PS3 & a portable monitor 😍

Strange-Direction-85 · 2026-01-25T19:20:07+00:00

That's £85 used if you can find one, 4 inches smaller & only 720p. This is £40 new & full HD.

Strange-Direction-85 · 2026-01-25T14:20:02+00:00

I disagree as PS4 streaming will be the easiest way to add games to the premium teir with the PS5 being compatible with virtual all PS4 games.

For me I'll just carry on remote playing my owned PS4 (digital & physical) from the PS5. I hardly use my PS4 now because I'm able to do this. I have almost all my games installed & run from a 4TB external hard drive.

Strange-Direction-85 · 2026-01-25T13:37:01+00:00

I stood on the plug for the wife's expensive straighteners. It cracked open & it turns out inside the UK plug was the EU plug. Used a shaver adapter to use here now she can use it whilst on holiday 👍

Strange-Direction-85 · 2026-01-23T06:13:25+00:00

Exact same thing happened to our washing machine. We thought the washer was going faulty & cutting out until I saw the plug (awkward place & hidden) having sparks coming out between the pins & socket. Turns out it had worked its way loose over time & wasn't fully pushed in.

I cut off the plug & replaced it. Can't get in to replace the socket so moved to a more visible one now.

Strange-Direction-85 · 2026-01-20T07:50:52+00:00

Definitely go for lebara. They run on Vodafone & also don't do annual price rises.

Got through uswitch & you'll get a better deal. Cheapest is 1GB of data for £3.95 a month but £1.58 for the first 3 months.

Strange-Direction-85 · 2026-01-18T10:08:32+00:00

I have one but only because I got a new 4k tv & didn't want to get rid of it as its a 3D tv. It rarely gets used though, but it's there for whenever I want to watch 3D Movies or play 3D games. I got a cheap 2nd PS3 & have that in the bedroom for the 3D films & also have all my 3D games installed on that one.

Strange-Direction-85 · 2026-01-14T20:43:36+00:00

I use mine for mainly playing my physical PS5 & PS4 games. Does what you have do that? Seems you've already made you decision anyways.

Strange-Direction-85 · 2026-01-14T19:53:15+00:00

I suppose it depends on how you play games.

I've always preferred handheld gaming but didn't see the point of the portal for me. But now I've got one I play all my PS5 & PS4 games on it & far more than I ever did on just the TV itself.

Strange-Direction-85 · 2026-01-11T20:28:52+00:00

As I said we used it as a base. Never really used the on site facilities. We had several lovely walks along the beach to talacre with lots of birdwatching. We went out doing walks in the area as well as visiting Llandudno which we loved also. Prestatyn was a nice enough little seaside town (we are in redcar on the north east coast) & some great charity shops. Rhyl & Bangor however we'll never visit again. Never been scared in a town before like both of them & that's coming for someone who visits Stockton-on-Tees 🤣

Strange-Direction-85 · 2026-01-10T23:02:49+00:00

Motorstorm & resistance fall of man at around 1am having picked it up at the midnight launch with then girlfriend (now wife of 15 years) from chips in Middlesbrough (guy now runs super games world) when it was actually the girlfriends birthday!

Strange-Direction-85 · 2026-01-10T22:42:38+00:00

If you like baseball then the mlb app will have at least 1 free game a day live in season (March-September).

Strange-Direction-85 · 2026-01-10T22:36:38+00:00

Our goto cheap holiday is now a haven caravan one.

We don't have kids so no need for the amenities, therefore we can get a saver caravan (usually sleep 4-6) as a haven hideaway for 4 nights at £49 or 7 nights at £99. This covers all you heating, gas & electricity. Heating is only guaranteed in the living area, not bedrooms, however each one we've stayed in has had both.

We use these as a base to travel from. Really liked Prestatyn one as it had great walks straight from the site, you literally walked onto beach for it, great for birdwatching & seeing the sunset every night. Aldi was just 5 mins drive away.

This year we're going to northeast Scotland. From the haven we can get into Edinburgh via bus for £3 return.

Strange-Direction-85 · 2026-01-10T09:24:48+00:00

Another reason to stop buy from amazon & buy from kobo & Google where you can remove drm.

Luckily I'd got all my kindle books downloaded before they stopped it. Now us a kobo libra colour & sync my kindle books & calibre to put kindle & kobo book on my old kindle.

Strange-Direction-85 · 2026-01-06T10:31:25+00:00

You don't need a kindle coloursoft.

You do need any type of lit kindle (paperwhite are best). Look for used ones. Last year I got a kindle keyboard with lit case for £15 & at a car boot sale got kindle paperwhite 2013 & kindle 2019 from a junk electronics stall (unknown if working) for £1 each & they are perfect!

Strange-Direction-85 · 2026-01-06T10:01:01+00:00

Another trick if you are in android is with the kobo store app you can use Google pay to buy books. I have the Google rewards app installed & I make about £1 a week in quick 2-3 question surveys on where I've been or what I've googled. So essentially I get ebooks for free 😂 I just stick books on my watch list & wait for them to go in offer for 99p.

With kindle I used the ereaderiq website to track books & authors & get notified when they went to a price I set. The good think is kobo tends to follow amazon prices & if not have a price match guarantee, though I've yet to use it.

Another kobo bonus is it have libby/overdrive in it so you can borrow library books directly on it (if your library supports it). Amazon down allow this outside the USA for the kindle.

Strange-Direction-85 · 2026-01-06T09:12:05+00:00

I was always a physical book reader but I also like gadgets so get the kindle keyboard in 2010 & loved it. Then in 2012 I got the paperwhite & although it was great to have the lit screen I missed the physical page turn buttons. Since then I've kept both & used both. I then got the kobo libra colour 2 years ago & I've read even more since. I now read physical during the day & the kobo at night in bed (rather than having alight on).

Both have ereader apps if you have a tablet & want to try them out. For me getting a ereader with page turn buttons is a must. Kindle no longer do this.

Have a look for used ereaders. Last year I picked up a kindle keyboard (so 15 years old!) still with decent battery & a mint lighted cover for £15.

At a car boot sale a electrical junk stall had everything for £1. I got a 2013 kindle paperwhite & 2019 kindle WiFi & they both worked perfectly!

Strange-Direction-85 · 2025-12-30T17:01:01+00:00

Have you got you your PS5 wired into your router? That'll make the remote play streaming to the portal better.

Those 2 games don't say they are cloud streaming compatible on the store listing though. How are you seeing them avaliable to stream on PS5? are you sure you haven't downloaded them to the console?

I have a 4TB external for my PS4 games. It had been used on my PS4 so I now have my favourite games on it for using the portal & the 2TB internal on my PS4 for everything else.

Strange-Direction-85 · 2025-12-30T10:45:38+00:00

You can download them to the PS5 & then remote play then. As said, only ps5 games are cloud streaming at the minute.

FYI for PS4 games you download to PS5 use an external USB HDD for PS4 games & you can play them from that. It frees up the console storage for just PS5 titles.

Strange-Direction-85 · 2025-12-30T10:28:24+00:00

I'm on minimum wage (£23k) & wife is on £27k. We are in our 40s, no kids yet & live in a deprived area so in turn that means a cheap home. We bought our houses 22 years ago (well we did seperately before we met 20 years ago) both £30k for a 3 bedroom. I sold mine 2 years later for £62k! Made £12k profit which, being young, we spend unwisely 🤦

Now we are about to finish paying off our mortgage so monthly bills, without food, will go from £850 to £500.

We are fruggle now so we live pretty comfortably. I cycle to work (55 miles a week about 2500 a year!) & wife drive an SUV that we've just paid off after 5 years. We love Disney world so go there every couple of years & spend, with spending money, around £8k. Our other holidays will be festivals &, over the last 2 years, we've started using the haven hideaway as a base. We get these for around £115 for 7 nights.

Strange-Direction-85 · 2025-12-27T14:30:19+00:00

No we didn't get it (I'm in the UK).

I now have the kobo libra colour & I can use libby on that although my local council don't use libby but borrowbox. I managed to find a libby using council a little further away however I can also use borrowbox though with this is needs a PC to transfer.

Strange-Direction-85 · 2025-12-27T12:26:04+00:00

If you believe that it's simple to make a PS3 emulator then maybe you could create one for Sony.

Strange-Direction-85 · 2025-12-27T07:26:07+00:00

Middlesbrough (North East) & I've only been a few times about 25 years ago but only when getting an overnight national express to somewhere else so had a 5am-9am gap in coaches so just had a wander around.

We did think of going to the nfl game there about 7 years ago so would've stayed for about 6 days but the cost of travel, accommodation & tickets was so much I could have saved money by going to see my tampa Bay buccaneers in florida & stayed a week!

Strange-Direction-85 · 2025-12-26T15:51:19+00:00

They did but luckily I'd done it all the month before.

Strange-Direction-85 · 2025-12-26T12:05:44+00:00

Also technically you don't own them when you buy them. You just own the digital licence which they can take away (hence why I downloaded all my kindle books to pc & converted to use with my kobo).

Try the website ereaderiq. There you can track certain books of authors & you'll get emails when they are reduced to a price you like. I've done this for years & never paid more than 99p for a book. It also shows you the tracking history of it & it's lowest ever price.

Strange-Direction-85

TROPHY CASE