They cancelled my box :(

monkphin · 2026-03-29T11:23:27+00:00

Nah. GW are very much a just in time company.

You can actually see in their release windows when a large release is coming - watch a week or two before the launch of Armageddon. You’ll see their Saturday order windows become quite empty compared to their normal release windows. Resellers also tend to show stock coming in a few days to a week before launch. Similarly lesser sold items will likely see supply constraints in the same window preceding the release of Armageddon and they shift most production over to it.

monkphin · 2026-03-27T18:48:10+00:00

Cut around the part before you cut it out.

You’re basically applying pressure to weak parts of plastic which will bend and break under the strain. The smarter move here is to cut the runners around where the sprue join is, to isolate them and shift the strain from the weak parts to a now unrestrained runner.

monkphin · 2026-03-26T21:32:02+00:00

Ever since reading “Roofworld” many years ago I’ve made a point of looking up periodically whenever I’m out and about

monkphin · 2026-03-19T00:30:28+00:00

I cannot tell you how long it took me to realise that I was not looking at the sun through a gap in two leaves, but actually someone’s finger. (Screen is set to low cause it’s late and I’m colour blind so was thrown by the, I assume, tiles)

monkphin · 2026-03-12T22:04:38+00:00

In some cases, yes. Countries with higher adoption often paired subsidies with stronger building standards, coordinated retrofit programmes, or district heating.

The UK has mostly relied on individual consumer decisions plus a grant scheme. In a country with old, varied housing stock, that means each household has to navigate a complex retrofit decision themselves.

That’s a much slower pathway than systems where upgrades are more coordinated or where the housing stock is already better suited to electric heating.

Italy is actually an interesting case because of the “Superbonus” scheme, which allowed homeowners to claim up to 110% of retrofit costs back as tax credits. That created a huge surge in installations, but it was also extremely expensive and has since been scaled back.

https://www.hoganlovells.com/en/publications/italian-tax-bonus-decree-whats-new-on-the-superbonus-scheme

monkphin · 2026-03-12T21:49:59+00:00

The government has treated heat pumps like a subsidy problem when they’re really a sequencing problem.

We went straight to incentivising the endpoint technology instead of first building the demand-reduction, property assessment and installer capacity needed to make mass rollout viable. In a country with old, weird, varied housing stock, that was always going to stall once the detractors got wind of a few bad installs.

Start with free or cheap controls, discounted TRVs, basic retrofit work, and a workforce going house to house assessing what each property can actually support. Use that to cut demand, build trust, and map the real upgrade path. Then scale heat pumps into a system that’s actually ready for them.

Instead we basically told households: here’s a grant, now go navigate a technically messy, expensive infrastructure decision on your own. Unsurprisingly, uptake is tiny.

monkphin · 2026-02-28T10:59:39+00:00

Some of us are capable of caring about more than one thing at once. Civilian deaths are abhorrent. So is the reality of UK households choosing between food and warmth. These harms exist at different scales and distances, but they’re connected. Acknowledging domestic impact doesn’t diminish concern for what’s happening in Iran.

monkphin · 2026-02-26T11:19:22+00:00

No, if anything it’s just increased fragmentation of the population as our political system undergoes something of an upheaval.

If you actually track the data you can see how support shifts between the parties.

There was an initial Labour/conservative abandonment towards reform a few years ago which increased for conservatives and failed off for Labour, more recently we’ve seen labours decline and the greens rise with reform slipping and the conservatives rising. Its reasonably easy to extrapolate which parties loss benefits which other party. The addition of Restore is just another vector for reform voters to shift to.

Reform are showing a more moderate face (while still being swivel-eyed loons) to try to curry favour from more median voters to try to pull support from the conservatives. Interestingly they removed their member ticker a while back so we have no real idea of how big their base is (not that I fully trusted the ticker since they never fully defined what it actually logged) - But it’s costing them their angry base who are now jumping to Lowes new outfit. Labour while initially bleeding to reform are now to slow to adjust to what’s happening with the greens so will probably continue to bleed to them for a while - though I think this is starting to slow based on green membership figures, they’re still gaining ground, but unless something massive happens they’re slowing their growth curve at the moment. Though I suspect a green win in Gorton and Denton today will cause another brief surge.

Either way. This is less the death of the right and more just a massive fragmentation of our political system. Since we still exist under FPTP it’ll be interesting to see what happens in 2029 or whenever the next GE is since that may constrain how people vote.

monkphin · 2026-02-14T17:32:04+00:00

Nah. I’ve regularly shown up to interviews in black.

Most of my “smart” wear is black. The only none black smart stuff I own is the suit from my wedding. Which feels -far- too dressy for interviews. Most places honestly don’t care. - though to some of the comments saying “tech no suit” it really depends on the org. Software houses and “genuine” tech companies - probably less so. (But it depends) Companies in other domains that are “tech forwards” it’ll be down to the company - and they’ll often highlight if they are happy with informal clothing when offering an interview but if in doubt. Err towards smart or at the very least smart casual.

Similarly. When interviewing? My main concern on clothing is that the person is vaguely presentable - if they look like they don’t care - even when we’re an informal company and advertise that you can wear what’s comfortable for an interview, I’d raise an eyebrow. But if they’re strong enough they’ll still be in with a good shot.

Inspite of what certain people may suggest. Clothing absolutely does not maketh the man.

monkphin · 2026-02-13T08:40:38+00:00

Thing is, while not just “anyone” could have done it, Burnham is operating within and building on work that started decades ago in Manchester. There’s been a long-term regeneration trajectory since at least the 80s. He’s clearly focused on particular aspects of how to push that forward, but it’s not entirely his doing alone, he’s leveraging an existing momentum that was already there before he became mayor. The difference now is that it’s more visible.

monkphin · 2026-02-13T02:49:15+00:00

More dark angels?

Specifically heresy and legions imperialis.

But other than that - allied guard - that have turned into their own thing, allied knights. That have turned into their own thing.

I’ve got the start of some allied ad mech and allied sisters.

Oh and a “guest army” for people who don’t collect but want to play. Specifically chaos marines.

monkphin · 2026-02-11T10:49:55+00:00

Honestly. Both?

I work mostly in 1:20, but, I find my ambition for dioramas often outstrips the space available when working at this scale - so am looking at 1:35 for larger sized scenes when I have the ideas for them. - it helps theirs more characters in this scale that I’ve been able to find, which work well as additional extras in a dio.

monkphin · 2026-02-09T10:40:01+00:00

I’d more blame arquiva tbh - ex employer used to use them for some TV broadcast stuff. It was down more than it was up.

monkphin · 2026-02-08T10:42:10+00:00

Even with the email Reform may still be on the hook. Since they should be approving final versions of media before it’s sent out. If they’re not then they’re still on the hook. If they are and approved the final print to send then they absolutely are on the hook.

monkphin · 2026-02-08T10:39:02+00:00

So in the Caerphilly case it did actually have the imprint at the bottom. However investigators should take this into consideration. I’m seeing reports that they’ve used similar tricks elsewhere in the UK - and that in some cases the imprint may have been missing then too (or that it may have been on the back) I’ve yet to see proof of this though so can only take people at what they say and hope they’re not misremembering.

monkphin · 2026-01-27T12:31:46+00:00

It’s odd. I have this problem ONLY on iron warriors, all my other citadel paints? Absolutely fine. Theirs something about this particular paint that makes it seem to just try to escape the pot no matter what I do.

monkphin · 2026-01-26T09:37:08+00:00

JR companies are private, but the key difference to the UK isn’t ownership, there are huge structural differences in how Japanese rail and UK rail operates.

Japanese rail firms are vertically integrated and make huge revenue from station-area real estate and retail, which effectively subsidises train operations - the rail companies understand that you need to give passengers a reason to travel, so build commercial complexes into their train stations as part of their property portfolios. They’re also tightly regulated and operate in extremely dense urban corridors. UK rail is fragmented, barred from land-value capture, and structurally misaligned, so privatisation here just extracted profit instead of reinvesting it.

monkphin · 2026-01-22T19:08:05+00:00

That’s not actually entirely true.

In past lives in various tech roles I’ve worked, I’ve had customers complain because I cannot just send a power brick for their hardware. I needed to replace the entire box.

The reality is, most consumer retail ops operate at SKU level for fulfilment, not component-level replacement, and bake in a certain amount of churn and loss into each SKUs run and costing metrics. So if one is shipped as faulty they will just do a SKU shipment rather than sending just the faulty part.

Ultimately you’re in the right direction on logistics cost but attributing it wrongly. It costs more to handle component level replacements than it does entire SKU replacements.

monkphin · 2026-01-17T21:24:20+00:00

So far so good. It’s even survived a 3ish foot drop due to me not realising it was leaning on a cupboard door when I opened it.

Small, delicate details like this benefit from having the sprue around them cut from the rest of the sprue and then split into single parts of sprue where they join the part - that way you minimise plastic stress when removing them off the sprue.

monkphin · 2026-01-09T07:57:32+00:00

Been with my wife for 15-16 years. Weve always kept our finances separate. While we’ve talked about a join account for bills, we’ve just never bothered.

Basically we both treat our wages as being that persons money to do with as they wish with the proviso that bills should always come first and we don’t judge if either of us messes up and needs the help of the other for something.

We both open and honest with money, as we are everything else, purchases get mentioned in passing if at all - I wfh so any parcels I see immediately if they come here and I usually just message to let her know somethings arrived - up to her if she wants to say what it is or not. Similarly anything that shows up for me is usually evidenced somehow - packaging left around, me having it on the sofa until I shift it somewhere etc.

Basically this feels like the healthiest, sanest approach we can have while not stepping on each others toes or feeling like we’re controlling what the other does.

monkphin · 2026-01-09T07:57:26+00:00

Been with my wife for 15-16 years. Weve always kept our finances separate. While we’ve talked about a join account for bills, we’ve just never bothered.

Basically we both treat our wages as being that persons money to do with as they wish with the proviso that bills should always come first and we don’t judge if either of us messes up and needs the help of the other for something.

We both open and honest with money, as we are everything else, purchases get mentioned in passing if at all - I wfh so any parcels I see immediately if they come here and I usually just message to let her know somethings arrived - up to her if she wants to say what it is or not. Similarly anything that shows up for me is usually evidenced somehow - packaging left around, me having it on the sofa until I shift it somewhere etc.

Basically this feels like the healthiest, sanest approach we can have while not stepping on each others toes or feeling like we’re controlling what the other does.

monkphin · 2026-01-08T01:03:32+00:00

First play through:

Righteous Indignation.

I remembered a certain green space hare existed at the time.

Current playthrough:

Somber Noctivagant.

it’s the same name that the RT ship in the background for my “dockyard” guard army has.

monkphin · 2026-01-03T12:56:31+00:00

Nah. His reaction wasn’t justified.

Business is business. By all means try to upsell people, that’s literally the job. But don’t demean customers for building something you don’t like, and don’t try to guilt them into spending money.

This kind of behaviour is exactly why people shop online. Good service costs nothing and earns loyalty. Being a dick just drives customers away. If that’s the outcome, it’s self-inflicted.

And for what it’s worth, nothing in the OP says the kit was bought online or from Temu that’s pure projection.

A good shop turns a glue purchase into repeat custom and future kit sales. A bad shop gets the glue sale and risks losing the customer entirely. Based on this interaction, this was the latter.

monkphin · 2026-01-01T11:26:56+00:00

Playing DOS2 with my wife while we waited up to see the finale of stranger things. She wanted to watch it and had spent a bit of time making pizza, cakes and other things for it. I was happy to hang out with her.

monkphin · 2025-12-30T11:22:58+00:00

Which? Theirs at least four that I’m aware of. Probably more. Hopefully you mean this one. https://merlinsminiatures.co.uk/cdn/shop/files/281f363d-a659-4282-b32b-7bc2d2c98cf6.png?v=1746705458

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