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Minneapolis, June 2022

Late this past June, my wife Anné was invited to speak as a part of an internship-team at the “ASEE” American Society of Engineering Education convention in Minneapolis, MN. Neither of us travel much, but with her program covering many of the costs involved and my having started a remote job, we decided it would be a fun trip for us both to go on.

I hadn’t written about or taken photos of a trip in many years now, but I did pack my camera, and it felt natural to pick up and shoot some photos again. You’ll see those sprinkled throughout this post, and while I didn’t take photographs of everything that I would’ve liked to looking back (a summery rooftop-Italian dinner likely could’ve used a snap or two), I’m just glad to have shot anything at all.

The Drive

The actual trip over was uneventful. It’s around six hours of highway driving from where we live, mostly through scenery that looked something like this:

I’d visited Wisconsin briefly last year to pick up a trundle-bed couch off Facebook Marketplace, but aside from that, both WI and MN were entirely new states to Anné and me. Unsurprisingly, they look not all that dissimilar to our home state of Michigan, which isn’t far away as another part of the US’s Midwest.

Upon driving into Minneapolis things did pick up quite a bit, with lanes being added onto the highway and several freeways intertwining to whisk folks around the city. The actual driving around Minneapolis reminded me a decent bit of driving around the more populous parts of the metro-Detroit area, but seeing as Anné and I live in a tiny college town nowadays it was a bit of a shock at first. So many lanes, cars, one-way streets, turns coming up too quickly, the list goes on. I did eventually acclimate to the pace of things, and felt better about some of the more assertive navigation required by the end of the trip.

Having arrived mid-afternoon, we spent some time meeting up with another member of Anné’s internship for dinner. While waiting for an open table, we checked out a sort of sunken-park built into a city block. It was about 25 feet below street level, sported many steps and benches, was ringed with different kinds of greenery, and held a skim-shallow wading fountain. The first of many green spaces that surprised me with their frequency around Minneapolis.

Sushi Train

And oh man — dinner! Food in general was a highlight of this trip. With Anné busy at the conference each day and me handling work remotely, that left evenings free for us to enjoy. I wish I’d photographed more of the food, but this meal from the evening we arrived will have to do.

Where we live in Michigan’s upper peninsula is fortunately one of the larger cities in our part of the state, so it has a Chinese place, a few Mexican-food restaurants, and even a sushi place of its own, too (though the grocery store’s sushi up here is nearly as good)! There’s definitely a few types of food we don’t get to eat a lot of upstate, and so Indian, Italian, Lobster, and Sushi were all things on our short list (though we didn’t manage to have Thai or Vietnamese this time).

Our dinner that first evening in the city was at a place called Sushi Train, which was a dining experience unlike any other I’ve had. Rather than order a few sushi rolls off a menu to be prepared for you, this place sported a dedicated conveyor belt of freshly-made sushi that trailed through the entire restaurant and past your table setting. Each small plate of sushi told you what it was with a label, denoted its pricing via color, and all one needed to begin eating was to pick something up and have it. Once the meal was over they would tally up the plates you’d consumed for your bill. It was definitely a case where smaller portions per roll and the ease of eating led to it being all too easy to rack up a huge tab.

While leaving we saw a table that had clearly been there awhile with a stack or two of plates almost as tall as they were while seated! We mused that it might be a great time to come and sit a long while, reading a book or otherwise catching up with a good friend for hours, though the gradual allure of sushi might make such an idea… quite expensive.

The sushi itself was quite good. I’ve had slightly fresher-tasting fish or fancier rolls elsewhere, but there was a large variety of both sushi and nigiri to choose from as they cycled by. There were a few more general sides, too, like edamame, seaweed salad, and even a peanut butter and jelly “roll” (they were more like “bites”, but it was a cute presentation all the same). Just about any type of sushi with eel is some of my favorite, and this place delivered it both in roll and nigiri form. I was a happy customer.

Flock

One of my favorite things to do when traveling is to find neat places to sit and use a computer. I couldn’t tell you exactly why, aside that I really like using computers, and getting to use them on-the-go and in a new place is sort of exhilarating for me still. All the hardware and software you’ve spent time selecting there with you, but out in a new place removed from the troubleshooting security of a home setup’s spare parts, extra drives, fallback machines, and reliable power and internet. Sort of like a nerdy little adventure, I suppose.

There’s something that’s always slightly bothered me about this brand of nerdy excursion, and has kept me from being able to feel fully justified about it. I spent time in cafes editing photographs or writing old blog posts in years gone by while on the occasional trip, but I’ve never had a job or work that I could use as part of my reasoning for holing up on a computer somewhere while others traveling might’ve wanted to bask on a beach or visit a landmark. That is, until now.

This summer I’ve been trialing doing some remote work for the small mechanical keyboard company ZSA. They make the ErgoDox EZ, the Planck EZ, and Moonlander keyboards, and I’ve been working there as one of a few folks who interface with customers both for more traditional order support, and more organic tech support and recommendations. It’s been pretty neat (and I may blog more about it sometime)!

This trip coincided with the week or two after I’d finally received a Moonlander of my own, and I’d only just begun learning how to type on it. The board being split was already a little weird for some of my less-disciplined typing habits, but it had keys in straight ortholinear columns instead of staggered rows, and multiple layers of keys to remember instead of only shift. It really was totally re-learning how I type.

In any case, having actual work to do on this trip and wanting to continue practicing that new keyboard’s layout meant that I felt a little cagey about the idea of relying on hopping around various cafes in the Minneapolis area. Sure, I’d be swimming in a veritable sea of great coffee in many kinds of brews from various shops, but I didn’t want to worry about having enough space for my setup, or how I’d need to pack the entire kit up every time I needed to use the bathroom — having had all those delicious cups of joe’. Thankfully, the local co-working space Flock was just what I needed.

Only about a 10 minute drive from our hotel, Flock is located in Minneapolis’s Whittier neighborhood, which felt a lot closer to some of the smaller metro downtowns I’m familiar with back in Michigan. The co-working space itself is nestled into a neighborhood not far from the main street’s restaurants and cafes, and was yet another place I was thankful to find a surprising amount of greenery. Flock’s driveway was ringed with tall fir bushes, the building was covered in vines, and a smattering of flowers dotted around some beds. I got there early on my first day visiting the space, and couldn’t help but enjoy sitting there in the summer morning with the plants.

Now back to the computers. Flock offered a variety of working spaces from simple tables like the ones you’d find in a coffee shop, to more built-out full desk spaces for folks in need of renting a more dedicated office space. I was thankful that they let me purchase a few single day passes and not some kind of weekly/monthly membership, as I just wasn’t going to be in town that long — nice and flexible. Signing up for a longer-term access membership would surely be more economical over time, but individual days worked well for me.

To be totally candid, I felt a little odd working from a coworking space the first day — like I was still a teenager enjoying using their computer among the adults getting actual work done, but… that’s not the case anymore. I did have work that needed doing, and it was genuinely nice to have a quiet, spacious place to do it in where I didn’t feel like I constantly had to be watching to make sure my stuff wasn’t stolen. It also felt nice to have a small “morning routine” of getting up and driving over to Flock after having had some breakfast at our hotel. It felt like a small taste of what a big-city morning might be like if one were to actually live and work there. I really enjoy getting to have small “lived experiences” in a new location like that, rather than only hitting up the “must-see” sites. I’m glad my remote work gives me a justification to slip into a routine while traveling, and it was a neat experience while in MN.

Steelcase Think

And now, for a nerdy aside about chairs.

A few years ago after having started streaming regularly, I spent some time researching ergonomic chairs for the first time and fell in love with some of the designs from brands like Herman Miller and Steelcase. Chairs like these had ergonomic comfort, adjust-ability, were well made, and often were designed to look as striking as they were comfy. The only problem with them, of course, being that they often cost nearly $1000US — way too much for a then-rock climbing gym instructor / barista’s hourly rate to justify.

Thankfully, I was living near metro Detroit at the time, and after a few months of scoping out pricing online I was able to snag a used Herman Miller Mirra 1 and Aeron Classic for Anné and me to use (both for around only $100). Since then they’ve been making both of our long hours in front of computers at home far more comfortable. Particularly for my Twitch streaming, I don’t think I could put in the kind of hours I do (about 25-30 hours every week) without a chair designed to promote proper posture and allow for adjustments to fit different desks, arm positions, etc.

Jump forward several years, with me now working full time for ZSA and still streaming, and I’m now more thankful than ever to have my reliable Mirra 1. It’s genuinely one of my favorite purchases of the last few years, and a tremendous value. Spending that much time holed up in my office away from Anné has felt a bit stuffy, though, and I’d been planning to find a way to spend more time in the rest of the apartment with her. This brings us back to Minneapolis, and my months-long plan to snag another task chair while visiting that would allow for me to work comfortably in multiple parts of our apartment back home.

I’d been watching chair listings for weeks before our arrival in Minneapolis, and by the time we’d arrived in the twin-cities area I’d narrowed down my search to an office that was in the process of clearing out much of their furniture since having gone remote during the pandemic. There were listings for chairs I’d tried before like the Mirra 1, Aeron, and Steelcase Leap, but the Steelcase Think stuck out to me for being a good deal cheaper than the other chairs on offer around MN, for its slightly smaller size, and for its more straightforward adjustments. The Think is positioned as a kind of mid-ranged model in Steelcase’s offerings, so it’s not quite as substantially built or as adjustable as something like their Leap or Gesture chairs. For what will amount to a secondary desk chair, I thought that sounded just fine.

The office space must’ve had close to 30 Think chairs they were trying to sell off. Some had slightly different configurations like a mesh back, leather seatpan, or Steelcase’s 4-way adjustable armrests — all of which I’d been eying as features I might want. I found only a single chair with the Think’s optional lumbar support insert, though unfortunately that specific chair had optioned out of the awesome armrests, instead. I deliberated for a bit on if I’d rather have nicer adjustments for my elbows or for my back, before thankfully realizing that the lumbar for the Think 1 chair was fairly simple to swap out. I managed to transfer the lumbar to another chair that did have 4-way arms, and frankenstein-ed together the best chair I could from what was there. The office manager facilitating the local sales was kind enough to let me kick in a few extra dollars for having salvaged the parts together, and with that we were on our way. The Think’s smaller size and light weight made it easy to transport back to our hotel, and much to Anné’s chagrin I brought the chair through the lobby and up to our room. I didn’t mind looking slightly odd in the process, I had to try it out!

I may write more about the few task chair options I’ve tried some other time (the Mirra 1 really does deserve more praise online), but suffice to say that the Think is quite comfortable, even as it doesn’t allow for quite the same degree of tension-adjustment and tilt control as something like the Mirra or the Leap does. It’s counter-weight based tension does feel a good deal firmer than I usually keep the resistance on my Mirra, but I’ve spent a few days working from the Think now, and I’m quite happy with it as a chair to use away from my main desk.

I can’t recommend secondhand task chairs enough. So much more comfortable than the kinds of chairs you’d find at bigbox stores or on Amazon, and potentially cheaper, too — with a good amount of patience and the right find online. Do your back a favor and look into one if you do any real amount of sitting in front of a computer. It’s worth the effort.

Back home

Speaking of sitting at home, that’s of course where I am now. Anné wrapped up her conference on our fourth day in the city, and we drove our way back through the many Wisconsin fields to Michigan again. I think we both enjoyed getting to see a new place and travel together, despite both having responsibilities during the day. It’s always neat visiting a place so wildly different from one’s day-to-day, and actually having work to get done while being in a new place was something I’d looked forward to for awhile now — it didn’t disappoint. I’m so grateful for the blessing a remote work job has been, and will continue to be as Anné searches for a job next year.

On that note of being grateful; after the bustle of the city and the long hours driving in the car (both downtown and on the highway), arriving home to our quiet apartment in a small town where everything is less than 5 minutes away felt like releasing a breath you didn’t realize you were holding. Travel is neat, but home sure is nice, too.

“E.U. Regulators Gonna Regulate”

This being my blog’s first “link post” strikes me as slightly unfortunate, as it’s not the most light and rosy of discussions to dive into. I did need something to eventually push me into the “type up your shortform take on an ongoing discussion” style of posts though, so here we are. Thanks Gruber! 😅

This past Friday, John Gruber responded on Daring Fireball to some proposed E.U. legislation that would force large tech companies to follow new guidelines around consumer-choice & competition. In Apple’s case, they’d need to begin following guidelines around allowing developers to access the iPhone’s hardware in the same sorts of ways Apple’s software does, and they’d need to provide alternative methods of installing software aside from the first-party App Store.

Gruber goes on to take issue with the proposed changes - which I think can be a valid stance depending on justification - but does so with some arguments that just don’t jive with me personally:

“This is bananas. All third party developers get control over the secure enclave and the software that controls it? Would be good to give them such control over the camera, microphone, and location data, too.

This is profoundly anti-consumer. Consumers aren’t asking for any of this shit. Actual people love their phones more than their computers — whether Macs or PCs — not despite the fact that their phones are tightly controlled consoles, but because they are tightly controlled consoles. These regulators don’t see it that way, because they’re idiots. They think they can legislate their way to a world where the iPhone (and Android, which is also console-like) remains far safer and more reliable than PCs while mandating that all the protections that have made them far safer and more reliable than PCs be removed. It’s absurd.”

Just initially, I take issue with equating Apple’s particular kind of walled-garden as holistically “Pro-Consumer,” making anything that threatens the streamlined first-party experience “Anti-Consumer” by default. Apple’s platform decisions range from some of the most-privacy-respecting implementations in the industry, to clearly opportunistic and based primarily in forcing folks to engage with them, their products, and their ecosystem above all else. I don’t see why addressing some of the egregiously anti-competitive rulings Apple has for their platform wouldn’t be possible while still keeping real system security locked down. It’s not all-or-nothing here.

The next part that jumped out to me is where John writes “Actual people love their phones more than their computers — whether Macs or PCs — not despite the fact that their phones are tightly controlled consoles, but because they are tightly controlled consoles.” which I think is just sort of assumptive, and likely wrong.

It’s true that widely people do spend more time on their smartphones and feel more strongly about those devices than traditional computers, but how much of that is due entirely to the form-factor? How much of that bond is because of all the new things smartphones allow people to do, and all the new places they’re able to do those things in? I seriously doubt the majority of users even have an opinion on the degree to which their device is cloistered and locked-down, much less enough of one to influence the reason they love their phone in the first place.

Regardless, I don’t envision a world where Apple’s streamlined ecosystem isn’t the default, emphasized experience on their devices out of the box, even in a world where they’re forced to level the playing field on how developers can compete with their first-party services and products. Those who don’t care, and who treat their device as a “consolized” experience (the folks Gruber insists love their phones oh-so-much because of its simplicity and safety) will still be provided it, I have zero doubt.

Why not allow users who do care a choice of services? I use an iPhone every day, I have for years, and I’d love to integrate my Dropbox account into iOS’s handling of syncing documents. iCloud Sync works great if you use all of Apple’s products, but throw a Windows PC or an Android device into the mix, and you’re out of luck. Not only that, but even on Apple’s platforms if you run into issues with iCloud Sync you’re left largely without recourse. Nearly all of Apple’s “it just works” solutions from Music Libraries to Photos to App Data don’t provide options to look under the hood and troubleshoot when something goes wrong. All you’re left with is the nuclear “sign out and back into your Apple ID” and “restore your device” options. Allowing the Dropbox developers to better integrate into the OS would alleviate a lot of my problems with getting data on and off my devices reliably, but in a lot of cases they’re not able to integrate with other applications the same way Apple’s iCloud Sync APIs can. Keeping quality developers from even attempting to make great software because they’re inherently on their back-foot against Apple’s offerings is just a poor state of things, and can only affect the third-party app ecosystem adversely.

Gruber and I obviously have different viewpoints. What it comes down to for me is that in order to wholly believe Apple’s justifications behind their integration, security, and software-quality rules, I think you’d need to exist in an alternate reality — one where tech giants haven’t been pushing against boundaries and common-sense consumer protections for years now under the same sorts of guises. That’s just not a reality we live in anymore, and I think the last decade in tech has proven that companies this large left to grow uninhibited don’t self-regulate in ways that do anything but help them grow larger, more popular, and more ubiquitous, with little regard to how that affects the world at-large.

It’s funny that Apple’s history features a line or two about “selling sugar water” to the world, because the best way I’ve been able to think about “big-tech” recently (from social media, to device manufacturers, to OS developers) is how we used to allow the Coca-Cola Company to put whatever they wanted in their drinkto get folks to enjoy and keep using it, but eventually realized that might not be what’s best for actual humans. How long until that realization comes to fruition for big tech?

Reflecting on Streaming & Setting Some Goals

Streaming on Twitch is the first “creative” hobby I’ve worked on in a long time that’s stuck with me. The experience of learning Monster Hunter onstream from kind folks kept me going initially, and ever since then I’ve been surprised and encouraged by just how much I still have to learn and how many kind folks want to hang out with me as I’m doing it. This coming April will mark three years since I committed to streaming the majority of the week, and that milestone along with some recent thoughts on my broadcasts have me in the mood for some reflection.

Over those years there’s been times where I’ve felt more ‘in-tune’ or ‘a-little-off’ with what I’m doing on Twitch - a personal highlight being our journey through MH4U for the first time with its tough challenges, neat new fights, and custom-quest multiplayer nights along the way. That period of time on the stream felt especially in-tune, and it helped me find something to work on each night that resonated with folks even during the downer year that was 2020. There’s been other times where I’ve fallen out of touch with what I think might be fun to do onstream with Monster Hunter, with the most recent being the last few months. I’ve bounced around from game to game without getting fully drawn into any particular entry, and in general I’ve had a bit tougher time showing up some nights with the kind of ‘drive’ to learn for myself and entertain folks with onstream.

I think the last time I felt like this I just bounced between a few entries until lucking-into beginning a game that “stuck.” This time I’ve been feeling pretty worn out from life’s busy routine in-general as of late, so I did something I haven’t done in those 3 years of committed streaming and I took a week off. Not a week of travel, visiting family, moving house, or anything else besides rest and reflecting on what it was I want to be doing going forward.

Admittedly most of the past week was spent allowing myself slower paced days compared to the norm - I found binge-watching all of HBO’s Silicon Valley to be relaxing ‘junk-food’ - but that space brought some clarity of thought with it too. That clarity and a bit of journaling and reflection let me narrow down some goals I want to practice going forward with the stream this year:

Try to focus more on the task at hand:

Streaming is always going to be a bit of a multitasking bonanza; It generally calls for playing a video game, reading a chatroom, and keeping an eye on the technical aspects of a broadcast all at once. I’ve gotten used to handling those “baseline operations” over the years, but this winter I’ve begun noticing myself frequently trailing off in the middle of a thought or fudging my way through a monster hunt instead of thinking about ways to approach it intelligently with whatever weapon we’re using at the time.

I want the stream to be a place where I can focus on learning about how to use the different weapons against the various bosses in a way that’s active and hopefully ever-gradually-improving. And I also want our stream to be a place where in-depth discussion can be had between folks who’re willing to debate the finer points and come out the other side having enjoyed themselves even if still with difference in opinion.

To better enable both of those things, I want to spend more time focused on just the task at hand: be it hunting or a discussion. I want to frame hunts through the lens of “let’s learn and practice these specific aspects with this weapon” which means talking more about gear preparation, where to be attacking the monster, and what moves fit into the boss’s movements and patterns.

Realistically, this will mean not always engaging in the deepest conversations and thoughts while in the middle of actively hunting, but likewise when an in-depth discussion arises I want to give my full attention to the melding of MH-minds occurring. To that end, I’ve already made a new “chatting” scene in OBS that I want to begin organically switching to during the course of streams as we talk about the many minutiae of Monster Hunter. I wouldn’t have thought that a “just chatting” scene with chat onscreen would ever be a part of our stream, but for the purposes of attempting to foster better discussion in a way that’ll preserve those conversations in the long run I think it makes a lot of sense.

Be cognizant of what conversation and tone I bring:

Building off the realization that I don’t always do a good job of fully participating in conversations onstream, I think I need to be more mindful of my own conduct and how it guides chat one way or another through the night. I’ve heard the phrase “chat is a reflection of the streamer” thrown around with various degrees of sincerity, but I think a variant of that idiom I do believe is that the chatroom is a product of the streamer.

By this I mean that being “in the drivers seat” of the stream has an outsized effect on how small shifts in my tone/interaction ripple out to the entire conversation, chatroom, and broadcast. Maybe I’m having a rough day, maybe the hunt I’m in isn’t going well, maybe we’ve been struggling on something tough for hours, but I know if I fire off a snarky quip into the beginning interactions of a conversation it’ll carry a different tone than if I’d taken a moment and given more thought to my response.

It would be unrealistic to hold myself to never having some sort of “negative effect” in the room - it’s infeasible for anyone to be that kind of consistent while also being genuine - but also I don’t think it would be healthy for me to try and extrapolate or assign a value of “good” or “bad” to every one of my interactions. That’s not my goal, just to be mindful of the effect my tone can have on the room and keep that more front of mind.

Alongside that I’d like to work at focusing on asking questions and listening/reading the answers instead of spending so much time finding ever-more-specific ways of describing my own thoughts on the series. There’s a whole lot more opinions and experiences from chat members we could all be hearing about and discussing than what’s up in my brain. And I know for a fact it can get old hearing my opinions repeated for the umpteenth time, I can annoy even myself with them when repeated enough truth-be-told. Being quicker to listen and slower to speak is something I’d like to focus on in life overall, which is tough to do without gradual work in a bunch of different areas - I’ll try my best to make how I act onstream one such area.

Plan for satisfying payoffs and tailor the pace as we go:

Something I noticed upon sitting down and analyzing the last 6 months of the stream was “huh, we haven’t really done anything exciting in awhile have we?” I don’t mean there haven’t been intense moments or things that have challenged me, but it’s also been awhile since we did something like solo Gogmazios, do a naked hunt, or have a really satisfying goal that myself and chat can enjoy the leadup to into a satisfying payoff.

Part of the reason we haven’t gotten to do something like that in awhile is because I’ve been playing through almost exclusively early-portions of MH games. First low-rank in MH Freedom, then low-rank in MH3U, low & high rank in MH World, and now low-rank and high-rank again in MH Rise on PC. I’ve been having trouble settling into which game I’d like to focus on, but I also think this is a fundamental failure on my part to structure the stream “schedule” well and then see it through.

Our stream doesn’t really have a proper schedule - I don’t even start at the same time most nights - but if I had to summarize how I want things laid out it would be split up into overarching ‘seasons’ roughly 3-6 months long each. Those ‘season’ blocks will focus on playing through a sizable chunk of a Monster Hunter game, give an overview and get a sense for what makes that stretch of each game unique, and then try to culminate in finishing a challenging or otherwise meaningful section in a neat way. Along the way there ought to be a mixture of progressing through the game, collecting gear for fun while building out equipment to draw from, and doing challenges for the sake of learning or showcasing something unique in a memorable way (also just for the fun of doing something stupid-hard if I’m being honest.)

Straight-up, I think I’ve butchered this essential pacing for the last 6 months. There’s been a bit of progression scattered across four different titles, an absolutely oversized amount of collection, and little-to-no memorable challenges. Like I said above, that’s owed to the early parts of the games we’ve been playing through, but it’s also up to me to tailor our pace and goals in order to balance those different aspects of a Monster Hunter game. It’s been difficult to feel like doing all of those things when not quite “clicking” with what we’ve been playing - but I think pacing things well has a large enough impact on the stream for me to set my own indecision aside and spend more time planning and following-through.

Right now we’ve been revisiting Monster Hunter Rise on PC, which is the first time I’ve replayed a MH game fully - much less only 6 months since initially completing it. Truthfully, while it’s been fun to experience an entry I love again with the fidelity PC gaming provides, and a huge joy to finally play alongside friends who favor the PC platform, I’ve had a hard time with sinking effort into the same content we already cleared so recently. Where I thought I might re-play the entire game from scratch just like we did on the Switch, now I’m thinking I may try to move on to something fresh in the series sooner rather than later.

It’s tempting to just ‘peace out’ and jump to yet another game, but I think for the sake of continuing to enjoy Rise with others and to provide a satisfying payoff to our PC-MH visit I’ll dedicate time to reaching Rise’s endgame and experiencing the new event quests that I didn’t get to on Switch. I hear they’re pretty hard, I bet they’ll teach me some new things about MH Rise, and I hope it’ll make for a well-paced ending to our time in Rise. Thinking through pacing like that will hopefully be more satisfying to watch, and I think even if it’s not always easy I’ll find myself feeling more fulfilled through balancing those different aspects too.

Not playing what’s new just because it’s new:

This past year was my first time streaming through a new Monster Hunter game on-release with Rise on the Switch. It was also the first time I got in contact with the publishers and community managers behind upcoming games to get early streaming access - and you know what, I’ve realized I don’t think it’s my preferred way to experience a Monster Hunter game.

Some of my fondest memories from streaming have been learning my way through MH-content that chat members have recollections about and can tell their stories with. The older games are full of memories, well-learned information (hard as it may be to find sometimes) and drama long-past-by. No one I hope gets into heated Twitter arguments about the shift in design ethos between MHFU and MH Tri anymore, but you’re guaranteed to find your fair share of opinions about MH Rise’s new Defender-weapon-update. Between the seemingly-constant stream of “drama” to have opinions on if you care about following the details of new releases, friends who may be worried about spoilers, and the new trend of drip-feeding out content after launch it can feel burdensome to try and contribute to the online frenzy of a new release.

I’ve been weighing the burden of that frenzy against the excitement and buildup of playing through a fresh new Monster Hunter game, and I think my personal scales are beginning to tip in favor of focusing on playing whatever Monster Hunter feels good at the time, rather than trying to schedule an entire year’s worth of “seasons” and their above-mentioned pacing around releases, updates, and events designed more and more to be near-constant. I don’t think that cadence really suits me or the stream, so I’m seriously considering hunkering down into an older entry in the series this year and sitting out of the new Sunbreak expansion’s release this summer. Now I’m saying this having only seen a fraction of the exciting things the MH-team has in store for that game, so I may still change my mind. That aside, the experience of playing through a new game launch differs enough for me from the cozy playthroughs of long-since-wrapped titles that I think it might be worth waiting it out and enjoying things later on, at our own pace and without those other pressures.

I’m not under the impression that any of these goals will become completely natural overnight - I have several years-worth of nightly habits to contend with after all. My week’s break also didn’t allow me all the time I needed to re-introduce exercise into my routine, revert back to a monophasic sleep cycle, or complete the numerous home-improvement projects Anné and I have been putting off around our apartment. Oh well.

That’s just life, I think. We rarely are afforded the time to take things one after another and truly without distraction. A week with some clarity has helped me sight some goals I’d like to work on piecemeal each day, and hopefully the nuance and balance those foster will be worth grappling with in practice. Thanks for reading my thoughts, and wish me luck.

Mike

Assessing My Attention

2022 Ahoy!

Attempting to crack the initial “barrier of entry” to practicing writing again has proven difficult in the month-and-change since I finished setting up this personal site. I’ve had a smattering of ideas, but haven’t found it easy to focus-in and put work into any of them. Some writing ideas were about the Monster Hunter games and concepts within them, others were about my livestreaming setup or some utilities I use on Windows to make it more palatable, but I’ve struggled with actually sitting down and working through those ideas in writing.

Throughout this past fall season I’ve come to realize the unhealthy mental relationship I have with computers and the internet. The process of creating this personal site and deciding to do more with my hobbies than just livestreaming out to Twitch has been particularly helpful in pinpointing some ways in which my brain is addicted and inundated by too much noise to generate much signal of its own. My brain is absolutely addicted to internet noise.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the 25+ hours I spend livestreaming to Twitch each week would be at the forefront of any “internet issues” I might be having, but I haven’t found that to be the case.

The chunk of time each night I spend streaming is some of the day where I feel most engaged and able to focus on a single, clear goal: Learn things about Monster Hunter, gradually showcase different entries in the series, and entertain, host, and interact with other Monster Hunter fans on Twitch. In running a broadcast I end up doing a fair bit of multi-tasking in the moment to keep an eye on the technical aspects of the broadcast, read and interact with the chatroom, and play a video game all simultaneously - but the fact that I’m focused on that singular task of “running a quality livestream” is both rather unique in my day, and where we start to come onto the real problem I have.

The rest of my day rarely asks for the entirety of my focus save for a few key moments. These are times like getting dressed and my short commute to work, some busier periods on-shift where I’m taking cafe orders or making them for a sustained stint, and evenings set aside to spend with my wife Anné - though truthfully even those key times aren’t as focused as they could be.

Outside of those more-demanding pursuits, I find myself a distracted mess. Sitting down to sift through video footage means an instinctual check of the community Discord server to ensure all there is well. Coming back to my PC from a busy stint on the job means catching up on the last 30 minutes of my Twitter timeline. Getting home tired from a day at work means spending an inordinate amount of time finding a suitable YouTube video to rest and eventually fall asleep to. Idle time on days off leads to endless scrolling; searching for the next hit of an interesting topic, good read, hot tech video, or goings-on.

It feels like my brain wants to be at 100%-uptime on “interesting things.” And that’s to say nothing of frustrating or incendiary topics managing to weasel their way into my thoughts well after I’ve stepped away from my machine or put down my phone.

I had a few particularly dark days of mental frenzy which came to such a fever-pitched point of distraction that I “snapped-out” of the thick of it to see just how addled my brain had become. On some occasions it didn’t just occupy my idle time; even with things I needed to do, I’d find myself laying about and just scrolling. Bouncing from one app to another trying to satisfy a dull ache of boredom that never truly abated.

You likely get the point, things have been mentally dire. At first just beginning to pay attention and notice all the ways my brain had picked up unhealthy habits was a painful process. Digital haunts I’d gone to for years for bits of entertainment, learning, or community were laid bare as having a hand in my inability to focus.

Since those initial realizations I’ve taken some time away from the offending sites cold-turkey, audited my lists of follows and subscriptions to have less “noise” to draw me in, removed the offending apps from my homescreen or pinned browser tabs, and its helped me begin to gradually feel better.

Articles about attention - or lack thereof - and addiction have caught my eye as of late, a recent one being How to Make Quitting Your Addiction Easier. In that piece, it talks about the best way to motivate yourself to make a change in habits being to assess and truly rationalize that you don’t want the offending patterns in your life anymore. It’s easy to tell oneself “I’m not allowed to be distracted on YouTube anymore” but just barring the option out with a rule doesn’t really fix the issue, not directly anyhow. If instead I think through how “I don’t want to let my brain fall into the algorithmic trap of searching for that next great video piece anymore - it makes me feel distracted and anxious” then I’m making a real change in how I perceive the time I spend scrolling YouTube, and I’ll be less likely to fall into that pattern again.

So far that’s seemed to be true. The more I pay attention and assess how I feel after having spent time online, the more I’m able to slowly rationalize that these websites aren’t places I want to be as often anymore. It’s scary how well the modern web wordlessly promises that whatever piece of information, communication, or entertainment you’re looking for - it’s just one more refresh, one more scroll away. It makes me look at newer, even more subliminal designs like TikTok and shudder at the uninhibited fire-hose of algorithmic attention-grabbing “content.”

My effort to step away from those dark patterns is still a work in progress - with me having more good days now, but also still lesser ones where I let myself fall into the comfortable rhythm of letting the web keep my brain busy. On the days I don’t though, I’ve found myself a little less anxious, a little more focused and able to sit with my own thoughts, and a little more likely to enjoy the simple pleasures of reading or writing again. It feels good, and I’m hoping it’s just the beginning of a healthier way to enjoy the internet and technology.

In truth I sat down to write this piece with the intention of touching on several other pieces of tech that I got to experience for the first time over the holidays. It’s exciting to have new technologies to learn about and analyze, but I guess the journey of self-assessment I went through to get here the last few months was more important to reflect on - since this is what bubbled up into my markdown editor.

I’m hopeful that in 2022 I’ll continue working on being more thoughtful and intentional with how I allow my brain and attention to be. It’s felt like coming out of an odd haze, and the clarity has been delicious.

Cheers,

~Mike

Upgrading & Settling-into the ThinkPad t480

Author’s Note

This piece was originally written and published to Reddit on 11/8/2020, but is the only piece of writing I’ve spent any real time on in recent memory prior to starting this blog.

I’m still acquainting myself with how to properly format & post using Hugo, so I figured porting-in this piece would be a good way of working out any formatting/publishing kinks before starting work on original pieces for RistrettoRambles. The writing here was written with a different context in mind, but I hope it’s still vaguely interesting to read over anyways. ~M

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Hey folks,

I only recently became a ThinkPad fan earlier this year after searching for & finding the excellent value of an x230 with a handful of upgrades thrown in. Pretty quickly I got used to some of the ThinkPad design mainstays you could still see in that model with its’ sturdy build, excellent input methods, and emphasis on user-serviceability.

A little while after that I got the chance to trade a fixed-up x230 + some cash for the t480 you see below. It felt like rolling the dice on if a newer, larger ThinkPad would be a good fit for me, but I still pulled the trigger on it. This is a few months ago now, and I’m very glad I did.

Stock Impressions:

The t480 came to me with the stock Intel i5 8250u CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 500GB SATA SSD, stock 1366x768 TN Panel, non-backlit keyboard, and a flush 3-cell battery. Pretty decent deal for a trade & some extra dosh, but I was looking forward to making some improvements and trying out the machine proper.

Coming from an x230 (and prior to that an older 11” MacBook Air) I was a little concerned that the t480 would feel too large for my daily use. It’s heavier in a “dense feeling” way, and requires a larger space in bags, but I’ve come to appreciate the extra space to stretch out and work both onscreen and on the keyboard deck + palmrest. I’d probably swap to a 12.5” or 13.3” device if there was one that boasted the t480’s features and expandability, but because there isn’t I’m quite happy continuing to acclimate to a larger workhorse.

The build overall feels more premium but also a bit more fragile than the ThinkPads I’ve fixed up and owned from around the x230’s release period. Those machines were finished less lavishly but felt like you could throw them around without damaging the internals inside. The t480 feels nicer, but also so densely packed that it’s hard to imagine you wouldn’t crunch in on something important with a decent drop. Its’ finish also collects a lot more hand oil on the outer case, which I’m trying to let bother me less over time.

The t480’s ports are more than enough for my use cases daily. I moved to USB-C chargers for my phone and x230 not long ago, so the t480 fits right in. The rest of the I/O is versatile and nice to have. USB-C/Thunderbolt 3, USB-A, HDMI, Ethernet, full-size SD, and a 3.5mm jack feels like as many options as one could want outside of dedicated audio in + out jacks. My want for that stems specifically from my livestreaming hobby though. I won’t need to use everything here on a regular basis, but I’m grateful the functionality will be there when and if I do.

While using the machine the performance jump coming from a 3rd-gen dual core up to an 8th-gen quad-core Intel CPU was evident. I don’t tax my CPU heavily on most days, but even in general system usage, light mutlitasking, and a good amount of web browsing things felt snappier and the system ran cooler than my x230 ever could.

Undervolting:

This segues us nicely into undervolting, which was something new for me to learn with this machine. I learned from this guide and had a fun time dialing in the undervolt values & stability using Throttlestop, a looping Cinebench R20 script, and RealBench for extended stress testing. It’s really cool seeing how the voltages, clockspeed, TDP, and temperatures all relate and react to one another. After a week of trying different values on both AC and Battery I settled on a -160mv undervolt for the core+cache and a -55mv undervolt for the iGPU+unslice. This handily dropped operating temperatures and allowed for eking out a bit more performance under sustained load.

Having gotten mostly used to the size and invested some time tweaking the machine to make it run better, I was enjoying the t480 enough to begin ordering parts and upgrades in for the machine - these will comprise the real meat of this post;

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The Upgrades:

Innolux IGZO Low-Power FHD Panel

This is a phenomenal screen that’s likely the best panel I have in a device at this point. Especially coming from the underwhelming stock TN panel this display has made using the t480 a lot more special. I can tell I’m looking at a high quality panel each time it flicks on and I see the Lenovo logo or my desktop wallpaper. Colors and blacks simply pop (NotebookCheck reviewed this panel here), & all that alongside the high 400nits brightness and reduced power draw is just a treat. This is also my first time using a 1080p panel in a 14” screen, and I find things to be a good balance of spacious, readable, and crisp at 125% scaling.

Ensuring to get the IGZO panel made by Innolux means you’ll get all the aforementioned niceties without compromising on more intense ghosting like with some of the other IGZO FHD panels from BOE & AUO. I had good luck sourcing a genuine panel with this seller on eBay who mention including the proper panel-mounting-brackets in their listing, and also reached out to me upon placing my order to confirm their panel would be compatible with my device. It took a few weeks to show up, but it was so worth it. Allow yourself some time to sit down and gradually remove the bezel so you don’t kink it and its’ adhesive strips like I did, and you’ll be golden.

Chicony Backlit Keyboard (FRU 01HX419)

The keyboard turned out to be a pretty finicky upgrade for me. I didn’t mind the non-backlit Darfon-manufacture model’s keyfeel - it has a slightly more pronounced “snap-back” after depressing a stroke - but I did mind the cheaper looking & feeling keycaps with decal legends. It took me three orders of a backlit replacement part to receive one that functioned properly on arrival. The first one was warped in a way that made the spacebar miss 75% of my inputs unless I forcefully bottomed out the right side, and the second had perfectly functional keys but a non-functional TrackPoint + mouse buttons. It took until the third one for me to get in a Chicony-manufacture model with good keys & TrackPoint operation out of the box.

As mentioned above, the backlit keyboard does feel slightly different from the non-backlit model in typing dynamics. It seems to have the same amount of tactility and force required for a keypress, but springs back afterward ever so slightly softer & quieter. I don’t feel a huge difference in use, but I do give a slight edge to the feel of the non-backlit model. The keys of the backlit keyboard are made of a higher quality material and have legends formed into the keys themselves to allow the backlight to shine through. The backlight itself isn’t as bright or as clean as other laptops I’ve seen, but I appreciate having the option there when I need it.

X1 Extreme Glass Trackpad

This was one of my final upgrades. It was a relatively cheap part + long wait to order from AliExpress and dropped in as an easy replacement after a little fiddling to get the trackpad properly centered in its’ space.

I use the TrackPoint for most mousing duties, but enjoy the trackpad for gestures throughout Windows or for when I can’t use both my hands while using the machine. The glass surface is smoother than the plastic trackpad but still has a very fine, matte texture finish to the surface.

I’ve already put a few hairline scratches in mine somehow, which is something I didn’t think about happening with glass but totally does. Still, I’m happy the surface I interact with there will likely stay fresher looking and nicer feeling over time than plastic would.

SaotoTech low-profile soft-rim TrackPoint Cap

I came to prefer the soft-rim style TrackPoint while using my x230 earlier this year, so this 3D-printed version from SaotoTech’s Etsy shop for newer, slimmer ThinkPads was an instant order for me.

It took awhile to ship overseas but was worth the wait. The material is slightly tougher feeling than the stock soft-dome cap, but recaptures the sensitivity and finger-anchoring that I appreciate with the official soft-rim caps. A cheap way to enjoy your TrackPoint even more & support a ThinkPad fan’s shop. :)

### m.2 2242 NVMe SSD

This t480 is the first machine I’ve owned that accepts NVMe storage, so I was excited to add in the Western Digital SN520 512GB NVMe SSD (the one that comes from the factory in the 2242 size, y’all are some real ones for manually slicing SSDs in half.)

I wasn’t able to find many options for NVMe SSDs in the 42mm “2242” size, so after shopping around I picked up my SN520 from TigerDirect who shipped it out extremely quickly. It benchmarks a good deal faster than the average speeds from the Crucial 500GB SATA SSD that came with the t480, but I’m not doing anything overly intense with it. It boots a touch quicker than my SATA SSD did (usually before the little Windows spinner can finish a full circle animation) and leaves room for future expansion in the t480’s 2.5” bay - so I’m pleased with the purchase.

Here’s some quick CrystalDiskMark results to test out the new SSD. First is the Crucial MX500 SATA SSD that came with the t480:

And after that, here’s the boosted speeds from the SN520 2242 NVMe SSD:

Pretty nice :)

### 72Wh 6-Cell Battery

I felt intimidated by the dearth of sketchy “genuine compatible” t480 batteries on eBay, so I ordered mine straight from Lenovo through Amazon and called it a day.

The stock setup of external 3-cell battery + internal 3-cell battery gave me around 4-6 hours of mixed usage with a few utilities running, Discord open, 3-6 Firefox tabs, and some light video and music playback.

On the 72Wh 6-cell battery + 3-cell internal I routinely use my computer for upwards of 6 hours at work and still pack up the machine with 50% or more left to go. I was expecting the combination of a low-power display, undervolted CPU, and extended battery to be potent - just not quite this potent. Anywhere from 10 to 14 hours of screen-on time is just insane to me. It’s a tossup between the IGZO display and this battery for my favorite upgrade.

### dGPU Heatsink + Fan Assembly

This was the last upgrade I added to the t480, and was another cheap part + long wait from AliExpress. My t480 lacks the dedicated Nvidia MX150 dGPU, so I isolated the part of the heatsink that would normally make contact with it using some electrical tape and re-pasted the t480 at the same time with some Kryonaut thermal paste I had left over from re-pasting my x230.

In the small bit of testing I’ve done since, working temps have dropped to around 30-40C while idle with programs open, and 45-55C while browsing, watching video, and general light multitasking.

Here’s a shot of the temperatures while idle:

And another screenshot this time running Cinebench:

The idle temps are pretty nice, but I was even more impressed upon looping Cinebench R20 and monitoring in Throttlestop. The upgraded heatsink allows the t480’s i5 8250u to maintain a 3.0-3.1Ghz boost clock indefinitely while accepting a 25W sustained TDP & hovering around 73-75C. That’s an increase from it settling in at around 2.6-2.7Ghz and around 19W sustained TDP on the stock heatsink and its’ similar to slightly higher temps. This netted a tidy increase in Cinebench results from ~1330 with the stock heatsink up to ~1580 with the dGPU heatsink. Not bad for a $15 part, and if one was really into tweaking thermal limits there’s room to extract even more performance for your effort while still staying under 80C.

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Post-Upgrade Impressions:

Having invested so much time and effort into upgrading this t480 one would hope that I end up preferring it to my prior x230 - and indeed I do. The t480 strikes a nice balance between newer quad-core performance on a power-sipping CPU, a host of tweaks & upgrades that can be swapped in mostly painlessly, and a good selection of ports that’ll allow for both backwards and forwards compatibility for awhile to come. The overly nice display panel & impressively long battery life were the main two factors that pushed the t480 over the edge into being my daily machine.

The things I end up missing most from my x230 are its’ x220-swapped classic 7-row keyboard and its’ more old-school ThinkPad design + sensibilities. At some point along the way ThinkPads became more like MacBooks that still sport some distinguishing ThinkPad features rather than a wholly distinct product, but that doesn’t mean the newer ThinkPads aren’t still great to use.

I don’t even miss the x230’s compact size as much as I thought I would. I’d still take a hypothetical device sporting a 16:10 or 3:2 aspect ratio & falling between the t480 & x230’s sizes as a personal ideal, but I appreciate what the t480 packs into its’ footprint all the same.

After months of upgrades I feel quite settled into my little t480 build. I still have the potential to upgrade up to 32GB of RAM and chuck a larger SATA SSD into the 2.5” bay if ever needed, but for now I think my season of upgrades is done.

I’ve come to like this little machine enough to think about replacing my desktop altogether with it, so maybe that’s where my further upgrades will manifest. And come to think of it, Xyte.ch ’s T25 classic keyboard modkit does look pretty tempting… I just can’t justify the cost… yet ;). There I go again.

Anyways. If you’ve made it this far down the page thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed seeing the different things I chose to add to my ThinkPad. This community of fixer-uppers, mods, and upgrades is a lot of fun - hope y’all appreciate whatever ThinkPad machine you’ve chosen to rock.

Cheers,

~M