I don’t have any grand ambitions in life, so you’ll find I tend to spend all my money in one area and nothing at all in others. Still, keeping a record of what I buy and writing a bit about it has its upsides: First, it reminds me: “Look at you, you idiot, wasting money again!” Second, it lets other people know: “Look at this idiot named Li wasting money again.” Yes, long story short, this idiot has been wasting money again. Let’s talk impressions.

The Dell Venue 8 Pro kept me company for quite a while — probably the electronic device I’ve used most in recent years, second only to my MP3 player. I watched videos on it, browsed the web, played all sorts of visual novels. But as my needs grew, the god-awful performance, the unsatisfying resolution, and the rough build quality started to bother me. So I sold it and picked up a Surface Pro 3. I’d read online that the i3 version’s performance might actually be worse than an Atom, that battery life was bad, and that while the US version was cheaper, the domestic warranty had been cancelled. So I gritted my teeth and bought the China-market i5 128G. Reviews are everywhere online, so I’ll just talk about the stuff that tends to get overlooked.

I do have a Sony ZX1, but it broke a few days ago… Okay, actually it got rained on and water got inside, so I played dumb and sent it to after-sales. They could tell it was water damage, but in the end they decided to honor the warranty anyway. “The motherboard has to be ordered, no idea when it’ll be fixed. We’ll call you when it arrives.” That’s what the repair center told me… So I found a new excuse to spend money: I bought an iPod Classic 160G on Taobao (now eBay). No idea if it’s new or not, but it looks pretty new. I’m not asking much from this thing, cheap is good enough. I’m not an Apple cultist, I hate iTunes, and all my music is FLAC, so I decided to flash the freshly-arrived iPod Classic with Rockbox for more freedom and format support. This is what it looks like after flashing.

Actually at first I was against buying these earphones… But I just couldn’t resist the shape. They look really good. And I was also very curious — no wait, curious (why the hell does that keep autocorrecting…). Plenty of forum kids absolutely trashed this earphone, going on about “boomy,” “hard to drive,” “bottom-heavy,” “nothing but bass.” In my experience, whatever audio mystics on forums say, you should read it backwards. I also checked a review by 盖子 on Reddit and, with a clear head, went ahead and bought them. I’m a low-key guy. The K374’s brushed metal is flashy, but to stay true to my low-key nature I steered clear of the showy silver and bought the wine red. Then I bought it on JD for 499 with a -50 coupon, and the very night it arrived the price dropped to 399… I agonized over it for a while. I don’t care about that little bit of money and I didn’t want to bother returning and re-buying, but no matter how I looked at it, it felt like JD had screwed me. “Fuck you, Liu Qiangdong!” I raised my middle finger once again, venting my anger helplessly.

As someone who slacks off at work, I can’t function without music. I used to listen to tunes on my JVC SR500 headphones, but unfortunately my desk is right by the door, and the boss is always walking past, criticizing me for wearing headphones at work and saying it looks bad. Fine, I figured I’d switch to something low-key—an earbud. Considering I’ve been listening to a ton of fripside lately and really love that thumping bass, I went looking for a tiny thing with strong low end. I skipped the Beats that would’ve boosted my clout and ended up buying the KOSS Spark Plug—the legendary “spark plug.” Of course, all that above is bullshit—I just wanted to buy something. Life itself is meaningless; only buying things lets you understand the true meaning of life.

Cardboard is a little freebie Google handed out at its developer conference. With a handful of demo apps it gives you a fairly basic virtual reality experience — basic, but supposedly mind-blowing. Supposedly. I saw people’s reactions on various forums, and the crowd was unanimous: it blew their faces off, it was the shit, it was unbelievably awesome. So of course I got curious… no, really, curious. So I picked one up. Mine was 20 yuan on Taobao. You can also download the PDF template and DIY one out of cardboard yourself — the box is cheap, the convex lenses are the annoying part to find. When it arrived, the knockoff level turned out to be pretty high. Apart from the missing NFC, everything it should have is there.

Back in high school, when I’d scraped together every last cent to buy a Sennheiser MX500 and plugged it into an iPAQ hx2412 to listen to Tony Daimoku with great relish, I’d already heard of Audio-Technica and was quite impressed by it. The reason wasn’t sound quality or anything like that — it was just that hearing the name made a triangle (the little steel percussion instrument I’d banged in elementary school music class) pop into my head. Later, as I sank deeper and deeper into the bottomless pit of audiophile mysticism, the idea that “Audio-Technica = female vocal poison” gradually dissolved into my brain. Honestly, I’d always wanted to try out just how poisonous the legendary Audio-Technica was for female vocals. Later I bought a CKM55 — no particular feeling on first listen, but after listening for a while, especially after switching to other buds later on, I realized what was good about it. That feeling of retaining both female vocals and bass at the same time was indeed nice. After that I kept wanting to get an Audio-Technica around the thousand-yuan mark, but Audio-Technica’s good stuff, including the CK100pro, can’t be had for a thousand yuan — too expensive, couldn’t afford it. Until one day my brain short-circuited and I bought Audio-Technica’s new product, the ATH-IM03, and my wish to “finally listen to a high-end Audio-Technica” was fulfilled.

Part One: Replacing the Screen Last Friday, I suddenly noticed a very small white spot in the bottom-right corner of my ThinkPad X230’s screen. I have no idea when it appeared. All I know is that from the moment I spotted it, it became absurdly conspicuous. I could barely stop myself from fixating on it. Sure, it only shows up against white, and my desktop is black—but it still looked wrong, plain and simple. First thing I thought of was checking whether there was any after-sales service, even though mine’s a gray-market unit. Asked the seller I bought from. Answer: after-sales is possible, but the process takes a month if everything goes smoothly, and it’s not even certain this situation would qualify for repair. Fine, fine. So I bought another screen off Taobao. Supposedly it’s an upgraded STB1, thinner and lighter than my old one, and more power-efficient too. As for the old screen, the Taobao seller said they’d take it for 100 yuan.

During Spring Festival JD had a coupon, 200-50, so I couldn’t help myself and chopped off the Logitech touchpad that normally sells for 199, the T650. It came to 149. I’ve been using it for a while now, so let me talk about how it feels. Since I mainly use Ubuntu, I’ll focus on that. For the summary crowd, look here: works, usable, serviceable, but not what you’d call nice. Fine as a backup. Actually, at first the shop owner said for ten extra yuan he’d throw in a knockoff copy of something like a black-and-white bear thing, and I refused……

I’m the kind of guy who feels like something’s missing without BGM, so I need music with me in all sorts of situations — whether I’m alone for a long stretch or just trying to wall myself off for a while. Anyway, this habit started back in middle school when I began listening to the radio. In high school I got my first MP3 player, a Walkman perfume-bottle model. I honestly can’t say exactly when I started inexplicably chasing sound quality. Anyway, once I had a job and money, I accumulated a bunch of slightly more audiophile-ish gear — players, sound cards, headphones, earphones. So this time I’ll talk about the three IEMs I’ve actually been listening to: TF10, ER4P, and Creative IE3. I really hate using baffling vocabulary when describing sound quality — half those terms I can’t even feel the meaning of myself. So, as the title says: no mysticism, just impressions. Source: Sony F807, all music in FLAC.