Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey & Valhalla

 Posted on February 11, 2022  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

I managed to source an Xbox Series X late last year. I’ve been playing a lot of Assassins Creed since then. There was a sale and picked up Odyssey for really cheap and proceeded to put 70+ hours into it. It’s brilliant. After not playing an AC game since 3 it was great to see the series improved the formula quite a bit. Combat felt better than I remember. The story was fun and Kassandra was incredibly likeable. [Read More]

Warhammer 40k 9th Edition

 Posted on December 22, 2021  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

I think it’s fair to say that my interest in Warhammer 40k 8th edition peaked early and dropped off a cliff after playing a few games. I don’t think I really gave it a fair whack, something I think I’ve at least started to do better with with 9th edition (and Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game). I have played exactly one game of 9th (and MESBG) this year and both were brilliant. [Read More]

Hotel Chocolat Velvetiser

 Posted on November 30, 2021  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

Hotel Chocolat make this device called a Velvetiser. It’s some where between a kettle and a blender. You put some milk and chocolate in and it heats up the milk while mixing it quickly to make it frothy (Velvetised). It makes one cup, in a short amount of time, very quietly, and is easy to clean. What’s more is that it’s really well designed and pleasant to use. The mixing paddle attaches via a magnet and magically is spun through that coupling. [Read More]

Apple TV

 Posted on June 8, 2021  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

It replaces a combination of Fire and NowTV sticks. Both of which are old and were cheap at the time. Their UIs are slow, remotes feels cheap, and clutter up the place. My immediate reaction is that tvOS is buttery smooth. Zero complaints. Moving between apps (and having it remember positions) is perfect. Starting streams is super fast, especially NowTV! Video looks sharper. We have a 1080p TV but I suspect it’s handling the video decoding better than our old devices. [Read More]

Clojure REPL in VS Code

 Posted on May 14, 2021  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

I’m tinkering around with Clojure at the moment and have found the tooling to be quite nice. My setup is: VS Code running on my Windows 10 machine WSL 2 running Ubuntu 20.04 Installed leiningen on Ubuntu Open VS Code and connect to the Ubuntu machine with the Remote - WSL plugin installed on Windows Install Calva on the Ubuntu side[0] Open up your clojure project and then “jack in” to the repl with “Calva: Start A Project REPL and Connect” which you can find in the standard CTRL+SHIFT+P menu, select leiningen and you’re away. [Read More]

The Warm Embrace of Apple

 Posted on March 2, 2021  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

I recently dropped my Pixel 3a perfectly flat on the bathroom floor and utterly shattered the screen. This broke the OLED too. I tried to repair but it failed[0]. I took this opportunity to shake up my tech stack and buy an iPhone. Here are my observations so far: Everything is just buttery from a UI perspective. It’s hard to describe but it animations feel smoother. Password manager integration is amazing. [Read More]

Supine Sourdough Redux

 Posted on January 9, 2021  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

I’ve continued making sourdough and have been tinkering with the recipe: The flour mix now will always have granary in. Around 30% of the 500g. More salt (2 spoons). Salt is great. Mixing the flour, water, and salt together first before adding the starter. I’ve found it easier to feel when it’s thoroughly mixed. As soon as it’s mixed whack the starter in and give it a little knead together then autolyse. [Read More]

My Clever Dripper Brew Recipe

 Posted on January 9, 2021  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

I’ve bought a Clever Dripper and put the Aeropress and cafetière in the loft. Whilst the Clever can’t do the volumes a large cafetière can, it makes great coffee with no sludge and easy clean-up (that’s compostable).

The brew method for two cups is:

  1. Fold the edges of your unbleached size 4 filter and put it in the Clever Dripper
  2. Rinse out the filter with warm water from the tap
  3. Grind 20g of beans to a little finer than a cafetière grind and boil your water
  4. Add 300g of water to the Clever Dripper, careful here because that’s very full
  5. Add coffee to water, do not stir
  6. Add 200g of water, it’ll be very full
  7. Leave for 5min as the coffee grounds create a crust
  8. Stir the crust in
  9. Leave for 5min
  10. Draw down into a carafe/thermos

Agile

 Posted on August 24, 2020  |  Dave Megins-Nicholas

Everywhere I’ve seen agile used it seems to stutter and fail as people get tied up in process and bike shedding. That led me to think about how I’d like to run agile sprints. So here it is: There’s a ranked and ready backlog of tasks going into sprint planning. This will be a persons full time job. They’ll gather test data, acceptance criteria, and work with stakeholders to get the priorities sorted. [Read More]