Essay prompt: “There was a merchant with a diamond worth a fortune, but the diamond had a flaw, and splitting it along that flaw would yield two flawless gems. Many experienced craftsmen didn’t dare try. A young craftsman stepped forward, split the diamond in two, and cut out the two gems perfectly. The young craftsman’s master said: ‘Sometimes you need not only enough experience, but also the courage to cast aside your worries.’ Write an essay on this material, choose your own angle, make up your own title."

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I was using Linux, but I recently needed to do some video work, so I figured I’d just install a Hackintosh. Looked at the specs and it seemed like my setup would be pretty easy to get working, so I gave it a shot — and in the end it actually turned out perfect…
CPU is an E3 1230 V2, motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-B75-D3V
GPU is an ASUS GTX 460 V2

I tried a Clover install, but it felt like there were a lot of problems and too little documentation, so I’ll switch over to Clover later if I get the chance.

The install method was manually making a UniBeast USB installer and booting straight from it. The GPU was detected automatically (occasionally it wouldn’t be, but a reboot with -v fixed it).

Everything was fine after installation. Once in the system I installed drivers with MultiBeast — mine is the latest version, 5.3.0

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Maybe I’m just getting old. I don’t have the stamina to push through long-ass AVGs anymore, so lately I’ve been hunting for short ones. That’s how I heard about The Piano Forest in Full Bloom — supposedly very short — and picked it up.

And yet… it still ate an entire afternoon.

Anyway, some quick thoughts. If you’re worried about spoilers, leave now.

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Bought the Qian 25, Qian 39, and Qian 49 out of curiosity… they arrived today.

Nice packaging, they actually came in tin boxes. Genuinely thoughtful.

Went through all three roughly, so here are my impressions. I’m a bit of a tin ear who still wants decent sound quality—the really fine details are lost on me.

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Luo Yonghao wants to make a Smartisan phone. Whether the guy can actually pull it off is anyone’s guess, but the blind self-confidence he’s been radiating has already seared my poor overworked eyes.

All the mockery just brings him more attention. Sometimes I wonder—Luo Yonghao isn’t a total idiot, so what if he actually nails this phone thing? Won’t he get mobbed by everyone who doubted him? And wouldn’t he have given people ammunition while paying a steep price himself?

Then I looked into what he’s been saying, and it hit me. Could we call this the “Luo-style language trap”?

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This is an old post I’m re-uploading……

Lately I’ve been meaning to level up my cooking……so I took today off and figured I’d give it a shot.

There wasn’t much left in the house, so I started with the easy stuff.

The tomato and egg stir-fry came out all broken up—my bad, I dumped the seasoning in too early. Should’ve waited until the eggs had pretty much set before going on.

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I downloaded Aozora Shoujo Kyouyaku-dan in January 2012… no, wait, it was June 2011… and then I just left it sitting there forever. More accurately, something about the game kept me from ever getting interested in it. Maybe it was too old? Maybe the character designs didn’t appeal? Or maybe the name just wasn’t cool enough?

So it was nearly a year later that I finally opened the game and started my own run through the world of galge.

You could say this is the most ancient-feeling game out there… though “ancient” isn’t the right word. “Orthodox” is more like it. Your typical old-school proper galge is probably exactly this: a protagonist who can toss out a snarky line or two, living under one roof with a bunch of girls of various personalities… then picking one and getting with her or whatever. Fine, it’s a standard harem setup, and more than a little clichéd.

I’ve played a few clichéd ones, sure, but what got to me most about Aozora Shoujo Kyouyaku-dan was the cast. Let’s see… aside from Hami Umi, there wasn’t a single one I cared about. The raspy-voiced tsundere sports girl, the shut-in loli who looks like she’d be horny, the two-faced airhead rich girl, the dopey female teacher, the even more two-faced senpai… none of them did it for me.

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It’s been over a week without unplugging it, so here’s a quick rundown of how the Cisco E4200 is doing.

Signal isn’t all that strong, but the quality is fine — one bar still holds a usable connection. Don’t ask me for the theory behind it, I’m not the expert. As for punching through walls, don’t get your hopes up.

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1 This thing really does put out a lot of heat 2 The so-called 300 Mbps wireless rate is really only useful for getting past a 100 Mbps LAN 3 I feel like I should just install Windows, carry the machine over, and plug it straight into gigabit Ethernet 4 Sure, the study already shows two bars, but you can’t actually use the connection…… you still need a repeater 5 That said, once you step out of the study it’s down to one bar and still seems pretty fast 6 The dual-band 5G and 2.4G can be merged into one SSID, but it’s better to keep them separate, otherwise you’ll always end up connected to 2.4G 7 It’s goddamn expensive, and if this thing turns out to be unstable on top of that, then there’s no point to it

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