Timezone Birthdays

I'm thinking of a very particular person when I post this, but yeah. I know someone who has a birthday but celebrated it in a different time zone. This confuses me.

A birthday marks how long you've been alive, right?
So, say you were born at 6:53 PM EST.
Then you move to another time zone.

You celebrate your birthday as soon as it hits 6:53 PM, but if your time zone is later than the one in which you were born, it's not REALLY your birthday yet, and if your time zone is earlier than the one in which you were born, it's been your birthday already.

Take the former case. It's not really your birthday yet. This means you haven't been alive that long yet, so you need to wait your turn until it's REALLY your birthday to celebrate.
fake anger, btw. Happy birthday.

Code Snippets Page Added

I added a code snippets page, because sometimes I'm bored and don't feel like writing something huge, so I just start something and see where it goes. Also, Python! I'm using it a lot lately. Fun stuff. After this, I wanna jump into PHP because it seems pretty fun.

Pirates vs Ninjas

Why are you posting this, Arnav?
TO MAKE A POINT


Pirates have all the following:

• Guns. Not dumb modern guns. Guns that used gunpowder, and wood instead of steel.
• Swords. Not weird Asian ninja swords. Cool, curved, cutlasses.
• Gold. Ninjas will NEVER have as much gold/treasure/booty as pirates.
• Beards. Just sayin'.
• Eye patches. Ninjas don't get to have eye patches, and see in the dark.
• Hook for a hand. Something that lets you stab things with your hand, and doubles as a weapon? YES.
• Peg leg. Ninjas have all their limbs. Ew.
• Cool universal logo. There IS some variation, but it's usually just the skull and cross-bones. Do ninjas have a universal logo? Maybe a random red dot on a white flag. Not a REAL logo.
• Ships. How do ninjas go from continent to continent, and steal things? They don't. They're not pirates.
• Explosives. Would you not love to plant a barrel of gunpowder on an enemy ship (that you got on to by swinging across from a rope) and then swing back to your ship and watch the enemy ship explode?
• Captains. Ninjas have no captains. There's no sense of leadership.
• Cool way of talking. Ninjas don't. Maybe whispers, but anyone can whisper. Not everyone can pull off the whole pirate "arrrrrrrgh" thing.
• Cool hats. Ninjas get headbands, but that's NOTHING compared to the cool curvy pirate hats.
• Flying pets! The higher-up pirates (Edward Teach i.e Blackbeard) got cool birds like Falcons, and the other ones still got parrots and monkeys (monkeys don't fly, but still. do you want a monkey? are you allowed to have one, as a ninja?)
• "Teams". Pirates have a crew. Ninjas are forced to work alone, and if they work in a team, they ALWAYS lose. If you've ever read a comic or watched an anime or something, you'll know that the more enemy ninjas there are, the less chance they have of winning. The more pirates there are, the more your butt is about to get kicked.

Ninjas have the following:

• stealth
• nothing
• they suck

Being A Pirate

After watching about half an hour of a Pirates of the Caribbean (thank god for spell check), I thought about what it would be like to be a pirate. It just seems so fun. Taking over ships, swordsmanship, getting money, ruling the seas, etc.. It seems so thrilling. Another thing is the personality of most of them. Almost always drunk (this might be wrong, considering I'm basing it off my half an hour of Pirates of the Caribbean), spontaneous, and they seem to enjoy life. There's no "teenage drama", there's young men learning to use a sword for the first time and young women learning to cook and clean (sounds sexist, but times were different back then). I feel like playing an MMORPG in which one can take over the seas and plunder other ships and things. I think there was a Roblox game about it (there might still be one... brb redownloading roblox). No, seriously. I am redownloading Roblox right now just because I have the urge to feel like a pirate today. I'm awesome like that.

Pirates are better than ninjas.

edit: guess what I decided to be for Halloween this year?

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.

Reactivation of Facebook

WHY?

I reactivated my Facebook. My social life didn't suffer too much from the deactivation, I thought it would suffer a lot more than it did. I reactivated it because I have to admit it's pretty useful. It's easy to have a conversation from phone to computer, it's easy to schedule events, and more people use it. I deactivated it because I felt almost addicted to the notifications (I know, right?) but I think the ~3 month break fixed that up.

Interview With J☼ Calto

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.