Arnav: So Jason, how do you feel about school ending?
Jason: It's great.
Arnav: Care to elaborate?
Jason: No...
Arnav: -laughing-
Jason: There's nothing to elaborate on... school ending is great.
Arnav: Explain the ceremonial breaking of the pencil.
Jason: What?
quality interviews brought to you by:
Arnav. Skype.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Ceremonial Breaking of The Pencil
Let me start off by saying this:
The last three years of my life has come to an end. That's what this feels like. It didn't feel like this at graduation, because we still had finals to study for. But now? I can still remember my first time walking into Wisdom. I was intimidated. I got lost when looking for classes. I still remember my first words, because they're significant to me:
"Cheese Girl." Yeah. My first words that I would remember for the next three years of my life were "cheese girl", and I said it because Gabriella Lucas, a girl who went to Abbey Lane with me, always loved the cafeteria's cheese blocks. I hated them, so when I got them, I gave them to her. So when I entered the class where she was sitting next to me, the first words that came out of my mouth in the school that I would gain friends in, lose friends in, learn things in, impress people in, disappoint people in, and become myself in were "Cheese Girl."
I'm gonna try and make my high school first words a little more memorable (well, Cheese Girl is still very memorable, I mean to say a little more normal.)
So, you've probably noticed the title by now. In fact, it was probably one of the first things you read. "Ceremonial Breaking of The Pencil". People do it all the time, but for me and a group of friends, it's more than just "lol skool ovar lets break the penc1L!!!11!1!11!1!one1!11!!!!!1" It's meaningful. Let's go to a flashback:
I'm sitting in the final final of the first year of the next three years of education. I'm asleep. Yeah. I fell asleep during the final, because I completed all the work in the first 45 minutes (and I got a 97 on the final, too, so don't think I did bad.) I wake up when everyone's leaving (they didn't plan to wake me up, it was a funny moment) and leave. The day has ended. The semester has ended. It feels so... final. So, I break a pencil and take the eraser end and hand it to a friend. He throws it to the ceiling of the school (and almost makes it, too). I explain to the other three people that it had meaning. I didn't break the pencil just for the sake of it.
Here's the meaning behind me, Jason Colato, Japjot Josan, and Brian Taranto's ceremonial breaking of the pencil:
The last three years of my life has come to an end. That's what this feels like. It didn't feel like this at graduation, because we still had finals to study for. But now? I can still remember my first time walking into Wisdom. I was intimidated. I got lost when looking for classes. I still remember my first words, because they're significant to me:
"Cheese Girl." Yeah. My first words that I would remember for the next three years of my life were "cheese girl", and I said it because Gabriella Lucas, a girl who went to Abbey Lane with me, always loved the cafeteria's cheese blocks. I hated them, so when I got them, I gave them to her. So when I entered the class where she was sitting next to me, the first words that came out of my mouth in the school that I would gain friends in, lose friends in, learn things in, impress people in, disappoint people in, and become myself in were "Cheese Girl."
I'm gonna try and make my high school first words a little more memorable (well, Cheese Girl is still very memorable, I mean to say a little more normal.)
So, you've probably noticed the title by now. In fact, it was probably one of the first things you read. "Ceremonial Breaking of The Pencil". People do it all the time, but for me and a group of friends, it's more than just "lol skool ovar lets break the penc1L!!!11!1!11!1!one1!11!!!!!1" It's meaningful. Let's go to a flashback:
I'm sitting in the final final of the first year of the next three years of education. I'm asleep. Yeah. I fell asleep during the final, because I completed all the work in the first 45 minutes (and I got a 97 on the final, too, so don't think I did bad.) I wake up when everyone's leaving (they didn't plan to wake me up, it was a funny moment) and leave. The day has ended. The semester has ended. It feels so... final. So, I break a pencil and take the eraser end and hand it to a friend. He throws it to the ceiling of the school (and almost makes it, too). I explain to the other three people that it had meaning. I didn't break the pencil just for the sake of it.
Here's the meaning behind me, Jason Colato, Japjot Josan, and Brian Taranto's ceremonial breaking of the pencil:
- breaking the pencil signifies the ending of education for the grade you're in. this is the most obvious one.
- one must always throw away the eraser end (preferably give it to Brian so he can attempt to throw it to the top of the building) to signify they are willing to write with no eraser and stand by what they say (i.e not erasing anything including memories, words, feelings, etc.)
- one must then take the pencil end home and write something with it. I still have what I wrote in 6th grade. It says, "well played, Arnav. well played." I don't have what I wrote in 7th grade (and don't remember it) and I have yet to come up with something to write that summarizes my experiences this year.
- breaking pencils at the end of the school year looks like something only immature students trying to look cool would do, but we took it to a whole new level. We gave it the breath of Life. We gave it reason to be.
- breaking pencils is fun
The end of school has come. I tweeted this earlier and was thinking about it, and it seems pretty cool:
"those steps that I took to exit that school today will be the last steps I will EVER take as a student of wisdom lane. deep stuff, man"
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
I Play Tetris
Yeah, I was playing some Tetris recently and people online were wrong (xkcd reference ftw?) about my Tetris skills, so I made a video about them so yeah. My first youtube video. It was fun to make (and free, as you can see from the top right two tabs if you know what I mean) Upload process overall was easier than I thought (it actually used to confuse me as a kid, but that was when youtube was like two years old max) and yeah here's the video for your viewing pleasures. (I was gonna add music but then... I didn't)
Clever Plan
I'm gonna come up with a clever plan. Right now, I'm looking for a clever name. More clever than you think. Something so clever that only I or someone like Sherlock Holmes would ever be able to understand. Something that has meaning buried deep within. Right now, I'm looking at the Latin phrase:
"amor est carcere, libertatem in mortem".
It means "Love is jail, liberty in death." I made it up by taking two common sayings and mashing them together. Now, I just need a way to work it into a name. You know what gave me the idea? Sherlock.
Yeah. BBC's amazing show, Sherlock. It's based off Sherlock Holmes (the books), but set in a modern day setting. After watching the only episodes that have come out so far (episodes 1 - 3 of seasons 1 and 2), I decided to go a little deeper into Sherlock Holmes' story. I came out with this: Moriarty's name has a certain root in it. A Latin root. Can you guess what it is? I'll give you a second (even though you probably already saw it, below this).
It's "mor". Morbid, mortem, mortal, morgue, mortician, etc.. Moriarty has "mor" in common with all those words. That inspired me. I don't know and never will know whether Sir Arthur Conan Doyle meant for this to be, or whether it was just a common name at the time that he picked. Either way, I decided something like this would be optimal if I were ever to come up with a clever plan. Alors, here I am, just sitting and thinking of a way to work "amor est carcere, libertatem in mortem" into a proper name. I could use this name for whatever I want, and then, when people are looking back at something I used the name for, they might be able to figure out what the original meaning was.
I'm thinking maybe the saying backwards? It becomes "metrom ni metatrebil, erecrac tse roma". Not much to work with there, either. If one splits it every other letter, it becomes these two: "ao s acr, ieae i otm" and "mr et cree, lbrae n mre". That starts with "MR", so maybe something like Mr. Etcree? I think it might be too obscure, I would have to use the other letters in some way too.
I could always go for an analogy* (Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort was amazing to me). An analogy would be a bit harder, but I think I could do it (especially now that I know there's an m and an r, for "Mr.".
Hmm...
*I meant anagram, obviously.
It's "mor". Morbid, mortem, mortal, morgue, mortician, etc.. Moriarty has "mor" in common with all those words. That inspired me. I don't know and never will know whether Sir Arthur Conan Doyle meant for this to be, or whether it was just a common name at the time that he picked. Either way, I decided something like this would be optimal if I were ever to come up with a clever plan. Alors, here I am, just sitting and thinking of a way to work "amor est carcere, libertatem in mortem" into a proper name. I could use this name for whatever I want, and then, when people are looking back at something I used the name for, they might be able to figure out what the original meaning was.
I'm thinking maybe the saying backwards? It becomes "metrom ni metatrebil, erecrac tse roma". Not much to work with there, either. If one splits it every other letter, it becomes these two: "ao s acr, ieae i otm" and "mr et cree, lbrae n mre". That starts with "MR", so maybe something like Mr. Etcree? I think it might be too obscure, I would have to use the other letters in some way too.
I could always go for an analogy* (Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort was amazing to me). An analogy would be a bit harder, but I think I could do it (especially now that I know there's an m and an r, for "Mr.".
Hmm...
*I meant anagram, obviously.
Grades
Grades always give me trouble lately. I feel like I was kind of born with all the knowledge I needed up until 6th grade or something, because up until mid-7th grade, I never had to show effort. I'm lucky I wasn't like that up till 8th grade, because these last 2 years have given me time to straighten myself up. I've had to learn how to study later than everyone because I never had to study before this. So, high school should be a breeze up till sophomore year. During sophomore year I'm gonna be suicidal. It's probably inevitable. Every genius I know was suicidal during sophomore year. I don't know why. Maybe it's just the year that people kinda give up? I don't know. Whatever. I'll make it through.
We had English finals today. They were harder than I thought. I was a bit distracted. I used a story that I didn't study for, because I couldn't remember the name of the main character of the story I studied for. Of all the things I studied for the story "The Contender", themes, plot, etc., I never thought to memorize the main character's name. I had a few names in my head but was anxious and didn't want to botch the name and ruin the essay, so I used a story I didn't study for. The whole grammar stuff was easy. I'm a blogger, coder, and redditor. If I didn't have grammar, I would have almost nothing. I actually didn't read two of the books fully either, so I think my grades in the class are pretty awesome. Since the final counts for 1/5 of the grade and I got to choose what I used, I think I passed that pretty easily.
Social Studies finals tomorrow. It also happens to be the last day of school. Social Studies is too easy for me. It's just memorizing facts and memorizing them in chronological order. I'm good at memorizing things. I memorized 50 something digits of pi for pi day (3.14, March 14th) in math class. I almost won, but got second place because some curses go here girl memorized more than me. Still, no one came close to me. The closest was below half of my amount. I still feel accomplished.
So yeah, grades. They're important. They determine where people go, who they interact with, what they do, what they CAN do, etc.. Some people say, "oh, grades are just a number, they don't express anything about anyone." While I don't think grades can say how smart someone is, they do say something about them. They say how responsible a person is. How consistent a person is. Intelligence alone can't be measured properly, but consistency combined with responsibility are obviously the closest things we've figured out how to measure so far. The SAT score and stuff is different. That doesn't measure responsibility or consistency. It measures retention in my opinion. How much can a given student retain from an SATPrep book? How much vocabulary? Of course, that's all just a silly naive 13 year-old's opinion. If you know what I mean.
We had English finals today. They were harder than I thought. I was a bit distracted. I used a story that I didn't study for, because I couldn't remember the name of the main character of the story I studied for. Of all the things I studied for the story "The Contender", themes, plot, etc., I never thought to memorize the main character's name. I had a few names in my head but was anxious and didn't want to botch the name and ruin the essay, so I used a story I didn't study for. The whole grammar stuff was easy. I'm a blogger, coder, and redditor. If I didn't have grammar, I would have almost nothing. I actually didn't read two of the books fully either, so I think my grades in the class are pretty awesome. Since the final counts for 1/5 of the grade and I got to choose what I used, I think I passed that pretty easily.
Social Studies finals tomorrow. It also happens to be the last day of school. Social Studies is too easy for me. It's just memorizing facts and memorizing them in chronological order. I'm good at memorizing things. I memorized 50 something digits of pi for pi day (3.14, March 14th) in math class. I almost won, but got second place because some curses go here girl memorized more than me. Still, no one came close to me. The closest was below half of my amount. I still feel accomplished.
So yeah, grades. They're important. They determine where people go, who they interact with, what they do, what they CAN do, etc.. Some people say, "oh, grades are just a number, they don't express anything about anyone." While I don't think grades can say how smart someone is, they do say something about them. They say how responsible a person is. How consistent a person is. Intelligence alone can't be measured properly, but consistency combined with responsibility are obviously the closest things we've figured out how to measure so far. The SAT score and stuff is different. That doesn't measure responsibility or consistency. It measures retention in my opinion. How much can a given student retain from an SATPrep book? How much vocabulary? Of course, that's all just a silly naive 13 year-old's opinion. If you know what I mean.
Monday, June 18, 2012
BASE64
To decrypt any BASE64 encoded strings, try http://www.crypo.com/tools/eng_base64c.php. It's really good for that kind of stuff. :)
//edit: methinks this may or may not have reached my target audience already. I'll keep it up, just in case it hasn't. and if it has, they know what to do with it.
//edit: methinks this may or may not have reached my target audience already. I'll keep it up, just in case it hasn't. and if it has, they know what to do with it.
Genius
I once read a series called the "Genius Wars". It was great. There's very few books that include anything computer-related, and there's very few that include anything that's not first grade level computer stuff. This book suited me perfectly, but there was one part that I loved because it described me so much, and made me hate myself.
It was a point in the book where Cadel (the main character, who happens to be an amazingly genius teenage hacker) was feeling particularly sad because he was pretty antisocial. In the bathroom, there were two boys trying to make a small bomb out of something (nothing serious, something that would explode and liquid would fly everywhere). Cadel then showed them how to make it 10 times better. He should have just walked away and accepted that geniuses are not accepted in society. Instead, he basked in the glory of having impressed two people who were far less smart than him, and whose opinion would mean nothing to him for the rest of his life. So, while he was basking in this social acceptance/impressiveness, he realized that he could just keep impressing people and he would be socially accepted for the rest of his life. After he talked to his psychologist about it (who happened to be the protagonist, but also Cadel's father... it's a REALLY good story), his psychologist told him that true geniuses are not accepted in society, because no one understands them properly.
I feel the same way about geeks. Even nerds (yes, there is a DIFFERENCE) have their own little society. Geeks? They're few and far apart (at least, in my age/year/place/life), so there's no group. Geeks are the ones who have spent their whole lives online. I know a few semi-geeks at my school, but gamers don't count. Gamers are the ones who yell "l0l n00b!" at their screen after dying 4 times in a row in Black Ops. 13 year old gamers are the worst kinds of people to deal with. 13 year old PC gamers are a little more acceptable, but they need to have memorized the Fibonacci Sequence up to at least 144, pi to at least 3.141592653589, or semi-know a programming language and how to use it. Otherwise, they're unbearable too. Where was I...? Oh, yeah.
I know no real geeks at my school. I know wannabe geeks, I know /b/ros, I know gamers, nerds, etc. but no geeks. No one who can program, no one who enjoys a computer challenge, no one who has ever encrypted anything in BASE64, no one who has used a keylogger (sorry!), no one who knows what RAM is/does, no one who can tell what 1000 is in binary, etc. I'm not trying to say I'm the only geek, but what I'm insinuating or implying is that I AM THE ONLY GEEK.
Therefore, my level of social acceptance is really low unless I start basking in those moments when I impress people. I hate impressing people though, because then
It was a point in the book where Cadel (the main character, who happens to be an amazingly genius teenage hacker) was feeling particularly sad because he was pretty antisocial. In the bathroom, there were two boys trying to make a small bomb out of something (nothing serious, something that would explode and liquid would fly everywhere). Cadel then showed them how to make it 10 times better. He should have just walked away and accepted that geniuses are not accepted in society. Instead, he basked in the glory of having impressed two people who were far less smart than him, and whose opinion would mean nothing to him for the rest of his life. So, while he was basking in this social acceptance/impressiveness, he realized that he could just keep impressing people and he would be socially accepted for the rest of his life. After he talked to his psychologist about it (who happened to be the protagonist, but also Cadel's father... it's a REALLY good story), his psychologist told him that true geniuses are not accepted in society, because no one understands them properly.
I feel the same way about geeks. Even nerds (yes, there is a DIFFERENCE) have their own little society. Geeks? They're few and far apart (at least, in my age/year/place/life), so there's no group. Geeks are the ones who have spent their whole lives online. I know a few semi-geeks at my school, but gamers don't count. Gamers are the ones who yell "l0l n00b!" at their screen after dying 4 times in a row in Black Ops. 13 year old gamers are the worst kinds of people to deal with. 13 year old PC gamers are a little more acceptable, but they need to have memorized the Fibonacci Sequence up to at least 144, pi to at least 3.141592653589, or semi-know a programming language and how to use it. Otherwise, they're unbearable too. Where was I...? Oh, yeah.
I know no real geeks at my school. I know wannabe geeks, I know /b/ros, I know gamers, nerds, etc. but no geeks. No one who can program, no one who enjoys a computer challenge, no one who has ever encrypted anything in BASE64, no one who has used a keylogger (sorry!), no one who knows what RAM is/does, no one who can tell what 1000 is in binary, etc. I'm not trying to say I'm the only geek, but what I'm insinuating or implying is that I AM THE ONLY GEEK.
Therefore, my level of social acceptance is really low unless I start basking in those moments when I impress people. I hate impressing people though, because then
- They take you for granted sometimes. Oh yeah, he did that one cool thing, but he can't do anymore.
- You start making a name for yourself, but you're still just that one kid who can do that one thing with the computer thingy
- I realize, "Hey. This will mean nothing to me next week, next month, next year, next decade, etc. It only means something to me in this moment. Why am I trying to impress this stranger again...?"
- Then I realize, "Oh, it's because there's no other way I can bring up a conversation with anyone because they talk about stuff like sports/normal people things and I just say "...k."
- Then I realize, "If we had a geek here, I could talk about anything/everything to them, but we don't, so I can't."
- Social acceptance
- it's fucking HARD if you're a geek
French, and Mainstream Music
I had French finals this morning. They were easymode. I wish I finished a little faster. I was one of the last two in the class. I remembered a few words that I normally don't, so I was happy about that... idk. It was too easy. There was no challenge. I flew through the multiple choice, wrote down words for the 50-word notes, and then came home. Here I am now. So, on to a more important topic.
Mainstream Music.
First off, I don't even like the word "mainstream". It's only used by people who care about whether things are mainstream. I don't care if someone else likes something I like. I don't care if everyone likes something I like. I don't care if no one likes something I like. The point is, if I like it, why should I pay attention to what others think of it? Obviously this doesn't apply to everything. "lol i like smoking i don't care what others think!!@11111!11!11!" No. Smoking = detrimental to one's health. Listening to mainstream music? Not detrimental to health (maybe social health). Everyone wants to be the person who listens to the stuff no one else listens to. They all want to listen to some really underground, obscure rap, not because they like it better than other stuff, but because when they're asked about their taste in music, they can puff up their chest and say, "I listen to -group no one has ever heard of here-!" In my opinion, this is how people get famous anyways. Maybe someone DOES like them better than other mainstream stuff; but that doesn't mean they need to make tons of statuses/tweets/posts/whatever the fuck else they do because they don't like mainstream things (TUMBLR)/other about what their listening to. It means they're entitled to their own taste in music and they shouldn't care whether people like Arnav will listen to the mainstream stuff like "Titanium" by David Guetta.
The word "mainstream" has popped up far too much in my life recently. So, maybe this blog post will ward it off. Hopefully. I AM TITAAAAAAANIIIIIUUUUUUUUMMMMMM wubwubwuwbwubwubwuwbwubwubwuwbuwbwubwubwuwbwuwuwuwbwubwubwubwuwbubwub
Mainstream Music.
First off, I don't even like the word "mainstream". It's only used by people who care about whether things are mainstream. I don't care if someone else likes something I like. I don't care if everyone likes something I like. I don't care if no one likes something I like. The point is, if I like it, why should I pay attention to what others think of it? Obviously this doesn't apply to everything. "lol i like smoking i don't care what others think!!@11111!11!11!" No. Smoking = detrimental to one's health. Listening to mainstream music? Not detrimental to health (maybe social health). Everyone wants to be the person who listens to the stuff no one else listens to. They all want to listen to some really underground, obscure rap, not because they like it better than other stuff, but because when they're asked about their taste in music, they can puff up their chest and say, "I listen to -group no one has ever heard of here-!" In my opinion, this is how people get famous anyways. Maybe someone DOES like them better than other mainstream stuff; but that doesn't mean they need to make tons of statuses/tweets/posts/whatever the fuck else they do because they don't like mainstream things (TUMBLR)/other about what their listening to. It means they're entitled to their own taste in music and they shouldn't care whether people like Arnav will listen to the mainstream stuff like "Titanium" by David Guetta.
The word "mainstream" has popped up far too much in my life recently. So, maybe this blog post will ward it off. Hopefully. I AM TITAAAAAAANIIIIIUUUUUUUUMMMMMM wubwubwuwbwubwubwuwbwubwubwuwbuwbwubwubwuwbwuwuwuwbwubwubwubwuwbubwub
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Fathers' Day
So, it's Fathers' Day (yeah, that's right. Fathers', not Father's). What's funny is, I don't even think this day has any relation to Fathers' Day. Fathers' Day could be in the middle of December for all I care, because there's no reason for it to be on this day other than "Hey, I have an idea, let's make a Fathers' Day in June!" I would like to see one of those kinds of holidays in August. August has no proper holidays. June has Fathers' Day and the Summer Solstice (which, after watching Avatar: The Last Airbender, counts as a holiday.) Summer starts in 5 days! Also, my mother found this awesome quote that she put on Facebook, and I thought it should be here, too (because it's so cool):
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)