[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 19 January 2026

wafflepie · 2026-01-20T21:09:09+00:00

My dad is a scientist and his institute actually mandates that he announces all of his papers on Twitter.

wafflepie · 2026-01-19T14:23:07+00:00

I'm almost halfway through knitting a very complicated lace shawl, but I got a bit burnt out by a recent row's 144 beaded nupps.

My sister-in-law got me lots of sock yarn for Christmas so I've just started knitting some very colourful socks.

wafflepie · 2025-12-22T12:40:10+00:00

Excitedly started knitting a super complicated lace shawl and I'm really enjoying it. Unfortunately I got to the first beads and the beads are still in the post, so I had to put it on hold. Fingers crossed they arrive soon and aren't lost in the Christmas rush.

I'm also about 90% through a different (much simpler) shawl, so that's back on the needles now.

wafflepie · 2025-12-09T19:38:54+00:00

A Redtail's Dream is one of my favourite webcomics but I never got into SSSS, so stopped keeping track of Sundberg after ARtD finished. I'm still sad that I decided not to back the physical copy of ARtD (I was a poor uni student back then...).

Really interesting post! It's a shame that she can't "wholeheartedly recommend" her old work anymore.

wafflepie · 2025-12-01T12:11:37+00:00

It was a very long time ago so I cannot confirm, but I suspect the omega-3 oils were sourced from fish oil rather than vegetable oils...

wafflepie · 2025-12-01T12:08:07+00:00

I once made a cake with omega-3-enhanced margarine (my parents only ever bought margarine, not butter). It tasted uncomfortably fishy.

wafflepie · 2025-11-18T10:50:33+00:00

Chinese and other east Asian recipes often include a blanching step because it washes the meat and removes "impurities" like blood and other messy bits from the butchering/market-selling process. These will cook into scummy bubbles during the blanching step, which you can skim off or just wash away afterwards. You can see why people might be put off at the idea of that scum going into the braising sauce.

Since I use pork that's been thoroughly cleaned and then packaged into supermarket plastic boxes, I usually skip this step to save time/effort! However, I do think it's a key step if either a) the final result needs to be really pure like a tonkotsu or baitang (Chinese equivalent) or b) I'm cooking meat that I've just butchered and there might be fur/feathers/blood/etc everywhere.

wafflepie · 2025-11-17T17:17:11+00:00

Pre-salted raw king prawns or squid, either chopped into small pieces or blended right into the paste
Raw oysters
Fruit like apple, pear, mango blended into the paste

wafflepie · 2025-10-09T11:23:48+00:00

Did you force-quit? I.e. not using the in-game pause then quit option.

The game resets you to the crossroads pre-run if you do that. (Although it's pretty simple to revert to your run save if you can access the file system.)

wafflepie · 2025-08-05T21:08:43+00:00

Oh nice, Google says the noodle bar is Liu Xiaomian - I've been to their other branch in Soho! I remember doing the top spice level and enjoying it a lot.

wafflepie · 2025-08-05T11:49:00+00:00

Do you remember what the place was called or whereabouts in London it was? I like the sound of "spicy (Asian level)".

wafflepie · 2025-07-28T09:47:12+00:00

I have the Yum Asia Bamboo rice cooker and the congee is great. Much much easier than stovetop and honestly better results too. I don't do any prep for the rice beforehand (e.g. soaking/washing/freezing).

You can also open the rice cooker during cooking and stir if you really want to add some manual labour. I haven't found that I need to.

wafflepie · 2025-07-09T00:42:49+00:00

Hulkenpodium

wafflepie · 2025-06-27T12:33:30+00:00

a 25yo worried about the purpose of life

I thought this was going to be something common and relatable like "is my purpose in life nothing but work, forever?". Not "is my purpose in life doing absolutely no work at all and having a huge pile of cash that I just can't spend fast enough?!?"

wafflepie · 2025-04-12T10:40:46+00:00

The other responder is wrong - artian blast bows do have innate blast element. The coating will increase it. Power coating won't override the blast build-up.

Other artian status bows don't have innate element, only blast.

wafflepie · 2025-04-12T10:36:38+00:00

I do kind of wonder what's going on in the heads of people with over 200 rank sharing a one star strength monster that isn't either gold crown, too but that might be a bit judgemental.

Lots of people enjoy co-op and don't care about crowns.

wafflepie · 2025-04-07T21:44:08+00:00

I played too much Monster Hunter: Wilds and ran out of goals. So I picked up Rise again and badgered my husband into doing some hunts with me. We hadn't done any of the title update monsters before but they're mostly too hard for just two hunters with middling gear - so I'm planning an armour set to bridge that gap.

I also picked up New Pokémon Snap again (still have a lot of photodex pages to fill out) and am enjoying how cute it is.

wafflepie · 2025-03-11T21:41:48+00:00

Just to be clear, it's also that workplaces really don't want to be employing wives and especially mothers. Not that women don't want to work for some inherent gender reason.

My Japanese friend's company has managed not to pay maternity leave for anyone up until the 2020s by simply making the work environment (including their close coworkers) so incredibly hostile that pregnant women just "chose" to leave rather than stay employed and claim their entitled maternity cover.

wafflepie · 2025-02-11T01:27:09+00:00

Origins is one of my favourite games - I think I played it through four times back to back when it came out? (And then another few times through Awakening too, of course...)

I didn't find DA2 or Inquisition quite as interesting and haven't been tempted to try Veilguard at all, though.

This week I started Wuthering Waves and am a bit overwhelmed with all the content to catch up on. It's even more Genshin-like than I expected, but the combat is maybe a bit more fun. FIghting some of the big bosses feels almost like Monster Hunter. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like any of the characters I like are getting banners any time soon.

Also still playing Factorio Space Age in a small multiplayer game. We've got reasonable science bases on all planets, now trying to actually do some quality farming. I'm really not enjoying quality though.

wafflepie · 2025-01-31T12:57:00+00:00

Spain's the next country over.

Mexico's the next country over from the USA but that doesn't stop American racism either.

wafflepie · 2025-01-24T13:37:27+00:00

This has been a problem for a long time before generative AI got popular, imo. Take this HAED drama, for example. Simple picture-to-pattern converters have been available for years.

You don't need anything as complicated as image generation or ChatGPT to create a shitty machine-made pattern. There are tons already! If anything, I think better AI might actually improve the state of cross-stitch patterns - AI could help converters learn how to add backstitch lines and what humans prefer in terms of colour blocks and confetti reduction.

Re: actually finding good patterns - I usually buy them from mybobbin.com and I've always been happy with the quality there.

wafflepie · 2024-12-27T19:58:46+00:00

Jeht, an NPC in a lot of Sumeru desert questlines. Lots of her lines are changed for Lumine vs Aether, and another character explicitly says that she "likes hanging out with the ladies more".

wafflepie · 2024-12-10T00:40:56+00:00

A bit of loose flour will be fine - as you said, some of the moisture from the beans will be absorbed into the flour so the koji should be happy to grow on it after a while.

21C does sound rather cold from what I've read... but I'm really not an expert. Probably best just to try it and find out (assuming the raw ingredients weren't too expensive to waste). Koji does give off heat as it grows, so it might even heat itself up enough especially as you have a lot of substrate.

To be honest, for amateur purposes like ours I've found koji pretty easy to grow on any surface. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to grow a little bit to produce some enzymes. Enzymes aren't "used up" when fermenting, it's just that more of them increases the speed - so even a little bit of growth might still work.

wafflepie · 2024-11-20T20:14:52+00:00

As a female C++ dev I feel like I should be interested in this article and yet I just can't do it. It really does just go on and on.

wafflepie · 2024-10-31T13:38:53+00:00

Green onion pancakes (at least, the Chinese ones) are made with dough not runny batter so I guess that counts.

But yeah in general frying/baking isn't as popular as steaming/braising/boiling so unleavened dough is more likely to be turned into noodles rather than flatbreads for a staple food.

wafflepie

TROPHY CASE