Four Island

It seems in my post strike last year, I neglected to do the obligatory Christmas Day post. Well, actually, I completely missed out on Christmas Week. Last year (lol, two years ago) I did some fun things like reviewing an extremely odd play that I had written when I was young (I had written another play that I planned to review this year, but.... :P), writing an extremely corny story and temporarily reviving KFM.

Actually, looking back at 2008, you will not find a Christmas post. That is because, somehow, the contents of the row were deleted from the database (even though the actual row wasn't deleted). I keep meaning to check my backup (yes, you read that correctly, I only have one pre-October '09 backup) and restore the post, if possible, but anyway, back to last year.

The main thing I was going to write about in my Christmas post was the most important Christmas present: a new laptop! Oh my god, I know! :P It took two days to transfer my files, set up Ubuntu and install all of my programs, but it was worth it! However, I currently have one problem that doesn't want to be fixed.

When I installed Ubuntu, I opted for the new ext4 filesystem rather than ext3. It seems I made a mistake. Today, while on my Windows side, trying for the fourth time to mount my Ubuntu filesystem, I discovered something terrible. First off, as you may know, while Linux is very nice about foreign filesystems, Windows has remained blind and apathetic. I had previously managed to mount my Linux partitions on my old computer (which had an ext3 filesystem) using a third-party IFS driver that was actually for ext2, but as ext3 was backwards compatible, it worked okay.

Both last week and today, using four different IFS drivers, when I mounted my partition, all I could see were the root subdirectories (such as "home", "usr" and "bin") and nothing else. These folders didn't contain anything either. It was very frustrating until I remembered that I had ext4 and I realized that that was probably what was causing the problem. At that point it became very annoying because I would now have to either remember to transfer files while still on Linux or use a memory stick. It gets worse, however.

When I next booted into Ubuntu, I looked back to the screen to a horrible sight. "Why is it in terminal mode?" I wondered, "Oh god, is it a kernel panic?" It wasn't, but the error message wasn't much better. "ERROR MOUNTING ROOT PARTITION - LOADING MAINTENANCE PROMPT - PRESS CONTROL-D TO RETRY". I crossed my fingers and pressed ^D, but I just got the same error again, along with some more information, however. It now said "OMG RUN FSCK MANUALLY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (not verbatim :P). So I ran fsck, pressed ^D again and it now worked. It gave me quite a scare, though.

So, when deciding which filesystem to use, if you dual-boot with Windows, go with ext3 but otherwise, you should go with ext4. I really don't know what extents are but I'm just going to assume it's better in some way. :P

So, does anyone remember the Quote Of The Month? Lol, AGES ago, I used to post about the highest rated quote that month. Well, I only did it once last year and that was in January. So, I've decided to skip QOTM and instead replace it with the Quotes Of The Year!

2009 was an.... odd year. Four Island kind of exploded during 2009 and not much happened. There were some good quotes, however, and I'm going to list them for you! Here are the 10 most popular quotes from 2009!

1. #248 The Lollipop Desert
2. #229 The CHEESE BLOCK EQUATION
3. #212 Earthrandoms
4. #200 I'm Naked!
5. #186 Smiley Is Slimey
6. #171 Hatkirby by Rihanna
7. #272 HLFS
8. #223 Fangirls
9. #265 Buried The Kitchen In Fat

And the number one quote of 2009 is....

1. #232 Blank

Yes, I see the irony. :P Anyway, 2009 had some really good quote. Most of the quotes up there spawned memes. Anyway, those were the quotes of 2009! I'm hoping for some more hilarious, meme-spawning quotes in 2010! Get to cracking jokes! :P And just so you know, the most popular quote overall is:

#112 Loading Very Slowly

It's 2010! And what better way to start a new year than by having people actually vote on my poll?

YES....... yes? - 7 vote(s)! Nawwwwwwwww - 0 vote(s)! Who's there? - 1 vote(s)! Indifferent - 0 vote(s)!

That's odd, people are actually voting! :P Anyway, this year I'm hoping to actually complete my annual goals and, well, that'll be good! Yay! Have a great new year!

It's January 1st once again! And before we go anywhere, let me wish you a HAPPY NEW YEAR YAYS! :P I like the repetition thing. So, anyway, exactly 1 year ago, I wrote a post about my 2009 goals. I'm going to write a list of goals for this year as well, but first, let's see if I successfully completed last year's goals!

• Increase RSS subscribers to 10 - Yes! This is surprising, but I've been noticing all year that my RSS subscriber count has been around my goal level. I requested at least 10 subscribers and the count has been flucuating between 9 and 11 for a while. Currently, it's at 11, so I consider this a pass!
• Write popular posts - I don't know exactly how to grade this one. For one thing, I barely posted last year (poll posts don't count!), but I did write some posts which were long....ish. Some inspirations such as Kirby Week and The Bet helped me to do so. The goal, however, quotes the Popular Posts module, and as you may have noticed, there is a 2009 post in the list: The Mystery Of The Ancient Fountain Of Dreams. Odd. :P So, for this one, I'm just going to say NEUTRAL and I'll make this year's goals clearer. :)
• Average around 1 comment per post - Comments? There were 68 comments posted by people other than me last year. How many posts did I post last year? 92. That's right, even with my dismal posting frequency last year, there were less comments than posts. Sad.
• Update the POTW on time - Wow, I seriously failed the late poll posting goal. For a while in the last quater of 2009, I was updating the POTW on a bi-weekly basis. Fail.
• Don't post random polls - Yes, I made random polls. I really need to come up with some good ideas for this year. Fail.
• The final goal was a joke, if no one noticed. :P

So, I passed 1 of 5 goals and failed 3 of 5. Wow, I did really badly last year. I hope I can do better this year. So, without further ado, here's my 2010 goals!

• Increase my RSS subscriber count to approx. 15 subscribers.
• Write at least one non-poll post every week. This is important because I am ashamed at my non-postiness in 2009. In 2008, I posted nearly every day!
• On that note, don't neglect to update the Poll Of The Week! It must be updated once a week on Saturday.
• Try not to post random poll posts. Make a list of upcoming polls if you have to.
• Get people to comment! Once again, I'm aiming for, on average, 1 comment per post. This allows for unpopular posts because people may comment frequently on popular posts.
• Revive The Fourm! Get people posting! I'm aiming for us to pass the 9000th post sometime this year. I mean, it's definitely possible. We had around 6000 posts posted in 2008. I think we can manage 700.
• Revive Fouripedia! There's a lot of new content that hasn't been added yet. I expect to see at least 10 new non-stub articles on Fouripedia by the end of the year. I know, it's not that big of a goal, but I was seriously lazy last year.
• Revive True Falsities! True Falsities was actually a 2009 project, so I can't compare it to 2008, but in the first half of the year we had so many people writing stories. Nowadays, there's one or two stories a month. I want at least two stories every month on True Falsities this year!
• Omg. Freaking. Revive. Pillowcase. I've been promising Season 3 for so long now and I've postponed it many times. Finish the season and post the comics! 2009 saw two seasons of Pillowcase, and I expect the same this year. And no cop-outs!

Wow, I'm really being harsh with myself this year. Well, I was incredibly lazy last year and I didn't get anything done. Anyway, 2009 is over and it is now 2010! Welcome to the new decade! I hope you all had a wonderful New Year and I hope 2010 is a good year for everyone!

It's New Years Eve! OMG! This is so exciting, soon it'll be 2010 and Four Island will be different yet again! Does anyone remember last year when all of the blog posts had red calendars next to them? Lol, we've been looking at blue calendars for so long.... And tomorrow it will change again.... to purple! :)

So, last year on New Years Eve, I posted a list of random/cynical predictions of what was to occur in 2009. Did any of them come true? Well, I did make a seventh layout, but not until September. :P And I did reinstall my operating system once, but on my personal computer (because I had somehow deleted the contents of /sbin.... :P) not my server.

This year, because I like the whole annual tradition thing, I will also be writing a list of predictions. But not in list form. I wrote an extremely strange song! :P

In the year oh-ten No-thing would hap-pen Because everyone will be busy typing "Greetings :)" into Yaplet!

Starla will change her site Into an Imogen Heap fan...site And then she'll realize she's pronouncing "Imogen" wrong and change it back like that!

TimTam'll make a wiki About a witch in Helsinki Then we'll all mob him from stealing a joke from Sabrina!

And Drifty, she will write A hundred stories in one night Then she'll post them all to FourFiction and my server will explode!

And Smiley, he will post Exactly one post, about toast And he will receive a medal for not posting about com-pu-ters!

And Sammi, she will draw All over her grand-maw Then she'll get grounded for so long that she'll actually write on her blog!

Then Bluemonkey and I Will collab on Layout 9 Until I realize he's trying to write it in ASP and I m-fire him and he m-quits and I realize that I skipped Layout 8! phew

And Pyro will perform A hostile-takeover of the town Jorm Then every day and every night will be a national holiday!

And Ozzyfrog, he will fly Right up in to the Sky And then receive a ticket for flying into a cable company!

And maybe J-A-L Will invent some sort of smell That makes iguanas want to eat toast and he becomes very rich!

And Timbo.... (oh, right, he discontinued his blog) will breathe air!

And True Falsities Will run another story About New Years being redirected to /dev/null and nobody knows what that means!

My router will explode (again) My website will be hacked (again) And Google will be acquired by Soy Products Ltd!

"2010 In Song"

Ummm.... that was weird. :P It.... sort of follows the melody of the first verse of Different Town. :P Anyway, have a very Happy New Year and I will see you tomorrow for my annual goals post!

Lol, this poll was a no-brainer.

YES!!1!!!1!!ONE - 12 vote(s)! No - 0 vote(s)! What's..... Chistmas? - 1 vote(s)! Indifferent - 1 vote(s)!

And YAY! More people seem to be voting now that I've fixed the logged in problem. :P Anyway, I hope you had a very merry christmas/happy other holiday! And now we're so close to 2010! Hey, I feel a cynical prediction article coming up again! :P

It's the last day of Kirby Week and some people said to me: "OMG ITS KIRBY WEEK!!!!" It's sad that Kirby Week's nearly over, but the poll results are in! :)

OMG ITS KIRBY WEEK!!!! - 4 vote(s)! **** you. - 0 vote(s)! What the pfargtl is Kirby Week? - 0 vote(s)! INDIFFERENT, OKAY?!?!?!? - 2 vote(s)!

Sew.... about yesterday.... :P I'm sorry I didn't write a post! It's just that I was really tired and I had been out all night and more excuses oh whatever, just throw those bottles of wine at your computer screen. Sorry!

Though I guess you could say that it's a Kirby Week tradition to not complete weekly specials :P . Anyway, Kirby Week is nearly over, but Christmas is very close by! Happiness! :D

On the fourth day of Kirby Week, Four Island gave to me: A deeper insight on the true meaningful nudules of randomness.

Randomness is a trait. It's also a blog, but we're talking about the characteristic here. So, what is randomness. WLEll of carser oiyoar know RANODMES S I shyperactivity!!!!!!! pbuttu!!!! Well.... no, not necessarily. You don't have to be a radioactively hyper sheep to be random. Randomness comes from within. Yeah right. :P

Randomness isn't really anything. You want to be random, go run outside and pull a tube-sock over your head. Write a story about someone's brain falling out. Oh dear, I do believe I feel a list coming out!

• Write a poem on a banana peel and then place it in front of your bedroom door.
• Exclaim your love for Russian mashed potatoes.
• Learn how to do the Macarana.... backwards.... twice as fast.
• Eat a computer.
• Radioactively reproduce Shakespeare's complete body of work. (This one requires fourteen lifetimes of practicing, so we don't expect you to complete it)
• Write a post about random stuff as a cop-out because you have a deadline in 12 minutes.
• Throw one of your favorite belongings into an empty trash bag, dance with it and make sure it knows how to spell "marfsky".
• Try new things. I've heard catfood is tasty.
• WRITE WRITE WRITE. Writing a random story is seriously fun and easy. Just think about the stupidest possible thing that could happen AND MAKE IT HAPPEN TO GEORGE WASHINGTON!!!! It never fails.
• Moderate comments.
• Listen to the collected works of Ludwig von Beethoven. Backwards. With each song logarithmically faster than the previous one.
• Download 200 pictures of lolcats, print them out and decorate your favorite mausoleum with them.
• Sing. Lady GaGa songs. Of course, it has to be backwards.
• Read a book on advanced physics and apply it to garbage collection in modern programming languages.
• Write a book outlining THE INTERNAL REOCCUPATIONS AND FLAGRATOINS OF USING ELLIPSES TOO FREQUENTLY.
• Make a website about something you enjoy. Such as dust-mite finding. You like finding dust-mites, amrite?
• EAT A MOOSE. Fine, it can be dead.
• Using red litmus paper, test various household objects for acidity and alkalinity and then throw them out the window and watch Spongebob Squarepants.

As you can see, there are many ways to be random. INVENT YOUR OWN, DUDE. See? That was random. Be random, spread happiness and try to ignore the fact that this post is so obviously a cop-out. Comment! :P

On the third day of Kirby Week, Four Island gave to me: A review of a random web-service.

HI. Welcome to Wednesday. Kirby Week is halfway over, how sad is that? Anyway, today's post is not as late and not as completely insane as yesterday's. Today, I'm reviewing Google Wave!

Okay. I'm not usually the first to know about something and this is no exception. I only found out about Google Wave about two months before it was released and that was only because Bluemonkey was ranting about it for some reason that I can't be bothered to check my chat-logs for. :P I wasn't really that interested.... that is, until I saw the features.

Google Wave boasts equal parts conversation and document. I didn't really understand that at first. Perhaps I still don't. All I did know was that it looked cool and people were apparently going nuts over it.

I finally received an invite from Bluemonkey and got to discovering. Google Wave seems to be a way to communicate and collaborate efficiently and quickly (in real-time, in fact). The thing is, however, I don't really know what I'd use Google Wave for. If I want to chat with someone, I'll use GTalk or Skype or Yaplet (which we are bringing back! :P). There isn't really anything compelling me to continue logging in and checking for new waves.

Not to say that my feelings toward Google Wave are completely negative. Wave seems to have some pretty neat applications. It's just that I haven't really found a need for any of them.

To end off this post, I'm going to present you with a surprise! I finally received my Google Wave invites today! So, if any of you still don't have Google Wave and would like to join in, please comment and I'll send you one! :D

On the second day of Kirby Week, Four Island gave to me: A short story about nothing in particular.

It was the first day of Christmas.

"Wait," a voice yelled, "Christmas only lasts one day! By saying the 'first' day of Christmas, you're implying that there is more than one day!"

For the sake of continuity, can we simply assume that there are more than one days of Christmas?

"That sounded really grammatically incorrect, you know."

Shut up. Just.... shut up. Anyway, it was the first day of Christmas. The snow had blanketed the beach house and everything around it so everything looked peaceful and-

"....snow? At a beach house? As in, on the beach? Not likely. And when you say that it blanketed everything around it, you're implying that it also blanketed the ocean. You know, the one adjacent to the beach the beach house is doubtlessly on?"

You don't have to take everything so seriously, you know. It's just a simple story. And a beach house doesn't necessarily have to be next to a beach.

"Yeah, well, stereotypically, you will find beach houses on the beach."

My beach house is in Iceland, okay? Moving on....

"You do know that Iceland is the one with the green, right?"

Don't make me come out of here.

"You're just a narrative device used to tell the reader of the story what is going on without using dialogue. You can't hurt me!"

I'm best friends with the writer of this story. She'll erase you if you don't qwazam.

"Seriously? You're making up words now?"

That's it! I QUIT. STARLA, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO FIND A NEW NARRATOR NOW BECAUSE THIS CHARACTER IS REALLY UNCOOPERATIVE.

"Hi there! Guess who I am."

O_O

"Yes, I like to write confusing stories. Good luck with that whole multiple personality disorder thing."

She walked away laughing, leaving the narrator very confused. Soon, however, the story was over and everything vanished.

Yes, okay, that story was very odd. But, well, that's what you get when you promise PROMISE to write a blog post and then fall asleep and laze about until you are only three hours away from your deadline. Tomorrow's post should.... make more sense. :P