Author: Shrey Agarwal

This is a series that I thought would be interesting as I have recently had an interest in getting stronger and as such, I have been making macro (macronutrient) friendly meals that have helped me lose fat and gain muscle.

In each post in this series, I will add a lunch a snack, and dinner. Because I wake up early for summer school I don’t have time for breakfast and fast from 6:30 am – 2 pm. Once I get home one of my favorite meals for brunch is my chicken & egg white wrap.

I used a low calories lavash bread which was 100 calories for a huge wrap almost a foot long. One large egg, 2 egg whites, 100g of turkey breast, sriracha 2 tsp, and 3 small cheese slices or one large cheese slice. The macros for this meal are as follows: 29.9g carbs, 19.8g fat, 57.8g protein, and 558 calories which is more than 1 gram of protein per 10-calorie!

For a snack, I kept it pretty consistent with A piece of fruit as well as a mix of regular milk and almond milk with a scoop of whey protein. The total macro of my snack is: 27.2 g carbs, 4.2g fat, 35.3g protein, and the total calories are 286 which means that in these snacks protein makes up half of all the calories consumed. This is because a gram of protein is roughly 4 calories and the ratio of protein to calories is 1 gram of protein to 8 calories so only 4 calories out of 8 are not protein.

Finally one of my favorite recipes for dinner is my glazed salmon with mashed potatoes. This may sound unhealthy however I will explain how I make my “mashed potatoes” in a way that makes them totally macro-friendly. To start let’s of course review the food and the meal macros.

This meal comes with 1 medium potato, 1 cup of carrots, 6.6 ounces of salmon, 1tsp of soy sauce, 1 tsp of sriracha, and 200g of mushrooms and onion. I glaze the salmon with soy sauce and sriracha which are both extremely low calories sauces. I get my salmon frozen from Costco. With that done let’s get to the macros: 53.3g carbs, 16g fat, and 51.1g protein and the meal has 641 calories. This meal is on purpose my most carb-heavy meal.

After this other than the occasional piece of fruit I’m not eating for about 20 hours so it is important I stay full. I also eat a filling carb-like potato instead of bread that digests more quickly.

Next, let’s review the entire day’s worth of macros and calories. In total, I had 146 grams of protein, 100 grams of carbs, 21g of fiber, 30 grams of sugar (all-natural and about 3 grams from sriracha), 1,900 mg sodium, and only 40 grams of fat! As well as a calorie total of 1,484.

On top of this healthy eating, I also exercise. This is to help digest my food and get my body into a caloric deficit that helps me lose weight. There are 2 main exercises that I do which are swimming and lifting. I tend to not lift nearly as often I mainly focus on cardio but I try to lift at least once a week.

Thats it for todays post I hope everyone has a great day see you next time!

I figured that people would be interested in how I am preparing for my AP European History AP test way in advance. I am doing this for a couple of reasons, the main reason is that I want a 5 on this AP and also because it will help me in the class as a whole so let’s get to it.

The first thing I am doing is ordering 8 books over the summer that have to do with AP euro. These 8 books cover 8 important fields of European history, a few of them include economy & art. These will help me understand the topic as a whole and will advance my knowledge I will go over each book in this post. However, only 6 of these 8 books are about European history topics the other 2 are for AP test prep.

The first book I bought was “Vienna 1814” written by David King. Which is a book on the peace treaties signed in Vienna known as the Treaties of Paris. That ended the Napoleanic wars which were a huge part of European history as they raged on for 15 years. This book provides a deeper insight into French history in particular and is definitely a good read.

Next up is “The Greek Revolution” which is another great book written by Mark Mazower. This book as you can imagine goes into extreme detail about all the events that took place in Greece’s independence and is another important book to read for historical context. It provides amazing information however the verbiage used is extremely complex and not for the average reader.

This next book is more about the economic state of things in European countries and it’s called “Gods Bankers” by author Gerald Posner. This book is all about money management in Vatican City and how it has evolved over the years under different popes. Overall it is a great boo but it is very long so be ready for that.

The next book that I got is called “Rescuing Da Vinci” written by Robert M. Edsel. This book is quite interesting as it is about how the N*zi’s stole European art and how the Allies attempted to recover it all. As well as how the N*zi’s stole part of the European culture as a result.

The Final normal book I got is called “The Ugly Renaissance” which goes over all the aspects of the Renaissance which is a period of artistic and cultural development in Europe starting in the 14th century. It is written by author Alexander Lee.

The final 2 books that I bought are for the AP test to prepare for it in advance. The first of which is called “Crash Course AP European History” written by Larry Krieger. This book essentially goes over a bunch of key terms and ideas in Europe that will likely be on the test and it is less in-depth than the second book I bought.

The second book that I bought is from The Princeton Review and it is called “Ap European History Premium 2022” This book includes 6 full-length practice tests as well as detailed information on every time period of European history up to the 20th century. It is written by the staff of the Princeton review and not one single author. Each chapter also includes a detailed timeline of when each event occurs in each chapter.

I hope you guys enjoyed this blog post and just as an FYI these books were all recommended to me by my high school Ap European History teacher so these books have all been vouched for and reviewed before I bought or recommended them to you guys. But that’s it for today see you next time.

As you can tell by the title of this blog it will be all about the inner intricacies of Valorants Economy and how you can use it to your advantage each and every time you play.

There are a few main terms that you need to know as they are very important to the rest of this post. The first is Eco or a save round which is when your team buys very little and the main purpose of this round is to take away enemies’ guns. A hard save is when your team does not buy at all. Next is a buy round where your team all buys rifles and heavy shields. Creds are credits or valorant’s currency during a game. Pistol round which is rounds 1 and 13 as this is when all the guns and credits are reset and you can only buy pistols/sidearms. Finally, a bonus round is where your team has guns and doesn’t need to buy.

Your economy comes into play as soon as the pistol round (round 1) starts. It is important to plan with your team on what guns to buy as a winning pistol round is huge and can often impact an entire half or even a game. Winning a pistol round allows you to buy second round while your enemy has to save. This means that you should easily be able to win rounds 1 and 2 and you should not buy on round 3 assuming you kept your gun from round 2. Now round 3 your goal is to hurt your opponents eco to the best f your abilities by taking away their guns as this is your bonus round where you have nothing to lose. If you are able to win a bonus you are just adding insult to injury as it isn’t super necessary. If you lose the bonus that is totally fine and you should buy a rifle for the fourth round. This round once again sets the pace for the next couple of rounds as it is often the first real round where both sides have credits for rifles.

Winning this round is great and really helps set the pace for the game and essentially makes it so that you shouldn’t have to eco very often. Another important thing to pay attention to however is how your teammates are buying. As if a lot of your teammates are dying every round you might need to eco as it is important to buy with the team. So even if you don’t need to eco it is a good idea to buy with your team. This next part of an eco kind of has to do with gameplay more so than just buying guns. This is how you should play as a team to make sure that you maintain a good economic state. For example, if a player on your team buys an operator another person on your team should peak with them to grab the operator if they die and to support them in general. This is primarily because an operator is 4,700 credits which is about 1.6 times as expensive as a rifle. Meaning that it is important to save and keep within the team.

That’s about it for this blog and this coming week I will be releasing a video with more depth so feel free to check that out.

This is going to likely be a multi-part series due to the fact that I not only will be recommending which parts of a pc to buy or if you should buy one at all. But I will also be explaining how to build a pc which is a lengthy process. So on that note let’s get right into it.

The main part of todays post is going to be about whether or not you should get a pc and what are all the components that you will need to make one. The main factors that contribute to whther or not you should get a pc are: Can you afford a pc or does a laptop make more sense, do you need to be able to move around with your computer, and do you want it to be upgradeable.

If you cannot afford a pc then you can either go for a budget pc and upgrade or a budget laptop until you can afford one. If you need to be able to move around I would recommend a laptop, and if you prefer upgradeable options then pc’s are better however there are upgradeable laptops. I personally am going to get a laptop that I will use through highschool and I will replace some componenets like the SSD before college.

Once you think about these things you can finally get to buying the pieces for a pc or researching which laptop works for you. If you are looking for laptops I’ll make a seperate post for that in a couple of days so stay tuned. For now lets go over the pieces for a pc.

First off you need a case to house your pc, next you need a motherboard, RAM (Random Access Memory), CPU (Central Processing Unit), GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), Power supply, Fans/cooling unit, and finally a monitor.

This may seem very complicated but it isn’t especially with a guide to follow. There are also a couple of small things that you may need such as cable managers and thermal paste but these aren’t very big pieces so I didnt mention them.

I’m now going to go into more detail about every piece of the computer starting with a case. Aside from the purpose of being the exterior of your PC your case allows necessary airflow to componenets like the CPU and GPU which overheat easily. So you need to make sure to get a high quality one to ensure that your pc lasts. A very common case brand is NZXT howver I prefer their coolers and fans. For cases I would recommend corsair as their cases are sleek but a bit more pricey however if youa re on a budget NZXT is the way to go.

Now obviously we need something to connect all of our componenets together which is where our motherboard comes in. There are quite a few brands that sell motherboards but the one that I would have to recommend would be ASUS they have a variety of motherboards for people on a budget and those without one. They are also a very reputable brand that have lots of good products.

The next componenet on this list is extremely important for PC function and that is RAM. The 2 main brands that I would recommend for ram would be Corsair and HyperX once again these are very well known and reputable brands and their products are high quality which makes them the best options for a PC.

Of course we need a processor for any computer and there are only 2 brands that are commonly used which are Intel and Ryzen. Ryzen is considerably more affordable and has slightly worse performance & Intel is considerably more expensive and has better performance. Though if all you care about is gaming then Ryzen makes more sense as it isnt very CPU intensive. But for general use Intel CPU’s are better.

There is only one good brand of GPU which is NVIDIA and their multiple series of graphics cards.

However there are quite a few options in terms of power supply. I would recommend companies like Corsair and EV3A as they have many high quality power supplies.

The main companies I would recommend for cooling and fans would be Corsair, NZXT, and ASUS. Corsair is the most affordable followed by NZXT and ASUS. These are all good options.

There are also quite a few options for monitors the main brand that I would recommend would be ASUS as they have high-quality monitors at a reasonable price.

That’s it for today’s post stay tuned for another one tomorrow!

Last post I talked about what parts you would want to get if you were interested in a PC. But I’m sure some people would like to get laptops so I figured I’d make a list of some of the best laptops out there. To start we are going to go over some of the best gaming laptops on the market.

1. Razer blade 17 laptop (starting at 2,699$)

This list isn’t in any order but this is the laptop that I personally will be getting. It has a variety of graphics cards but the base version has an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, and an intel i7-12800H processor. It also has a QHD 165 Hz screen with 16Gb of RAM, it also has a 1TB SSD.

2. ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 GX550 (2,399$)

The thing that makes the Zephyrus Duo unique is the fact that it actually has 2 screens. The first one is the primary monitor and the second is directly below it. The screens are both extremely high definition and the graphics they produce are very clean.

3. Acer – Predator Triton 300 SE (1,499$)

This third laptop on our list is probably the most bang for your buck. It comes with a 14″ monitor and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060. The CPU it comes with is the Intel Core I7. The laptop also comes with 16 GB of ram and 512 GB of SSD storage.

4. Lenovo Legion 5 (1,199$)

This laptop is also very affordable as the Acer predator Triton was however it has very different specs. To start it has a Ryzen 7 4800H CPU and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. With a 15″ 144Hz monitor. As well as the standard 16GB of RAM.

5. MSI GE76 Raider (2,899$)

The fifth and final laptop on our list is the MSI GE76 Raider which comes with some great specs including an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, a 17.3″ monitor that is in FHD quality with 144Hz, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

That’s it for today’s blog I hope you all enjoyed and I’ll see you in the next one!

All around the world, there are hundreds of different combinations of sandwiches from gyro to Pb & J so let’s take a look at some of the most iconic sandwiches from around the world.

I figured why not start out with the classics, for most people here in the united states the first thing that comes to mind is the age-old salty and sweet delight the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But don’t let its simplicity take away from its amazing flavor.

Next up is a classic east of the USA, I’m talking about the cubano. The name kind of gives it away but it origniated in cuba and it consists of: 5 main ingredients Cuban bread, ham, Swiss cheese, pickled cucumber, and mustard. The sansdwich is then toasted with a generous amount of butter until it has a crispy exterior.

Next up we have another american classic that I figured I would mention as it is legendary all over the world and is a classic that shouldnt go unmentioned. That sandwhich is the Hoagie as well as the Philly cheesteak and as it turns out both these legendary sandwiches originated in Phillidelphia. The Hoagie is an Italian American creation that consists of: hoagie rolls, ham, salami, tomato, lettuce, onion, italian dressing, and cheese. The philly cheesesteak has less ingredients and they are as follows: Thin cut ribeye, onion, provolone cheese, and hoagie rolls.

Our next sandwich finally goes far away from the states and lands us in Greece. Now maybe some of you can guess why we are here but I’ll just let everyone know that it is for another world renowned sandwich and I am of course talking about the Gyro. Gyro is a traditional greek sandwich that is enjoyed typically for lunch but it can really be eaten at any time. It is made with: Pita bread, tzatziki, Lamb and mutton, onion, tomato, yogurt, garlic, and cucumber.

That’s it for today’s blog post I hope you enjoyed and I’ll see you next time !

Today we are back to the educational/informative posts and I wanted to discuss how kids hat are introduced to robotics are more interested in STEM as a career or just continuing it in the future.

Robotics from my experience has introduced stem, particularly engineering to people from all walks of life who may or may not have done anything like this before. Over the years I have also noticed more and more women at all of the competitions that I go to and even teams from other countries that come to competitions in the states.

This positive reinforcement of STEM at a younger age helps encourage further research and even pursuing a career in a similar field. There are a few main reasons that people don’t pursue STEM careers and I think that robotics helps people get past most of those reasons.

I did research on the topic and these were the 3 main reasons that I found. The first being people feel like STEM is too technical and complex. This is a very common misconception because all people see, are these really complex machines or huge code files. They don’t get that they can start small as they don’t really see anything small in the real world.

This is solved by robotics as you can start with a small robot or even a lego robot before you get into something more complex like a vex or high school level robot that has hydraulics and such. This way people can slowly ease themselves into the complexity in a way so that they understand it.

Next is affordability often times getting into STEM takes money that people just may not have. The average high school level robot costs anywhere from 20,00 to 50,000 US Dollars. Which most people don’t just have lying around. For this reason, there are other robots such as the Romi robot that run the same code and cost a 1000th of the price at 50$.

The final main barrier is accessibility some people just don’t have any way to get to somewhere where they can learn about STEM, nor do they have a computer to learn it off of. Robotics is once again a good solution to this as it is very accessible and there are teams all over the world that people can join.

Finally, there is also one more thing that people can use to learn about STEM and that is free websites like code.org or the concord consortium that offer lessons upon lessons about all sorts of things related to STEM. I would highly recommend that you go check them out.

That’s it for today I hope you enjoyed it and have a good day!

This is a different type of blog post but I figured it would be interesting to write something that isn’t necessarily educational or related to robotics/coding once a week just as a nice break. But with that let’s get started.

There are 7 main types of peeking in Valorant. They are as follows: jiggle peeking, jump spot, jump peek, regular peek, crouch peek, Ferrari peek, and double peek. Now, this may seem overwhelming but they aren’t too complicated.

We should start with jiggle peeking which is when you peek out from behind cover with either a or d and immediately after you see around whatever you are behind you press the opposite key and immediately get back behind cover. This type of peeking keeps you safer than slowly peeking out and exposing your player to the enemies. Jiggle peeking makes you harder to see and aim at.

Next up is jump spotting where you are behind cover but if you jump you can see over it. In this situation hold crouch jump and then let go of crouch as soon as you land. And it will make your jump silent and will expose less of your head.

After this is jump peeking which is probably the hardest peek out of all the others on the list and what you do is jump and peek an angle while pushing a and s or d and s. this increases your maneuverability in the air and allows you to peek an angle very quickly and it exposes very little of your player model making it nearly impossible to shoot you.

We go back to the classics which is a regular peek, but it can be enhanced with a counter strafe. First, peek as you normally would, and as you are going to stop instead of letting go of the key you are peeking push the opposite key for example if you are pushing a push d and if you are pushing d push a. This will cause your character to come to an immediate stop and it will reset your gun accuracy faster than just letting go of one key. Which can give you the split-second advantage you need in a gun fight.

Up next is another variation of a classic peek and it is the crouch peek. This peek is used to punish people aiming for the head which makes it more effective in higher ranks. When you are crouching you move slower but your head is considerable lower making your opponent adjust their crosshair. This peek just requires holding crouch and normally swinging at an angle.

This upcoming peek is the riskiest of them all but it is the Ferrari peek. It is called this as you essentially run past an angle and then stop and shoot any enemies you see. The main reason this type of peeking is used is because it requires your opponents to move their crosshair over and track you. But in Valorant many people aren’t great at tracking as movement is not that advanced.

FInally we have double peeking. This is when you and a teammate peek an angle to almost guarantee a trade if one of you dies. This is best to do especially when up players to keep that advantage. If you are doing this type of peek MAKE SURE TO NOT to STAND IN FRONT OF ONE ANOTHER as if you do the opponent will just be able to shoot one of you through the other.

That’s it for today’s video if you want some more examples to check out my youtube video on this very topic.

Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwEWg4nqkN8&t=7s

As I’ve been talking about in my last few posts robotics is an industry that is booming right now and for good reason. Robots are able to do things that humans may not and they can help us further understand the world. However often times robots are extremely inaccessible to the average person. People have been coming up with some unique ways to combat this and in today’s blog, I am going to talk about a program that I have been and still am a part of since 3rd grade.

This may be a familiar name to some of you but I’m highlighting the FLL or the first lego league. Which is an organization that runs international robotics competitions with levels ranging from elementary to high school. These competitions are recognized throughout the world and they are the biggest robotics organization for kids of all ages.

The founder of this organization is a man named Dean Kamen who worked together with lego’s CEO to create this competition. Now after many years, the competition is sponsored by all sorts of companies ranging from Boeing to John Deer. With all these sponsors the competition has been able to spread worldwide and there is even a yearly world championship that takes place.

I was first introduced to this program when I was in 3rd grade because of my school robotics team tryout. I made the team and we went on to qualify for states which were huge for my first time. We, unfortunately, didn’t win but it was a great experience. So I continued with basic FLL and lego robots until 7th grade which is when I got my first experience with a VEX robot.

The VEX robots were massive and made out of real metal parts like aluminum and steel which was a new and interesting experience. They also used real electrical motors and more complex sensors which lead to more advanced coding. This was another great experience however my middle school robotics experience as a whole was cut short due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. However, our school team still made it to states and we would’ve progressed further had it not been for this pandemic.

This may have slightly demotivated me but I continued doing some robotics on my own during lockdown/quarantine and then I was eventually in high school. Where I found another great team that helped do their part to spread robotics worldwide. I’m of course talking about Beach cities team 294.

This is the team that I am currently on and not only has this team led to the creation of almost 25 FLL Lego robotics teams but they also have helped spread robotics internationally all the way to turkey with the help of the Impresa team from turkey.

These are all different ways that people around the world are helping create interest and increase accessibility to robotics worldwide. But that’s it for today’s blog I hope you enjoyed it and see you next time.

This is quite a long and general topic but I figured to mention all the innovative ways robots are being used all around the world for lots of different causes. The inspiration for the title of this video is the company Boston Dynamics who created both robots that can dance and also those that can traverse obstacle courses and take hits.

Link to dancing video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U-bI3On1Ww

Link to parkour robot video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4DML7FIWk

Boston Dynamics isn’t the only company out there working with robots however they are doing it in a very unique way. More mainstream uses of robots is that of workers in factories. A company that is really utilizing these robots is Tesla.

As you can see these massive robots are working on cars that are in production and are helping do these monotonous tasks that are repeated countless times. So that humans are able to do the tasks that require more rationale.

These however are massive companies that employ lots of people so of course, they can afford to buy and create these massive robots. However, there are examples all over the world of how robots are being used to solve problems without being very expensive.

One example of this type of company is Pololu which is based n Las Vegas, Nevada.

They created a robot that is affordable and can run the same programs and languages as a large robot. Which makes them great test dummies. As a company could buy a few of these robots and have their new programmers practice on these small robots that way in case something went wrong the company would lose 50$ instead of thousands.

In fact, these same romi robots are used by our school robotics team to train people who are new and interested in coding. Once they pass all the challenges on these robots they are allowed to work on the main robot.

Another way robots are being used now is as test dummies for car crashes. These dummies are rigged with hundreds of sensors that record the force at which they are hit when a car gets into a crash. This helps people learn just how safe cars are and how that safety can be improved.

The main party that tests cars that come out each year is the NHTSA aka the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. They have tested hundreds of cars and determined which ones are the safest over the years. A few cars have even gotten their coveted 5-star safety rating.

That’s all for today’s blog I hope you enjoyed and stay tuned for the next one! I’ll also be uploading a video today so make sure to check out my youtube channel Drago Gaming.