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Friday, July 6, 2012

Python

I've been doing a project in Python lately. I'm really interested in it. To start things off, here's a flashback of me when I was 7 years old:
-reading book about business and economy-
"... the best way to sell a product is to listen to what people want, and then create it."
-close book, start listening to what my family wants-

the rest is not important. It's just that line. That line of that book which I don't even remember the title of stuck out to me after all these years for a reason. Who knew in a kid's book, I would find something so genius? Just listen to what people are complaining about, and answer that with a product, and you're set. Easy money. Right?

So, I just kinda had that advice stored somewhere in my brain for 6 years. Recently, I was on Twitter (no duh I'm always on there). A Rioter (someone who works at Riot, the people who produce and maintain the free-to-play game I love, League of Legends) named Rinoa needed help with a computer build. Since I had researched computer builds for a few months before this because I wanted one myself for my birthday, I decided to help.

HERE is where the idea started. I went and found a bunch of good products that Rinoa could use to build her very own hot pink gaming computer. I needed a way to tell her all these products and information about them in 140 characters (curse you, twitter character limit) or less. I found pastebin. Or well, I didn't find it. I had used it before, but only for posting code. Anyways, I pasted all the products into the paste box. Here's the outcome, for those curious:
http://pastebin.com/gp39QVwf

Note the format.
<category>
<item name>
<price>
<url>

I had to go to each of the pages and do this in a very systematic, tedious way. I had to copy/paste 10 things from 4 locations on 10 pages. Not fun. The thing is, I also happen to know an online community who had this same problem a lot. The computing, customizing, and overclocking section of HackForums (obviously I can't speak for them, but in my opinion, pastebin is the best way to give lots of info on a computer build at a glance like that).

So, I took it upon myself to make this my first real Python project. (my first real project, period. I've had others, but this one will be finished and released!)

-take Newegg URLs
-spit out a ton of info about the product
-so far I only have name/price/url
-aiming for name/category/rating/price/url/optional comments

category is hard. rating is semi-easy. optional comments are difficult-ish.

Here's a video of my program in action (so far):

Watching it in anything less the 720p makes it hard to see. Just sayin'. Also, my taste in music is better than yours.