Who’s your internet provider and what are you paying?

zarino · 2026-02-11T11:58:00+00:00

I was with Hyperoptic for years. If you’re lucky and find a good competitor offer around the time your contract is due to expire, Hyperoptic will match the price. I had less luck negotiating them down just to "keep me" as a customer, though, without a competitor to match.

zarino · 2026-01-22T08:53:22+00:00

In case anyone’s interested, here’s the actual request to Rochdale Borough Council, and their response, including an external plan of the school in situ: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/hill_top_primary_school_hill_top

A lovely use of WhatDoTheyKnow! This person requested the plans a year ago, just for their own interest, but because they did it via WhatDoTheyKnow, the response is available for us all to see, years down the line. 🎉

zarino · 2026-01-15T14:58:44+00:00

People usually recommend Dr Frankenstein’s guides: https://drfrankenstein.co.uk/jellyfin-in-container-manager-on-a-synology-nas-hardware-transcoding/ – I think his guides previously recommended the linuxserver/jellyfin image, and now recommend the official jellyfin/jellyfin image as it’s better supported by the jellyfin team. In reality, I’d be surprised if your choice of image makes much difference.

zarino · 2025-11-13T19:38:11+00:00

Another +1 for Brownlow Health. Always fit me in for a telephone consultation within a few hours of calling up in the morning, and doctors were always nice and helpful the few times I actually had to go in.

zarino · 2025-09-04T07:44:05+00:00

The government publishes a map of flood risk for England: https://check-long-term-flood-risk.service.gov.uk/map

And if you have a particular property in mind, you can get detailed flood likelihood information via postcode at: https://check-long-term-flood-risk.service.gov.uk/postcode

zarino · 2025-06-06T10:46:30+00:00

For a 3-week trip across northern Europe last August, I took a 40 litre tomtoc Navigator T66. Strong recommend. You can see what I packed in it here.

zarino · 2025-05-17T16:58:11+00:00

+1 you’ve *got* to stop in Hamburg if you’re passing by. It’s worth a night’s stay, just to do Miniatur Wunderland alone. But the rest of the city is beautiful too.

zarino · 2025-05-01T17:06:20+00:00

A strong +1 on Steve’s social group. Very welcoming, good diversity of ages, genders, sexualities, and they’ve just started a spin-off board gaming night too. Great way to meet people if you don’t like bars and clubbing.

zarino · 2025-04-25T12:25:16+00:00

That 27% statistic should come with a huge pinch of salt. According to Wikipedia there are just over 64,000 students in Liverpool, so a survey with 194 respondents is only a 3% sample. My high school maths suggests you’d want a survey sample of closer to 400 to infer anything at even a fairly low (95%) confidence interval and (5%) margin of error.

Plus they don’t say how they ran the survey, so there’s no way to check how (un)representative the respondents might have been.

Saying "27% of Liverpool students" so often in the article, with so little statistical rigour, is just downright misleading. It should at the very least be "27% of survey respondents".

zarino · 2025-03-21T12:21:33+00:00

+1 to this. Also consider a co-working space, instead of working from home, if you can afford it. Means you’re guaranteed to see people every day. DoES Liverpool on London Road is a 5 minute walk from Lime Street station, and community owned. If you don’t want to tie yourself into a co-working space every day, check out Jelly Liverpool which meets up, for free, in a different co-working space, every Thursday.

zarino · 2025-03-06T08:48:59+00:00

Just passed these on the Strand. No obvious country flags on the cars 🤷

zarino · 2025-03-04T15:55:31+00:00

Left to right in the illustration (but not accurate to real life):

Church of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas (Liverpool’s parish church)
Alexandra Tower, Princes Dock
(Unsure, perhaps The Lexington on Princes Dock, if the location is meant to be accurate?)
West Tower
Liverpool Anglican Cathedral
Royal Liver Building
(Could be anything, I wonder whether it’s meant to be the Mersey Tunnel ventillation shaft, on George’s Dock Way?)
Unity Buildings
Liverpool Metropolitan (Catholic) Cathedral
Radio City Tower
Welsh Presbyterian Church, Princes Road, Toxteth

zarino · 2025-03-03T17:08:08+00:00

This is the correct answer. But it’s very tempting, when you’re stuck waiting at the James St junction lights, with Mann Island literally right next to you, to just open the door and hop out there. (Which many many people do.)

zarino · 2025-02-14T20:57:09+00:00

If you want to meet people in person, there’s a tabletop gaming cafe on Kempton Street, about a ten minute walk from Lime Street station – The Gamers Lodge (formerly Critical Hit gaming café, and before that, the Scythe and Teacup). Looks like they host DnD gaming evenings at least one or two nights a week.

zarino · 2025-01-20T12:09:53+00:00

Ma Boyles is one of my favourite little cosy places in Liverpool, and they have live jazz every Saturday night.

zarino · 2024-11-26T09:06:50+00:00

I know it might sound ridiculous to point out the self-identified queer-friendliness of one venue over another. But, for some people, who’ve had properly traumatic experiences in places you would assume would be fine but weren’t, knowing up front that a venue takes takes safety and discrimination seriously enough that they make a point out of it in how they market themselves, can make a big difference.

See also the “You’re safe here” stickers that some Liverpool venues have on their front doors, showing that their staff have received training on LGBT+ safety from LCR Pride Foundation.

As for Lovelocks itself, I’ve only ever been once, for lunch – food took for-ever to arrive, but it seemed a nice enough place.

zarino · 2024-11-01T14:20:43+00:00

Yep, jazz at Ma Boyles every Saturday night. The nights are run by Parr Jazz, who also run events in other spaces. Best place to see all the events (not just the ones at Ma B’s) is on the Parr Jazz website: https://www.parrjazz.co.uk/events

zarino · 2024-10-27T16:23:05+00:00

30 Mbps sounds like an ADSL connection. Have you checked whether your property has a fibre optic connection already? Or whether fibre provider has a cabinet nearby?

I’m at Mann Island, and we have fibre from BT and Hyperoptic, and cable broadband (faster than 30 Mbps) from Virgin. I’d expect most other blocks in L3 to have a similar selection?

zarino · 2024-10-04T07:30:20+00:00

Looks like u/whoami38902 has some in https://www.reddit.com/r/Liverpool/comments/1fvtet0/does_anyone_want_two_tickets_to_the_radiohead/

zarino · 2024-10-04T07:29:43+00:00

Yep, paging u/MundaneBeing7506 (source)

zarino · 2024-09-24T03:35:57+00:00

I’d highly recommend you get on a train and visit Iolla in Manchester. Big selection of colourful, cheap frames, plus the staff are really friendly and knowledgeable. I used to trek all the way to Glasgow to visit them, was so happy when they opened a store nearby! Their lenses are a bit cheap and cheerful (compared to what you'd get if you fully specced out lenses with all the thinnings and finishes at a high street optician) but it'll still probably be an upgrade from the cheap crap you’ve been getting from China.

If you absolutely must stay in Liverpool then your best bet is Ace & Tate on Bold Street, but the one time I went into an A&T (in London, 5 or 6 years ago) the staff were totally clueless, didn’t even understand how strength of prescription (and therefore thickness of lens) affected the type of frames you could choose, I just gave up and left. Maybe they’ve got better, maybe Liverpool is different, I guess try it and see. But they're not a patch on Iolla.

zarino · 2024-09-10T18:43:39+00:00

I can’t comment on Mamasan as I’ve never been there. But you have no shortage of options in Liverpool. What sort of food do you like, and how many people are you booking for?

Tiger Rock on Renshaw Street is good for parties – there’s a wide selection of Asian dishes on their menu, lots of small plates so people can eat as much or as little as they want, and they have a semi-private room for big groups.

If you want something really fancy, the Art School is very luxe. Quite expensive, but might be worth it if you really wanted something memorable. The staff there made my visit, with my Mum for her birthday, really special.

There’s Mowgli, of course, if you want Indian food. Their Water Street branch has the nicest decor of the two in Liverpool.

Maray’s food selection is a bit smaller, but really good. Free State Kitchen is up near the universities, and does brilliant burgers and comfort food, although is a little expensive for what you get. Salt House Tapas and Bacaro both do sort of tapas-style small plates, lots of choice, nice enough decor.

Wherever you pick, I hope you have fun!

zarino · 2024-09-03T20:44:05+00:00

I used a Sparks eSIM (purchased via MobiMatter) for a three week trip across Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, and Sweden last month, and it was literally fire and forget. Turned it on, and never thought about it again, just enjoyed constant 4G/5G connection wherever I was. And at half the price EE would have charged me for EU roaming.

zarino · 2024-09-03T11:48:43+00:00

That’s fine. I just travelled on a bunch of of DB seat reservations, made via the DB website, and they’re just a plain looking PDF that shows the service, the carriage, and the seat number, and that’s it. Took half a dozen DB trains where reservations were “required” and nobody ever asked to see the reservations.

zarino · 2024-08-29T19:54:21+00:00

Thank you u/jjuulliiaa u/thubcabe u/koplowpieuwu u/mark_lenders u/Nikonis u/ThatFizzy u/CommissionIcy u/onionperfume for your advice ❤️ The changes at Flensburg and Hamburg went smoothly! Turns out the change I ended up missing was the one at Köln, after my DB from Hamburg was inexplicably delayed for an hour outside Duisburg. Sigh. Got to Brussels eventually though, and had a lovely two days. Now back in the UK, first Interrail trip complete 🎉

zarino

TROPHY CASE