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.

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:

• 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"

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.

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.