For a very, very, very long time, native Four Islanders have communicated via a channel known as "Yaplet". However, many scorned Yaplet for it was never available, often slow and, possibly the most annoying (to me, anyway :P), did not allow you to log chats. Yes, as stated earlier, I'm a freak obsessed with chatlogs. :P

Anyway, the other day, I was discussing on The Fourm how we needed to find another place to talk in a room and suddenly, it hit me: start an IRC server! So I did! An hour later, FourNet was born. Yes, it really took an hour to set up the server. What can you expect? I had a bad SSH connection and atheme was stabbing me.

I made a pretty page for FourNet. The FourNet Page! YAY! There's an IRC web-client on that page that you can use if you want to see FourNet without downloading an IRC client, and there's also a page with some cool statistics about random people who frequent #fourisland. :P

It's not just a boring old chatroom, btw. I installed a chat bot! Meet Fourie! Fourie (who was named after the Four Island mascot, obviously) is very odd and has already spawned some pretty hilarious quotes such as:

359 - Intern molesting

361 - I Love TimTam

362 - Leaving

368 - Kicked

369 - Hatkirby's Virginity

Anyway, YAY! FourNet is a fun place and we like messing with Fourie's mind. Come and join our insanity by visiting the FourNet page and.... yay! :D Have fun, random stuff!

The people have spoken! "Subtle Mode" wins with an amazing majority over the rest, though "Mobile" did pretty well (considering it was my vote and I didn't cheat this time). One thing that does disturb me, though, is that two people voted for the "Rainbow" layout. Really? Can't you people see the invisible warning message "I WILL STAB YOU IF YOU CHOOSE RAINBOW"? Gosh. :P

A "Mobile" layout for phones - 3 vote(s)! A "Subtle" layout for TEH SNEEKINESS - 6 vote(s)! A "Rainbow" layout for OMG EPILEPSY - 2 vote(s)! Other (specify!) or NONE I DONT CARE YOU FAT - 1 vote(s)!

So, as I'm sure some people will be happy to know, I have started work on 'Subtle Mode'. It's basically going to be a bland layout of Four Island with not-so-eye-blinding colors. I'm going to try to get that committed to Four Island soonish, because I have a much better idea for Four Island 3.0 that will replace Subtle Mode: Masquerade Mode. Yes. Awesomeness. :P

Also, last night (or perhaps earlier, I only discovered it last night), someone left an anonymous comment on my Annetenna post. I approved it, but for some reason, my blog system accidentally deleted it. Yes, this is probably a sign that Four Island 2.0 really needs to go. Anyway, I'm very sorry to the commenter and if you're reading this, please resubmit your comment to the Annetenna post and I'll ensure that it gets posted this time.

Finally, you may have noticed this week's poll is about media players. You may have also noticed that the options are "Apple iPod" and "Everything else". That's because that's seriously how it is. Don't fight it! :P

I've often wondered about what I should blog about on my blog. Stuff, right? I asked about it in a poll a few weeks ago. Programming stuff won, but is that really all yo you people care about? Last year, I did a few randomish posts such as Cakefile and A Short Tribute To Doctor Who and they were received well. Random stuff is fun and hopefully you'll be seeing more of it on this blog.

However, note that when I say random stuff, I do not mean like My Weird Social Commentary. I'm trying to pretend that never happened. It actually only happened because I was in this same situation--it was late at night, I was tired and I need a post so I wouldn't fail my annual goal. This is why I like posting earlier in the week, so even if I don't post again later, I'm safe.

Also, I wanted to mention that I've been thinking about it and, really, this is my personal blog. I can write whatever I want to on it. If you haven't noticed, all I ever write about is programming or a project I'm "working" on. I could write about some insane book I'm reading or the most fantabulous singer evar. In fact, you know what would be cool? I buy an album once a month because I like collecting things and CDs are just freaking awesome. So, what I could do is, after purchasing my monthly album, listen to it for about a week and then write a review of it.

That would actually be a really cool thing to do. I actually just came up with that while writing the previous paragraph. Writing does stuff for you :). Anyway, I think I'll be writing more often on my blog because I realized that I don't have to restrict myself to formalish stuff. I mean, look at Drifty's blog, or Pyro's blog. Now, I'm logging off so I can get some sleep. Bye. :P

Love your indecisiveness people. Just love it.

Yeah, it was fun but it's dead. - 1 vote(s)! No! I'm feeling.... PRODUCTIVE!!!! - 2 vote(s)! I... don't know. - 6 vote(s)! Indifferent. - 3 vote(s)!

I don't know either. I think I won't freeze True Falsities. I think it's extremely unlikely that anyone'll ever post on it again (except for me, possibly, randomly, infrequently), but it's still awesome. True Falsities is a very important part of Four Island, having spawned numerous memes and Pillowcase. Anyway, cheeze.

EDIT: OH MY GOD. I can't believe I forgot to mention this! I've been thinking about it all week and was originally planning to write a longer article that included this on Wednesday, but then suddenly it was Thursday and whatever.... THIS IS THE 300TH POST ON FOUR ISLAND. OMG! Three hundred blog posts! Wow! Omg! And Four Island isn't even three years old yet! Wow! ....wow! :D

I quite clearly have a problem. I call myself a programmer, but really, when was the last time that I programmed? My project management system tells me that the last commit on The TGS Website, my current project, was on March 16th. The most recent thing that I've released was probably Layout 7 back in August. Therefore, I'm a fail.

What do I blame my current programming laziness on? My extreme obsession with archiving. I'm sure that's a mental disorder or at least a byproduct of my obsessive-compulsive disorder because it's really unhealthy. My music library has the have the exact date I started listening to a song and it has to have the exact number of times I listened to it. When I chat with someone, I must be able to access some form of log. And when I started the revival of the TGS website project, I started to track the time I program.

I have an extremely tight procedure when it comes to programming: write a ticket, start the timer, implement the feature, commit the code, close the ticket and log the time. This is very unhealthy as it puts me off from coding because I feel that it's too much work to fix a simple bug or implement a simple feature. While I know that source control and issue tracking are very good practices, I am very strict with my implementation of them and the addition of time tracking is too much.

Therefore, I need to come up with a new strategy. I think the best thing to do would be to eradicate the time tracking part of the process. While that doesn't resolve everything, it would get me back to where I was before, and didn't I manage to release Layout 7 for Four Island last year? I think that if I try to maintain a healthier programming strategy, this laziness streak would end. I sure hope so, anyway.

If anyone has any suggestions for a healthier programming procedure, I'd be very happy to hear about it. Leave a comment! :P And new commits should start appearing in the TGS Website repository before long if this decision works :).

YAY I LIKE PILLOWCASE. Anyway, yay! I guess it was worth the wait, eh?

AWWW YEAHHHHHH - 10 vote(s)! No, I mean no, I mean no, I mean no, I mean no - 0 vote(s)! Maybe? - 0 vote(s)! Indifferent - 1 vote(s)!

Okay, I know, I failed. I ultimately failed with my True Falsities revival. I posted once, and then ate a brick. Sorry. I really don't know how I can try to revive TF if I can't even post on it. So, first off, I failed my goal. No neutrality, I just flat-out failed it. Second, I'm reconsidering freezing True Falsities. We could either freeze it and leave it as it is, or keep it unfrozen in case anyone randomly decides to post on it. I doubt people would post on it anymore, but it's not my choice (well, it sort of is), it's the voters' choice. Sort of. :P

Through the popularity of my current comic (Pillowcase!), it's sometimes difficult to remember that I once had a different comic: Kirby's Fan Mail. Yeah, remember that? That was a.... weird little comic, wasn't it? Yes, anyway, I recently had it brought back to my attention when I was looking through my Google Analytics. I saw a referral to Four Island from something called badwebcomics.wikidot.com, and I though, "Hm, what could that be?" So I went to the page in question and found.... a review of Kirby's Fan Mail explaining how it fails and how I'm mentally challenged! YAY! :P

Seriously, I'm not being sarcastic. The article actually was about how stupid the comic was and I seriously find it VERY amusing. Read it here, plez. 'Tis awesome. Like how he points out that I can't draw or that I think word salads are comedic gold.

However true or funny the article may be, however, there are some points I would like to make in my defense:

• First of all, the author of the article spelled my last name incorrectly. It's Insigna, not Insignia.
• One of the author's favorite things to make fun of was a comic of mine called Shimi's Warning, which he described as incredibly stupid because it was just a picture with a link to an off-site comic. There are several reasons that I had to do this. First off, Shimi's Warning was done in Flash, which, due to a technical limitation of the comic hosting software, could not be hosted directly on the site. Second, the only thing you can post in the comic area on that site is comics. You cannot just post text. Yes, I probably should've provided a text version of the URL so people could just copy/paste it, which I eventually did. However, the comic itself has since gone down which is really not quite a shame because it was pretty bad.

And.... that's really all I can think of right now. It's not too easy to defend KFM :P. In fact, here are some things that I think the article lacks:

• Blatant copyright thievery - After writing a comic involving a cookbook, I posted a comic from the original Kirby manga because it had to do with the previous comic. Yeah.
• My total non-coolness - Yeah, four years ago, I didn't know what "emo" meant. So I probably embarrassed myself.
• The whole "world trip" debacle - For a few comics, I talked about having Kirby go on a trip to other people's comics and do stuff. Instead, I stopped posting comics for two months and simply had him write a letter of apology when I got back. Wow, my failness never fails to fail!
• Same with the "awesome" 50th Comic Party.
• Homophobia.
• There is clearly no food in this one, yet he claims he is eating it.
• The punch line of this one is the fact that the sender of the letter didn't leave a name. Ha-ha.
• I'm not going to pretend to know what I was on while writing this one.
• My total disregard for an update schedule. For a time, I would post like 10 comics a day, and then I wouldn't post for like a month. Then, I stopped doing the comic in 2007, only to pick it up for a month in 2009. I'm surprised people actually still read it.

Clearly, I could go on for much longer, but I don't feel like it. Instead, I'll let you, the reader, either read the article I linked to above or search through Kirby's Fan Mail for more of my failness. Oh yes, and check out my recently revived comic, Pillowcase! Thank you and good night! :P

Oh-ho-ho! It seems like Pillowcase is pop-u-lar! Perhaps it's because it's the only one of the listed projects that didn't die a horrible death. Yes.

True Falsities - 2 vote(s)! Pillowcase - 5 vote(s)! Endlenge - 1 vote(s)! FourFiction - 1 vote(s)!

So, yes. It may seem like I've failed my most honored annual goal, posting at least once a week other than the weekly poll post. Well, I had three posts planned for last week and they all fell through, probably due to my zombie-like state. Seriously, when I order something online, I go insane until it arrives. I was going to write about the 2 year anniversary of The Fourm, my awesome April Fools Day joke (I'm so awesome, right? THREE ISLAND!) and a hilarious review I read the other day.

Anyway, I found a loophole in the goal: I never specifically said that I couldn't post twice in one day. So, later today, I will post another post and it will count, yay! Don't worry, I've already written the post, so it's not going to fall through. And I'm not going to try to pull this one again; I still feel like it's cheating a bit and I really dislike posting twice in one day, so from now on, I'm going to try my hardest to post earlier in the week. Cheese.

EDIT: ....wow. WOW. Lol, I think I may have had a lesion. No, I didn't fail my annual goal at all. Somehow, I forgot that I posted about Pillowcase Season 3 earlier this week. So I pretty much just freaked out about nothing. Lol. I'll post today's other post tomorrow instead. :P

GUESS WHAT. No, I didn't set myself on fire again. I'VE RELEASED PILLOWCASE SEASON 3. YES. IT HAS STARTED.

Enough with the screaming. Okay, so after 5 months of work and procrastination on my part, I've finally finished the first 65 comics of Pillowcase Season 3! parties You may be wondering why I said "first," well, it's quite obvious: I'm quite free to add on to the season while it's going on, and so are you! If anyone wants to contribute to Pillowcase, send in a guest comic! :P

Anyway, I'm very, VERY happy that I've finally revived Pillowcase. And don't worry, people. I worked very hard on this season. It's not going to be a bust like Season 2 was. :P

Lol, MLIAA received a fairly good response on this POTW.... until you factor in the fact that most of those positive votes were probably me. Then the lack of posts on MLIAA makes more sense.

Soooo average! - 6 vote(s)! Too cool. - 0 vote(s)! Too boring. - 1 vote(s)! Indifferent - 1 vote(s)!

I really should be prohibited from voting more than once on things. Lol, anyway, happy Spring Break to most people out there! Today is Saturday March 27th and I'm very happy! EARTH HOUR!!!! I hope everyone participates in Earth Hour (my favorite eco-friendly event EVAR) and yay! :D Also, I hope everyone's excited about Pillowcase! :P