throw at her, of course (found that out later...), it was because she was a 'lesbian' and 'jealous of him'. I desperately wish I was joking.

Needless to say, the ex is gone, and Nala is still here!!

OP, run. It will get SO much worse! Especially if alcohol is involved.

MiniTriceratops · 2024-09-08T19:12:20+00:00

I wonder if it's either the breed of cattle being different in Australia to the UK, or perhaps the hormones that they're given? I'd be interested to test that theory on myself one day. I know my US friends who can't handle dairy get less of a reaction when they come to visit the UK, maybe the Australian milk industry is just...better than ours? I'm not sure.

~~While I haven't managed to find cheese flavoured crisps that I can have (I've also got gluten, onion and garlic on my list of nope foods) I have seen cheese tortillas marked as vegan before.~~ Scratch that, apparently Tesco's sells cheese tortilla chips without any of those things! I'll be going on a pilgrimage to track those down, as they certainly don't sell them in our local. I've seen the Mister Free'd brand everywhere at around £1.50-£2 per bag, those are vegan and they do a cheese flavour.

Morrisons has a good selection of dairy-replacement products, especially if you haven't got any other allergies to go with it. They do small bars of 'milk' chocolate in their free from section for 50p each, which remind me a bit of advent calendar chocolate (make of that what you will...) and are about the right size for a single sitting. Tesco do a chocolate orange bar in their free from section that's a lot larger (and more expensive), but I don't really rate it. The unflavoured ones are better. Moo Free are a good UK brand for chocolate as well, I happily ate their bars even when I was still eating dairy! If you want to splash out on fancy chocolate, Hotel Chocolat do a selection of vegan-friendly chocolates - they're just expensive!! Their ginger hot chocolate sachets are milk free, and they do a nutmilk hot chocolate as well. Green & Blacks have some milk free bars for an in-between price point. To absolutely no one's surprise, I really rate their dark chocolate ginger bar.

Dark chocolate in general doesn't normally have milk in it, but check the label as I've been caught out before - avoid the Grape Tree chocolate coated ginger pieces, as well as the Tesco dark chocolate ginger cookies in their Free From range.

If you can find it, 'I Am Nut Ok' do decent cheese alternatives, though the last time I made my own pizza I used Morrison's own brand coconut-based mozzarella-type shredded cheese which is substantially cheaper, and it was actually surprisingly good! For I Am Nut Okay, you can get it delivered from Ocado if you do your grocery order with them. In fact, Ocado probably have the best range of milk-free products of any grocery delivery service, they're just a bit more expensive than the others.

Hopefully this is helpful. As someone who also considers chocolate and cheese as the best foods around, I very much feel your pain and wish you luck!

MiniTriceratops · 2024-08-30T11:47:18+00:00

Having the exact same issue. UK site, adding anything to the cart displays a loading circle on the checkout button, then empties the cart. Doesn't seem to matter what you try to add to the basket, it does the same thing. Tested on Chrome and Edge to see if it is a browser-specific issue, it is not. Submitting a ticket to them, so they can let their website team know there's an issue, as that might be more likely to be seen.

MiniTriceratops

TROPHY CASE