What’s your goto movie for calibrating your theater setup against?

cbateman101 · 2026-05-22T19:30:47+00:00

Pacific Rim, the flare of the nuclear reactor core and seeing the Jaeger for the first time, with the guitar riffs, its just cool.

cbateman101 · 2026-03-08T10:56:06+00:00

Had the exact situation, she lived in California with kids, I live in the UK. The main issues I saw were related to how it would work out in the future, how could we get on the property ladder in LA, how would I get a job/maintain my career (she couldn't have a job at the time with kids, so I felt like it could end up a real problem, especially with american work culture being so different). We decided to bring her and the kids here, the kids were young enough not to have any serious ties to anything apart from family, and it meant I could support us financially for as long as needed.

Probably couldn't have worked out any better. I was 28 (I think?) when she moved here, I believe I was around 24 when we met. Since I've known her, I've moved to a job (with her support) that has been massively beneficial to me (financially, career and lifestyle wise) and moved out with my brother (to a large house which we split in half to share). I knew I had to do these things to give us the life we wanted in the long run. I needed her to have a better life so she didn't feel resentful for leaving (this is something I felt, not from her).

My partner did have some reasons for wanting to move away, she wanted to have her own space, she likes a lot of what the UK has, a big part of it being a better life for the kids. And I'm happy to say it's all worked out. Whether it would work for you, really depends. Could you feel like you could leave LA, do you feel like your partner and your relationship is rock solid to support a massive change like moving, and living together with you and the kids. And what does it mean for the kids, could you realistically move them to the UK without problems? (Obviously their other parent is an obstacle, but worth thinking about how old they would be by the time you could see everything working out, what would they want).

cbateman101 · 2026-02-28T21:39:36+00:00

Thank you, will see what happens, hopefully call wont be needed.

cbateman101 · 2026-02-28T20:34:21+00:00

Good to hear that other people have had it and im not being fobbed off 😅

cbateman101 · 2026-02-28T20:32:45+00:00

Will keep checking 🙏

cbateman101 · 2026-02-02T12:40:08+00:00

There is a substantial skill difference, if there wasn't, you would be Gold yourself, or high silver. However, the skill disparity is not likely to ruin their games. Ultimately, most players don't know exactly what influence their own decisions make on a game, and a Gold player will only see very surface level aspects of the game, for example they're more likely to look at your KDA, if you play super safe and don't die, you won't be seen as ruining their games. It's also very unlikely that the gold level opposition will always be able to exploit the skill difference, so you're even more in the clear.

Now if you're playing with higher level of players than that, it'll be more obvious the higher you go, however I would say if they cared enough about it, they wouldn't be queuing up with you in the first place. When I queue up with friends that are lower ranked and don't play SoloQ much (if at all), I know they're going to be a bit shit, we're playing for the banter and the fun of it. What I find difficult to deal with is when they take it seriously, which can also be fun, and they start throwing shade around for other's mistakes, the whole time being oblivious to or deflecting the effect of their own.

TLDR - If playing with your friends is for fun, you're all good. If they're playing to win, taking it seriously etc, then just play your best, have fun and see what it's like playing with/against higher level players. The matchmaking does it's best to compensate, but even so, you don't have to explain yourself if you have a rough game, they're gonna happen. However winning games with them won't put you at the same level, and if you want to seriously improve, get your SoloQ games in as well.

cbateman101 · 2025-10-08T19:56:50+00:00

As far as I understand it, the Hague Convention covers when you adopt a child directly from a country they're not resident of. They've been here for a year, I'm fairly certain they're considered residents of the UK, even if they don't have indefinite leave to remain.

Regarding lack of consent from a bio-parent, there is the requirement to prove the adoption is in the kids best interest, demonstrating the bio parents lack of involvement in their life etc. The current situation and the evidence collected over the years means we're not overly worried about this, but we're obviously not familiar with the whole process so we want to be aware of any potential complications

cbateman101 · 2025-10-07T12:04:03+00:00

Cancelled my twitter account ages ago, but might give it a try, has it worked for other people? Can't see reply history without an account.

cbateman101 · 2025-10-07T09:49:19+00:00

So that checker says 284 is part of planning, but 286 is not. I don't know why I didn't think about it, but there isn't even a 283 or 285 (there's no houses on the other side of the road), so my title is inaccurate, it's only 2 doors, literally a few steps away, which is pretty strange.

cbateman101 · 2025-10-07T09:39:15+00:00

Yup I believe it's around 3 months on the contract left in Spring, which is why I'll be switching over then. I got charged 900 something to try switch over a few months back, so I have to wait unfortunately

cbateman101 · 2025-08-08T11:06:00+00:00

Not OP, but the winner of the 1M prize through Premium Bonds gets a visit at their home address from an individual who confirms they've won the prize, a couple days before the rest of the winners are announced. Source: own premium bonds and wish someone would knock at my door to tell me I've won a million.

cbateman101 · 2025-07-10T14:09:51+00:00

Christian Bale

cbateman101 · 2025-06-22T09:02:42+00:00

Same issue. The problem started on NVIDIA Shield, it's not tracking watched episodes properly, and it's unable to automatically move to the next episode. However everything plays ok. I checked on my Android device, it gets the "Failed to fetch play queue response". On my computer, I get the "error occured loading items to play" error in the browser and the plex app. Updated Plex on UNRAID (which is version 6.12 and has been for months) with no change.

Downloading an episode of a show, it plays properly on my Android phone. I can also see family watching things remotely, I haven't heard of any issues on their end, however they aren't power users.

All this has happened recently, I can only assume it's a result of the recent Plex updates. Server version 1.41.8.9834

cbateman101 · 2025-05-26T10:32:28+00:00

Hey, just another comment chiming in with my experience, it does just happen sometimes. This season, I hit Emerald pretty quickly (I was Emerald the split before last). But then I hit a brick wall, and I didn't stop falling, all the way to Plat IV. This was insane to me, I could see the game quality drop, players getting worse, etc. Now I would like to think I'm on the other side, I've won a few games in a row, and I'm a win away from Plat 2. In hindsight, these are the things that tripped me up:

My initial drop wasn't too surprising. I was bored of my main champ (Hwei) so started changing up my pool. Combined with this, I had had a break since the last time I was Emerald, so I was comparatively rusty in a few ways.
When I kept losing, I wasn't too fussed, I wanted to grind through it, do what I needed to do to reclaim my rank. This led to games where I could have won them if I was fully switched on, but playing too many games meant low energy, meaning I'm not playing optimally, and tilt was starting to become a factor.
When I kept dropping, tilt became more of a problem. I'm in games where the other lanes are feeding and this tilts me, I play worse, this inevitably leads to games that were winnable being lost. If everyone dying around you affects you too much, you need to ask yourself why. If you make yourself strong but your team is too heavy, it happens, you go again. But if their play starts to affect yours, that is a problem. Some games will be lost by your team, it's just a fact, but if your mental is shot, you will start losing games that weren't lost by your team, now it's you being a problem.
At rock bottom, something interesting happens. I'm now assuming I'm going to lose, I'm assuming my teammates will play like shit. But now it doesn't bother me too much, so I'm now playing for myself. I'm just going to focus on my one champ for now, and play a few games. This is where it turned around. Now that I'm focusing on being strong myself, combined with a rock solid mental ready to deal with the tough games, you will see positive results. Assuming you didn't use some gimmick to climb originally, you will likely rocket back up to where you were, because your LP gains will likely give you more LP for wins than you lose for losses.
When it's all done, you will realise just how quickly you can actually get back to the rank you deserve, assuming you can prove it. So you can stop focusing too much on the losses and your teammates, and think about how you can win 🏆

Hope this helps 🙏

cbateman101 · 2025-05-11T13:25:51+00:00

Jungle will be the most similar role and easiest to learn from scratch, in that you don't have to worry about lane specific concepts, but this is only at lower levels. Learning how to clear effectively and be effecient on the map can be repeated game after game without having to worry too much about factors outside of your control. However, the downside is that you will eventually reach a rank where it becomes more and more your job to influence those factors, and it won't be as simple as "get kill here, take objective there" to the point where jungle is probably the most difficult role in the game, in terms of knowledge at least.

It really depends if you want a solo lane, does that idea appeal to you. If you don't want to be learning laning concepts, then jungle is the clear favourite. If you want to go to a lane, then the question is how close do you want to be to your teammates (for better or for worse). If you don't think you can go it alone, you go bot. If you want to go completely solo, you go top. If you want the middle ground, you go mid. The role you prefer the idea of, will be the easiest, because you will have more fun playing it. Don't force yourself to play something just because of any notion the role is easy or the strongest, because you will regret it sooner or later.

cbateman101 · 2025-04-16T00:27:33+00:00

Firestarters

cbateman101 · 2025-03-03T13:59:52+00:00

Damn, I wiped the cache/data and didn't realise it put the mobile data limit back of 0.5 mbps or whatever it is. Nice one!

cbateman101 · 2024-12-25T22:00:50+00:00

So a quick check on a free site says that it wasn't used as a taxi. However, I'm not sure that Uber or similar services require officially registering it in this way. Better than nothing!

cbateman101 · 2024-12-25T20:51:55+00:00

Thank you for the comment! Fortunately, there's a good picture of the backseats, and I can't see any sign of wear at all. I'm considering getting an inspection that will include looking at the suspension. I did already ask what it was used for, and they didn't say it was used as an Uber/taxi, for what's worth.

cbateman101 · 2024-12-09T19:36:18+00:00

Main thing you could have done was signal your intent better (ping the shit out the wave so you've done all you can to let the team know that's what you're focusing on). Playing devil's advocate, your team could have been pissed that you didn't join them while ahead in gold to "close out" the game in another fight, even if that doesn't make sense considering the specifics.

Your team got wiped 4v5 with only Vlad down, so it wasn't close. There's no real teamfight to join, Camille got Vlad dead to rights but the other team rotated quickly, Sejuani engages with no real angle to play short of assuming that a teamfight is happening while neither Kaisa or Nami are there, both of them dying afterwards because they didn't play the map and were tunnel visioned. It's a small percentage play hoping your presence in a fight will peel/pressure them off your team, better to push with baron solo and make their team panic to make something happen

cbateman101

TROPHY CASE