[Drezha]

Tippon wrote:

Drezha wrote:

Went through Quidco and could get the Unlimited deal for £20 a month with a free B535

Double check your paperwork when it comes through. I just did the same through TopCashBack, and the paperwork says it’s £29 a month after the various discounts. The initial emails all say £20 a month. I haven’t had a chance to ring them yet, but I’ve got to chase up my phone bills too. My contract ended and they still charged for the phones.

Paperwork and first bill came through today and they had me down for £29 as well. Called them and they’ll apply a discount to my account to drop it to £20 a month, so I’ll have to keep an eye on it.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

What model Pi have you used? The Pi 4 can display two 4K monitors apparently (not tried it, as no 4K monitors here).

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Yeah, the 525 is fine now we’ve had it a few days.

Upload speeds have been noticeably quicker whilst at work backing up documents – getting 2.5Mb/s through Freefilsync, rather than the 1Mb/s was getting on Virgin.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Use Arq on my Mac to backup to a Onedrive corporate account (the Uni provides me with Office 365 – Arq ensures that it’s encrypted at rest) and Synology gets backed up to Synology C2. I also store a copy of files at work, using the SFTP server and Freefilesync to copy between the Synology and work as that does SFTP sync.

Then I have multiple file copies at home, as I also have Time Machine hooked up to my Mac and the Synology acts as a Resilo Sync node, that sync all the files across my devices.

I had considered throwing Backblaze in to the mix, but the offsite copy at work sort of covers that, and would be quicker to recover from in event of a house fire.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Dave Rice wrote:

Drezha, unlimited sims are available for business at the same sort of cost

Did not realise that! Thanks for pointing out. I’ll send it to the cadet unit I just left as we were being a bit naughty and using a personal SIM, but apparently should be using a business line (a restriction as cadets is a charity I believe).

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

PlaneMan wrote:

Drezha wrote:

I’m currently trying to cancel with Virgin now

Good luck, you may well need it.

Got there in the end! Phone call to the Indidian call centre was a pain, before they transferred me back to the UK, but once back to the UK call centre, it seemed to be fine.

This morning it’s a bit slower – might investigate where I can put the router this weekend and see if it’s quicker upstairs.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

I’m currently trying to cancel with Virgin now. They’re telling me I need an engineer out and they may need new cables etc. I’m not bothered with that – the 4G connection has been solid since the first day. Only hiccup was trying to browse whilst Steam was downloading updates.

Haven’t tried online gaming, but I don’t tend to do that to much. Speedtest seems to show pings averaging about 35-40ms.

interesting point but the Three deal isn’t for business – says so in the terms and conditions apparently (and is why it’s limited to 1000GB a month from what it says in the conditions).

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Tippon wrote:

Double check your paperwork when it comes through. I just did the same through TopCashBack, and the paperwork says it’s £29 a month after the various discounts. The initial emails all say £20 a month. I haven’t had a chance to ring them yet, but I’ve got to chase up my phone bills too. My contract ended and they still charged for the phones.

Thanks. No paperwork yet, but it all turned up and after the initial setup, it’s been fairly good.

However, I fell foul of Virgin’s follow up phone call from when I cancelled and they’ve signed me up for another 12 months, for 50Mb for £25 a month. Setup is just me screwing the router in to the cable at the wall, as this was previously supplied by Virgin. I think they managed to get me in a moment of weakness, as the first day of the Three deal was a bit poor – see below.

With that, the next day when Virgin offered me it, I accepted. However, it seems to be working nicely now and have not had anything as bad as that during the day (I’ve been working from home today and it’s been solid).

Now I’m in two minds which one to send back!

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

With the house completion going through today, I pulled the plug on this and I’ll be cancelling with Virgin (and paying the early repayment fees if I have to) as they wanted 30 days notice to change address and this means we’ll be without internet for Christmas (no thanks!)

Went through Quidco and could get the Unlimited deal for £20 a month with a free B535 – if I’d have gone through the Three website directly, it would have been £21 and only a B331. Should be able to get £60 cashback as well.

Will see how we get on with it!

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Thanks for the link. I’ve been making use of VNC for accessing my home Pi and currently use the Realview VNC to access it from outside the house. May have to look in to it or look at not accessing it. In fairness, once the house sells, I’ll have no reason to access it from outside the house, so can just leave it as a local VNC connection which may be OK (I’ve not yet read but I’ll have a look).

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

I’ve 170 days of my subscription left, I’ll have to do some research to decide whether it’s worth replacing that.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

JayCeeDee wrote:

Drezha wrote:

I do have a VESA mount somewhere, but my current monitor doesn’t support it so it’s not much help now unfortunately!

My old monitor wasn’t VESA mountable, so I got one of THESE. I’ve replaced the monitor since and now have 2 VESA monitors on a DESKMOUNT. That means the old adapter is spare – if it’s any use to you all I want is postage for it. PM me if that’s of any use. It’s a bit of a cludge, but it worked well for 9 months or so.

Thanks for the offer, but no thanks – my monitor is this one, and the stand is built in. Does the job for me and I’m not using the Pi 4 at the minute.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

I guess you just download the videos?

I use it for downloading some Youtube videos and converting to MP3 files, which would probably tax the processor of the Android for quite a period. I do use it on a Pi to do the download so not that much faster perhaps!

I’d not tried it with iPlayer – I’d always used get_iplayer for that, so perhaps I’ll try this one now then.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

I do have a VESA mount somewhere, but my current monitor doesn’t support it so it’s not much help now unfortunately!

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

An article showing that the newer firmware updates are helping to keep the board cool.

https://www.hackster.io/news/raspberry-pi-4-firmware-updates-tested-a-deep-dive-into-thermal-performance-and-optimization-2f22c78e7089

Also interesting is the almost throwaway comment at the end about running the board vertically, rather than horizontally. Not sure I’ve seen a case out there that would do this but interesting to see if there is!

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Interesting to note that it can be powered directly from the iPad Pro!

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

They weren’t covered in my backup location – they’re saved in your Saved Game folder in your user profile folder of Windows. Moving them in to the My Games folder in my documents folder and creating a directory junction back to where they came from has solved that issue (it’s only the third game I’ve ever seen use that folder – both of the others are old! One of the Red Alert games (3 I think) and Star Wars: Empire at War!)

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Ed P wrote:

Drehza, I’d recommend going into settings and making sure you do not have BOTH local and cloud saves. They have/had a habit of getting out of sync causing data loss. I turned off Cloud saves as I could not see their point on a single player game.

Noted – I hadn’t seen that, so I’ll make sure that’s enabled. I can only see its worth if you game on other PC’s (I only have one that will run it!) and you want to backup the saves (which, depending on where the local ones are saved, may be covered by my backup regime anyhow), so I totally agree on that point.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

I put aside my issues with Epic and purcashed it. I tried to buy it on the Windows store, but Windows refused to update to the latest Windows version and therefore wouldn’t let me download it, so I purchased it from Epic instead.

Have spent most of yesterday playing – wife is Ireland and I had to wait in for a parcel and for a chap to service our alarm (who never turned up!).

Impressed so far. It’s got hints of Bioshock and Borderlands in to my mind – perhaps a bit more so than Fallout, but it seems to take all three and throw them in a pot together to spit this out. Enjoying it, so money well spent at the minute.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Bob Williams wrote:

I don’t know why you wouldn’t be able to play music directly off it though. https://tinyurl.com/yxdlloeo

As I was looking to use it with an Apple device and Apple don’t allow fun 😉 Well, with that one I wouldn’t as the new iPad is USB-C, as is the Moto G8.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

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