Four Island

Hmm, no one voted for Pillowcase? Interesting....

The Blog - 0 vote(s)! Pillowcase - 0 vote(s)! Endlenge - 1 vote(s)! Other (specify in comments) - 1 vote(s)!

Incidentally, I have just started working on Pillowcase's third season. I don't want to put a date up in case I can't make it, but expect Pillowcase to revive around the end of November. :)

You may have heard of FourPuzzle. Sounds familiar, right? If it doesn't.... then you may have a point because I can't seem to find the post on Four Island about it. Anyway, FourPuzzle is my grand project. I know I already had a grand project that majorly failed, but I'm sure about this one. FourPuzzle is (going to be) a C++ library that allows you to easily make an RPG game.

"Right," you may ask, "but what does that have to do with the title of the post?" I'm getting to that. See, I started implementing FourPuzzle around November of last year. In Java. Yes, it was originally a Java library. When I had implemented about half of the specification, I came to an important realization. Java is slow. Mmmmhm. It's awesome library and cross-platformness came with a price. A price that didn't work out so well in a game.

So, I stopped development on FourPuzzle in March and sort of forgot about it. Then, when it became time for me to start working on my yearly RPG, I remembered FourPuzzle and though "Hey, it would be great to make this year's RPG in my own engine." So I started trying to implement FourPuzzle in various languages to see how it would work. C++ lasted about 5 seconds before I realized how complicated that would be. C#/Mono lasted a bit longer, but it simply wasn't cross-platform enough for me. Then, I discovered Qt.

Qt. Is. Awesome. It's a C++ library that I like to explain as "Java for C++, without the Java." It's cross-platform. It has a huge amount of classes and functions that I can use (some of which have names very similar to their Java counterparts. I mean, really, FontMetrics and QFontMetrics? :) ) It has a resource compiler. It has a UI designer. It has everything. I am in love. :)

I had previously disliked Qt for the sole reason that KDE was written with it. For those of you who don't know, I use GNOME. GNOME PWNZ. :) But Qt is not responsible for how it is used. Qt is awesome. And it will be used to implement not only the FourPuzzle library, but also an editor program that will allow non-techie people create a FourPuzzle game without having to touch a single line of C++. Stay tuned for details :D

I did it again. Stupid me with the stupid habit of not updating the POTW. Pralsh.

4.5 - 2 vote(s)! 6.2 - 0 vote(s)! 7 - 1 vote(s)! Other/None - 0 vote(s)!

YAY 4.5 TIS AWESOME. Okay. :) Anyway, horray for the Theme Switcher! :) And I totally fail at updating! Like, anything!

Do you think I fail at updating on a normal schedule? Yes, I do. Clearly. It's been a week.

You totally do - 1 vote(s)! Yes, you kind of do - 1 vote(s)! I would have to agree with the above two options - 0 vote(s)! I'm legally required to add a "No" option here - 0 vote(s)!

I actually had an excuse for not updating last week, though. Due to a bug in my coding, I couldn't actually access the Poll Update page in the Admin Panel because of the quotation mark in the fourth option. Wait, that's still my fault, and I was being lazy by not fixing it earlier. Oh well. :)

Anyway, now that's out of they way, let me introduce you to an amazing new feature on Four Island that I spent all night working on! It's the Theme Switcher! YAY!

I often get nostalgic about old layouts (as evidenced by every time I release a new one) and I would like to go back to said layout, but I can't without changing the entire website. I've found a solution!

You may have noticed the "Theme Switcher" combo box in the Hatbar. You can use that to choose which Four Island Layout you would like to see. Currently you can choose 7 (the current), 6.2 and 4.5. It actually works! :)

I doubt I'll ever implement 6 or 6.1, as they're not so different from 6.2 (well, the original 6 was kind of weird, as it had no background picture) unless people want me to, but I'm think I might want to implement layout 3. It would be very hard, though, because Layout 3 is from before The New Four Island so it doesn't conform to the templating system and other stuff. Plus, the site was different then, The Fourm and the Quotes DB weren't integrated into the rest of the site and most stuff was accessed from the "Misc" page.

So, choose your favorite layout and get Four Islanding! If you notice any bugs in any of the layouts, please let me know. :)

Okay, the other day, Bluemonkey sent me an email with a few links to some articles about RSS Cloud, a long-forgotten, but majorly AWESOME feature of RSS that hasn't really been implemented. Until now.

Basically, RSS Cloud is a tag in the RSS root that defines a "cloud" server that the RSS feed exists on. RSS readers that support the feature, upon finding that tag in an RSS feed, will connect to the cloud server in question and "subscribe" to that feed. What does that mean?

Well, when an RSS feed has a cloud, whenever something happens that will result in an item being added to the feed, a message is sent to the cloud saying "hai thar, i've got a new item!" And when a subscriber subscribes, it recieves all of the updates from that feed in real time.

Now what does that sound like? Yes, InstaDisc. But it has a few advantages and disadvantages over InstaDisc.

For the advantage, RSS Cloud is adding onto an existing method of data discovery, RSS. It doesn't require you to download some kind of new program, just the newest version of your favorite RSS reader. This also means that webmasters don't have to work as hard at making their feeds real-time. They would just have to add a cloud server to the feed and set one up instead of the complicated Subscription thing I had going on with InstaDisc.

However, it has a disadvantage. RSS Cloud only works if the subscribers' computer is web visible. Hey, that also sounds familiar! Yes, that's the reason why the first specification of InstaDisc failed. If RSS Cloud wants to succeed, it needs to take a leaf from the new specification: Use Reverse AJAX. Keep the connection open, use a heartbeat. Because the majority of people nowadays use routers and NATs and thus cannot be web visible.

So, there's my rant on RSS Cloud. It's awesome, but it has it's disadvantages.

I'm feeling awesome. Why? Because I just set up an automated database backup script for Four Island!

Yes, you heard me right, Four Island didn't previously have any automated backups. Shock, horror, I know. What's worse is that Four Island isn't even one of those lucky websites that never loses data. Remember (or not) False? That would've never been lost if I had backups. And how about Color Pencils before the Great Color Pencils Purge of '08? I know Drifty initiated that, but not all of those posts deserved to die. Some of them were awesome. :)

Anyway, yes, I've set up an automated database backup script. Now, all of the databases on the Four Island server (which includes those of my hosted sites) gets backed up weekly and sent to a remote email address (which, I might add, has enough free storage to last me for 15 years :) ) Awesomeness :)

The only problem I have is that only the database is being backed up. I want to create some kind of monthly backing up plan where I manually back up the all of the server data on my server (including VCS repositories, non-source-controlled data, configuration files and the databases) to a portable drive. The only problem is, I don't have a portable drive. The only thing close is my memory stick, FourStar, but she only has 4GB and I need that space. Maybe I'll save up money to buy a memory stick with more space :) OR A RAID 6 SETUP WITH A SERVER FARM AND MANY MANY DOLLARS. lol, jk :)

Anyways, as a sidenote, about Color Pencils, I made an awesome discovery the other day. I found that searching "inurl:gryph.fourisland.com" at Google Blog Search came up with excerpts of the old Color Pencils posts. Which means that they might have the full posts buried in there somewhere :D I is hoping to revive them. (I actually have already revived one post, Time Of You Life, because I happened to have 6 hard copies of it so I transcribed it back onto her blog)

Well, guess what people. Today is September 22nd 2009. The second anniversary of the creation of Four Island. And this year (unlike the first anniversary, which happened to be during Four Island's extended downtime), people will be around to appreciate it. :)

Sadly, if Four Island today were to be compared to, say, it's first half-birthday, which would've been March 22nd 2008, you would see an incredible difference in activity. Back in the Golden Days of Four Island, which basically included the time between the creation of Four Island and the extended downtime, The Fourm would be posted on upwards of 100 times a day and people would visit often. Now, even though activity seems to have been increasing in the last few days, there are often weeks where nothing is posted on the Fourm.

Strangely, the hit counter has not reflected this activity change. In March of last year, I probably received about 50 hits a day (which was still surprising as, well, what 50 individual people are interested in my little website? :) ), if you check the hit counter nowadays, you will see upwards of 200 hits a day. Odd? Probably :)

Anyway, I'd just like to wish Four Island a happy birthday and I hope that others do too. After all, it's been through a lot :)

Okay, I know True Falsities has been dead since May. But I'm reviving it! True Falsities was once a fun and popular place where we all created weird stories that parodied ourselves and the metaphysical island we all live on and that was great. And yayish.

If I was asked why I thought True Falsities died, I would say because of the slowdown. At some point, I don't know when, True Falsities started loading VERRRRRRRRRRRRRYYYYYYY SLOWLYYYYYYY. Which made it impossible to use because it would be so annoying. Like, a lot. Well guess what! I've fixed it! Turns out IntenseDebate was the cause of the slowdown. I really don't know why, and now it's a bit annoying not having IntenseDebate on True Falsities because now I don't know if anyone's going to want to comment, but hey! As long as TF is back up :)

So, to celebrate to (hopeful) revival of True Falsities, I wrote a True Falsity! I actually had the idea months ago and only finished it today. It's called Drifty Revealed. I hope you people flock back to True Falsities now! :)

Wow, I had no clue what drugs I was on two weeks ago. And sorry I didn't update AGAIN. I'm a weirdo.

iTunes - 3 vote(s)! Banshee - 0 vote(s)! Windows Media Player throws up - 0 vote(s)! Other - 1 vote(s)!

I think I'm officially going insane, what with updating the poll 8 days late. Yesterday I had an excuse, I was sick (and still am) but last week I wasn't so I should've posted.

And Now I Rant! FOUR FICTION THE FOURM OMG PILLOWCASE LETS POST ON STUFF LIKE TRUE FALSITIES AND THIS OR THAT WHAT HAPPENED TO ENDLENGE OR THE PROJECTS LETS JUST DO STUFF.... okay, I'm done. Sorry, my brain isn't really functioning properly. Anyway, post on Four Fiction or The Fourm! The Fourm seems to have been semi-revived in the last day or so because there has been a lot of posting! :)

Also, I'm working on a new story based on a dream I had a few days ago, so, if you don't want to ruin the surprise, DON'T READ MY DREAM DIARY!

Yay, people obviously have no clue what I'm talking about. NO CLUE.

vi - 0 vote(s)! emacs - 0 vote(s)! nano - 4 vote(s)! Notepad - 1 vote(s)!

Btw, the reason I didn't update this poll last week was a combination of me thinking that no one was voting and me thinking that the POTW didn't work in Firefox for Windows, for some reason. I dunno, I'm confused. Lol :)