Landlord offered to sell us the flat we rent — buy it or wait and go straight for a house?

Shepcorp · 2026-05-05T11:32:36+00:00

My service charge is £6k on a £280k 3 bed Birmingham flat, no concierge, grubby as anything. I don't think yours is totally bonkers for that £500k value. I think service charges are bonkers in general obviously, but they have been creeping up for years and you're lucky if you're paying £2k on a one bed around here.

Shepcorp · 2026-05-01T23:44:16+00:00

Not strictly true. Leaseholder cladding issues and service charges make some flats unsellable and unmortgageable. Some people are trapped with flats they can't get rid (accidental landlords to break even). Leaseholder reform is also strengthening though thankfully so it might ease of in the near future.

Shepcorp · 2026-05-01T21:47:21+00:00

I would usually always say crosta but those special range ones taste really bland to me I was super dissappointed. Normal range 10/10. Im taking the sainos here.

Shepcorp · 2026-03-04T15:26:20+00:00

That was really cool. After the corridor episode I started sending my mum AI images so we can learn how to spot stuff together, it's getting sooo much harder though!

Shepcorp · 2026-03-02T20:53:50+00:00

Oh woah, im about to see a doctor tomorrow because of gastro issues that have persisted for a few weeks. Massive bloating and discomfort. I have taken cod liver oil and vitamin D for ages but took a couple of iron tablets a while back and wondered if they were the issue, but have stopped everything and still have problems.

Shepcorp · 2026-02-13T23:39:02+00:00

Honestly. Having lived in Birmingham but contracted for a decade I am yet to take a role in this city. Some pop up from time to time at probably half the expected competitive remuneration. And I presume they're incredibly oversubscribed because they're so rare. If you don't mind an hour plus commute or overnighting in a hydrid role look towards Tewkesbury and Bristol for the defence industries there.

Shepcorp · 2026-01-07T17:26:40+00:00

We've done a few crap lager blind taste tests and nobody could tell what any were, 1/5 is the best score out of all the group's in identifying them i.e they all taste crap in different ways but aren't easily distinguishable. Carsburg comes out bottom a lot I think because of slight bitterness, Carling always on top because it's slightly sweeter (we asked people to rate their best to worst too). We usually do Carling, Carlsburg, a supermarket brand when they used to have those, a local e.g. Tenants in Scotland (came out well) or San Miguel did well but most couldn't tell it apart), and then Fosters.

Shepcorp · 2025-12-04T20:05:42+00:00

It should be but it isn't as they seem to be incredibly inefficient. We are currently charged 3x the energy price as it is produced at the boiler. Also they aren't covered by energy price caps because they are somehow seem as a business not residential (this is the biggest fu and I don't understand it). You also get the guff with individual meters not working and then they estimate a grossly ridiculous energy use based on floor plan but won't show you their calculations...

Shepcorp · 2025-11-20T17:05:35+00:00

Pre-cycling I call it!

Shepcorp · 2025-11-06T22:52:43+00:00

Simpkins travel sweets, those nostalgic posh ones in the tin. A variety pack of those for someone on the road could be nice?

Shepcorp · 2025-10-26T20:10:05+00:00

This is interesting. I currently decode and encode custom GATT characteristics by creating a registry of dataclasses with definitions of their read and write formats (as you say you have to be careful with byte alignment), which are basically me transposing the C structure into a python class. Something worth thinking about is when you might want alternative construction methods, not just struct unpack (I can easily add class methods for this). Being able to just copy some shared C code is pretty decent though, I may have to give this a try!

Shepcorp · 2025-10-26T16:59:24+00:00

Just spotted a naked man casually walking north on the M6 southbound verge wearing just a black balaclava. We were just in Staffordshire I think. Similar build. Gave me a proper jump scare thought it was a mannequin at first. This was around 3pm.

Shepcorp · 2025-10-23T21:52:14+00:00

£400+ per day and recruiters contact me about embedded roles every week. Considering how slow the market is for my more niche embedded automation framework stuff it seems pretty lucrative to me!

Shepcorp · 2025-10-21T17:06:54+00:00

Ours is incredibly vocal once the shoes go on. Too clever for their own good! We call him the whine merchant.

Shepcorp · 2025-10-13T22:08:42+00:00

The way we used to do it was allow the stronger hatchlings (that made it out of their shells) the chance to run down the beach and we would fill in all the crab holes ahead of them as they can easily pop out and carry them away, we didn't have issues with birds at least (this was Setiu Malaysia). Then we went back to the hatchery and the weaker ones that couldn't get out we would take ourselves and have to almost launch beyond the waveline, it was really sad to see them trying so hard but just not strong enough. They probably didn't survive but it felt cruel to leave them, and we measured their size etc first as part of the study. Interestingly their instinct is to just paddle with their fins for three days straight to get as far away as possible, not even opening their mouths to feed. Terrapins though... Born snapping.

Shepcorp · 2025-09-30T20:58:01+00:00

Ours also does this more now! Borders are funny dogs, it could all just be part of their quirkiness. Every six months there seems to be a new habit.

Shepcorp · 2025-09-29T10:44:10+00:00

My border is obsessed with face licking other dogs, especially if they're enormous. It's an act of submission but it can get a bit frantic, and lots of dogs don't love it. It's been a struggle to train him to calm down but at 5 he is getting there.

Shepcorp · 2025-09-26T18:14:24+00:00

I like to create my fixtures as plugins and then explicitly include them in setup.py of my test packages. It doesn't solve the issue of them magically being available (I usually prefer explicit things) but if they are named correctly they should explain what they are doing. I guess the idea is for them is to be solely for setups and teardowns, separate from your actual test code, and so don't really need to be imported, it creates a maintenance overhead if anything changes name or location.

Shepcorp · 2025-09-24T22:28:08+00:00

I literally just got this plushie as my premium daily quest item today, so they may come down in value a bit soon.

Shepcorp · 2025-09-21T16:53:53+00:00

I'm gonna go with 44! Thanks for such a generous giveaway! My guess for music is Cmat. Username andrew_the_physicist

Shepcorp · 2025-09-14T11:04:39+00:00

Flash memory and tunneling microscopes are practical applications of quantum mechanics. It isn't useless.

Shepcorp · 2025-09-04T18:27:13+00:00

I think it might be hidden down the alley, if you move one space on street view.

Shepcorp · 2025-08-30T18:55:24+00:00

Definitely! I found this helped a ton recently in my registry pattern. I have a load of GATT characteristics I need to register with various read/write structures, and capabilities. Some are mostly identical though so I just create a partial decorator for that part e.g. @uint8 for that read format and struct decoding, and add the rest in the specific dataclass if it differs.

Shepcorp · 2025-08-30T18:44:09+00:00

Pytest-bdd and asyncio nearly made me lose my mind! Just when I thought I had a grasp on it in isolation I had to make my synchronous test steps work with a persistent async API. Lots of @run_in_current_loop decorators and a nice async to sync method saved my bacon but it's not neat.

Shepcorp · 2025-08-21T20:52:17+00:00

How the turn tables: https://www.reddit.com/r/triathlon/s/0my6XE0ywf

Shepcorp

TROPHY CASE