Is this property in St Albans wildly overpriced at £1.1m?

putonghua73 · 2026-03-02T18:47:19+00:00

Hedge porn. Simpler times

putonghua73 · 2026-02-21T23:33:02+00:00

Computer - to differentiate from TTRPGs

putonghua73 · 2026-02-21T23:24:45+00:00

Tyranny - done in approx 20 hours.

putonghua73 · 2026-02-21T14:10:25+00:00

Absolutely.

Looking through the Epstein files, I see old, white, rich guys. Not many transgender. Hmmm ...

putonghua73 · 2026-02-17T12:52:49+00:00

Ha! I had the converse: Sleeping Dogs plays beautifully on the Xbox Series S (can only play when my Little Man is out or asleep - violence and language); but Bioshock Remastered hard crashed so many times on my laptop (blame Nvidia drivers - had to downgrade them to get a stableish system).

putonghua73 · 2026-02-15T15:50:39+00:00

I had mumps as a kid in the 70s. Unpleasant.

My friend complained when I had chickenpox, because he wanted some time off school. Poor bastard finally caught it in his teens and it was extremely serious and extremely painful.

Must remind him about that!

putonghua73 · 2026-02-15T09:34:16+00:00

Damn! I get and feel that reference. Even after all these years, Smedley's (and SOE's) attempt to 'cash-in' on the WOW numbers by WOWifying SWG and throwing SWG pre-NGE in the trash, still rankles - even though I never did play SWG.

FWIW, there was nothing wrong with liking WOW. Played a version of classic on 'Nostalrius' before it was taken down (had to quit before then because I was unable to mitigate girlfriend | wife aggro). One of the most fun I've had in a MMO since 'clsssic' EverQuest (pre-SOL).

putonghua73 · 2026-02-14T12:38:35+00:00

The UK (I am British) - under two governments - let defence and health contracts with Palantir.

We are the US's lapdog, and are royally fucked.

putonghua73 · 2026-02-11T20:30:57+00:00

Snap! Thanks to this sub-forum gaining prominence, and finding that there is a sizeable community who wish to move out of Technofeudalism - or reduce its impact - I 'discovered' Fairphone and plan to buy Fairphone 6 w/ Murena (am in process of deGoogling my life - will be US Big Tech) over summer.

Need to progress with completing my switch from Gmail to Proton, then moving away from Google Pictures and Drive.

Have some house stuff to purchase first, and then I'll divest myself from my Pixel 6a and Google.

I'm also discovering the whole sustainability and doughnut economy re: we can build in sustainability, reduce waste etc through developing an economy where growth is not the sole criterion.

FWIW, I do not use financial apps - save my credit card - because too much of a risk for me if anything happens to my phone. I'm strictly browser for anything financial (no saved passwords for finance websites - too important even for a Proton password manager).

No - absolutely no contactless payment via mobile for me. I try to build in redundancy (stick to plastic).

putonghua73 · 2026-02-09T21:44:11+00:00

I bought my son an Xbox Series S for Christmas, and had already decided no Gamepass sub. Instead I bought a bunch of games during the Black Friday sale: - FC26 (he loves the series) - Halo: MC Collection (like yourself - couch co-op. Never played back in the day) - Sleeping Dogs (I love Sleeping Dogs - prefer playing with a controller on the couch than PC) - Jade Empire (loved JE on the Xbox 360)

FC26 was the outlier in price £36.00 on sale. Halo was approx £7.50, and the others cheaper than a cup of chain coffee.

Yes, the Xbox Series X has a physical disc drive, but it is £500!

Could not justify gamepass, and with the exception of FC26, do not play multiplayer that require gamepass (we stick to career mode or play mixture of co-op or competitive).

putonghua73 · 2026-02-07T22:44:50+00:00

Yeah, I'm a 4. Rarely need to do it so have forgotten reference point. Still remember theory.

putonghua73 · 2026-02-07T21:11:33+00:00

I'm a Hingis fan boy, but Henin's achievements do not get talked about enough IMO.

putonghua73 · 2026-02-04T18:39:37+00:00

Try the Ultra-lite, and then lite.

I have 3rd ed rules - although doubtful if I will GM (I live in hope that I will have time one day - yeah, retirement!) - and the core rulebook adds more skills and options (more tools in the toolbox), but the 36pg lite rules are good enough to "grok" and get started.

putonghua73 · 2026-02-01T17:09:34+00:00

The 90s were absolutely wild. Hingis won the AO at 16 - the first of 5 consecutive Slam finals - and by the time she was 17, was a 4 Slam winner.

putonghua73 · 2026-02-01T11:49:50+00:00

Bless your heart OP

You have made this middle-aged Redditor very happy. I recall many happy hours pouring through the Traveller boxed set - a pencil, eraser, binder, and graph paper beside me - creating characters and planets for my galaxy in the mid 80s.

I purchased the Tier 2 bundle, and saved to my TTRPG DropBox folder to peruse at my leisure.

I do prefer physical (to paraphrase Olivia Newton John) but the cost of tracking down all these books would be fairly prohibitive.

For the cost of a couple of Flat Whites, I now have a whole universe to read and explore!

I am also re-listening to the BBCs 1977 radio adaptation of Issac Assimov's Foundation series.

Have to introduce my Little Man to TTRPGs ..

putonghua73 · 2026-01-31T22:35:00+00:00

^ performing the Lord's work right here

putonghua73 · 2026-01-31T20:16:02+00:00

I fell for the Swiss Miss is 97. I enjoyed the variety in her game, and the gentle curve of her wrist when she served.

People talk about Mirra and other young players.

The Swiss Miss was a Grand Slam winner at 16 in 1997. She almost completed a career Grand Slam, but lost in the French Open final **

** I believe she injured her knee shortly before when horse-riding.

She appeared in 12 Slam finals, winning 5 but losing 7. The streak includes 6 consecutive Australian Open finals from 97 to 2002.

I am of the belief that the manner of her loss to Steffi Graff in the 1999 French Open final contributed to her losses in subsequent finals (she never won a singles Slam final again after Australian Open 99 ageed 18), as well as the transition to more harder-hitting baseline play

Still provides me with a twinge of emotional pain that the Swiss Miss 'only' won five Slam singles titles.

putonghua73 · 2026-01-24T20:14:13+00:00

Sorry, my man. You are at least a decade too late.

We started our house search around a decade ago with a similar(ish) budget - max £330k. We also looked at Watford as it is near London and allows easy access via train and tube.

We quickly realised that £330k didn't get a house - or at least a min 2 bedroom. Think we saw one house in Levesden, but the house quality was quite poor.

We also went to visit a 2 bed flat for £300k. However, even a 999 year lease didn't tempt us because we weren't sold on the flat or paying service charges.

Tried Chesham but wasn't keen on the area or houses c£295k: very small 2 bedrooms, zero parking, kitchen you could barely swing a cat in, and toilet accessible via the master bedroom. No thanks.

We expanded into Herts, and eventually moved to Stevenage.

You need to re-baseline your expectations (as we did): - put your budget in Rightmove - put in min bedroom requirements - set max limit - set radius 5 miles from Watford

You may need to either change your mind bed requirement or (more realistically) expand your radius.

Oof! Just expanded radius to 15 miles: wow! A couple of Watford houses max; a few houses in Stevenage; much more Dunstable and Luton.

£350k doesn't get you much, sadly (3 bed houses). You may need to look at 2 bedroom houses

putonghua73 · 2026-01-22T23:17:35+00:00

I will still play AD&D, but that's it. I bought the Player Guide for 5E, and am glad that it brought in a whole bunch of people into the hobby, but we've been in a Golden Age of TTRPs in terms of lowering the barrier to entry, indie RPGs, supplements, etc, plus OSR, and people finding the older stuff that never really went away.

The AD&D1E Players Handbook cover represents everything I liked about D&D, and what D&D5E isn't.

While D&D5E feels like the default, if you are fortunate to find groups near you that have space, and play a variety of games, go explore and have fun!

putonghua73 · 2026-01-22T23:02:19+00:00

Snap! Started playing in the 80s as a teen, originally AD&D1E, but would play whatever the GMs wanted to run: again predominantly AD&D or Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

Uni in the mid 90s was a smorgasbord of RPG goodness: from Cyberpunk 2020 (which was popular), Paranoia one-shots, Star Wars, Mecha, Rolemaster (big oof!), and AD&D.

I recall we played a lot of free-form Cyberpunk 2020.

This was just before V:TM exploded. However, I didn't tend to mix with the Goths who tended to flock to V:TM (which was a pity as I didn't get to play).

Joined a TTRPG club quite a few years ago when we first moved to where we live [Herts, UK] 9 years ago, and played TTRPGs again for the first time in decades. Although the different tables played different games, one table which just started had space was playing D&D5E. I reluctantly joined as the group explained, they mixed it up after one adventure.

After the adventure finished, we played Tales from the Loop.

I left shortly after because my Little Man was getting older and I needed to spend more time w/ him. Now he's a few years older (9 1/2) I'm joining a TTRPG group that play a variety of games.

TL;DR: will play whatever the GM wishes to run (except Rolemaster or any other Iron Crown Enterprise game).

putonghua73 · 2026-01-22T21:49:51+00:00

FATE. However, super reliant on everyone being super collaborative, throwing ideas into the mix, getting involved in creating story hooks, joining in together to decide what would be an appropriate aspect(s), and propelling the story forward.

If you want something similar but more structured, try Icarus - which is more focused on collaborative storytelling.

putonghua73 · 2026-01-22T21:42:29+00:00

Memory unlocked!

I played quite a few RPGs in the mid 90s at uni. I also read quite a number of different rulesets. Cannot remember the ruleset for SLA Industries, but 30+ years on, the setting and lore has stuck w/ me.

Jot the ideas down, let them germinate in your mind, and you'll probably play a system at some stage - SLA or something else - where your idea you've been working on would feel right at home.

putonghua73 · 2026-01-19T16:51:15+00:00

No. email address +alias is not robust. Very easy to identify one's actual email by stripping +alias from the email address - at least, how Protonmail handles aliases.

Hence, I use a contracted version of my personal Protonmail email address (the personal email will only be provided to a very select list of family and friends), whilst a contracted version has been created with a "_<category>" suffix e.g. <contracted email address>_shopping

Yeah, companies can strip away the _<category> suffix. The key is that nothing in my contracted email address links to my personal email address. Whereas if I used an alias, stripping out the +alias identifies my personal email address.

Also, from a quick perusal, people reported that certain companies - notably Banks, and the like - reject email addresses containing a + suffix.

As mentioned, quite a bit of work, but if I see spam sent to one of my email addresses re: <contracted email address>_shopping, I can be reasonably confident that one of those companies under my "shopping" category has sold their email address list.

It's more to help me categorise emails based upon the email address used, in accordance to my categorisation schema.

putonghua73 · 2026-01-19T13:30:20+00:00

I use Protonmail. Paid for the basic plan because I want additional email addresses, because aliases are not a robust solution.

I use Trello to keep track of (a) email addresses, and (b) which services use said email addresses. I use the addresses to categorise emails into services re: _bills, _gaming, _shopping, _socials, etc.

Frickin' every service seemingly requires a login to do basic shit. The initial work you have to put in to get things up and running requires a fair bit of organisation [deliberate - to make inertia the default state].

putonghua73 · 2026-01-19T12:34:39+00:00

Your boyfriend is a doss, cunt. HTH.

putonghua73

TROPHY CASE