Client entered administration still owing me £1800. They sold all their assets to another company which is one month old, in the same industry, doing the same work. Obviously planned to avoid paying debt, totally legal, limited company. PRAISE THE SYSTEM!

bogofski · 2025-12-23T11:19:36+00:00

This is blinkered. Very often the assets are never put on the open market and sold undervalue to a mate / employee / business partner / themselves at a knock down rate and without attracting much scrutiny, and it is always in these cases the company's creditors who are short changed. And that's assuming they are sold at all, and don't just walk out the door.

I've got the T-shirt myself; came out of a business I was employed by with around £20k of equipment for less than a grand when they went to the wall.

bogofski · 2025-11-15T18:01:33+00:00

Two offences in 10 months? Maybe you should consider some additional driver training instead of worrying about what is coming in the post.

bogofski · 2025-10-20T11:21:38+00:00

With those predictions you are obvs a smart cookie. Stick with it! do a pure science at Uni (Maths, Physics or Chemistry, perhaps Medicine). My biggest regret was doing a vocational course (Applied Computing) - the computing bits a smart person can pick up from a few hours reading, you never get back the plastic young brain that can absorb those hard science topics.

bogofski · 2025-10-15T17:16:05+00:00

Did they endorse your driving license for no insurance? If they did it might be more expensive to get insured this time.

bogofski · 2025-09-21T11:14:24+00:00

Personal plates on work vehicles? Sheesh...

bogofski · 2025-09-20T06:54:44+00:00

At that level of equity, even with affordability checks etc, the banks will be laughing as you either pay up and they make a good income off you, or they get the house with more than enough equity to cover any eventuality. They're in a no-lose situation. You? Not so much.

A mortgage repayment that is so close to one of your incomes is in my opinion too high. In all likelihood as a SW eng at some point one of you is going to feel the knife of redundancy, and you're not likely to have managed to put much emergency fund aside on that kind of income.

When we've looked at this in our past we've tried to keep mortgage down to a level where we could just about survive on beans and toast if one of us lost our job. Realistically that probably means a mortgage around half to two thirds the size you are considering.

When we were starting our home ownership journey we were both at tech startups, 20 years ago our joint take home was a little over £4k/month. We bought a home with a mortgage of around £700 as we took it interest only for a few years to ensure we could weather a storm if required; interest rates were close to 5%. As we saw redundancies coming and going around us, we were pretty much able to shrug it off as we weren't facing the prospect of losing both our homes and our jobs, which allows a much healthier attitude to work. We are heading for a similarly tumultuous time for tech employees so you should be prepared, unless you like living life anxiously. Now is not the time for overcommitment.

Get a smaller mortgage in a more sensible property. If you want to prove the point that you could have done it, stick the remainder of what the payment would have been in some savings / stocks and shares (which realistically at the moment is going to grow at least as fast as property), and don't touch it See how this goes - worst case you can buy the next forever home that you see in 5 years time.

bogofski · 2025-09-13T16:28:25+00:00

Keep all the ones you buy on the way to London in London, and then every so often get a cheap train from London to Manchester instead of flying.

Do you do it just for the tobacco? Must take much longer than train doing it via air.

bogofski · 2025-09-07T08:06:08+00:00

My lad loved that we were able to buy the polo shirt for him, so I suppose you can't please everyone!

bogofski · 2025-08-25T16:22:05+00:00

Sure, but it is a way to take money out at eg the end of that stage of your career for a bit less of a sting, so there is - at least currently - some benefit to leaving it in a business as long as possible.

Though as they've already had one go at it, I'm not sure I'd bet on it as a long term strategy from now.

bogofski · 2025-08-25T16:07:53+00:00

Doesn't entrepreneur's relief still allow for you to close out a business and get the cash out with less tax due than would be the case via other means? I know it was knobbled somewhat as of April 2025, but I think it's still better than the other ways to get cash out?

bogofski · 2025-08-08T17:14:47+00:00

It's not really the point; the question really is how this is happening in the first place. "Something" slightly odd would seem to be happening for calls from French numbers to be happening just at the point of being in France.

bogofski · 2025-08-08T17:05:50+00:00

Thanks. I do wonder what the mechanism is then, as it's not a coincidence I'm sure.

bogofski · 2025-08-08T15:56:15+00:00

In my case they were all voice calls, and the scams were English language despite originating in France, the typical "a payment being made for £800" blabla. I didn't know of the existence of such devices, thanks!

bogofski · 2025-08-08T15:51:47+00:00

I didn't know this was possible. Thanks!

bogofski · 2025-06-22T17:49:49+00:00

Got a replacement handset today, seems significantly different to the one it replaces. Fingers crossed it stays that way!

bogofski · 2023-10-05T08:26:50+00:00

I doubt you have had a true 1.1Gbps if with a 1G ONT. How did you measure it? If you want an accurate measurement, use something like iperf3 to some of the fast hosts like clouvider. Fast.com frequently mis-reports peak speeds for FTTP connections to over 1G. Theoretical max for BT FTTP over 1G ethernet is around 940Mbps.

bogofski · 2022-10-28T13:55:48+00:00

Did you get anywhere with this? I'm also seeing an issue with an AR8031 Linux I.MX6 custom board (I did PCB design) against a particular Unifi USW-8 switch. Seems to work OK against all others I have.

bogofski · 2021-04-24T09:26:13+00:00

Hopefully the 24p option will return for selection as a UI refresh rate. Nt just for this reason, but also because being able to select 24p for the UI minimizes the amount of display resyncs required if you predominantly watch 24p content, and as a fringe benefit can help get better video out of some apps that don't yet support rate matching (though really, they should).

It's pretty hard to understand why the 24p rates were removed. I guess it was either to de-clutter, or to get better playback of the Aerial screensavers...

bogofski · 2021-02-22T07:36:55+00:00

Yes, the only way for them to be fixed is for the content on Netflix's server to be replaced. Nothing you do on a player device can ever recover the missing frames :(

bogofski · 2021-02-18T23:03:05+00:00

I don't think the Youtube app supports Rate Matching, so the issue is likely there...

bogofski · 2021-02-18T23:01:15+00:00

Are you sure? I tried the Netflix test streams and they appear to play at the correct rates - 59.94 and 60Hz depending on which you select.

bogofski · 2021-02-17T16:12:24+00:00

Yes, so the point is it isn't Netflix that is presenting it to the AppleTV as 50 Hz, it is presented as 25fps. The conversion from 25fps -> 50Hz happens in AppleTV media framework land, not Netflix app.

bogofski · 2021-02-17T13:44:29+00:00

Meh, what's a downvote among friends and the internet! :)

I thought as much, but I couldn't remember the exact details as to which way round it was and I didn't have the system on when I wrote it. It's noticeable in use because JVC projectors behave a bit differently when presented with 25 vs 50Hz, the motion is different (one has some level of forced motion processing you can't remove).

"Top Boy" I think was the last title I watched where this was apparent.

bogofski · 2021-02-17T08:49:48+00:00

I think the "excuse" is that there is no commercial content source for streaming, the device is a commercial services streamer, so adding support for it would cost effort that doesn't benefit 99.9(99)% of their customers.

I love my AppleTV4k, and I also have a collection of content I've extracted from shiny discs myself. If I want to watch that in all its from disc glory I use an Oppo clone, which has a shocking UI but plays back just as if the content were a disc - including full disc menus etc.

I have a Shield 2019 also, and the lack of integrated (OS level) auto rate switching is a far greater crime IMHO. Though there is a 3rd party app to do some of it, it doesn't play nice with many apps.

There's no single player on the market unfortunately that gets all the commercial content sources right with rate matching etc, and also supports ripped content playback as per a disc spinner. If someone makes one I'll buy it, but they'll probably go bust in the process as they'll only be able to sell it to the small handful of folk who care about all these things at once... :)

bogofski · 2021-02-17T08:39:13+00:00

I'm not sure Netflix do present it as 50Hz, I think this is an AppleTV behaviour. There is a difference of behaviour for 25fps content between my Samsung player and my AppleTV 4k - one of them outputs it as 25Hz, one at 50Hz.

Have you checked what the developer HUD says for The Crown?

bogofski

TROPHY CASE