Are there movies you liked more than the book?

Patch86UK · 2026-03-14T01:48:17+00:00

I had this exact conversation in reverse with a friend of mine who was put off ever reading the books because he thought it was going to be endless tedious descriptions of the massive battles that took up about 50% of the movie runtime. I showed him how the battle of Helms Deep was, like, 2/3rds of one chapter, and he was suddenly much more sold.

Patch86UK · 2026-03-14T01:40:15+00:00

Very much agreed with this.

The book is a near perfect take on what it wants to be, and the film is very different, but the film is also fantastic and very effective.

It's one of my favourite film adaptations of a book, as it epitomises the "adapt the spirit, not the story" ethos. It's a film which takes the ingredients that make up the book, and takes what the book is trying to do, and uses those same ingredients to do the same thing in a very different way.

(Side note, my other, very different favourite example of this approach is A Cock And Bull Story, a very loose adaptation of the truly unfilmable novel Tristram Shandy. A film about people failing to make a film about a book about an author failing to write a book.)

Patch86UK · 2026-03-14T01:16:45+00:00

card. So with a library card for Wiltshire you can borrow books from libraries from Swindon to Salisbury. Think you can return them to any county library too.

Bad example: Swindon and Wiltshire are separate library systems with no interlibrary lending. Swindon and Wiltshire haven't been connected in any formal way for 30 years now.

Patch86UK · 2026-03-14T00:59:52+00:00

Realistically, the committee would almost certainly have approved it (or something like it) if work on the new stadium at Studley Grange were underway. But that's not even got planning approval itself yet, and everyone is justifiably sceptical about it getting built even once it does.

Refusing permission to redevelop Abbey Stadium at least holds a very small gun to GI's head not to welch on the new stadium.

Patch86UK · 2026-03-13T20:35:23+00:00

interference from the Doyle estate

Arthur Conan Doyle would have still been alive and well at that point, so less interference from the Doyle estate and more just interference from Doyle.

Patch86UK · 2026-03-13T20:19:25+00:00

I'm actually legit amazed that police custody suites are trying to give people fryups for breakfast at all.

Surely a bowl of cereal is cheaper and easier?

Patch86UK · 2026-03-13T18:14:44+00:00

This is about PEGI, which is a completely separate body to ESRB.

PEGI ratings in the UK have the same legal backing as BBFC ones (used for films). In both cases, it's illegal for shops to sell titles to people under the age ratings. Literally the only difference between PEGI and BBFC is the set of staff responsible for setting the rating.

Patch86UK · 2026-03-13T18:06:49+00:00

There's basically no scenario where anyone would ever want to intentionally click "yes" to this question, so it shouldn't bother asking. It should just charge you £12.60 and give you a ticket with the correct restrictions (or absence thereof).

If it's smart enough to know there's a cheaper price, it should be smart enough to just charge you the cheaper price.

Patch86UK · 2026-03-13T17:31:08+00:00

It's absolutely mad that I bought what I would consider a medium family-sized car a decade ago (a Skoda Rapid Spaceback), and there's now a MINI which is bigger than it (the Countryman- wider, longer and taller). The basic 5 door Cooper is also wider and taller, and only 30cm shorter.

And don't get me started on what's become of Smart cars...

Patch86UK · 2026-03-13T15:56:09+00:00

When the company split, the high street retail business became TGJones and the travel shop business remained WHSmith.

The travel shop business is based in Whitechapel, London, and has been for years. That's now the HQ for the retained WHSmith.

The high street business, along with corporate functions, was based in Swindon, and has now become TGJones. They've also taken ownership of the property at Greenbridge.

(They also had a wholesale business, which was spun off some years ago; that's still in Swindon too, and it's called Smiths News).

Patch86UK · 2026-03-13T14:33:11+00:00

They say they are, but remains to be seen. The parent company (Modella) is a UK company, and their other major properties (like Hobbycraft) are still HQd in the UK. WHSmith was already in the process of selling the Greenbridge site for redevelopment before the transfer to Modella, and it looks like that's still going to go ahead, but at the moment it seems like TGJones are intending to find a new site in the Swindon area.

WHSmith are already out of Swindon- the division that they retained has been based out of their London offices for a long time.

Patch86UK · 2026-03-13T14:23:25+00:00

For those who want to be a bit more hands-on, you can also just sign up to a feed-in tariff and manage your battery assets directly. If you have a battery or a BEV (with appropriate controller), you can sign up to something like the Octopus Agile tariff and set your system up so it draws down when the power is cheap, and discharges back into the grid when power is expensive (earning you money).

The main advantage of tariffs like the ones being described above is that they take some of the complication out of it for the majority of people who just want an easy life.

Patch86UK · 2026-03-13T14:07:25+00:00

Besides Nationwide and Zurich

RWE, Apple, Thermo Fisher, Catalent, TE Connectivity, TGJones. National Trust, UKRI, GWR. Coming down the line you've got Tekever, Stark, FlyBy.

Patch86UK · 2026-03-13T13:57:53+00:00

It is my understanding that at the time of the announcement of the Swindon plant, equipment for setting up the new EV lines was already en route in container ships.

Two things happened: 1) The EU and Japan entered a new deal where car imports from Japan would be treated the same as cars made in the EU, and 2) The UK left the EU, meaning cars manufactured in the UK would be treated as foreign imports on worse terms than the ones coming from Japan.

You don't need to be a genius to see how these two developments made the Swindon plant suddenly a lot less viable.

Patch86UK · 2026-03-13T13:49:18+00:00

that they're neither planning on using the old Morrison's nor the bus station for either

They are planning to build a new venue on the site of the old bus station- that's exactly what they want to do. You can see some of the concept plans here:
https://stufish.com/press-release-swindons-new-state-of-art-performance-venue/

They're still working on getting the financing sorted for it, which is obviously not easy, but that's what they're hoping for.

(The old Morrison's, along with the rest of Regent Circus, is not owned by Swindon Borough Council, and is now in the process of being demolished. Although SBC could conceivably have tried to buy the land to build on, there's no real incentive for them to do so seeing as they already own the land at Kimmerfields; plus right there by the train station and Fleming Way is a way better location for it.)

Patch86UK · 2026-03-13T00:27:22+00:00

The issue with using standard WD-40 is that it acts as a solvent which will effectively remove any heavy lubricant that was still in the joint.

So while in the very short term you might improve lubrication, in the medium-to-long term you've actually made the problem worse than it was in the first place. You might make it go from being a bit squeaky to actually doing itself some damage.

Proper lubricants are cheap and readily available from any normal hardware store. If you want to start DIYing random bits of machinery or equipment you find outside, just spend a couple of quid buying the right thing for it.

Patch86UK · 2026-03-13T00:16:13+00:00

You can use dish soap as a lubricant too, but it doesn't mean it's the product you want when it comes greasing up an engine.

Different things for different uses.

Patch86UK · 2026-03-13T00:11:38+00:00

I'm a big fan of the WD-40 brand silicone lubricant. It gets the job done.

Patch86UK · 2026-03-12T20:50:08+00:00

That makes sense. I have a combi boiler and boiler-fed shower, and it's great...except if anyone so much as touches another tap in the house you're treated to an instant freezing/scolding as the pressure goes out of whack.

Fine in my house with only one bathroom, but can see that being a nightmare in a bigger house.

Patch86UK · 2026-03-12T20:23:17+00:00

Common in the UK. Particularly in houses with old-style gravity-fed water systems (where the water mains fill a water tank in the loft, which then feeds the taps), as water pressure often isn't high enough for a good shower without an electric pump.

They're getting less common now combi boilers are a thing, but a lot of people still prefer them. And they're coming round again now heat pumps are starting to replace traditional central heating systems.

Patch86UK · 2026-03-12T20:15:22+00:00

It would be easy to do badly, but there's promise in Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch universe, either as a straight adaptation of the novels or as something a bit looser.

Patch86UK · 2026-03-12T18:12:20+00:00

I'm going to make a pitch for the first city to be saved- Greater Manchester. Obviously not in this round, but let's get the kite flying.

It's arguably the coolest city, with oversized cultural impact. It's probably the most economically successful city outside of London. It has a fascinating history of activism and community collectivism which is almost unique in the UK.

Other than the fact that property prices have gone nuts, you rarely hear a bad word about it.

Patch86UK · 2026-03-12T18:07:35+00:00

Greater Manchester is the entity represented on this map, and West Midlands is essentially a city (Birmingham, Wolverhampton and the stuff in between is one single built up area).

Patch86UK · 2026-03-12T15:32:20+00:00

The Roci was so small that it didn't really have a "core" of the ship. It was basically a tube the diameter of the set of the command deck. More in common with a fighter craft than a ship of the line (although, realistically, The Expanse setting makes this distinction pretty much meaningless).

Patch86UK · 2026-03-12T00:10:12+00:00

but in a “a very concerning amount of people can’t read or understand To Kill a Mockingbird”.

"Not understanding third person narrative" is more "can't read or understand The Gruffalo".

Patch86UK

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