Four Island

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 :)

Oh yes. I, the cooliest. Feelings so to be good appreciated, to be yes.

yes almightly starla, i worship your shadow - 4 vote(s)! It's disgusting stature makes me want to create ThreeIsland.com - 0 vote(s)! Why does love always feel like a battlefield? - 0 vote(s)! Indifferent - 1 vote(s)!

As a sidenote, some of you fanatics may have noticed that Pillowcase stopped updated a few days ago. Sadly, due to unforseen circumstances, I have temporarily lost SSH access to my server and can't update Pillowcase as such, so I guess Season 2 is coming to an end. It was fun restarting my little random comic, and I can't wait to do it again in a month or so. PILLOWCASE FTW!

Lol, it seems I accidentally thought Friday was Saturday and update the POTW a day early. Weird. Oops, Ima Silly. :) Anyway.... what was I going to say in this post? Yes, I just wanted to mention that I had added FourFiction to the sidebar so random people can find it. I've also written Chapter 9 of my story, Dreams Are Magic, in case anyone's interested in reading it. FourFiction pretty much died when I went away and I hope to revive it because it's a pretty cool place, if I do say so myself. :)

Many people ask me repeatedly, "what's KSA?" Then I ask them how on earth they know that name, and they reply that I talk about it all the time. Then I feel weird for forgetting that. For some reason, I've always kept pretty much everything about KSA completely secret. But now, I'm going release that information and more.

KSA stands for Kirby Star's Adventures, and it was the first RPG I had ever made. What made it stand out from the rest of my old games was it's plot, which I fell in love with. The game reached lore status in my book and I was happy that I had managed to make such a good game.

Then there came that one fateful day in 2008. I was sitting in front of my old, dying computer. I had booted into a Linux OS from a floppy disk in an attempt to save precious documents from my doomed computer. As the hard drive started to crash, I frantically copied folders from the computer to my memory stick. Halfway through each transaction, the hard drive would spit out an IO error and stop copying. After this happening four times, the fragile hard drive uttered a final wheeze and crumbled into nothingness. My old computer, with so many important things on it, was dead.

When I returned to my normal computer later that day and checked what I had managed to save, I found two VB.NET games I had made, a copy of RM2K and a folder called "tehadks". I had interpreted that to mean "Teh Adventures of Kirby Star," and I was overjoyed that I had managed to save KSA from my dying computer. When I opened the project in RM2K, however, it became apparent that I hadn't. The Adventures of Kirby Star, while having a similar name to Kirby Star's Adventures, was a different (and not so legendary) RPG I had made back in the old day. I was defeated, my game lost to the void of electrons.

A few months ago, I was looking around in my home folder after my boot manager's configuration files got messed up and I was determining which files to save when I reinstalled the operating system. I came across the folder "pc2lap", astonishingly contained those four folders: "arden", "ARDEN UN", "progfil" and "tehadks". The sight of Teh Adventures of Kirby Star made me really miss KSA, so I decided that I would do everything I could to recreate it. Thus, the KSA Restoration Project was created. I wrote down everything I could remember from the game and then got my brother to do the same as he was a frequent player of the game. However, I wasn't yet motivated enough to do anything with that data.

Two months later, I came across the mind-dump and remembered KSA for the third time. This time, however, I was driven to recreate the game because of my fond memories of it. I did end up completing most of it, substituting forgotten explanations for humor (Kirby: ....well, Starla didn't tell me exactly what to do here so I guess we'll just do some random errands for you. Witch: Good, because Starla never told me how I got you to do said errands for me) but it just didn't feel right tarnishing the game's memory with something that might not have been as good as the original. Because of this, I stopped work on the project again.

However, all was not lost. Some of you may have seen my Facebook status update last week. If not, here it is:

Starla Insigna is freaking out with excitement because she just found a folder called KSA on her computer that could contain the real original KSA. I'm going over to Windows to check it out :)"

Starla Insigna

I had found "pc2lap" again and decided to do some sifting. The Arden games didn't turn up anything (other than the fact that my old VB.NET games' code was.... scary), but "progfil" (which I assume to be DOS' shortening of Program Files) did turn up something rather interesting. The only folder within Program Files that had started to copy over to my memory stick was one called ASCII, which is the company that made RM2K. I found an empty folder called "RTP" and one called "Project", which I had previously assumed to contain the RM2K example game, Don Miguel's Adventure. However, when I looked inside the folder, I was shocked and amazed to instead find a folder called KSA. I freaked out and restarted into Windows to see if it was, truly was, KSA.

The state of the project was similar to that of "tehadks", while all of the maps were intact as well as some of the resources, the database was gone. This meant that the game couldn't be played, though I still could open the game in RM2K and look through the maps. They were all there, completely intact, and I was so happy. All of the terrain, the characters, the conversations, the events, it was all there. The complete plot of KSA, as well as the original maps, were all at my disposal.

Because the original was unplayable, I decided that I would continue working on the remake. I wouldn't have to feel bad about ruining the memory because I now had the complete transcript of the original happenings. I even had the bright idea of letting you choose at the beginning of the game whether you would like to see the original dialogue or the humorous version. KSA will (hopefully) be fun when it is finished. So yippy yay yap, I can't wait to finish it and let you readers tell me what you think.