Four Island

Ok. As I mentioned in my yearly goals, few people comment on my site. I've asked around and a big reason is that they don't like commenting anonymously (Timbo94). That is why blogs such as Color Pencils and Dream Weaver get comments and I don't (along with the fact that their content is good), because they use IntenseDebate so their accounts are centralized.

Hoping to please my readers, I decided to try to implement IntenseDebate on my development computer. At first, it went pretty well. I replaced the comments on all commentable pages with the IntenseDebate JavaScript. It looked great and seemed to work.

However, it all went downhill from there. First of all, the main index page shows the number of comments next to each post. I was able to emulate that nicely by hacking some of the special JavaScript included in the Wordpress IntenseDebate plugin. However, while the post at the top of the page said "No Comment" happily, the rest all said "undefined" and the link didn't even point to the right place. Strange.

More importantly, there's the topic of my sidebar widgets. Since I would no longer be in control of the data, I couldn't access it freely. IntenseDebate does provide "Top Commentors" and "Recent Comments" widgets, but there's a catch. First of all, it's more JavaScript. You have to use the HTML it provides, no changey. There is limited CSS customization support, but it didn't help. The widgets looked terrible in my sidebar. Second, Recent Comments showed an excerpt from each comment. That's way too long. Mine only shows the post title, the author and a link. Third, the "Popular Posts" widget would still have to die because part of the fourmula for popularity is the number of comments on the post, which is unaccessible to me due to IntenseDebate.

Lastly, switching to IntenseDebate would involve me losing all comments already posted on Four Island as there is no easy way to import the comments. And we can't have that, right?

Because of all of this, I've decided not to go with IntenseDebate. It'd be too much trouble and it'd probably hurt Four Island rather than help it. So, I think I'll try to spruce up my own commenting system. So, I have some questions I'd like to ask you people (please comment, a few anonymous comments won't hurt and you're contributions will help remove the anonymous problem):

1. For the anonymous problem: I can't use the IntenseDebate accounts, but how about OpenID? Is that a plausible direction to go in?
2. Or would it be better for me to simply make it a lot easier to register? No, that probably wouldn't help. Sorry, disregard that suggestion.
3. Ok, perhaps I'm completely lost on the whole "anonymous" problem. Please leave suggestions, thankses!
4. Should I add comment threading like IntenseDebate does? I'm leaning towards the "no" end of the spectrum, but it's up to my readers. Sortof.
5. Any other IntenseDebate features you'd like to see in Four Island?

Anyway, thanks in advance for helping. I'm just trying to make Four Island a better, more social place.

Just like that, another year passes. Well, most of you seem happy for 2009, and while I'm sure we'll all miss 2008, I'm sure the future'll be bright.

YES! Time goes by so slowly! - 4 vote(s)!
Not a chance, I looove 2008! - 1 vote(s)!
What year is it? - 1 vote(s)!
I'm, like, indifferent - 2 vote(s)!

And yes, I'm very sorry for doing the poll late again. I've already failed one of my yearly goals. Oh well. If I hadn't posted late, the True Falsities craze wouldn't have started yet. That might be good.

I wanted to start this post off by saying that I had come down with a case of writer's block, a severe condition in which authors and bloggers simply stare at their text editors, unable to write or think and that I'd saved this post in my reserves just in case I came down with this terrible condition, but then I realized that I was copying too much from Humorix. So, instead, I'll start like this:

Recently, I've been reading Humorix again. It's so good! I love it! I so badly want them to continue doing to because it's so funny and good, but sadly, it is not to be.

It is becoming clear that I am obsessed with Humorix. During Four Island's extended downtime, I started a Wordpress blog called "False", which was pretty much a parody of Humorix. However, instead of containing Linux humor, it contained Four Island humor, including all of Four Island's regulars.

For instance, the first story run was about Four Island switching to Wordpress. There was mass hysteria, cats and dogs living together and I had recieved the title of "clinically insane".

The next thing was an article on Smiley actually updating his website. Then, akin to Humorix's ''Crashback'' feature, the next post was about the fact that he actually did update his website. However, I then pointed out that Atmos hasn't updated for years.

There was a big series going on in it about Gryphic and the Color Pencils War. It started with Gryphic posting American English on her blog, which people found suspicious. Next post, she posted on her blog an admittance that she was not actually Gryphic, a robot dispatched from the "American English Agency" had locked her in her closet after she posted "Colour 4eva" [sic] and had been writing posts for her ever since. I do not remember why the robot finally cracked, but I do remember paramedics carrying a half-dead Gryphic out of her closet on a stretcher. She was fine by the next post, though, thankfully. I think she then sued American English Agency over her blog, a.k.a., she wrote the lawsuit as a blog post. There was a further conspiracy about Gryphic and Color Pencils that I cannot quite remember. It was good, though, and I miss it a lot.

There was this thing about TimTam going insane after being interviewed for something and running out into the desert, but I was probably on cupcakes by then. I think it had something to do with this Humorix story, like TimTam was accused of doing that to Apple and then he went insane. I don't know, it was funny.

Sadly, I cannot post the actual posts or the hilarity I miss. There was a problem with the posts, I do not remember what it was. Something, perhaps, with the emoticons, or perhaps the declarations. However, I wrote a PHP script to automatically change all of the posts so the problem was fixed.

Oops. I made a mistake in my script, I forgot the "WHERE" clause in the "UPDATE" command. Stupid me. Every single post was replaced with the contents of the last post written, which had something to do with JAL making a website about saving the children.

That annoys me greatly because I remember LOLing at some of those stories, and I enjoyed the entire Color Pencils fiasco. I liked writing deliberately false news stories, but I wouldn't have the drive to support an entirely separate blog full of it. It would be fun, though.

Perhaps it could be a collaborative project, everyone writes a false news stories, series can build upon others and more fun. That would be fun. And then, there'd be a false news site other than dead ol' Humorix for me to read. And that'd be yay.

#5 + (8) - [X]
#86 + (8) - [X]

Ok, I'm quite aware that today is not the first of the month. But, because yesterday was New Years, I had to do something special. However, we haven't done QOTM for a while and I decided that I might as well do it (hello from parentheses land!).

Strangely, this month, there are two quotes of the month! #5 (Envy) and #86 (Voices from Nowhere) tied exactly at 8 points each!

I'd also just like to announce the new minor layout, 6.1! If it conflicts or uglifies anyone's face, just tell me!