Category: technology

Organizing Music

fishfaceshawtyLeave a comment

I have gotten into a lot of discussions recently about the best way to organize one’s music library. This discussion goes beyond the typical Apple Music vs Spotify discussion. While that discussion is equally important, there is a right answer (the right answer being Spotify). The discussion of what is the best way to organize music is open-ended and transcends the void of the preferred listening platform. That is unless you use a platform like Pandora, a radio station, and if you use Pandora, I will respectfully avoid interactions with you.


I organize music by just shuffling my liked songs. This is mainly inefficient. Unless I find new music consistently, I end up listening to the same songs way too often. Also, when I play music while hanging out with friends, I have to put a lot of attention into making sure the music fits the “vibe”. I used to organize music by having one playlist for every day of the week, and while this worked for me, once again my playlists did not always fit the “vibe” of hangouts due to the mixed-up genres.

Probably the more efficient way of organizing music is having one playlist of all the songs I like, which I would listen to while driving or working by myself. Then I would have a few playlists of some different “vibes”; like summer beach days, light night vibes, or just chilling. Which would allow me to have more versatility when playing the role of DJ.

Photo Credit: Me

FIFA

navraj22Leave a comment

My favorite video game series ever is FIFA. I grew up playing the career mode and play nows against my cousins, so playing today reminds me of those times. I remember once, my cousin played me when I was 8 and he kept the ball the whole game, scoring at the last minute of each half. I cried the whole time, but he blocked the door and wouldn’t let me stop playing.

Anyways, in the 10 years since then, I have grown up with FIFA. I moved from career mode to online seasons in FIFA 17 and switched to the ultimate team in FIFA 22. I play in my free time and I played all summer, so I got really good this year, but when school started, I realized I couldn’t play because the wifi at my grandparents was so bad. Solely playing on the weekends didn’t suffice, I needed a solution.

That’s when I realized I could play at school during free periods. Since that realization, I have been playing on the college counseling room tv during all my frees and have been doing homework at home instead of during frees.

I am excited for school to be out so I can play FIFA all year. Here is a photo of my ultimate team’s best player’s card.

PC: Futwiz

The Metaverse is Gonna Suck

cannassuerLeave a comment

In the past couple of years, everyone and their brother, mother, and sister have made some outrageous statements about how Web 3, Crypto, NFTs, and the Metaverse are going to be the future of everything. At first glance, it seems very true, NFTs can help artists’ rights, Web 3 and Metaverse will decentralize the internet, and Crypto will decentralize currency, it’ll all be great!

Or so everyone thought. I find it pretty astounding the number of people that were really convinced that it was all gonna work out swimmingly. Sure, I’m happy to admit that at one point I saw more of the advantages in this whole scene than disadvantages, some really cool things have come out of this whole boom. The DAO that tried to buy the constitution(which was completely undermined by the ETH fees), and NFTs that allow access to a restaurant or a real club were all really interesting innovations in the Crypto World. However, in the past couple of years, it has all become an absolutely insufferable party topic for Tesla and Silicon Valley bros alike. Everyone who heard about it on their favorite podcast just had to take it to themselves to mansplain it to every other person they see. The culture around this whole thing just completely devolved into DogeCoin bros and making their ugly bored ape their profile picture. It definitely has cool art but a floor price of 100 ETH is genuinely criminal.

Photo Credit: Yahoo Finance

Not only that, but everyone and their mother who had the money to do it completely took advantage of the lack of laws surrounding this whole scene and absolutely screwed, scammed, and crushed everyone involved. Yes, I am talking about Elon Musk and DogeCoin. If you still believe he actually believed in Doge and wasn’t just doing it to pump it and dump it, you are gullible. Pump and dump schemes were coming out the wazoo, to the point that they gained enough traction to involve influencers such as members of the FaZe Clan. Similarly, popular influencers alike such as Logan Paul were making lazy NFTs and charging thousands of dollars in ETH for an unoriginal picture of a Pokemon with absolutely no exterior purpose or club. And Logan Paul isn’t even close to the only person that has done this.

Photo Credit: https://www.world-today-news.com/

Similarly, everyone has all these high hopes for the Metaverse, but 12 different companies are trying to make their own Metaverse and have made no significant progress. I mean have you seen the Facebook/Meta trailers of their Metaverse it looks so bad. It literally looks like an animated children’s video it is so ugly. Not only that, but Mark made the whole experience seem so underwhelming. Similarly, the Metaverse is realistically going to look and feel nothing like what these corporations are making it out to be. There’s going to be dossing out the wazoo, server issues to rival most Ubisoft games, and more microtransactions than the entire battlefront series I mean imagine what TenCent and EA Metaverse games are gonna be like. Not only that, but Mark’s version of the Metaverse displayed a very calm and normal conversation which I can assure you there will be none of in the Metaverse, it’s going to be a glorified VR Chat Lobby.

Photo Credit: cnet.com

Overall, although the Metaverse, Web 3, and all of its capabilities seemed exciting at first, the lack of legislation and the fact that only big corporations are trying to take over the space completely murders the hype of all of it. The goal of Web 3 has completely disappeared and has just devolved into a disappointing mountain of pump and dump schemes and faulty technology.

Poem

im6footLeave a comment

I’m alone in the dark

Scared of the ocean because of shark(s)

I have a dog, she goes “bark”

I’m walking my dog, gotta embark

In school my friends said I was a narc

Fireworks; spark

Traveling international, Denmark

My teachers yell at me because of my remark(s)

I walk my dog in the park

I know a kid named Mark

After this I’m starting my villain arc

pc: flickr.com

Journalism Showdown

bartholomulethegreatLeave a comment

Two weeks from now, the Journalism class at my school will be participating in a smash tournament amongst the class. For my blog this week I will be giving a prediction based on how I think the skill of my classmates is in smash.

For those of you readers that don’t know what Super Smash Bros Ultimate is, it is a game that consists of fighters trying to stay on top of a platform. Characters have a bunch of different attacks these include a neutral smash, a side smash, up smash, and a down smash on top of these attacks there are the same directions but with a light attack. Heavy attacks do more damage at the cost that they leave an opening at the end of the attack for the opponent to take advantage of.

The ordering of placements will go like this (I’m not going to use their names for privacy I will use their initials)

The list goes from first to last

  • E.H.
  • N.J.
  • A.K.
  • C.C.
  • H.L.
  • Z.D.
  • S.H.
  • B.M.
  • E.S.

Wildcards: Z.Z., C.H., F.A.

E.H. Has the game and plays it a lot, so I trust his skill.

N.J. plays with E.H. a lot and supposedly is very good, so he makes the number two spot.

C.C. recently got the game and had been playing it a lot.

H.L. plays smash on her brother’s switch in preparation for the tourney.

Z.D. hasn’t played a lot of Smash but has a lot of prior game knowledge.

A.K. plays games to my knowledge but I don’t know how much, I just know how good others are.

B.M. plays Madden so he knows how to strategies, so I think he’ll do pretty well.

E.S. doesn’t play games and when she did it was quite disappointing.

F.A. I’ve never seen him play a videogame ever he says he knows how, though, so he’s gonna be a wildcard.

Z.Z. is a bit of a mystery to me because I have no clue of her videogame knowledge, so I put her at the bottom but she is a bit of a wildcard.

C.H. confuses me because I don’t know if he plays videogames, so he’s another wildcard.

Credit: Demon Gaming

James Webb update

udarsh318Leave a comment

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has finally reached its orbit at Lagrange point 2. There it will stay in the shadow of Earth to take pictures. Now these won’t be ordinary pictures, while the Hubble Space Telescope has been taking photos in the visible light spectrum, the light we can see, the JWST will be taking photos in the ultraviolet spectrum. This will allow us to effectively see through any sort of cosmic clouds which have previously blocked our view. The photos will be taken in the ultraviolet, translated into black and white, and then colorized to give us some of the most incredible pictures we have ever seen. The telescope can’t take photos right away though, it will take about six months to cool (it needs to be -233 C to detect ultraviolet light) calibrate, and undergo incredible amounts of testing. When photos begin to be taken and released our understanding of our universe as we know it may very well be flipped on its head.

James Webb Space Telescope: How does it work and what will it see? - BBC Science Focus Magazine
Photo credit: NASA

Shithousery

navraj22Leave a comment

My favorite sport is football. Not the bloodsport played with the oval ball by yanks, but the beautiful game, joga bonito, or if you lack any sense of intelligence and cultural awareness “soccer”. Specifically the Barclays Premier League (also called the English Premier League).

The thing that sets footy apart is the fact that supporters of teams are allowed to be rowdy. Fans consistently scream obscenities, light flares, and heckle the players and opposition supporters.

Partizan Belgrade vs Red Star probably has the most heated rivalry (between fans) in European soccer. The clubs represent their fans’ political ideology and personal identities. These clubs’ fans have literally stabbed each other over support, and fights are a given outside every fixture. Most notably, fans light flares inside the stadium which seems like it should be illegal, but hey…it’s the Balkans.

VC: Copa 90

English fan culture is equally unique. Fans mostly just yell the most obscene and insulting things they can, oftentimes insulting dead relatives and getting into players’ heads. The chants they yell in support of their players are often touching and tailored to their players. For instance, Wolverhampton Wanderers supporters often chant, “Heeeeee’s Koreannn, He’s only on loan for a seasonnnnn, but we think he’s fookin brilliantttt, he’s Hwang Hee Channnnnnnn,” in honor of the Korean loaned star.

VC: The Wolfpack

These chants unite fans in ways unthinkable to American sports fans. Here is a foreign Man U fan leading the chants, known by all supporters, in a local pub.

VC: Football Away Days

I implore you to go explore the world of football chants, fair warning, it can get kind of raunchy.

VC: SommitSports

(THESE ARE THE RAUNCHY ONES PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!)

VC: SommitSports

These fan groups are stems for identity, FC St. Pauli fans broke away from Hamburg SV fans because of the racist, sexist, and all-around toxic supporters, forming their own group that stands for inclusion.

When fans or players are acting a little wild, it’s called “shithousery.” Here are a few examples.

VC: Vaulted

VC: Dan1S

Football > Ovalball. If this didn’t convince you I don’t know what will

My “Student” Character is ending…

ojaipizzaLeave a comment

Starting from my 9th grade, I can feel the time passing so fast. Every year passed with a blink. I kept complaining about school and life until recently I noticed that I only have a couple of years left being a student. I started to like being a student actually, the only struggle is homework every night. Otherwise, I can just have fun and do anything I want with my family and friends. With my work experience before, I imagine in the future, I will need to wake up so early and do my work until 9 pm. When I get home it’s probably 10 pm, plus, doing some stuff and taking a shower will be at 11 pm; Afterwards, I need to sleep at least before 12 am so I won’t be tired from tomorrow’s work. I also imagine that every day will feel the same. Nothing surprising will happen to me. It all just feels so complicated.

In this case, I want to give myself a goal. Although I might be busy working in the future, I still want to do something that I always wanted to do, which is to become a Youtuber. I’m not sure about when I am going to start, maybe from college or maybe after college. I love taking videos and editing them. Some of the successful jobs started from interest, and my interest is editing videos, so I give myself a goal to start the action and share those videos I made with everyone. I’m thinking the content of the video I will be posting is about a vlog or some prank video with my friends. To be honest, I haven’t started yet so I don’t know what the content will be. However, I wish I could do or even try anything I want to do before I get old and couldn’t move my body anymore.

Photo Credit: BBC News

James Webb

udarsh318Leave a comment

So, as many of you already know, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launched a couple weeks ago. Now that might not seem like such a crazy thing, but it most definitely is. This telescope is the most complex telescope humankind has produced to date, it has the ability (hopefully) to see the first light emitted from the Big Bang 13 billion years ago. Now that fact is confusing to some, how can we see back in time? Well, basically, light has a speed of 299 792 458 m / s to be exact (approximately 670616629 mph). We measure this in terms of distance, as lightyears. Say a super bright lightbulb is turned on somewhere ten light-years from earth, it would take ten years for the light to reach us so that we could see it. Now if we take that principle and scale it up, the further we look, the longer it’s taking for us to see that light, so if we look at something 13 billion lightyears away, then we are seeing 13 billion years in the past, and since the universe is constantly expanding finding something 13 billion lightyears away is not very difficult. Anyway back to JWST, it will be in an orbit we have called “L2” which is just behind the Earth so it will constantly be in Earth’s shadow, it will be 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from the earth, which is far past the moon. From that orbit, it will take pictures. A lot of pictures. Of course, our time with the JWST is limited so NASA has allocated certain hours for researchers for an approved project. This telescope will bring in a new era of research, we may learn the origins of the universe, and if not we will still learn so many things from this telescope. Things like planets with potential life, we will learn about the formation of galaxies, and many many more things. I am excited to see the pictures this incredible telescope will take.

James Webb Space Telescope: how our launch of world's most complex observatory will rest on a nail-biting knife edge
Webb's Orbit

Photo credit: Space. Com

What Video Games I could Survive in

cannassuerLeave a comment

As someone who has over 5,000 total hours on video games and absolutely no survival experience, I figured it would be fun to take my favorite games and which of them I think I could survive in.

Dark Souls 3: Being my favorite game of all time, I figured I would start with good ol’ Dark Souls. If you’re not a masochist, and you don’t know what Dark Souls is, it’s a fantasy game that’s generally regarded as one of the most difficult video game franchises. And as a masochist who has now beat the game countless times, I can confidently say that there is no way that I would even be able to kill a single enemy. I mean, the first hard enemy you fight is a giant crystal lizard dog that would beat me into a pulp before I could even lift my sword.

Image credit: Dark Souls III Wiki

Hollow Knight: There is absolutely no way I’ll die in Hollow Knight. I mean everything in that world is literal bugs. If I can’t beat a couple of bugs, I don’t know what I’m doing in life.

Image Credit: hollowknight.com

Portal 1 & 2: As someone who considers themselves a pretty solid puzzle solver, I can confidently say that I can beat both portal games. Not only am I a decent puzzle solver, but Glados stands absolutely no chance against these hands. I mean all of her wires are always exposed. Ever heard of unplugging their wires? I mean if Chell can beat both games without thinking of that obvious loophole, then I can easily find my way through the Aperture Science Labs.

Image Credit: Games Radar