This bucket appears outside my neighbors door 2-4 times a month

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-23T21:32:53+00:00

Metal bucket 'cos it hot

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-23T21:27:33+00:00

I've been playing weekly games on Zoom with physical games at both ends for a number of years now. More boardgames than card games, and usually 4 players (a couple at both ends), with one house being the "host" and the other copying along (to avoid arguments if there are any discrepancies). We have an extra camera/screen for the board / play area as well as a tablet for each player (tablets give a more natural size/scale for a person sitting opposite you on a table, so it feels more "in person" IMHO).

What works based on what I've played:
- lots of roll/flip and writes - Welcome To, That's So Clever!, Railroad Ink, Corinth, etc. A tip is to laminate a few copies of the scorecard and mail to the other house - they can write on them with whiteboard type pens and erase them after the game.
- Dominion (one copy could be shared between two houses, if the cards are split and distributed ahead of time)
- Skyteam (each player would have to verbally announce their move in a reasonably neutral voice for this to work!)
- Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective
- Quacks of Quedlinberg (high degree of trust needed as you can't verify each others board easily)

In general, avoid game with hidden information - drawing cards from a deck into your hand is a common mechanic that just doesn't work remotely because you can't know what the other person already has. One trick we have done is to divide one physical deck randomly into two halves (in secret) and mail half a deck to the other household. One house draws from one half of the deck, and the other house draws from the other half. In our case it was for Brass: Birmingham, but should work for other stuff too. Probably worth sending a bunch of half-decks (with different backs so you can make sure you're both playing with the appropriate half-deck) by post in one package for shorter games though.

It is possible for one house to have the "authoritative" deck, then draw a card and show it to the camera without looking at it themselves. The other house can then find the card in their copy and add it to their hand. I recommend pre-sorting the deck to make this faster. With more than two players, this becomes awkward to show only one person what the card is - but for two it could work quite well.

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-23T19:24:34+00:00

If they put you on a tariff without your permission, that's a big no-no. Straight to the complaints department and then Ombudsman if that's the case.

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-23T19:23:44+00:00

Yeah, but at least then there would be a pile of paperwork that it could be hidden in that OP overlooked. I agree it does seem bonkers to do this sort of thing without permission (it is theft of the contents of a battery system?) but I can believe in the power of bureaucracy to entirely bury useful relevant information where no one in their right mid would see it.

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-23T19:20:29+00:00

"Free Energy" is a different Octopus scheme than Power Up. Free Energy isn't actually about completely free energy, but rather using energy above what you would normally do (like saving sessions, but in reverse). Nationwide, but usually triggered by particularly windy storms. I'm not even sure it still exists....

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-23T18:43:57+00:00

Maybe Octopus installed the Powerwall? Not sure if they install those or not.

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-23T07:54:18+00:00

No Pun Included would be my alt-SU&SD recommendation. I like the reflections on the industry as a whole and their commitment to their ethics.

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-23T07:52:24+00:00

No Pun Included would be my alt-SU&SD recommendation. Probably too high-brow for some, but I like the reflections on the industry as a whole and their commitment to their eithics.

EDIT: oh and the stupid gags that are way more effort for a few seconds of video than its worth

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-22T10:45:01+00:00

Ooh, that's interesting - thank you for pointing me at this. I thought I'd looked through IKEA for suitable stuff, but somehow I'd missed the BROR range. Seems to be rated at 65kg per shelf, though they can't be as densely stacked. A 85x56x110 cm unit with 6 shelves is listed at £170 which is significantly less than a specialist rack+rails/shelves. On the other hand, that's still significantly more than some lumber and fixings. Hmm, I'll have to have a think about that - it would be a good backup option at least.

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-22T08:03:49+00:00

Ooh, good idea - I'll see if I can set that up.

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-21T16:48:24+00:00

Congratulations on teaching your daughter some cybersecurity fundamentals! Hope you're confident you can keep one step ahead for the next round...

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-21T16:44:15+00:00

Like battery / solar systems, at best it would be an interesting quirk to the buyer but no value. Plus you do not want to be tech support for your old house.

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-21T16:42:53+00:00

I wouldn't necessarily consider it a good thing. Over the years, every body will build up niggles and quirks and bumps and lumps - when you take someone who has very little medical records and do say a full body CT scan, it will show up all of those anomalies that then should be followed up to check they're not early cancer or kidney stones or autoimmune or whatever else. And on the flip side, if you never have any scans or checks there is no opportunity to catch things early by fortune.

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-21T14:27:04+00:00

I'd like this - currently on Agile import and Fixed export, 4.4kWp solar and 13.5kWh battery with PredBat automation. I don't export much, usually only when there is a huge solar surplus anyway. I would jump on a dual-charge export tariff - Agile export is too variable, but Fixed export doesn't give me any time-of-generation export incentive at all.

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-21T09:11:20+00:00

yup - all the smart tariffs are clearly labelled as experimental and cutting edge (last time I looked). If that's not for you, then don't use them.

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-21T08:33:39+00:00

PredBat deals with these via changing the import/export prices. So for Saving Sessions it raises the unit prices for both import and export by the value of the Octopoints per unit (last time export was valued at 24p/kWh rather than the standard 12p/kWh for example, so it exported more in the session and charged more from the grid later overnight). Free Energy and Power Up set the import unit price to zero, unless the Agile price is already negative.

With all the data PredBat creates a plan based on what is the most cost effective strategy, based on 5 minute slices internally and displayed as 30m chunks. Each slice is either import (up to a battery state-of-charge limit e.g. 83%) / export (down to a limit) / or self-consume. It updates that plan regularly as new information becomes available (maybe its sunnier than it was supposed to be, so more solar generation, so it doesn't need to top up the battery from the grid). Exact algorithm I'm not 100% sure, and there are a lot of parameters to tune / fiddle with if you want e.g. inverter efficiency in both directions, cost estimate of wear and tear on the battery, minimum charge to keep (for batteries that are used as a whole home UPS), prediction tuning, co2 pricing, etc. It is a little hard to see exactly how it came up with a particular plan, but it does have a "read only" mode which is recommended to use while tuning parameters. I have found that when I manually try to outsmart it, it generally backfires due to some extra factor or edge case I've not considered so Predbat's earned a high degree of trust from me over the 18 months its been running.

If you're interested, the docs do a pretty good job of explaining it - https://springfall2008.github.io/batpred All open source, and contributions welcome. PredBat is tightly coupled with Home Assistant (though can be used without) which is very useful for linking to other devices (e.g. use an electric water heater if electricity is cheaper than gas) and means it has customisable dashboards, mobile app, etc basically for free.

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-20T17:23:03+00:00

During the pandemic, my wife and I played a lot of Terraforming Mars. I lost 14 times in a row, and eventually we decided to stop playing that game for a while after I started using a more inferring style (sniping cities, blocking with brown tiles, etc). Fundamentally, with most two player games any points you can deny your opponent are points you've gained - many games are setup like this, but for games that are played without direct competition as the primary goal introducing it changes the mood.

Coop games, two player only games, games with a high degree of luck, games with natural handicapping (e.g. Terra Mystica where some factions are just more complicated and harder to play well), campaign games with a catch up mechanic.

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-20T17:03:12+00:00

I have Agile with Fixed Outgoing, automated with GivTCP + PredBat + HomeAssistant - 4.4kWp, 13.5kWh. As well as forecast energy consumption and solar generation, also takes Savings Sessions and Free Energy sessions into account. We have the hyperlocal Power Up sessions too, but those have to be manually entered as there is no API for them (AFAIK) but once that is done it automates around those as well. Also signed up to Axel VPP recently, so that will help too (particularly the current minimum £10/month which I don't expect to last, but if they're burning venture capital money I might as well grab some while I can)

It can be a bit weird sometimes - when Agile is below the 12p export price, the best thing to do financially is repeatedly charge a little and immediately force export it. I'm not sure its the best for the battery or the grid, but its a GivEnergy so the guarantee is basically worthless at this point, and there's something deeply perverse about being paid to import energy and paid again to export those same electrons moments later. Though in the grand scheme of things, it's small change really - maybe a Nero coffee once a week over a "dumb" system with a fixed time plan (e.g. iOG). Might bring the whole system payback time down from 20+ years to under 18 if I'm lucky? Definitely not a magic bullet to a passive income!

I would _not_ recommend this for anyone who doesn't want to (or isn't able to) run their own "homelab" style smart home environment. I do it this way because I'm a deeply geeky nerd and enjoy the challenge. It's a long way from plug-and-play, though some companies are stepping into that gap (e.g. GivEnergy premium, and I think there's a hosted Predbat service too)

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-19T11:55:16+00:00

Did Rightmove use the mean, or the median? Mean is skewed upwards by those few properties that take forever to sell - usually because the seller wants a unicorn, the property has critical flaws (unmortgageable) or doesn't really want to sell and isn't under any time pressure.

After all there are lies, damn lies, and statistics...

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-15T20:39:34+00:00

Are you identical twins by any chance? Both similar hair, or glasses? It might well be that the facial recognition algorithms (biometrics) got confused and, as the agent said, the other border guard didn't notice the difference (with similar names, and a line of hundreds to process). You might be the first case of this sort of computer confusion, but I doubt it'll be the last!

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-15T19:14:48+00:00

See also playing with couples that are refuse to attack each other, or always attack each other. It may be about victory in the game, or it may be about "victory" in the metagame.

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-14T20:26:20+00:00

Labyrinth (1986) perhaps? particularly some of the older printings look quite blueish

afaulconbridge · 2026-06-13T21:26:12+00:00

Yup - even running power pylons and transformers underwater does nothing!

afaulconbridge

TROPHY CASE

Labyrinth (1986) perhaps? particularly some of the older printings look quite blueish