I don’t know when the “YuanDao” meme blew up, but by the time I noticed, it was everywhere. What is “YuanDao”? A flathead earbud that ships for 9.9 with free shipping (sometimes even less). I was already familiar with this kind of product, because back in the day it wasn’t called “YuanDao” but something like “Diving Expert,” so at first I figured it was just a “budget Diving Expert.” Later, as the YuanDao meme took off, my curiosity about it grew a bit: Is this thing really that amazing? Plenty of people, I’m sure, ended up trying YuanDao the same way I did — by accident. I got my hands on YuanDao a month ago. The price was great — 9.9 with free shipping, I think, and they knocked 4 yuan off, so it cost me less than 6. I’ve been listening to these earbuds on and off for about a month. Not that many times, honestly, but not few either. Quick impressions:

There are plenty of people on Xianyu selling modded webcams that support Microsoft’s Windows Hello face unlock. Basically they take cameras out of laptops, hack them into USB devices, and you plug one in as an IR face-unlock camera. The cost isn’t high, but most of the shells are 3D-printed or metal shims and look a bit janky. Not a big deal unless you look closely — the main draw is that they’re cheap. I ended up buying one for 69 yuan with free shipping, since the other sellers were asking 79 to 99 and up, sometimes without free shipping too. Once it arrived it turned out to be pretty simple: a 3D-printed shell with a laptop pull camera inside. No cable included by default, but I found a USB cable and plugged it into the computer. Mainly meant for the PC at work, which is running the currently trendy Windows 11. The shell comes with double-sided tape, so you can easily stick it to the top of the monitor, like this:

I’ve been using some rebranded Philips charger in my car all this time — I’ve mentioned it before, and it doubles as a mount so you can glance at navigation. I bought it back then because it was one of the few products that could charge wirelessly. But after all these years, a few things about it have gotten genuinely annoying. The suction cup doesn’t hold well. When it gets too hot, it falls off. At least 4-5 times over the years — rare, sure, but having it drop while you’re driving is pretty nasty. It blocks your view. A big lump like that sitting in the middle does get in the way sometimes. Wireless charging power is too low. After I retired my OnePlus 5 for a Pixel 3XL, this thing couldn’t even charge it — it would actually drain the battery. Besides not charging fast enough, the Pixel 3XL would also disable LTE data from overheating. I’m using this for navigation, damn it — no data, no navigation. Why does it overheat? Because the thing sits dead center. Fine in winter, broken in summer. Anyway, it’s been several years. Time to replace it.

My old laptop was gone, so I decided to buy a new one. And since I was buying new, I figured I’d stick with the X1 Carbon line—especially since around Chinese New Year there were rumors that this generation would bring a ton of great changes. Sure enough, right around the holiday, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon 9th was officially announced: a brand-new 4K screen, a new 16:10 aspect ratio, better speakers, a bigger battery, a beefier Iris integrated GPU, and a shorter key travel. Overall it still looked way better than the old versions—at the very least, that screen alone was worth bragging about. So I decided to go for it.

For the whole of last year my eroge machine was the Chuwi Minibook. It’s got plenty of small problems, but I thought it was fine — good enough for playing games. Then at the start of this year I lost my laptop bag, and the Chuwi Minibook went with it, so I started thinking about getting a new machine. My requirements were pretty clear by then: A good screen. The Chuwi Minibook uses PWM dimming, which is a pain over long sessions. Good battery life. A galgame machine doesn’t need much power, but the battery has to be biiiig. Enough cooling. The Chuwi Minibook got scorching hot when I ran it, and the fan sounded like a plane taking off. Expandable storage, at least NVMe. 16GB of RAM. I like leaving a ton of stuff open in the background. USB-C for docks and charging. After shopping around, the only thing that fit was the GPD P2 MAX, so I grabbed one on Taobao.

Bought these at the end of last year, when Amazon Global had them on sale for a little over 1200 — the lowest price they’d ever hit, and way cheaper than buying domestically. I already had a long-serving ER4P, but I still went for these. The biggest reason: the detachable cable. I’m always worried the cable on my ER4P will give out, and as the upgraded model, the ER4SR’s replaceable-cable design is obviously a lot safer. Surprisingly, the overseas order didn’t get hit with customs, and it arrived safe and sound. The only downside was the long wait for shipping from the US.

Everyone knows my main machine used to be an X1 Carbon 2017. Unfortunately, I lost it earlier this year. After that, my wife was actually on board with me buying a new one, but the X1 Carbon 2021 was about to launch and the rumors said it was a big upgrade — new 16:10 screen, better GPU and CPU performance. So I decided to wait. But while waiting, I still needed a laptop to get work done. So I started looking: Performance has to be passable Keyboard has to at least be usable Screen at least 1080p, color gamut can’t be terrible Strong battery life Build quality as good as possible

Preface: I picked up a Pinebook Pro back around 2019. I vaguely remember the other machine I was fiddling with at the time was a Chuwi Minibook. Nearly a year and a half went by and the Pinebook Pro spent most of it collecting dust, until my ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2017 went missing a while back. I really had no computer to use, so I dug it out and used it as my “main machine” for a stretch. And honestly, when the Pinebook Pro first launched, the ecosystem around it was pretty incomplete (though already a big step up from the old Pinebook). Now that I have a new temporary main laptop, I can set the Pinebook Pro aside for the time being. The days of using it were an interesting and painful memory, but it was also a chance to seriously try out this “open-source Arm Linux laptop” and see its strengths and weaknesses. So I figure I’ve earned the right to give it a subjective review here.

Buying this thing was a total accident — I saw it going for absurdly cheap on Xianyu. I’ve got a decent impression of the Xiaomi Piston Pro. I still use it plugged into my tablet or PC for Galgames and videos. The sound isn’t anything high-end, but it’s not bad either — good enough for watching videos or playing games. It has a mic too, so it can pinch-hit for voice chat. So when I saw how cheap this was, I bought the “Xiaomi Dual-Driver Earphones.”

A while back my main eroge machine, the Chuwi Minibook, broke — the power light wouldn’t come on anymore. Since the warranty on that thing was almost up, I contacted the support lady to see if I could get it repaired. But nobody bothered to answer me for about two months, right up until I’d given up. Then the email came! She said it could be repaired, and explained the part I’d been worried about. I’d heard Chuwi’s after-sales was garbage — basically they just reinstall the OS and ship it back — but it seems crowdfunded products aren’t treated that way. Of course, I also found out why there’d been no reply for two months: the lady who’d been answering had quit, and they hadn’t hired anyone in those two months… Fine. In the end the machine got sent off, and I had no Windows machine on hand. That’s when I spotted what looked like a Lenovo Windows tablet in my wife’s inventory. The model was Lenovo MIIX 2 10, and it even came with a keyboard. So I asked if I could borrow it. “Sure, whatever. That’s your mother-in-law’s computer, seems like it’s been abandoned for ages.” So I picked up this Lenovo MIIX 2 10 and kept playing Gal.