Week 4&5 - A Major Tech Upgrade
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Preface
It's been a while since I wrote a weekly. These two weeks can be summed up in two words: device upgrades.
From keeping my spending in check at the start of the year to falling utterly for tech sales, vouchers, subsidies, and every tempting option these past two weeks, I've become another creature of consumerism that can only obey “give me money” 😇.
Sure enough, give someone money and they start wanting to buy things. Maybe that's immature, but between thinking about them day and night, the recommendation algorithm's brainwashing, and the fact that I really could afford them, I admit the sellers won. Although my wallet was the only casualty 😿.
Redmi G Pro 27U
Why not swap the team that makes Redmi monitors with the teams responsible for Xiaomi's other home devices!
Redmi monitors are almost unbeatable for value: amazing color accuracy, integration with Mi Home, calling up Xiao Ai to turn off the lights...
I finally gave in and bought the Redmi G Pro 27U I mentioned in week 2&3. A little over 2.3k yuan after the government subsidy, just enough to use up the money I'd “brought in from outside” since starting university... By scraping things together and selling unused stuff secondhand, I managed it without asking a single “parent” for help.
But for someone like me, who doesn't have a huge appetite for shopping yet is easily tempted, this already crossed a mental line 🥲.
At first, I bought MSI's Xuanlong (玄龙). I really wanted to upgrade my monitor, and the Redmi wasn't eligible for the subsidy then. After thinking about it endlessly, I placed the order.
Two days into using it, I was looking at an all-black screen one night and noticed two bright red dots... I checked, and the official policy said two or fewer didn't count as a defect. An exchange would be a hassle; better to use the seven-day no-questions-asked return and buy another monitor. But if I bought the same one again, what if it had the same quality-control problem?
After a night of indecision, I discovered Hunan had finally added monitors to its subsidy program. I dropped the MSI immediately and got the 4K 160Hz Redmi I'd been dreaming of.
Unboxing the MSI had left me fairly calm—it really was just a monitor. This one, though, surprised me! As soon as I plugged it in, it booted into a TV system, with no ads. Before even connecting my computer, I spent an entire evening watching TV on it...
After a few days, my overall feeling is: very satisfied. I was lucky and didn't get the uneven screen brightness people mentioned online. I followed my heart and bought the one I liked most 😉.
Cloudcone
I got a new VPS from cloudcone. Four cores, 2 GB of RAM, 140 GB of disk, only 24 dollars a year—what more could I ask for?
And I got especially lucky: its IP wasn't blocked by the Great Firewall! Cloudcone has long had the problem of IPs you can't reach over SSH, but with that out of the way, I declare it unbeatable for value... The connection is also much nicer than with some providers—DigitalOcean, for example, where even SSH felt laggy.
While I'm still within my year's free DigitalOcean credit, I may need to start gradually moving the blog to the new VPS. (Besides, 12 dollars a month for a DO server is still too expensive, and connections from China are painfully slow. Not recommended.)
RSSHub - Maybe We Still Need RSS
🧡 Everything is RSSible
RSSHub has long been one of the little projects I wanted to self-host. This week, I finally did it. 😗
In an earlier post about tinkering with my old server, I wrote about trying to deploy RSSHub and breaking my free Oracle VPS. Surely that won't happen on this machine... right?
After being battered by recommendation algorithms, maybe I need to build an information environment of my own.
Why self-host RSSHub instead of using the official feeds? Mainly to look into how to write some feeds myself, perhaps? Though I haven't started learning yet... At least I can tweak some scraping parameters myself and get around a few of the anti-scraping measures on Chinese sites, such as Bilibili.
Then again, maybe all this tinkering is just about getting my information All In One?
Apparently, RSS was originally intended to give online readers a way to aggregate text, so they wouldn't have to bounce between countless websites. Convenient and quick. That's part of why we use it too.
But in today's age of video feeds, maybe we need RSS even more.
The reasoning is simple enough, and comes from an ordinary experience of mine: I want to watch a particular creator's video, but end up spending ages wandering through homepage recommendations.
We try to build an aggregator by subscribing or hitting follow, but those seem to have become little more than “proof of preference.” Most of the information we get comes from “Home” and “Recommended.” That's perfectly normal, and I'm not dismissing that route to information. It meets our need for breadth.
But as the homepage recommends interesting videos, or even stupid ones, our time drains away a minute or a few seconds at a time, often leaving us less productive. When entertainment spills into study time, what have we actually gained in return for the time we paid for it?
Even when we set out to find a particular source, it's hard not to be swept off course by the torrent of information.
I hope RSSHub's Everything is RSSible really can come true. And I hope some Chinese websites (yes, Bilibili, I'm talking about you)
will offer more RSS interfaces. Having your own collection of sources, finding a little space for your own learning amid the flood—that sounds fun too.
There's still plenty to play with on the new VPS. It's a nice toy to tinker with. Let me learn lots 🥰.
MacBook Air
Of all the things in this wave of “device upgrades,” the one that stirred up the most feelings was the MacBook Air I finally decided to buy.
It will be my first Apple device, and the end of a long internal tug-of-war—or a new beginning?
In programmer and IT circles, macOS has become a religion.
My phone isn't an iPhone. Because of some rebellious prejudice against Apple when I was young, I always thought I'd never buy its products... Even when Dad kept telling me after the gaokao that I needed an iPhone and a MacBook as my main devices, I resolutely chose the familiar Android + Windows combination.
But having always used Android and Windows, I've also always wondered: what exactly is special about macOS? What have those people who “can't go back to Windows” experienced?
Maybe I just want to try it for myself.
Once, while out with my roommates, we passed the Apple Store at IFS. Among all those Apple products, the one that caught my eye immediately was the MacBook Air... I don't know where that attraction came from. Maybe, after all the tinkering I'd done since starting university, seeing a product that fit my needs so closely finally made its purpose click...
I'd been using my tablet to remotely stream from the laptop in my dorm. It helped with portability to an extent, but the dependence on a network, the input lag, the cramped screen, and all the preparation before each trip—unplugging the monitor cable to prevent “hauntings,” checking the connection—left me struggling to keep up with demanding coursework.
Then there was an especially painful experience this week: I went to the study room planning to write code and improve my notes, only to find that my computer wasn't online, so the remote connection failed. I'd also forgotten my mouse. After struggling with Termux + Vim on the tablet and mobile Obsidian without image hosting, I finally gave up on finishing that day's work. My assignments snowballed after that. Today's deadline ran straight into tomorrow's, one after another. I couldn't finish them all 🥲.
I've heard that for the first-year summer short term at HNU's 信科院, all students do is arrive at the school building at 8
A lightweight, self-contained device with long battery life and a good programming experience had become something I needed.
Maybe there was also the strange need to “take it to a study room, put a Starbucks beside it, and enjoy a little bourgeois life.”
“Having to bring a computer for the short term” was just an opening that made the desire reasonable. Without it, I'd probably have found another excuse to convince myself.
Maybe I just seized a chance to fulfill a wish without losing too much money.
Before buying it, though, the anxiety lasted longer than the excitement. I agonized for ages: “Do I really need this? Will it just sit on the desk doing nothing? Do I need it, or am I just another sucker for consumerism and algorithms?” I kept doing the sums, comparing offers, checking my savings, then closing the page again and again, trying to tell myself to “wait a little longer.” But the next recommendation or low price always pulled me back.
After all that weighing up—and perhaps a little impulse—I finally pressed the payment button. The feelings were mixed: relief at finally getting something I'd wanted, anticipation of an unfamiliar experience, and a trace of uncertainty about the future. But at least once the order was placed, I really did stop refreshing shopping apps and tech news so often. There was a little less restlessness inside.
So I don't see it as “having money to burn”... Sometimes, being curious, wanting something, being able to afford it, and finding a good price
are enough reason to grant yourself a wish.
For now, the MacBook Air is still on its way. My hopes are simple: I want it to be a dependable companion in my studies, especially in the coming short term, with a stable, smooth programming experience that lets me focus on learning itself. I also hope I can adapt quickly to the unfamiliar macOS and discover what it can do, rather than leaving it to gather dust.
But honestly, I'm still a little afraid to make wishes—afraid it'll be too lovely, and afraid it'll become a burden.
Still, life needs a few wishes. And somehow, little by little, they come true in ways you didn't expect.
Next week I'll be doing assignments with my new companions. I'll report back once the novelty wears off and the mess begins. Let's see whether these purchases become productivity wonders or very expensive ornaments.