Your Backup Hobby

More music for your listening pleasure, plus it helps with the cold. Money quote (old friend, but still): 'sounds like a party I would have liked to have gone to'




It's a shame there hasn't been any dancing here for so long.

Airgun in the basement, now that winter has set in. I have a 15-yard target range now, with a pellet trap and a backstop so I don't shoot myself or valuable appliances with an errant shot.

I spent a little Christmas bonus money on a used one of these: www.airgundepot.com/fx-dream-lite-compac...ottle-air-rifle.html . That thing is like a pug dog to me; so ugly it's cute. Still shooting nothing but paper, but those chipmunks that are eating car and Christmas light wiring aren't making any friends.

I also set up my hobby area in the basement as well. My miniatures painting stuff is down there next to the airgun stuff. I haven't done any painting yet but plan to pick that back up soon.

My sister got me into making my own kombucha two years back, and I finally decided to explore the wider world of fermentation this past week. Pineapples have been cheap lately, so I opted for a tepache test.

It’s dumb easy. A few days in a big jar with the aforementioned pineapple, brown sugar, ginger, habanero, cinnamon and water and a few days in a flip-top bottle. That’s it, and my inaugural batch was amazing. Full flavored and spicy like Stoney Tangawizi, a Kenyan ginger beer. It’s definitely not for everyone, planning to serve this batch with some club soda for those who don’t want something hotter than Tabasco and to brew a future batch with all spice and cloves instead of the habanero, but I love it. If you’re at all interested in fermentation, it’s hard to find something easier to make. I’d recommend Bon Appetit’s YouTube video for a guide.

Adventures in fermentation continue as a I get into sourdough by starter two years after everyone else. Baking bread in a Dutch oven has been a revelation for a crisp crust. Also pretty pleased with how my sandwich breads have turned out. They take a lot less work and are noticeably softer than other baking techniques.

My starter has become more active now that I feed it with rye flour, but it’s still not rising as much as I’d like. It’s been a long winter here and dry. If the summer humidity doesn’t kick it into high gear, I’ll have to try something else.

dysjunct wrote: * Bench press, 195lb/88kg 5/3/5/5/5. Getting to my limit here unless I start eating a lot more. If only there was a way to guarantee that 100% of excess calories would be converted to muscle and not fat.

Almost a year after this post and I've gotten my bench up to 220lbs for sets of five, while staying at roughly the same body weight.

The key, I think, was to switch from five sets of five, to three sets of five -- but on the last set, do as many reps as possible. The extra volume helps with hypertrophy -- you can make progress for a long time by getting your muscles stronger, but eventually that taps out and you need more muscle tissue. There's also a good mental component from going to failure; I used to dread failing a lift and now it's no big deal.

Plus, hypertrophy = more muscle mass = SICK GAINZ BRAH

I've also made progress on the overhead press, 150lbs for sets of five. I'm getting close to my limit there too.

Sadly my other lifts have regressed. I messed up my right knee in January and basically couldn't walk for a week. ("Patellar tracking issue caused by an imbalance between the rectus femoris and the vastus medialis oblique.") I had to mostly start over on the squat and the deadlift to build up strength in the tissue around the knee, in order to prevent it from happening again. My dream of deadlifting a triple Barnes will have to wait.

All eight beds are finally planted out. Not really doing much different with my vegetable gardening from last year outside of experimenting with no-dig potatoes under grass clippings. Radishes need to be thinned, have already enjoyed two meals of fresh asparagus, planted four varieties of heirloom tomato, and snow peas, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, kale, carrots and beets are already peeking through.

Looking forward to some reasonable harvests.

I took up kayaking over the past few years and I photograph street art under the bridges.

I have also become a near master in guitar tech work, and spent the last three years buying and selling stringed instruments, primarily guitars, and have amassed a nice collection which is mostly paid for by the gains from my flips. Ive made quite a few musician friends and have supplied some local top acts with higher end gear. A band called Skipping Stones out of Louisville used one of my custom speaker cabinets, and Hot Action Cop’s guitarist used a looping device I sold him live and on their latest album. I sent some custom pickups to a guy who moved to Romania as an artist, and musician. Also, my nephew got my hand built Stratocaster when my brother died, as he is an absurdly talented guitarist. So, keeping busy.

In the process I became an adequate, intermediate guitar player. I post stuff on Insta, @SuperflyPete.

I'm at about a 95/5 split between the "hobby" end of of miniatures gaming and actually playing the games, which feels fine. I was picking up Wal-Mart acrylics for a big terrain project when I spotted an unfamiliar shade...

Even though I prefer the adjacent arts of devilstick, kendama and off-string to-to, I attended the International Jugglers’ Association annual festival this past week. It was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Which shows you the pull the IJA has.

It was a good time. I attended some workshops that I lacked the technique to fully appreciate, I practiced some combat juggling though my club skills prevented me from doing much beside hoping no one noticed me in the corner, I listened to an experimental nuclear physicist discuss his simulations of zero gravity juggling, and I watched a man take a gold medal for making 47 catches on nine-ball juggling.

That stuff was cool, but the best part was just hanging in the main space. I taught some people the basics of devilstick and learned six-club passing from just some guy. The best part may have been time spent with a Japanese guy who only played devilsticks. I have no problem saying he’s better than me, but I feel he might say the same about me. He could do some two stick tricks I’ve never attempted but just had a very different style based on hand stick flourishes. I prefer a much faster center stick style, and he seemed impressed by some of the most basic tricks I learned. It’s nice to plug into the larger community for a little while and see your way isn’t the only way.

DarthJoJo wrote: Even though I prefer the adjacent arts of devilstick, kendama and off-string to-to, I attended the International Jugglers’ Association annual festival this past week. It was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Which shows you the pull the IJA has.

It used to be in Fargo.

Always met a great bunch of people at juggling events and always learned new things. One time at Duke a guy was teaching passing in a three-beat. That was messed up.

I got rid of 18 boxes of used books over the last week or so, which is sort of removing a hobby, I suppose, or trying to avoid maladaptive daydreaming (I'll read this one day! I'll use this to write something!). Thanks #adderall!

Midseason garden update.

Harvested a pile of beets this weekend. Turned them into almost two gallons worth of pickles and still had enough for a sizable raw, shredded salad and a half pint of baby purée. I know I repeat this, but I’m always amazed at the garden fresh taste. It’s milder than storebought but also has so much more flavor.

Also harvested the carrots. Should have pulled them last week because a bunch had split to resemble a cobra’s hood. I think I’m giving up on them next year. Just not productive enough for my needs.

It’s probably a bit late to start them, but I rotated pumpkins and butternut squash into those vacated spaces. Last year was a long summer. We’ll see what happens.

Also harvested the year’s first zucchini and a pale yellow-green pepper I thought was a jalapeño at planting.

DarthJoJo, sounds like it's going well!

Here in the garden this year I went full on raised beds and ditched the in-ground stuff. We have super-clay, and even though after a few years of amending the soil, the location(next to a slightly wooded area, so no direct sun til 1-2pm) wasn't the best. So... middle of the yard raised beds it is!

Holy cow. Everything grows so well. Pepper plants are bigger and have tons of fruit. Broccoli grew and we finally were able to harvest a head before it bolted. Cilantro hasn't bolted yet! I interplant some marigolds because I bought into the companion planting myth and they're so huge they're crowding out stuff I didn't think they'd come close to. Tomato plants taller than me by mid July. We had a couple extras so we put them in ground and they're 1/3 of the size.

After a couple weeks of 45 minutes of daily hand watering I got drip irrigation set up, so now that gets turned on and I water myself with a beer on the deck.

Beets aren't ready yet here, they got a little shaded out by said marigolds and cabbage. First time growing cabbage and was pretty successful. I'll probably be able to pull the beets next week, I usually make a beet & beet green risotto(pink rice, neat!).

Tried "pool ball" zucchini this year.. It's just as prolific as any other zucchini, they're just round.

I always try swiss chard and it always gets messed up by leaf miner to some extent, so next year I'll probably have one bed with a floating row cover which should be easy to do. I think I also want add some sort of poly tunnel to a couple of the beds for season extension. We bought a modular fence to keep the rabbits out so I can bump the fence out by one panel next year and squeeze in 2-3 more raised beds

We also put in an asparagus bed this year between the deck and the yard(in theory, can't really see it while sitting on the deck), so should be swimming in asparagus in 2-3 years.

Been putting more time into three-ball juggling and yo-yo lately. When I haven’t felt like running for 45 minutes on our YMCA’s 100 meter track, I’ve gone to the gym for practice. They’re fourth and fifth respectively on my list of preferred skill toys (devilsticks, off-string yo-yo and kendama coming ahead of them), but it’s been nice to learn new tricks and keep my hands moving.

Goals for the summer are two devilsticks simultaneously and more work on club juggling when I have the space outside.

My caged garden performed fairly well for the first couple of years, but the nearby trees keep growing out branches to steal the sunlight for the garden. Rather than repeating my spring ritual of pruning tree branches again, I moved my garden cage to a different part of the yard. There used to be a big tree there, but it died during the third consecutive summer of drought, so I had it cut down.