writing a college essay?

if you couldn't tell, i really, really hate formal writing. for christ's sake, my blog is written in all-lowercase informal shitlang i invent inside small ingroups. so, being tasked with writing an essay that could determine whether or not i get admitted to a college is FAR out of my comfort zone.

i thought to just ramble and bullshit about technology first, then talk about life stories, and finish with a sob story on gender identity. some of it was sincere. most of it was mindless rambling fueled by methylphenidate, soda, and a thesaurus. and hey! i got a reason to complain about how much i hate masculine stereotypes. will people think of me as a femboy for it? probably. do i care? No.

ir took two hour-long sessions to complete over the span of two days. the ending was rushed. it was also late, but whatever. the whole essay was just a really flattering way to call myself an internet addict and somehow still seem intelligent by effect. the whole essay could by summarized into "i like computers. i think in an autistic detached manner. also i am homosexual. pity me." except i stretched it across over 700 words somehow. i'm pretty sure the word cap was 800, and if it's 700 then i'll just cry into a pillow.

i write in a really weird way when i need to be formal. to me, i think it's almost...emotionless and empty. it looks AI generated even though i write all of it by hand. could it be the thesaurus giving me really fucking weird and obscure synonyms? probably. i also have the Worlds Worst Fucking Social Skills™, so that's probably a contributing factor. 

i used to want to be a writer, and i've definitely attempted. i wrote a script for a show produced by a friend, and despite being short, apparently it has been called the most well-written episode out of that show, even though i personally view it in a lesser light. i'm just harsh on my work for no reason. call it a symptom of incessant perfectionism. i honestly thought it was a poor-taste shitpost that wasn't even connected to the lore of the show.

later in around march, i gave a shot at writing a novel-format story in private. i never told anyone about it, i never showed it off. it quickly devolved from being a mediocre fiction story into being a bizarre romance that was shamelessly and obviously a projection of my own desires. i wrote most of it at 3AM so it's not that surprising it devolved into borderline yaoi, but still. i just can't write.

an issue i constantly run into is writers' block, and a constant fight with myself to just keep on topic. because it would be very weird to be reading a boring novel about two people working in a restaurant when suddenly the entire iBoot startup procedure is described in detail because one character turned on an iPhone, which is also arbitrarily specified to be an iPhone 6s 2018 running iOS 12.1.2. would be pretty jarring, no? or perhaps a character in the story's phone dies, and entirely out of the blue they end up having to fastboot flash their pixel 6 pro to android 12 to bring it to life. both of these are incredibly boring and mundane if you're not actually part of the communities i lurk. perhaps it'd be slightly funny if you were, but in that case, why are you reading a shitty indie novel instead of fucking with iBoot? my stupid ADHD brain can't keep things together. having to act tech-illiterate just so my writing is readable feels like stabbing myself in the chest, twisting the knife, and trying to think logically through the intense pain. an over exaggeration, sure, but it's basically what i feel.

it's probably best if i just keep to being a nerd about phones and an autistic ex-logokid-turned-graphic designer. writing is for the neurotypicals, not for the tech hyperfixated weirdo who has so many phones that i have a table in my room covered entirely in phones and tablets. besides, if i'm not writing gay shit, it's probably just incredibly depressing thanks to projections of other lurking life issues that i ramble on about. forcing myself to write normally is like trying to force yourself to be normal. it involves a LOT of masking and, inherently, is incredibly draining no matter how motivated i am to give it a try. and usually the end product is mediocre at best, unreadable at worst, and a spaghetti storm mess of words about as organized as a PHP beginner's first web app. and as finals lurk in the coming weeks, i'll find myself even more drained and less motivated to try any writing anyways. it's easier to lay in bed and laugh at a british man yelling flawless keyspam gibberish from tumblr posts than it is to actually pour any sort of passion into a project i won't finish anyways.

hunting down iOS betas

ever since tethered downgrades became feasible and somewhat usable on certain newer devices (namely A9 and A10-based devices), i've been curious about hunting down and running experimental and beta versions of iOS. my main testing device is a random iPhone SE 1st gen i have lying around.

prior to restoring anything, i had been running 19A5261w (iOS 15 beta 1) on it. i had upgraded to it back in june 2021 after the WWDC keynote of that year. since then, i had kept on that firmware because i was too lazy to update, then trollstore came out. like most beta iOS versions, they're pretty dry for jailbreaks. palera1n didn't work (though that may have just been an A9-related issue) and dopamine just didn't support it.

i kept on that version until may 2025. once i discovered new tools for tethered restores and SEP exploits, i finally decided to give it a go and restore, testing with a simple IPSW of iOS 9.3.1. as expected, ti worked. wifi connections worked, and i had no issues with anything. cellular didn't work, but i suspect that simply being a side effect of the iOS 15.8.4 baseband. that, or old age claimed the cellular antennas. regardless, it didn't matter to me, i have no plans to main an iPhone SE 1 in the godforsaken year 2025.

this led me down a bit of a journey. i wanted to find beta versions to try. i managed to track down iOS 11 beta 1, which ran just as well as you'd expect an early iOS 11 beta to run on a crappy A9 device. it was horribly bugged and almost everything was broken, but i expected no less from iOS 11.

apple has a habit of purging iOS betas from their servers. this contrasts with google, who for some ungodly reason, still serves the fastboot images for LPV79 on the nexus 5 from 2014. additionally, betas are locked behind apple developer accounts. while it's entirely free to get an account, it also means that finding archives of the firmware is basically a near-zero chance. google's search engine has sucked ass lately, and no other search engines i know of offer the in-depth advanced search tools google has.

so, at the current moment, i've only found iOS 11 beta 1. i plan to hunt for early iOS 13 betas eventually, but i doubt i'll find them. and no, for legal reasons, i'm not posting.or offering downloads for what i find. if i'm feeling generous, i might throw it on the internet archive, but don't count on that.

macOS' support lifecycle is terrible

in 2025, many OSes out there have become rolling release, where you're expected to be always up to date or else things break or your computer yells at you to update (sometimes forcing you if you're a windows user)

microsoft is probably well best known for this. windows update.is aggressive as hell and loves to force you to update whenever the automatic update service decides is appropriate to do so. apple pioneered rollback prevention with SHSH blobs preventing iPhone users from downgrading their OS beyond what apple currently is signing. chromebooks update themselves quietly and typically seamlessly, the only indication of an update being a new feature or (somehow) even more horrifying slowdown. rolling release is just a market standard now.

but for everyone who isn't "your average consumer," rolling release can be annoying, and a downright nightmare for enterprises and pro users relying on a fixed configuration for everything to work smoothly. as much as i'm sure they don't want to, companies offer solutions for these cases, typically for a pretty penny. but it's better than nothing. microsoft offers the long-term servicing channel (LTSC) for windows 10 and 11, offering 7-10 years of support for each release, google offers a long-term support channel for chromeOS wbere devices get regular security updates but only get version bumps every 6 months. this way, you stay secure without having to factor in potentially breaking updates.

apple...does not offer any such options. despite macs being the de facto productivity machine, apple just does not offer long-term support. you get 3 years of security updates, and that's it. you're expected to hop up to the newest macOS release when that time comes, or yearly if you're the plain guy who simply needs a mac for work. but for everyone else, three years is not enough for macOS. with each release dumping huge overhauls to the system, and with how deprecation-happy apple is, a mere 3 years isn't enough to ensure long-term support for those who need a stable, consistent system for their needs.

for example, in 2021, apple released macOS 12 Monterey, which removed the bundled PHP from the system entirely. this left webmasters with two options.

    1. keep on macOS 11 Big Sur where PHP was present and keep it for as long as possible, kicking the issue down the road.

    2. upgrade to monterey and break the server, then spend god knows how long searching for a method to reinstall PHP, discover that said version behaves far differently from the now-available versions, and spend MORE time trying to fix that.

both options suck. in a perfect world, Big Sur would simply have 7-10 years of support, allowing more time for a seamless transition to a more modern platform. we'd have ample time to move over, and extra time if needed for any legacy systems and programs for which full replacements are needed if new macOS versions break them. macOS server didn't even offer LTS, prior to its relaunch as a add-on for existing versions, the standalone versions had the same support cycle as their consumer counterparts did.

apple just needs to start an LTS channel. they have the resources, they have the money. it would be great for the many IT professionals currently stuck upgrading every mac they have every 3 years because LTS just doesn't exist.