Abyssinia, Hackintosh

After two years of service, my Hackintosh has been retired. Well, the Mac half has. The Windows half is still in the middle of in the middle of Jedi: Fallen Order.

The story, for those unfamiliar (aka everybody): two years ago, the iMac that took me through film school and my first years in Los Angeles finally kicked the bucket. While I have no doubt that I killed it through a combination of multicam video editing, YouTube, and Overwatch, it doesn't change the fact that my iMac was how I looked for work, wrote my stuff, and edited the then-still-alive Blue Post Podcast.

I nabbed the first appointment I could get at a nearby Apple Store and had them take a peek inside. By the time they finished their tests, they determined that the logic board (Applespeak for motherboard) had failed. The cost to repair my six-year-old machine: $800 (almost).

So there I was, mostly broke, unemployed, and still in need of a computer. These were also the dog days of Apple's updates for the Mac, so machines on the low-end weren't great — the Mac mini of the time was basically an expensive paperweight with an HDMI port — and a full-on replacement was more than I could rationally spend on a new computer. After all, I still needed money for groceries. 

While my roommate was at work, he would let me borrow his laptop so I could research my options. Since Los Angeles is a land of entertainment professionals who swear by the Mac, I discovered a few local retailers who sold used devices. I could get an iMac that was only a few years older than the dead one on my desk. For $800.

Unless I sacrificed video editing and limited my video games to text-based adventures, I was going to spend $800 on an old machine¹. And buying an old computer that I would need to replace soon thereafer felt like literally throwing money away. And then I remembered hackintoshing.

Months earlier, while still gainfully employed, I had started planning to build my own gaming computer. Bootcamp on my iMac was fine, but the graphics card was getting old. And while my iMac could run circles around the average PC when I bought it, the fact I couldn't upgrade my graphics card put games like Grand Theft Auto V or The Witcher 3 out of reach². Having a dedicated gaming machine that I could update over time would alleviate that problem, and would enable me to spend less money on a replacement for my iMac³.

I realized that with a bit of tweaking (and a few sacrifices around the CPU, memory, and hard drive), my planned gaming system could work as a hackintosh, and it would only cost me — wait for it! — $800.

I thought about it for a few days. There are some functions of MacOS that won’t work on a hackintosh, and spending $800 to build a new machine that should run MacOS is a tad riskier than buying an old machine that will run MacOS. But my financial sense won out. I had been planning to build a gaming computer and on replacing my iMac with a new one at some point in the future. As much as it may have seemed foolish in the short term, in the long term I would end up spending less money overall — buying an old machine would have also cost me hundreds, and wouldn’t change either long term goal. By building the machine, I would be spending money I was going to spend anyway, only earlier than intended and during a period of strained personal finances.

I loved it. I loved building my computer. I loved tinkering with my computer. I can’t wait until I can build another computer⁴.

I will never use a hackintosh as my primary system ever again.

Yes, the Hackintosh was sometimes fun to tinker with⁵ — especially when I was in-between jobs and had the time — this past year was like watching the slow gradual death of my love affair with my machine. After so many Final Cut crashes and Nvidia driver glitches, I knew that the death of the Hackintosh was inevitable. It's untenable to have work come to a standstill because your machine is, well, hacked. It was simply a matter of having the money on hand to buy a new iMac.

Which I did back in December.

As much as I enjoyed building my own computer.there is something rather pleasant about buying a computer, only having to worry about changing a few options — if any — and knowing that the machine will work⁶.

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1. I could've bought a piece-of-shit Windows machine, but unemployment was miserable enough on its own.

2. Yes, my machine could run the games, but even with my shitty eyesight, 20fps at low settings isn't playable.

3. While Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere will take advantage of a graphics card, since video editing has ended up being more hobby than career, spending the hundreds of dollars Apple would charge to upgrade the graphics card wouldn't be worth it if the computer wasn't being used for gaming.

4. My current thought is to update the graphics card every 3rd generation, and to build a new computer every six years. With the slowdown in CPU innovation we saw this past decade (looking at you, Intel), I could probably use this system for more than six years. But, if part of the fun is building the machine, why not build a new one if I can afford it?

5. I won’t say that I’ll never build another hackintosh (hello, media server!), but one will never again be my primary machine.

6. To provide even more context in how replacing the Hackintosh with an iMac made my work easier: The Geekbench scores between the two machines were close. The Hackintosh won both graphics and single-core, and the iMac won multicore. You’d think that’d mean I’d see little improvement, but Final Cut imports and exports of Hashtag General broadcasts went from being measured in hours to minutes. The advantage of running MacOS on a machine built to run it makes a difference.

2019: A Reading Year-In-Review

The past few years, I have been working on reading more books. I read all the time while growing up, but my reading habits suffered after graduating college. I still reading constantly, but Reddit and short news pieces aren’t the same as sitting down with a book. A few years back, when I was in-between jobs and had too much free-time on my hands, I started to taking advantage of the library. In 2019, I took advantage of my commute on the almost adequate LA Metro to read even more. Teenaged Logan would still win, but present-day Logan might give him a run for his money¹. Here are the books I read in 2019 (in alphabetical order by title/series):

The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency, Book 2), by John Scalzi

Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson

The Firebird Trilogy, by Claudia Gray:

A Thousand Pieces of You
Ten Thousand Skies Above You
A Million Worlds with You

Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson:

The Final Empire
The Well of Ascension
The Hero of Ages
The Alloy of Law
Shadows of Self
The Bands of Mourning
Secret History

Star Wars:

A Crash of Fate, by Zoraida Cordova
Alphabet Squadron, by Alexander Freed
Galaxy’s Edge: Black Spire, by Delilah S. Dawson
Last Shot, by Daniel José Older
Master and Apprentice, by Claudia Grey
Queen’s Shadow, by E.K. Johnston
Rebel Rising, Beth Revis
Resistance Reborn, by Rebecca Roanhorse
Thrawn: Treason, by Timothy Zahn
Thrawn: Alliances, by Timothy Zahn

The Stormlight Archive, by Brandon Sanderson:

The Way of Kings
Words of Radience
Oathbringer

Tiamat’s Wrath (The Expanse, Book 8), by James S.A. Corey

Warbreaker, by Brandon Sanderson

The Witcher, by Andrzej Sapkowski:

Sword of Destiny
The Last Wish
Blood of Elves
Time of Contempt

A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K LeGuin

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1. Unless you want to give increased weight to the fact that teenaged-Logan would be reading 1984 or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, not another Star Wars novel.

Dear Lucasfilm: Can we please keep Star Wars Christmas?

I have been accused, quite possibly fairly, of being a grinch. It's not that I don't like the holiday season, I just get grinchy when Christmas music gets played outside the acceptable confines of Black Friday through about 10pm Christmas Day.

For the past decade, Christmas has diminished in its importance for my family. My parents have yet to recover from the cataclysm that was "The Recession". My father is now too old, too experienced, and therefor too damned expensive, that getting work is still a struggle. And since America criminally undervalues education, my mother's income as a teacher isn't enough for them to survive. Christmas has become a tragic symbol of our struggle to try to get the family together, if only once a year.

Between Christmases without the parents, celebrations occuring on different days due to work schedules, and a long standing moratorium on giving presents, my joy for the day itself has slowly eroded away—by my late teens my favorite part of Christmas was the watching someone as they would open that awesome gift they didn't know they wanted. But now, the only reason Christmas was the time of year we'd get together was the fact that it was the only time my dad could get away from whatever office he was working at and my mom, my sister, and I would be off from school. It could've been April for all we cared. The Christmas season stopped being special.

And then The Force Awakens happened.

For the past two years, having had Star Wars for Christmas, it's given me something to look forward to. While my parents aren't the biggest fans, yet Star Wars is something that my sister and I have shared since we were kids. Star Wars at Christmas time offered me the joy of something new to share with her, and with my friends. I love "Star Wars Christmas".

But time and again, Lucasfilm keeps trying to shoehorn Star Wars back into May. I mean, I get it. Star Wars is the film that gave us the idea of the summer blockbuster. Up until The Force Awakens, every film had been released in May. There's tradition there. But having all the films release in December is letting us build a new one. And I want to keep this one.

So please, dear Lucasfilm/Disney/Santa, can we please keep Star Wars Christmas?

Oil

Back in January 2016, I visited a friend stationed in Hawaii. This was due more to luck of timing rather than actual planning. The Force Awakens had loosened its grip on the universe, and I had no side jobs lined up, so I was able to take the time off work on a whim. This of course had the side effect of having no itinerary other than "see Oahu".

My friend serves in the Navy, and a side perk of Navy dress uniform is free addmitance to the U.S.S. Missouri, so that moved Pearl Harbor to the top position in my non-existant plan. But the first stop that day was the Arizona.

As you get close to the U.S.S. Arizona memorial, the air reeks of oil. It gets up in your nose and overwhielms any other smell. No salt-tinged sea breeze, just oil.

To call the Arizona a memorial is almost a disservice. It is a tomb. You wander in a dazed silence knowing that the bodies of one thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven men—killed in an instant as an explosion ripped through the hull—lay buried beneath the waves. But the smell of oil lingers, more permanant than the stench of death itself.

My friend took my picture, so I'd have something to show and share. I didn't really want him to. This isn't a memory or a place you visit and plaster all over Facebook. I've never shared the photo. I don't need it to remember. I have the smell.

50 Words or Less

I'm trying something new. Whenever I catch a movie in the theater, I'll sit down and write a review of the film. But, seeing as I'm incredibly lazy and don't actually want to write some long-winded, in-depth reviews, I'm going to write short reviews. Like, really short reviews. As in reviews nine words shorter than this paragraph.

I'm calling this project 50 Words or Less. The reviews will be posted here on A Rant In Progress and at 50words.reviews. If you want to stay up-to-date, you can also follow @50WordsReviews on Twitter.

These reviews will use an easy to understand, emoji-based ratings system:

Must See 🎟
Thumbs Up 👍
Thumbs Down 👎
Avoid at all costs 🚫

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Edit: The reviews are no longer being posted to A Rant In Progress. The newest review can be seen in the sidebar, and all reviews are posted here.

50,000

Monday this week, Blind, a short film I made back in film school, crossed 50,000 views on YouTube. But I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t look into what that number actually means.

There are some spoilers below, so if you haven’t watched Blind before, go watch it. Besides, if you’re reading this, we are probably friends, which means you should’ve seen it before now anyway [insert fake guilt trip here].

So the fun little bits of info:

• Blind was uploaded to YouTube in April 2013, and by the end of May 2014, only had 630 views. After that—for reasons I still don’t know—viewing numbers exploded. By the end of June it was up to 942, an increase of almost 50%. By the end of July it had more than doubled, with 2288 views.

• From August 31st-December 20th of 2014, Blind was being viewed over 500 times each week. Views peaked the week of September 28th-October 4th, when it was viewed 773 times.

• Since January 2015—with the exception of a three week period around the 2016 New Year—Blind is viewed at least 135 times a week. But the first week of January 2015 was also the last time it was viewed more than 500 times in a week.

• Views for Blind have begun to slowly tick back upward. Since the start of 2017, Blind has been viewed at least 200 times per week.

• 83% of views are generated by YouTube’s suggested videos—the list of videos that appear beside the comments and at the end of a video.

• While Blind has 50,000 views, the actual number of people who watched the full film is closer to 6500.

• 50% of viewers stopped watching by the 30 second mark.

• Only 18% of viewers make it to the 3 minute mark.

• Somewhere between 1500-2000 people stopped watching after she knocks the glass off the counter.

• Only 13% of the audience, roughly 6500 viewers, will get through the sequence where she walks through the glass. But—assuming I’m reading the data correctly—approximately half of them will go back and rewatch the moment she knocks the glass off the counter.

• That 13% will keep watching until the credits roll. Only 3% watch all the way through the credits.

• Blind has 94 likes, and 21 dislikes. Or, if it was a Rotten Tomatoes score, an 82%. Blind is certified fresh!

Reading

Growing up, whenever we traveled for vacation, I would inevitably have a bag filled with a half-dozen books in tow. They could be library books or books that I'd read a thousand times, but inevitably, I would’ve made my way through most of the books by the time our vacation was over.

Now, I've never really stopped reading. I spend hours a day perusing various news sites, online tech journals, and reading entertainment industry trades. In all honesty, I probably read as much today as I ever read in the past. The only difference is I stopped reading books.

This has always been one of those odd battles for me. I’ve never struggled with reading, but even as a kid, my mom—ever the teacher and librarian—would struggle to get me to read fiction. She even credits my discovery of Star Wars—and my desire to consume everything related to it—with getting me to read something other than a history book. But after the English classes of middle school, high school and college filled with classic pieces of literature, fiction has once again fallen to the wayside. I would still read, but I wouldn't be shocked if I was averaging only one-to-two books of fiction per year after I transferred to film school. In high school, I would’ve been reading one-to-two a month.

While the internet is a worthy replacement for non-fiction and news, I decided that my reading habits needed a kick in the proverbial behind. So, a few weeks ago, I started reading. A lot.

In the past three weeks, I’ve read the first three books in The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey, two books by John Scalzi (if you are a Trek fan, you need to read Redshirts), and, even though it was non-fiction, I also read Wil Wheaton’s Just A Geek. And because today is Hobbit Day, I’ve also started doing an in-depth re-read of The Lord of the Rings, something that’s been on my to-do list for awhile. Now, much of this reading onslaught is due to me currently enjoying hashtag funemployment, so it’s inevitable that I will eventually slow down. But I hope that this current effort pays off to become a good habit.

They Probably Couldn't Even Find It On a Map

Back in college, before I decided to go off and study film, I studied English. I had one teacher who spoke with pride about her dog-eared, note-ridden books. She encouraged the class to take pencils to our books, to underline passages we liked and write notes in the margins. Since we were college students and had to buy copies of the book, she thought that we aught to make the books our own. She wanted our books filled with our questions about character motivations, observations and insights we had, to dig dig deep into the text, becoming active readers rather than passive ones. I never wrote a note in that book. I haven't written anything in any book. For some reason, I never could. It probably doesn't help that my mom worked as a librarian for a bit when I was in middle school, but in my eyes, writing notes in a book was no better than graffiti on a wall (which is one reason why I thank jeebus for ebooks, but more on that at another time).

But, I now admit that I was wrong. If you own the book, writing a note or underlining a passage, all to help your understatnding, that fine. Go for it. But this. This is desecration:

On page 21 of an LA Public Library copy of Caliban's War—Book 2 of The Expanse—some dumbfuck decided to spew their prejudice onto the book. I bet this fuck couldn't find Punjab on a map. I could probably hand them a map that has Punjab highlighted with arrows pointing to it from every direction, and they still wouldn't be able to find it. If I said it was a mountainous region shared by Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, as far as they would know, that's right. Because that's totally where Punjab is! Except, it isn't. That would be Kurdistan. Punjab is in India and Pakistan.

"But, that's not fair, Logan!" an imaginary blog reader might cry out. "Just because they're prejudiced, doesn't mean they're geographcially illiterate!" True, imaginary reader, but even with a casual reading and interpretation of the fucking book, I can still safely say that they're a fucking idiot. Why, you may ask? Because one of the major points of The Expanse book series—at least in the 2.25 books I've read so far—is that humanity needs to put aside it's petty differences. Despite that, the dumbfuck still wrote "Fuck Punjabis" in the book. Why? Beacuse he's a dumbfuck.

So, to the aforementioned dumbfuck: Were you paying attention? Were the words too big? Or is your head wedged too tightly up your own ass? I bet that headupassification leads to oxygen deprivation and the hindrance of one's own mental faculties.

But, most importantly, my dear dumbfuck, please don't write it in a fucking library book. Go out, buy a copy, and then go to town defacing that one instead. Acutally, no. Don't do that. Don't write your assinine racism in the book. Just read it. Read lines like this one, from the third book in the series, Abaddon's Gate: 

"The Ring didn't put us on alert," he said. "It's the Martians. Even with that thing out there, we're still thinking about shooting each other. That's pretty fucked up. Sorry. Messed up."

"It seems like we should be able to see past our human differences when we're confronted with something like this, doesn't it?"

My dear dumbfuck, read and understand what the book was saying about humanity—that despite all our differences, we are still one people. And dumbfucks who right "Fuck Punjabis" in a book are a part of the problem.

A Pain in the Head

I don't normally wake up with a headache, but when I do, it's as if my day gets sucked away. My eyes have trouble focusing, the world seems to spin, and I am overcome with the desire to sleep. The energy and will to do anything is almost non-existant, yet somehow I always seem to power through it. Anything that needs to get done, will get done, and only a full-blown migraine will knock me fully out of commission. But I still feel like a sluggish bore, ranked only slightly higher in mental abilities than a potato.

Today was an unfortunate day where I did wake up with a headache. I've had a nap, laid about, and still somehow managed to finish an episode of Lights. Camera. Reaction! that should be live later tonight. But all I want to do is lie on the couch and do nothing. I hate feeling like I'm just there, waiting for the annoying throb to dissapate. Hell, this entire post is essentially me trying to avoid the alluring call of my couch's siren song. I have no idea how the hell my mother—whose genetics I blame for 78% of my headaches—put up with an ADD-riddled terror and a half-hobbit sized brat when she had headaches that would often send her to bed soon after she got home from work dealing with twenty-five to thirty snot-covered, screaming kindergarteners. That would give me a headache; my mom would handle it with one.

And I still just want a nap.

LAN

Once, when my best friend from high school came to visit me here in LA, we immediately reverted to our younger selves. We spent the majority of the weekend playing Halo and ate a diet that was 90% pizza and soda. We had a blast.

I remember when the idea of services like Xbox Live were considered phenomenal. "I can play with my friends on my own TV at home." The idea of not being forced to play a game on split screen was seen as a godsend, especially when your friend has a habit of screen-looking so he could kill you more effectively. But now, as much as I enjoy some online games, I found that I missed the days of LAN Parties where everyone was together in a room playing. I think that desire is one of the reasons we're undergoing a renaissance in tabletop games. It's also the reason that my gaming group regularly plays together in the same room, even for something like Heroes of the Storm or Star Wars: The Old Republic. There's something about playing together in the same room that makes it special. It's that feeling that's the inspiration behind LAN Party over Team Blue Post. It's not just videos of gameplay—what makes it special is that we're in a room playing together.

Some friends and I have banded together and started making a podcast. We're also making some other cool things that will be coming out soon, so head over to Team Blue Post to stay up to date with all the stuff we're making.

My landlady passed a few days ago. She was crossing the street and was hit by a car. I'm sure many would find it odd that the death of my landlord is actually a serious emotional blow, but this was a relationship that went beyond simply paying rent every month.

My roommate and I each wrote a note that we passed along to her family. This is what I wrote, and even then I don't think it truly does her justice.

"Every time I would talk to Mary, she would apologize profusely as if our conversation was robbing me of precious time. She never needed to. I enjoyed our chats. The five minute ones about how my career was progressing; twenty minute chats about nothing; the two hours she spent visiting with me and my family during my first Christmas in LA.

She just wanted to stop by, give us a bottle of wine, and wish us a Merry Christmas. But my Dad, being my Dad, had her sit down and try his homemade potato pancakes. Next thing we knew, two hours had passed. She excused herself, not wanting to intrude any longer. She could've stayed another two hours, and we wouldn't have minded. Afterwards, my parents commented that I was lucky to rent from someone like Mary.

Mary was that little bit of hope when we thought our grand LA adventure would end before we'd even been in town for a week. We were looking for an apartment, and thanks to Mary, I have a place I can call home."

Goodbye Mary Sepikas. You will be missed.

When I was 16, I swore to myself that I would never be like my dad. Not because my dad isn't an amazing person—amazing being a gross understatement—, but after seeing him come home exhausted after putting in 8-10 hours for crummy bosses—with an hour commute on top of it—I swore that I would never do that. I would only work that hard if it was for something that I loved.

During the past few months, I have been dealing with a temp job in an office, a part-time job at a movie theater, and the occasional PA gig on top of both. It was a regular occurrence for me to work two weeks with only one day off, and it was not unheard of for me to work twenty days straight before that day off would come. About a week or two back, while driving home at 2 AM after an eight-hour shift at the theater, exhausted from having worked eleven days straight—with two more to go before I got that solitary day off—, I realized that I had put my nose to the grindstone I had always sought to avoid. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't mind working hard, or putting in 60+ hours a week, but I feel like I've been chasing dollar signs instead of what I had moved to LA hoping to accomplish.

I am in love with creation. I love coming up with new universes, characters to explore them with, and watching as people experience the world I created. All I have to show for the past year is a third draft of a TV pilot, scripts for a few shorts, and a growing number of script breakdowns and outlines. While some might consider this acceptable, I consider it an abysmal level of output. I miss the days of film school where I would often have a script, a short film, and an essay all due in the same week. It was hard work, but I loved it. All the crazy hours of work and all the videogames played can't hide the fact that right now I'm intellectually starved and creatively stifled. Things need to change.

I can't say for certain what this blog will end up becoming. I will probably talk about film, television, politics, technology—really whatever thoughts I have that I can write a few hundred words about. I can't promise any regularity; I'm still figuring out the finer details. Right now, this blog serves a singular purpose: Get me to write more.