Hosting
My wife’s family came over last Saturday. The day before, we went to Hema NB and spent almost two hundred yuan on meat, then stopped by a nearby vegetable market for a big pile of greens. On Friday night I started stewing pork bones, worried there wouldn’t be enough time the next day. Even with the head start, we didn’t sit down until 12:30. By then everyone was more than ready to eat, and fortunately the food landed well.
I remember making several proper dishes: yellow-braised chicken, plum spare ribs, pork-bone and radish soup, chicken wings from the air fryer, and stir-fried greens. My father-in-law also brought pre-cooked mei cai kou rou—pork belly with preserved mustard greens—and hot mutton. I suspect he brought them just in case his daughter’s cooking went sideways.
Why are there no photos after all that talk? The house was full, the scene was chaotic, and nobody remembered to take any. A family of five came over, and the place was lively enough that we forgot everything. So you’ll have to settle for the menu and picture it yourself.
I really admire my wife—she can put a whole table of food together on her own. I was only the helper, mostly washing pots and dishes. I did offer to cook, but since it was a new kitchen, she was afraid I’d blow it up, so that plan was dropped.
Crafts
I don’t know what got into the kindergarten lately, but kids and parents have all been making crafts. The theme is a little turtle, and the school sent home some materials.
My kid brought them home, and grandma had no idea what it was. The kid then went at it with scissors, and the small pile of materials was gone before anyone could stop it. Luckily I had some spares, and the finished result is below.
Pixel Artist
A while back I started an independent project, and I’ve slowly figured out which direction to take. I’m planning to begin with a pixel-art editor.
For the past two days I’ve been stuck on a rotation problem, and I only got it debugged tonight. Basically, it’s about rotating a Map and rotating shapes.
Normally, rotating something just means typing an angle into the editor. That does work, but a better approach is to transpose rows and columns at the data level. After the transpose, the data is rotated, but the Map itself hasn’t rotated, so I can still drag and drop the various shapes just as I would in the unrotated state.
That’s why I often say you can’t cut corners with algorithm work. Tall buildings start from the ground—I’ll keep taking it slowly.
