Herts of Lard 2023

 Posted on March 28, 2023  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

Two weeks ago I went to my first Lardy Game Day at Herts of Lard 2023. It was absolutely brilliant. Many thanks to @Joe_Wargamer for running it. If you aren’t familiar, Too Fat Lardies are a company that produce wargames which are mostly historical in setting. Their motto is “Play the period, not the game” which is very much my jam. At a Lardy Game Day volunteers host games by providing a scenario, armies, a table full of terrain, and GM in some fashion. [Read More]

Book Review: Second City

 Posted on March 16, 2023  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

Book two of 2023 is Second City by Richard Vinen. I picked it up on a whim from The Heath bookshop in Kings Heath (which is lovely). It’s an incredibly in-depth history of Birmingham from its geography & mythic Anglo Saxon origins, through The Enlightenment, its rise as an industrial city, the role it played in the British Empire, then onto the Second World War, its transition into the car centre of Britain (and decline there of), finally the 21st century. [Read More]

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

 Posted on March 16, 2023  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

A year after my last post on Assassins Creed I have “finished” Valhalla. It didn’t take an entire year because I took a huge break after playing the first couple of hours. Why the break? Going straight from endgame Odyssey, Eivor feels so sluggish. Valhalla’s combat feels much more brutal and parry focused than the way I built Kassandra in Odyssey. Kassandra would cut about care free slashing everyone into ribbons but Eivor stands waiting to parry and do stun attacks. [Read More]

Book Review: How Music Works

 Posted on March 6, 2023  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

Aim 3 of 2023 is to read more. I’m going to post reviews as I go. March is still Q1 but this does feel like a very late start. I’ve picked up the guitar again after 12 years away. I wanted a refresher on the things I’d forgotten. So I picked up How Music Works by John Powell. It tells a very neat story from the foundations of “what is sound” all the way to selecting a key for your composition and thoughts on audiophiles. [Read More]

ARM to Bicep

 Posted on February 10, 2023  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

At work we use Azure for infrastructure and Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates to define it as code. Microsoft released Bicep as a nicer way to write your templates. We’ve recently finished porting a service to use Bicep. It took a lot longer than I’d hoped but we got there. Here are some of the things I learnt along the way. Decompiling You can decompile your existing templates with the Azure cli: [Read More]

KATA: Full English Time

 Posted on February 1, 2023  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

At work, we have a weekly Code Gym. Someone will bring a kata/problem along and we’ll split up to tackle it. Usually pairing across normal team boundaries. Pretty normal stuff. We have been doing this for two years now and feel like we’ve run out of kata. So we’ve been trying to invent new ones. I am going to post ones I’ve created which should hopefully be useful to someone. [Read More]

Will this pan change my life?

 Posted on January 2, 2023  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

Non stick pans annoy me. When you buy them they’re incredibly effective. Then slowly degrade until they’re more stick than the alternatives. The prime example is my last pan which had a weird wavy texture that when the non stick coating failed, food would get stuck in the valleys. Awful experience, terrible design. So I’m trying stainless steel. I’m not sure I have the discipline for seasoning cast iron pans yet. [Read More]

2023 Aims

 Posted on December 31, 2022  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

Rather than resolutions, here are my aims for 2023: Paint more miniatures. I had a very good summer of painting miniatures but flagged in the final third of 2022. Play more games with said painted miniatures. I’ll be giving a local club a go soon which should hopefully make this one easy. Read more. It’s not difficult to read more than me. In 2023 I’d like to find a way around my inability to read at home. [Read More]

Albums (Music) of 2022

 Posted on December 23, 2022  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

As always, I’ve listened to a lot of music this year. Some old. Some new. My most anticipated release this year was Ridge and Furrow EP from Dark Forest. DF were my favourite discovery last year and I just love them. The new EP is excellent, Skylark being my favourite track. I hope they put out a full album again soon. A blast from the past is Jethro Tull’s Heavy Horses. [Read More]

I'm not going to win a Golden Demon

 Posted on November 13, 2022  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

I’ve been in Army Bosh Mode for a while now. The French Napoleonics, DAK, and 30k Space Wolves have taken up all my hobby time. I need to mix it up. Tickets for Warhammer Fest 2023 went on sale and I picked up a Golden Demon ticket too. I’m going to do a diorama. It’s been a while since my last diorama but I think I have a good idea. I’m planning on documenting the process here. [Read More]