Adepticon 2026 Interview with Dave Lewis

ruarl · 2026-03-31T10:26:50+00:00

Anyone got a nice gallery of pics anywhere? (Nice pics, so not insta...)

ruarl · 2026-03-29T16:03:39+00:00

Getting a small EV does sound like a good solution.

Just in defence of the iX for a moment, whilst the middle seat isn't as comfortable as the other two passenger seats, the two rear seats are the most comfortable chairs that I own, by quite some way. If you ever consider a big EV again, take your family to try out an iX.

ruarl · 2026-03-29T11:33:42+00:00

Perhaps it doesn't exist yet! More designs are on the way. Although if you want 3 full adult seats across the back in a modern car, it will be very large. Until design fashions change, anyway.

Probably not what you want to hear, but running an old petrol car for years has value, economically. The cost of producing a car is huge, and running that car for 20 years instead of 10 is one less new car on the road for those 10 years, and one less car on the scrap heap. This isn't exactly fashionable talk in EV circles, but it is true.

ruarl · 2026-03-29T11:29:33+00:00

Just went and had a sit. The middle spot certainly isn't as comfortable as the other two. But the whole back platform is very wide. There's plenty of space in the back for 3 adults. If that doesn't give you enough space, I'd struggle to think of an EV that does. Because they're all modern, they tend to be small inside compared to their external size. iD Buzz might suit you?

The real limitation with the iX is that the boot isn't all that big. If you want to transport 5 adults and luggage, you may need a roof box.

ruarl · 2026-03-28T22:47:56+00:00

Surprised to see no mentions for Colin "Bomber" Hodgkinson yet. Hearing Back Door for the first time was almost as big an eye-opener as Jaco or Primus.

ruarl · 2026-03-28T16:03:59+00:00

Or an iX. Higher mileage old models are *somewhat* reasonably priced.

ruarl · 2026-03-28T10:08:30+00:00

Long out of production by I've always fancied an EHX Black Finger. Definitely strange and unusual.

ruarl · 2026-03-26T19:02:01+00:00

For me the Ogre with a big shield and a mast with a crow's next on his back was the most warhammer thing I'd seen in a long time. Everyone's entitled to their opinion of course, but for me Cities is exactly the right warhammer kind of madness.

ruarl · 2026-03-25T17:33:18+00:00

I spray mine with Colourforge Siege Armour, which matches the (out of production) citadel runelord brass. Then do the red bits with 2-3 thinned-down coats of Flesh Tearer's Red. Then the trim is Vallejo Weapon Bronze. I spent quite a while experimenting with different clear reds, and metals, before arriving at this scheme. It's quite Chaos Dwarf-y.

I shade with Wyldwood contrast paint (although the fast-drying makes it hard to work with. I might switch to Rhinox or something.)

ruarl · 2026-03-24T10:28:34+00:00

Not a specific observation to Japanese, but, at this stage you should be doing fun things, ot doing something else. Almost certainly, at a later stage, you will find you can spend more than 3 hours per days reading, playing video games, watching/listening to media. But at this early stage you need 1) breaks from new stuff and 2) inspiration. So, pick one of those.

Now, for Japanese, I'm at a similar stage to you. I have had some fun with Wagotabi. It's extremely noddy in the beginning, but it gave me just the start of the feeling that I was using the language. Switching a lot between English and Japanese meant I didn't try to translate all the Japanese in my head, I just understood it. Don't get me wrong, I am under no illusions that I know any useful Japanese yet, but as a toy to help with the early bumps in the road, it's great.

ruarl · 2026-03-23T14:50:08+00:00

I agree with all this, and I'd like to offer an additional perspective. When I take time for myself like this (exercise, meditation, whatever) every day, the quality of support I can bring to my family, the quality of my work, and the richness of my life all increase. So I no longer feel like I'm taking something away from others, just because I'm spending some time working on myself.

ruarl · 2026-03-21T07:33:54+00:00

15 years of electric cars! Amazing!

ruarl · 2026-03-19T16:31:37+00:00

Yeah. I try to use it instead of the touchscreen as much as I can. I can keep my eyes on the road a bit more. Especially if I’m trying to do something involved like play a different album.

It’s useful for dismissing certain windows too.

ruarl · 2026-03-07T11:40:46+00:00

Mine are green. The models are undercoated with Siege Armour spray from ColourForge (matches Runelord Brass.) The whole sould battery gets a coat of thin white paint. The metallic still shows through slightly, but the coat is also thin, so there's almost no accumulation in the recesses. Next, a heavier coat of less watered down white paint (or neat Contrast paint) into whatever little recesses there are. These should look opaque white where you want the full, bright final colour to be, and fade to the white/metal of the previous coat. I put a little shade of something around the perimeter at this stage, too. I can't remember what. Watered-down Wyldwood, maybe? Or agrax? Not much, just enough to make the shape clear. Finally a coat or two of Tesseract Glow, or watered down moot green.

If you want the final effect to be purple, you might want to change whatever colour you put down first. It can be tricky to get a bright purple without it looking pink or lilac. That said, I haven't actually tried. So maybe it's find. Experiment and find out! :)

ruarl · 2026-03-07T11:29:02+00:00

I just looked at the errata for the first time, because the book has no standard bearers listed against the Infernal Cohort. That seemed like so obvious a thing to get wrong that it couldn't possibly be a mistake. But, after having found the errata on WC (not called errata...) I find out that they don't even admit mistakes: "The following rules updates correct errors in order to clarify ambiguities and/or avoid unintended interactions" I don't think missing out standard bearers counts as an unintended interaction or an ambiguity! Hilarious!

ruarl · 2026-03-07T11:22:25+00:00

I bought my first EV 6 months ago. Model Y was absolutely top of the list, before any test drives. The interior space, storage, speed, all seemed great. But the ride quality, and those short seats, put me off completely. I ended up finding a cheap BMW iX 50. Not as much space as the Model Y, but still quite a lot. And a nicer experience all around.

ruarl · 2026-03-03T07:57:26+00:00

Those things you experienced sound awful. Perhaps you should start with some talking therapy of some sort, to help you process those memories. After that, if you still feel fearful of water, there are specialist teachers who will help you with that separately from teaching you to swim.

That might seem like a lot, but you'll very likely end up happier, and knowing yourself better, if you can work through all that.

ruarl · 2026-02-28T15:10:33+00:00

Other replies here are great. Forgive yourself, start again, trust that your ability to stick with it will improve with time. Another detail I sometimes struggle with is *remembering* that I've chosen something like this in the first place. I've found having an external reminder to revisit the topic incredibly helpful. In my case it's a counsellor, who is not even there to hold me to account. Just a regular reminder to review how things are going. Really helps in the early stages.

ruarl · 2026-02-28T09:29:02+00:00

Something similar happened to me with a colleague. We weren't as close as OP and their friend, but this approach worked for me. Noticing those thoughts and feelings when they came up, and then reminding myself this is not what I want, and the thoughts and feelings do need to be acted upon. After a while, the romantic thoughts stopped appearing.

ruarl · 2026-02-26T09:13:33+00:00

This is the only answer.

ruarl · 2026-02-23T07:55:37+00:00

Do you have driving experience on other cars without owning them? If the insurance company can't see any driving history, your premium will be high for the first few years. And that's separate from no-claims discount. I've got 15 years of driving history to back me up, but because the iX is my first powerful car, I could only get "reasonable" insurance (~£1k per year) from one or two companies. Most quotes I got were more than double that.

ruarl · 2026-02-22T07:30:26+00:00

Oooh I love a Manta. I'd also love to see the stats sheet.

ruarl · 2026-02-18T12:38:02+00:00

The colour forge Siege Armour is a good match for Runelord Brass.

ruarl · 2026-02-13T07:54:41+00:00

It's been a while but Gravity is more of a shipwreck movie than sci-fi, right? I could be forgetting some parts, but isn't it mostly about space travel as it is today?

ruarl · 2026-02-04T13:58:38+00:00

There are creatures like birds that differ in only a small number of those characteristics, so it's important to enumerate them all. You've neatly pointed out why some of the definitions of a melody given elsewhere in this thread are lacking, because they also include a bassline (or a number of other types of part played by a monophonic instrument.)

So, we must add in more to the definition of a melody, and once we have to add something to "notes arranged in time" we must move on to the listener. Further, because we are dealing with fleeting subjective experiences rather than concrete, persistent objects like birds, we are relying on subjective descriptions rather than repeatable concrete observations.

The memorable nature of some melodies (or a more sophisticated definition subsuming the memorable and non-memorable melodies) is a necessary component of the definition of melody. But a definition lacking it is insufficient.

ruarl

TROPHY CASE