Last year I messed around and bought a FiiO Q7, barely listened to it, then sold it. Honestly I can’t be bothered with this portable DAC business anymore, but then I noticed the Chord Mojo 2 had come out, and the price had dropped quite a bit, so I got tempted again. I have a deep fondness for the Mojo series, mainly because I think it’s a DAC made from an FPGA design, fundamentally different from the traditional parts-stacking of domestic “DAC+AMP” units. After all, FPGA counts as “hardware simulation,” and in theory it has far more unlimited potential. Don’t you think that’s cool? As a loser guy, I think this is way too cool, perfectly in line with my imagination of future life, technology with a bit of fun.

Last year, while I was replacing the battery in my Switch, my hand slipped and the screwdriver flew off and hit the screen, leaving a nice little pit right in the middle. That’s when I remembered that almost a year ago, I still had insurance on the screen — you can read the details here. So I thought, isn’t this the perfect time to get the screen replaced? While I was still hesitating, the next day the machine obligingly developed a new problem: the TrackPoint’s right-click button popped out, and it wouldn’t go back in. Looks like I had no choice but to go to the service center.

A while back I wanted to get my dad a computer so he could chat on Discord and check stocks. I originally planned to pick up a ThinkPad and upgrade it myself, but then I spotted something unexpected on Xianyu: DELL Latitude 7370 Intel Core M5-6Y57 8G RAM 256G SSD The seller said it was in 9/10 condition and wanted 900 yuan, shipping included. By any reasonable measure, 900 yuan is a bit much for this. But I looked closely at the screen and asked the seller what the resolution was. Turns out the seller didn’t even know how to check… So I tried a different angle: is the screen a touchscreen? The seller said yes, it’s touch. That’s when things got interesting. On the DELL Latitude 7370, a touchscreen version can only mean one thing: the same 3K wide-gamut touch panel as the top-spec XPS 13. If it really was that screen… then 900 yuan is a fair price, because the screen alone is worth more than 500.

When I got sent to the quarantine facility, I brought my Switch, and that’s where I wrecked the sticks on the thing… The clips that hold the left and right sticks in place also went bad — the sticks wouldn’t stay put, one push and they’d pop up. So I figured I’d just replace them, and in for a penny, in for a pound: the left and right stick clips, the console’s own battery, and the sticks themselves all got swapped. You can buy all of this on Taobao: Rail clips — there are metal versions now, and I strongly recommend the metal ones, they’re just sturdier Sticks — there are second-gen ones, plus the newly released GuliKit Hall effect ones. If you’ve got the money I’d go Hall, but remember: the point of a Hall stick is that it massively cuts the odds of drift, not that it feels good Battery — I couldn’t tell which was the real “official” one, so I just bought the highest-selling listing The screwdrivers for teardown usually come free

A while back, I got this sudden itch to buy a tablet, but my requirements were a bit unusual: Cheap enough Has a Type-C port Screen preferably 4:3 — I don’t game, just reading and videos Speakers have to sound good As few ads as possible, ideally none or stock Android 8 inches It’s not like tablets meeting these specs don’t exist. The Xiaomi Pad 2 and 3 series are all over Xianyu, for instance — but those are e-waste that’s been hacked to hell and back… Then I stumbled on something magical: the JD Tab, the tablet JD.com put out back in the day: 4:3 high-quality screen Flyme OS, no ads 8-inch size Harman Kardon speakers Type-C charging Going for just over 200 yuan on Xianyu, brand new Holy crap, brand new? That’s gotta beat all that e-waste, right? So I got carried away and bought one. Little did I know that was the start of a whole series of adventures.

Right after I sold my FiiO Q3S, I happened to see the announcement for the FiiO Q7, and there was a launch discount, so I got carried away and bought it. Then I barely listened to the thing before hastily selling it off. Maybe I just didn’t like it. Or maybe I didn’t want to deal with it anymore. I remember the Q7 arriving around October 14, 2022. As FiiO’s new-generation flagship DAC, the Q7’s packaging can only be described as “lavish,” and its spec sheet as “extravagant.” 3.5/4.4/2.5 balanced outputs Dual DAC chips Independent amp stage Large battery Supports bypassing the battery to run on wall power Works as a desktop unit or as a portable DAC/amp combo A display in the middle showing the current status It also came with a pile of accessories: a genuine leather case, a screen protector already applied, and even a cooling stand so you can use it as a desktop unit.

Buying the Pixel Buds Pro was decided from the start, and its release was completely expected. Because the first-gen and second-gen Pixel Buds had no noise cancelling and mediocre battery life, they looked like half-finished products in every way. So I bought the Pixel Buds Pro not long after it came out. Worth mentioning: I bought it through Wellbot, and it was actually $50 off at launch — a pretty big discount. My expectations for the Pixel Buds Pro were simple: the noise cancelling just had to work, and it must not do what the previous Pixel Buds did, where one ear’s battery suddenly died. When it arrived, the box was smaller too — no idea if that’s to go along with the so-called “environmental friendliness.”

Back in the summer, bored out of my mind, I was poking around online and found out you could actually buy a Pixel 6 Pro case on Etsy. I got hooked pretty fast on these wooden cases from a brand called HARDWOOD. There are plenty of similar ones on eBay, but this grain pattern was just too unique. The price wasn’t bad, so I bought one just to see if it would even arrive. They shipped it out quickly enough. What I did not expect was that it was coming from Ukraine 🇺🇦, followed by nearly a month of total silence. Ukraine is still fighting Russia, right? I was half convinced my package’s plane had been shot down. Then after a bit over a month it suddenly showed up in China, and I had it in hand.

A while back, for some reason I lost my mind and went back down the audiophile money-pit road. This time I was noticeably more broke about it: no four-figure new releases, no $199 AKG n5005, just a calm little DAC purchase. The reason was simple enough. I had some fairly specific requirements: The DAC has to support a 4.4 balanced output It also has to have a 3.5 headphone jack It has to be portable, suitable for laptop use It needs its own power, a battery, but also an option to toggle between “battery power” and “USB power” It has to be cheap. I know about the Mojo 2, I just can’t afford it Decoding specs shouldn’t be too low Eventually I found this magical thing, the “FiiO Q3S.” Magical because I have no idea when it came out, FiiO’s official store doesn’t sell it anymore, but you can definitely find traces of it on eBay and Mercari. It matched my decoder needs perfectly — everything I wanted was there, the price wasn’t bad either, just 850, and it even supported installment payments, so I got carried away and bought it.

A while back, right after I got my Pixel 6 Pro, I fired up Genshin Impact and watched this piece of junk stutter just fighting Dvalin. Then I thought about all the people hyping up the “Tensor Core” GPU as some beast… So I figured, if this crappy SoC keeps throttling because it overheats… Why not just slap a cooling fan on it? When it comes to phone cooling clips, the first thing that comes to mind is the “Black Shark Cooling Case.” Yep, my thoughts still drift back to that virgin shark.