We bought a new front door the other day. I say bought, we won't actually pay anything til April 2018, which is handy because we can't afford the monthly payments at the moment with my wife on maternity. My pay is just about to go up (backdated 2 months) and when she goes back to work in Easter we'll be back to something approaching normality, so can start saving up.
Thanks.Originally Posted by Foe
Yep! Unless i keep earning more so can pay it off quicker. If I earn less I'm up shit creek.
Anyone into mortgages on here?
And Magic, no pics. Madman.
Just seen a TV show say that a decade ago you needed an average of 3.2 times your salary to buy a house here. Now it's 6.6 times.
We finally bought our own place four weeks ago. We got loan offers from a few banks (went to 5 or six in total to make sure we got the best possible deal) and even though they did fuck up a few times everything is now in order and the new place is finally starting to look like a home as we got the last big items delivered today. Obviously we're still missing a few things but the area is lovely and we couldn't have afforded the area in a few years when they start building the tram tracks over the sea. Now we just have to keep paying the bank for the next 25 years.
Congrats Pen, where is it?
Bit the bullet and advised my landlord I want out asap. Contractually I haven't a leg to stand on, but it's worth a shot.
I live in Helsinki, so the area won't probably tell you much, but the area is called Kruunuvuorenranta. 78m2 with two bathrooms (the bigger one has a decent size sauna) two bedrooms (with an option for one more) and a massive livingroom kitchen combo (that's open kitchen in English I think). Obviously we're both super happy.
Edit: oh and it's brand new we moved in a few days after everything that was needed was done, but they're still doing something outside with the yard and such.
Congrats, Pen.
Does it have a garage for the huskies and sled?
Is there a back story to this?
I guess they could be kept in the storage room we have on the ground floor. It's an apartment building so it's that or the balcony.
Have you seen the film Coming To America? That's basically the situation when Eddie Murphy and his PA move into a NY flat.
What a film
Ah, I thought you were still in London for some reason. Sauna sounds awesome, is having one of them pretty standard even in apartments?
Yeah, it's pretty common to have one. And if you don't have one there's usually a communal one (everyone has their own time slot) in the building. I'll get a few pictures up if I have any still on my phone.
I live with a cunt.
Anyone got any Philips Hue lights? Kinda tempted to get one of the starter packs. Seems pretty cool.
http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/bes...d-light-bulbs/
Yep, I got a starter set, the desk lamp, and some lightwaverf sockets fairly recently. They work brilliantly with the Google Home.
Expound?
What's the desk lamp (link?) and what are the lightwave sockets?
Lamp https://www.amazon.co.uk/Philips-Per...dp/B00TPKQ6DG/ (more of a bedside thing than a desk one but I'm only ever typing at mine).
Lightwave RF sockets https://www.amazon.co.uk/LightwaveRF...dp/B00ATY2R80/
I was going to go for Samsung Smartthings sockets as they work natively at the moment with Google Home (Smartthings, Hue, and Nest do) but they were more expensive and you can work the Lightwave ones with the remote or app and they'll work with the Home if you use IFTTT.
You can also buy Lightwave RF light switches and just control your normal bulbs with them.
How's the Google Home thing?
I've got a little list of Smart Home shit I want to buy:
- Speaker
- Lights
- Hub/voice control
It's decent. Lacked a lot of functionality to begin with but there's lots of services being added all the time, Netflix and your photo backup being the latest and very handy. I got some chromecast audios and plugged them into existing speakers, so once you name them in the app you can play or transfer music to them directly from the Home by voice (just say "play my rock playlist upstairs" and it'll start playing my Spotify playlist on the speaker with the CC named 'upstairs' plugged into it. Same with the Shield box (or a normal chromecast), if I ask Home to play a Netflix show it'll just start playing it on the TV.
For some reason it can't do reminders yet (even though it can tell you your schedule from Calendar) which is really annoying as it should be a piece of piss for them to implement, but it shouldn't be long. Needs multi user support in a big way too. The language barrier can be a pain too as it's officially a US only device as of yet, but I haven't found any regional issues, which I had feared. Like if I ask it what the traffic to work is like it will tell me with an ETA even though it's not a US location.
I'm not sure if the Echo does all that with the Chromecasts but I think it has more features of its own at this stage. Interestingly I see at CES today a good few devices landing with Alexa built in so Amazon must be licencing it out to third parties. There's a very similar Lenovo hub and an LG fridge with it that I seen so far.
Cheers.
I could really do without an internet fridge
Yeah that's a really odd one. God knows how much they'll be flogging that for.
If I had it back again I'd probably got an Echo (provided it had the Chromecast support) as having them in all the main rooms would be really handy, so you could have one main one and then dots elsewhere so it wouldn't cost a fortune.
All this smart home stuff has got me using IFTTT more though and it's so fucking handy, even for non smart home stuff. I don't know how I went so long never checking it out.
Echos are fucking shite! My mum has one it's total lol.
Is she trying to do anything useful with it though or just trying to converse with it?
It can tell her the weather and play radio. What else can be done with it?
I don't really know fully but I presume it can play music from a Spotify account, set timers, play news, etc. I must buy a dot and check one out properly myself.
Ask it to read out her son's excellent posts on The Third Half.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/amazon...atures-2016-10
The new Shield has Assistant built in.
And these
https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/04/nvidia-spot/
How does this all work @Giggles? Out the loop here.
Is Google Home the hub of some sort similar to Alex and everything works off that wirelessly? How does IFTTT come into play?
Yeah it's basically Googles version of an Echo but it has Google Assistant built in rather than Alexa. You can use it as a stand alone for the usual things like playing music (has a decent speaker but I don't know how it compares to the Echo one), timers, general questions, etc but it also controls smart home devices like anything with Cast functionality and the three natively supported ones I mentioned earlier (Hue, Smartthings, and Nest) that can be added in the Home app.
Toggle Spoiler
IFTTT comes in for devices that aren't supported yet by Home. It has Assistant as one of the 'This' functions so you set up what you want and use Home as the interface to do it.
ie, setting up an IFTTT applet like "IF I say a, b, or c, to Google Assistant, THEN switch on my TV (the lightwave rf socket the TV is plugged into).
Ah, so you don't really need Home unless you want to voice activate? You can just control everything from the app if you have the Smart Things hub and any other supported devices?
Yep, they all have an app or you can use IFTTT to do things like timers or situational switches without any voice control. Or once Google Assistant makes it onto more phones (only on the two Pixels currently) you could voice activate from there if you want (or download Alexa).
Cool - I got a Sonos Play one at Christmas so good to know I don't need to shell out for something else I wouldn't really use to listen to music.
Will take a look at SmartThings, cheers.
EDIT: what the fuck would you use a wifi fridge for?
I would love one of those (Sonos) myself. Must take another look at them.
Smarthings is a really good one to start with as most things you'd want are included under the umbrella (lights, switches, sockets, etc) so you could build up a fair bit of stuff all under one single control hub. The way mine is now I've the Phillips hub and the Lightwave hub and , even though they're hidden as all I use is Home, if I was to go back I'd just use the one type and have one hub.
Sonos is brilliant, incredible sound.
Just had a look at IFTTT, I briefly looked at it 2 years ago and couldn't see the benefit. At that stage I think it was just posting things to social media feeds. Came on leaps and bounds since clearly! Incredible.
Yeah they did a whole redesign a while back and added so much to it. I had looked at it myself way back but Tasker was a lot better for what I wanted then. I think IFTTT does everything I'd want now and in a much simpler way.
I could probably get away with the Chromecast Audios instead of a Sonos with the setup I have but none of my speakers are all that great anyway so for one really good main one it would be the way to go.
The Sonos app is pretty good too, integrates really well with Apple Music/Spotify/Amazon Music. Didn't realise you could get DAB radio on it too until I opened it.
I'm never having any of that Internet connected stuff. I've seen too many @internetofshit stories like the internet going down so the boiler doesn't work. One bloke's wifi enabled cat feeder disconnected when he went on holiday and the thing died.
Landlord has given me the nod to escape come February end. Result.
Had Scottish Power round to install a smart meter. It's installed and stuff so no more giving readings and just paying for what I use instead of them guessing.
Annoyingly though for someone nerdy such as myself, the little gadget you get won't work in my second floor flat as the meter is down stairs
What's the gadget meant to do?
I'm a twit
Tells you how much energy you've used and how much it's cost you that day/week/month/year. Tells you if you're using more or less than the day before.
They're pretty cool. Most people will need to have them, within the next 5 years I think the timeframe is.
I've just enquired to SSE about one.
Also was on the phone to an architect earlier telling me about my wall. He sounded so fucking professional my wallet was already weeping just listening to him talk.
So been quoted £500 all in, that's including structural engineer and the council planning permish. Cash.
The work and parts who knows. Maybe £1,500?
Flat hunting has become ardous. Like fuck am I paying £900 to live in peace.
Reply With Quote
