Nindokag @nindokag@introverts.social

my daughter: I have a Halloween activity book! let's draw wizards

(we draw wizards)

her: why does your wizard have a ball with an eye in it

me: It is a Palantír, seeing-stone of Númenor. Saruman the White beholds the Enemy: a great eye, lidless and wreathed in flame

her: stop using that weird voice

me: But this is my Christopher Lee voice

Left: 馄饨 that my wife and me made; right: 馄饨 that my daughter made. She's very proud of her own special way of making them.

Anybody else watching the CCTV new year song and dance extravaganza this year? There is an ox robot dancing to Chinese hip hop and it's very weird

And, fried!

Making some special Chinese new year foods. Here are 春卷 about to go into the frying oil

My daughter said "I'm going to draw what the inside of my head looks like" and then she drew this:

I was inspired by watching @Thomas paint gaming miniatures on twitch stream, to share some of mine:

these are an army group from the Khador faction in the game Warmachine. Some big stompy steam-powered robots, supported by mechanics and snipers, and led by the character "Karchev the Terrible". These were some of the first minis I painted for this game. It must have been about 2011. They've been in the back of my closet since 2016.

My wife signed us up to be ambassadors for the town's new composing program. Here's a stack of kitchen sized compost buckets and instruction pamphlets we're distributing to the neighbors!

My kid gifted me this card with her drawing of a coronavirus

I finally finished my big #lego project: a scale model of the Kingdom of Hyrule as seen in Legend of #zelda : Breath of the Wild

I started this in early August and finished it on New Year's Eve.

More about it on my website: http://nindokag.net/j/lego-stuff/lego-hyrule

(Uhhh, spoiler warnings for Breath of the Wild, I guess? If you zoomed in really close you could see some things that could spoil some surprises for the game.)

Here's a moon photo from the same night, which came out pretty good!

With the exposure turned back up, you can see the 4 Galilean moons of Jupiter and a 5th moon that I think might actually be Saturn's moon Titan?

A fun fact: Jupiter is about 800 million km away right now. Saturn is another 800 million km farther away than that. They look close from our vantage point but they are not close.

#GreatConjunction

Better picture of the #GreatConjunction, from last night, Dec 20, 2020. I turned down the exposure so you can see Saturn's rings.

I didnt have to drive to the beach! Turns out there's a gap in the trees half a block down from my house where I can see the conjunction from the sidewalk!

I'm old enough to remember seeing this exact image when it was new.

Seeing it come around on Tumblr as a joke about $CURRENT_YEAR is bringing up a... complicated mix of emotions.

(one of these emotions is "wow, now that I know what the Memphis Design Movement is, I see its influence everywhere")

Mars! a big improvement over my last attempt to photograph mars (which was 90% lens flare) but I think I can do better.

Practicing getting the right camera settings to take space pictures through my telescope. The white crater is, I think, Tycho Crater, and the grey area to the right of it is Mare Nubium.

Thanksgiving 小龙包

Yyyyeeesssssss

It's this time of year again! The weather is cold. Time to make nabe ! And oden! I went to Nijiya market for Japanese fall/winter vegetables, fish cake, and locally made tofu! I'm excited.