Four Island

Does something look, perhaps, a little different about my website? That's right, I've redesigned my website. Considering that Four Island 3 came out September 22nd, 2011, and that Four Island 2 came out June 13th, 2008, this is an amazing turnaround for me, and I'm very excited about this new incarnation of my website.

Four Island 3 used Wordpress, a very powerful blogging platform that I have admired in the past and which did turn out to be very appropriate for my website. The thing is, ever since realizing, when Four Island 3 came out, that my website badly needed to be simplified, I've been obsessed with this very simplistic ideal. Four Island 3 did not meet that ideal. Wordpress was simply too powerful for my needs. Four Island 4, however, is much simpler and yet, it gives me more control than Four Island 3 did.

Four Island 4 uses Jekyll, a simple, blog-aware, static website generator. It's actually a very cute little concept: you write a few webpages with some template code in them, create a folder for your Markdown-formatted blog posts, and run a command that generates your static site. Whenever your site changes, you run the command again and your site is regenerated. It's not dynamic at all, which is perfect for my increasingly old webserver. It's also incredibly simple, yet cute.

Read more...

Guys, it's that time of the year again: the beginning! You know what that means! Review posts! Yes, there may possibly be more than one this year! Now, one of my favorite things to do in the beginning of the year is enumerate the ten most popular quotes of the previous year. Well, guess what? Last year was awful quote-wise! What's with the slacking off, peeps? I wrote that beautiful Quotes DB for the win and no one's using it! There were only 9 quotes submitted last year with ratings higher than 1, so, well, it's a bit sad. But anyway, here we go:

9. #472 - Samson
8. #465 - Hurricane Irene
7. #463 - NO ONE MESSES WITH MY OVARIES
6. #456 - My Baby Is Erect
5. #454 - Fourie's Soul
4. #443 - Is This A Thing That Happen
3. #440 - Friday
2. #437 - Electricity

And now, ladies and gentlemen, drum roll please. The most popular quotes of 2011, with a terrifying FIVE upvotes:

1. #452 - Let's Get A Room

Yeah, last year was pretty awful. :P No, but really, I just think the Quotes DB is dying out for some strange reason. I'm the only one submitting quotes to it, and no one's voting on quotes. There was some really funny quotes posted towards the end of last year, and, well, they were never voted on. At least Hurricane Irene got in there. That's a funny one. And "Is this a thing that happen" is practically memetic---that needed to get in. :) Anyway, here's to a better 2012. Come on people, quote and vote! Help me fulfill my annual goal!

Oh, and if you were wondering about the highest voted quote overall, which I usually do talk about in this post, don't worry---it hasn't changed since last year. It's still #232 - Blank. God, we suck. :D

Wait for it... wait for it... HAPPY NEW YEAR YAYS! It's me, your regularly scheduled failspaz, ready to usher in the new year with some fantabulous posts of failure! Let's get ready to fail! Now, last year was a horrible pit of despair that I don't care to dwell on or even really remember at all, so I'm just going to stare at my new fractal calendar until I pass out and think it's 2010 again. What is the likelihood of me actually backing up my server today? I don't even think I did it in December... in fact, where the heck am I right now? Anyway, you knew it was coming folks: it's time for the annual goals post! Hey! You in the back! Stop crying!

Now, okay. Let's get one thing straight. In 2010, I let my annual goals consume me until I actually wasn't human anymore and was actually a puppet controlled by Four Island's cronjob. In 2011, I said "screw this, they're guidelines, not rules" and I decided things would be more lax. How did that work out for me? Not very well, I don't think.

• Write four posts a month - Noooo. This was designed to replace the horrid "write a post every week" goal that was torturing me and instead allow me to have some more flexibility in posting. Uh-uh. There were months in 2011 when I didn't even post once, let alone four times. The only month in which I posted over four times was January. Some months were so close, screw you September and October! But yeah, this was a pretty big failure.
• Average around 1 comment per post - I posted... 17 times last year. This is painful. How many comments were there? 23! There were 23 comments posted last year! Okay, 19 if you don't count comments by me, but still! I actually completed this goal! I had no idea! This is fantastic!
• Reach 15,000 posts on The Fourm - Uh, no. I don't even have to check. I mean, I will anyway. The number of posts on The Fourm is up to 12,467. Just... around... how many... there were... last year... This is atrocious. I am very dismayed. Time to nuke The Fourm.
• Release 1 season of Pillowcase - No, oh god, I'm so sorry. I didn't, I couldn't. I worked so hard, but I couldn't complete it. This did not happen. I apologize so profusely. Hey, is my annual apology post fun yet? Someone? Please laugh with me!
• Release 2 programming projects - I was actually closer on this one than I thought I would be. I did not release two programming projects, but I did release one: the new Quotes DB. So, yes, failure, but not complete failure! Always look on the bright side of things, even when there is none and you realize you just ran out of painkillers.

So, another what I call "year of failure." For the third year in a row, I have succeeded in completing exactly one of my annual goals. Well, at least I'm consistent. Let's see what kind of trainwreck I'm setting myself up for this year:

• Write at least four posts a month! Yes, I'm doing this again, because I really think that if I stop lazing around and start drinking more caffeine, this could be a good thing! Four Island needs to be written on! Write about Apple, write about cats, write about interior decorating for all I care! Actually, don't, because that'd be kind of awful, but still. I need to write!
• Guess what, for the fourth year in a row: comment! I want to average at least one (1) comment per post this year. I mean, I've finally achieved this goal through the sheer strength of not posting at all, so imagine if I can complete this goal AND the above goal! How amazing would that be?
• Get 100 quotes into the Quotes DB! In both 2009 and 2010, the number of quotes submitted was over 100, so why can't we do that again? I mean, 40 quotes last year? That's just sad. Let's be hilarious, and let's let other people know about it! I want to revitalize the Quotes DB!
• Release 1 season of Pillowcase! I'm serious, I have to do this! I've been working on Season 4 of Pillowcase for quite a while now, and I'm sure it's going to be amazing once I finally finish it and release it. Just you wait, all you swalligaggers! That was totally a True Falsities reference!
• Do some more freaking programming! Yes, I'd like to try again at releasing 2 programming projects this year. I have some ideas, some things could happen, and well, I need to drink more caffeine. I need to stop failing. I can totally be awesome this year, and this post isn't becoming awkward for anyone at all. Stop yelling at me!

So, here's the list of things I hope to do this year. Do you believe I can succeed? If you do, raise your hands and sing a Marina & the Diamonds song! It's 2012, baby, and things are going to be awesome! None of us are going to die, either! So, with the risk of jinxing my future: this year's going to be great! Let's get back on our feet and do stuff! Do you like my pep talks? I sure hope you do, nameless stranger, because they will continue to get weirder. Have a great year!

Guys! It's me again! I know I haven't been posting too frequently lately---for that, I apologize. I'd cite reasons, but they're the sort of reasons that would require me to kill you if you learned of them. It's okay, just chill. Anyway, you know what time it is? That's right: it's time once again for my annual random predictions! I liked them so much in 2008 and 2010 (and besides, 2009's 2010 In Song was a disaster of sad proportions), so, you know, they've now become law. Bring on the predictions!

Actually, before we bring on the predictions, let's first take a short look at last year's predictions and see if any of them actually took place. You wouldn't expect it, but it actually looks like a few of them did, depending of how much of each prediction you take seriously. This year, my router did break (though it did not explode and Four Island certainly didn't have a popularity spike) and I did end up replacing it with my Time Capsule, though that didn't actually happen until April 24th. iOS 4.3 did in fact come out (kind of a no-brainer, really), but it didn't sport the fantastic features I hoped it would and it actually came out a month and a day later than I said it would. This one's pretty freaky: I predicted that the iPad 2 (which did not end up being named after a feminine hygiene product) would be announced on the day after it actually ended up being announced. So close! :P I also had IANA run out of IP address blocks a little later than they actually did: the event (and associated awesome ceremony) in fact occurred on February 3rd. Next, we skip forward a few months and we see that I in fact did get a MacBook Pro, just on the day after I predicted. So close, yet again! There was no kerosene on my server, though. Phew. July 29th in all probability did occur exactly how I predicted it. The best prediction, though, was the prediction for September 22nd, because that did in fact happen. I mean, not all of it. I never went to jail. No. That is not a thing that happen.

Okay, so, are you sick of me talking about the past yet? Good, because it's time for some random predictions! Let's get this train-wreck started!

January 2nd Microsoft announces that the name for the operating system codenamed "Windows 8" will be "Windows Flash." A new beta is released later that day that contains almost no similarities with the previous betas, does away with the Metro interface and actually replaces the entire Windows interface with a maximized Internet Explorer 6 window containing a Flash object. After the initial shock wears off, a police investigation is conducted and it is found that Steve Ballmer accidentally shot himself in the head during a meeting with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. Yes. That's exactly how it happened. In unrelated news, MSFT stock goes up 38% by the closing bell.

January 32nd Someone realizes with horror that we accidentally put the leap day in the wrong month.

February 18th Pillowcase Season 4 is finally released. The first comic consists of several thousand panels of Pillowcase telling Pepper off for buying a PC powered by Solaris. Smiley cheers. In unrelated news, optical media also spontaneously becomes relevant again.

February 27th Marina & the Diamonds' sophomore album, Electra Heart, is finally released to Starla's delight, as she was terrified that it would not come out in February and she would instead have to buy something Scottish. She is not heard from for the rest of the day.

February 28th Several Tumblr servers explode from the massive traffic of Marina & the Diamonds fans screaming about the new album.

March 13th RFC 6452 (HyperAd Transfer Protocol) is published as version 2.0 of HTTP. Proponents of the new standard praise it as "the perfect way to monetize what was previously a godless, communist platform by making advertising an integral part of the experience." It contains new request fields such as "UserDemographic" (possible values: male, female, teenager, robot, hittite, jesus christ, yeti...), "UserPervertedness" (more perverted users are more likely to receive porn instead of the requested webpage) and "LastPageVisitedOnAmazon." This information, which browsers will be required to procure from users before allowing them to browse as the specification requires web servers to deny requests from browsers not using the fields, will allow webmasters to include more appropriate (or less appropriate, you naughty) advertisements on their websites.

March 23th RFC 6453 is quickly published as HTTP v2.1 after critics of HATP claim that it is unconstitutional and likely to start syrup-flinging riots. The new standard, which is only required in the Wonderful Land Of America, adds a new request field: "DoNotAdvertiseRegistryCertificate." Users who do not wish to receive HATP-automated advertising or are tired of receiving porn at inopportune times can sign up for the Do Not Advertise Registry and receive an SSL certificate for the modest price of $200. Critics are okay with this.

April 15th After a debilitating manufacturing error is finally resolved (a factory in Kentucky exploded), the iPad 3 is finally released. It is almost identical to the iPad 2, except for the fact that it is red.

April 16th The iPad 3 tops the sales record set by the iPhone 4S.

May 2nd The Australian hook turn is introduced in New York City. Pretty much everyone immediately dies.

May 17th Four Island Layout v7 is released. It includes several never-before-seen features such as "Free Aneurisms!", "Absolutely No Content!" and "Slightly Worse CSS Jitter!" Starla responds to the immense (read: -5 people) negative reaction by hastily implementing another theme switcher. The layouts are mislabeled. No one notices.

June 7th The second comic from Pillowcase Season 4 is released. It consists of half a panel of Pillowcase eating a rabid dog.

June 17th Starla fails to receive birthday gifts from any of her New York friends because most of them are dead, and the ones who are not suddenly realized that they never existed in the first place. Starla writes a scathing article on Four Island about how pilgrimage is dying out and how we all need to adopt flopsybunnies in order to keep the Four Island economy alive. She then eats a bucket of ice cream with a shovel.

July 38th Someone realizes that we accidentally added a leap week to July for some god forsaken reason.

August 9th Drifty submits a quote to the Four Island Quotes DB. Tumblr immediately afterward announces a record uptime of one full day and a long-awaited full recovery from the Marina & the Diamonds debacle in February.

August 25th Rebecca Black takes over a small island off the coast of Greenland known as "Continental North America" and in her Almighty Fridayness, enforces Opposite Day. New Yorkers start making left turns from the right lane only, and for a few short minutes, the world makes perfect sense.

September 14th Microsoft releases Windows Flash. A shipping error results in the two or three people who preordered the software actually getting strippers in the mail rather than the bloody operating system. When interviewed, users admitted they were, in the end, happier to have the strippers than they would be with Windows Flash.

September 22nd Starla does not release Four Island 4. No. Why the heck would she do that. Are you insane? Do you need some help? Come on, let's go up these stairs now. One... two... three... four...

October 13th The iPhone 5 is released, after another production delay (someone snuck into the main factory and ate all the Twinkies). It contains a 74-day battery life due to its revolutionary new usage of Hammerspace. Because of the longer battery life, Apple also added 4G LTE support to the iPhone 5 which, if enabled, reduces the phone's battery life back down to 24 hours.

November 6th Lawrence E. Page somehow wins the popular vote despite not actually announcing his candidacy for the presidency. Enlivened by his surprise win, however, he makes many speeches and vows to rid the world of Yahoo!'s tyranny. He also vows to revoke the March 23rd revision to the HyperAd Transfer Protocol, because Google, and therefore the world, runs on ads.

November 26th An unofficial prequel to Twilight, "Freaking Daylight" is released, causing a major uproar amongst Stephanie Meyer fans because Edward's name is misspelled in different, creative ways on every page. Drifty, meanwhile, goes into hiding. Total coincidence. I mean, those two things have almost nothing to do with each other. Almost. Well...

November 30th Apathetic Ink's first app is finally released on the App Store. Within 30 seconds, it does so fantastically that the Apathetic Ink staff all get inflated egos, and the head programmer goes back in time and writes this post.

December 9th A Four Island Holiday Layout is released (read: forced upon users by the removal of the theme switcher) which covers Four Island in scarves. The font has been replaced with a scarf, and most links require you to go to Amazon and purchase a scarf before you can click them.

December 21st The world fails to come to an end, and Starla laughs a lot. She ends up going to the hospital with a broken laugh box.

Wow, that ended up being a lot better than I had hoped. Probably my best predictions yet, if I do say so myself! And I do say so myself! Woo-hoo! Can't wait to see how many of these don't come true, and, well, it'll be amusing to see how many of them do, coincidentally, end up coming true! I mean, December 21st, come on guys. The Mayans thought people were made out of corn. Whatever... Well, here's to the end of a year that didn't really go so well for me, and I'll see you tomorrow for the freaking annual goals post! Starla out!

Guess what, peeps? It's finally happened! I said peeps! No, but seriously, the iOS 5 untethered jailbreak is finally out! We've been waiting for this for months! For those not in the know, this means you can finally restart your phone and it'll actually, well, turn on again! This is better than the semi-tether I covered a few months ago, because the untether is a full, every boot jailbreak: Safari still works, Mail still works, and all of your jailbreak applications still work. Excited? You betcha. Let's start.

WARNING: This does NOT work for A5 devices. So, if you have an iPhone 4S or an iPad 2, you're out of luck at the moment.

Okay, first of all, you have to be running iOS 5.0.1 to get this jailbreak. In the past, it looked like it might take longer for an iOS 5.0.1 untethered jailbreak to come out, so I recommended people stay on iOS 5. Turns out that things have changed and you actually need to upgrade now. Quick, before iOS 5.0.2/5.1 comes out and ruins things! Quick, go to Settings > Software Update and click Install! You should see something beautiful like the picture to the right. Aww, how adorable. However, if you're me, you may receive an error message telling you that you misspelled "receive" too many times (or more likely, that the upgrade failed). If this happens, simply upgrade using iTunes: plug your iPhone in, click on your device in the sidebar, and click Update. Simple as that. Horray.

Now, if you've gotten this far, you'll have an iDevice running iOS 5.0.1. That's great. Here's when things split. If your iDevice is unjailbroken, because you just upgraded from iOS 5, follow these instructions. If you're currently running a tethered jailbreak on iOS 5.0.1, skip to the next paragraph. Now, head over to the iPhone Dev Team's blog and pick up a copy of redsn0w. There's a Mac version and a Windows version---please ensure that you download the correct one. Things are pretty simple now: simply launch redsn0w, click Jailbreak, and follow the instructions to put your device in DFU mode. It'll handle things from that point on. It's magic! And suddenly, your iDevice is jailbroken. Let's all hug, eh?

Now, if you were already running a tethered jailbreak on iOS 5.0.1 when you started reading this post, you have something slightly different to do. Open Cydia on your tethered device, and search for a package called "Corona." Without the period, of course. English. What an odd language---getting away from the point! Now, install the package. It should be called "Corona 5.0.1 Untether." It's that simple. Horray, we're all jailbroken!

So, now that the untethered jailbreak is out, what does this mean? Well, it means that I can stop getting stuck at testing centers because I was forced to turn off my phone before entering and then subsequently ended up not being able to phone for a ride afterwords! It also means I can listen to music after accidental contact with lightning without bashing my face in and rescrobbling every song afterward! It's all good for the environment, you know. I hope everyone enjoys this fabulous untether, courtesy of @pod2g, and, well, hopefully you A5 folks get something soon, eh?

I read an interesting article, today, by Shawn Blanc, regarding the condition of a 17-month old, well-used, iPhone 4. Yes, that would happen to be the title of the article. My interest was piqued because, for the most part, I've had a similar experience with my (only 14-month old) iPhone: the glass looks perfect, no scratches or anything, and the months and months of fingerprint buildup can be easily removed with a wet microfiber cloth (make sure you turn the phone off first, dear god). Not only that, but I have in fact dropped my iPhone a few times: I dropped it at least twice onto tile flooring in the bathroom, and once, in the early morning after just waking up, I dropped it down the stairs, and it bounced. It would've been hilarious if I wasn't so terrified, but when I got to the bottom of the stairs and picked the phone up, not a scratch. The only sign that a drop had even occurred was the fact that the mute switch was flipped for some reason.

So, all in all, I've had a good experience with my aging iPhone, right? Well, actually, there is one thing that I have had a problem with regarding my iPhone: the camera. Like Shawn, I have vehemently refused to put any sort of case on my phone---not even the free bumper Apple gave me---because I have a passionate belief that Apple products are too beautiful to ruin with an ugly case. I've seen it happen too many times. Seriously, friends and family who use Apple products with cases on them, you know I'm talking to you. :P Anyway, my phone never has a case on it, and I often set it down on a table or something when I'm not using it. Normal usage of a phone, right? Well, it turns out that however normally I was using the phone, I must've been a little too careless at some point because before I knew it, my camera was useless.

<!--more-->I first noticed my iPhone's camera was getting a bit blurry sometime early July. I mean, it definitely worked fine in June---I'm telling you, it worked fine in June. When I was at camp, I took a few photos and looking over them later, I noticed that they looked a bit grainy and washed out, but I assumed it was just the lighting or something. I'm a sucky photographer, so sue me. Well, it kind of turned out that it wasn't the lighting, as the quality of my camera degraded more and more, and more and more memorial photographs were ruined. It was very upsetting to me because I have a form of visual processing disorder that makes it difficult to remember what things look like and to make up for this, I often try to take pictures of things I want to remember. Okay, sure, I'm relying on a camera phone to retain visual memories, but seriously, there's little better you can do than a camera phone without looking weird/creepy. Honestly, though, look at how bad the camera quality was by September:

[gallery link="file" columns="2" include="3715,3716" size="medium"]

There's a very clear difference between those two photos, no? Anyway, I eventually noticed that the lens on the camera was extremely scratched up. It was quite shocking. The photo at the top of this article is of that camera lens, though the damage is probably not discernable in the image. Needless to say, I was upset and I became determined to fix this problem. And you know how I did it? I bought a replacement back plate for my iPhone. Did you know you could just replace that thing? It's pretty awesome. The camera lens is part of the phone's back plate, and so if you replace the back plate with a new one, you get a new camera lens too. So, I ordered a new black back plate for my phone, and I was very excited to get it, but when I did, I found that I was a little disappointed in the quality of the camera. It really wasn't much better, and, looking at the camera lens, I found that the new back plate also had scratches on it! This was very dismaying. However, I did not give up, and decided to buy another back plate, this one a bit different and a bit more interesting. That's right, I bought a red back plate for my phone, because the color red [REDACTED]. Guess what: it arrived, I swapped it onto my phone, it works and it's awesome. Just look at its awesomeness:

[caption id="attachment3723" align="aligncenter" width="234" caption="I apologize for how awful this photo is. I actually had to take it using a bathroom mirror, lacking any other useful camera."]<a href="http://www.fourisland.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/IMG0368.jpg">[/caption]

Anyway, to wrap things up, yes, Shawn, I agree that the iPhone 4 is a very durable device that certainly has the ability to withstand the test of time. However, a product is only as strong as its weakest point and the camera, especially for me, is detracting from the phone's overall long-term usability. I've been very paranoid recently regarding my phone because I don't want to damage the camera. Based on the fact that my iPhone usage is basically split into three categories (listening to music, retaining visual memories, and everything else), shouldn't it matter that the camera could die on me without warning again? The iPhone 4S is supposed to have a much better camera than the iPhone 4. Too bad I'm locked into an AT&T contract. :P

There's been a lot of talk, today, about this thing called a "semi-tether" for iOS 5. What the heck does that mean? Well, if you're jailbroken, you probably know about the two types of jailbreak: tethered and untethered. Untethered is the awesome-acid-trip jailbreak, and tethered means that you have to connect your iPhone to your computer and jailbreak it every time you turn it on. Now, this isn't a huge problem because, really, how often do you ever turn your phone off? The problem lies in the answer to that question: "I don't---it only turns off when I run out of batteries or it crashes." When your phone has an emergency and decides to turn off, chances are that you aren't going to be near your computer, and chances are you won't be able to boot tethered. That's why an untethered jailbreak is awesome.

"Starla," you may be wondering, especially if this is the first time you've read this blog and are seriously considering deleting your history after visiting it, "What are you getting at?" Well, it turns out that I was actually wrong about something. Gasp, I know. So, if you have a tethered jailbroken phone on iOS 5, especially if I was the one who jailbroke your phone, keep reading. Actually, you know what, everyone just keep reading. You heard me.

Now, apparently I thought this was a far less serious problem than everyone else did. I mean, so, your phone unexpectedly turns off due to a crash and you have to boot without a jailbreak. It's annoying, and you can't use Safari or Mail for some reason, but your phone still works, right? It turns out I've been horribly misguided. This morning, when I was reading about this new "semi-tether" thing, I got very excited because I thought it might be a step closer to an untethered jailbreak. However, as I read the article, it seemed to me that the semi-tether didn't offer anything I didn't already have: it claims to allow you to boot your phone in an unjailbroken state if you have an emergency reboot and can't boot tethered, with the caveat that Safari and Mail don't work. Um... doesn't it already do that? Turns out, no, it doesn't. When I got home and was near my computer, I decided to try this out and rebooted my phone, expecting my lock screen to appear and to be able to writing a post for my blog laughing at the silly semi-tether people. Nope---stuck at the Apple boot logo. This utterly surprised me because I swear to God, just a few weeks ago, when I was on iOS 5 beta 7, my phone accidentally rebooted while I was out and it booted fine---just Safari, Mail and my Cydia apps didn't work. I'm not sure what changed, but it's certainly not a pleasant change.

So, if you're on a tethered jailbreak, especially if I coerced you into tethered jailbreaking your CDMA iPhone 4 around 6pm last night by telling you that you could always just boot unjailbroken if your device shut down for any reason (I apologize! I was actually wrong for once!), this semi-tether might be something to look into. It's a package on Cydia, which means all you have to do is add a new repository, download the app, and then reboot the phone. I'll walk you, the imaginary reader, through the necessary steps:

1. Open up Cydia. Tap the "Manage" button at the botton and then tap the "Sources" button in the middle. Tap the "Edit" button that appears in the top-right corner and then press the "Add" button in the top-left corner.
2. A dialog will pop up. Enter "http://thebigboss.org/semitether" into the textbox and then click "Add Source".
3. Cydia will reload its sources. When it's done, tap the "Search" button at the bottom and then search for "SemiTether".
4. Install the "SemiTether" package.
5. After installing, it will ask you to reboot your device. Do so without booting tethered. Your phone should boot successfully (albeit taking longer than it normally does) into an unjailbroken state with Safari and Mail not working.
6. If all is well, then connect your device to your computer and boot it tethered with redsn0w.

There you go! From now on, if your device crashes while you're on the go, rebooting it won't trap you at the Apple boot logo. Hopefully the real untethered jailbreak comes out soon because this tethered jailbreak, even if it is semi-tethered, is really annoying. The semi-tether has a lot of caveats too, such as an increased boot time (by like a minute and a half apparently) and it apparently doesn't work for everyone and may conflict with some Cydia apps you have installed. I suggest that, if a jailbroken device isn't necessary for you (like it is for me---I seriously need my Scrobbl :P), you might want to consider unjailbreaking your device, at least until the untethered jailbreak is released. If you ever want to unjailbreak your device, it's very easy---it just takes some time. All you need to do is connect your device to your computer, open iTunes, click on your device and then click the "Restore" button. It'll backup your device and reinstall the operating system, thus removing your jailbreak. This is just a suggestion: it's perfectly acceptable to keep your device in a tethered jailbreak. It really depends on your needs.

So, in the end, what did we learn today? Three things, I'd say: one, that things are definitely subject to change whenever changing is most likely to screw me over; two, that my posting rate is still so infrequent that my Physics classmates are actually telling me about it (well, you know what? Your mother.); and three, that I use far too many dashes when writing. Seriously, count them. Then, solve for the tension of the rope pulling the box up the hill. You heard me.

Guess what's happening here? That's right, I'm reviewing an album! I haven't done this in a while, but then again, I haven't really been posting too frequently either. Well, that's about to stop. Let's talk about Kerli, and her debut album Love Is Dead.

I'm going to do this review in a different manner than I usually do album reviews. Usually, I write a track-by-track critique of the album, but I've found that that's actually really awful and not how, well, anyone else does it. Instead, I'm going to weave you a tale of ice cream mountains and chocolate skies. Yes. I just quoted a Kerli song.

Why I Bought It

I first heard about Kerli the same way I first heard about most of the singers I like (including Kate Nash and Regina Spektor!): my buddy last.fm recommended her to me based off the artists I already like. This was back in June/July, I believe, and at the time I wasn't really in the state to buy a new album (I had just purchased two Regina Spektor albums, received two other albums for my birthday and had a line of albums waiting for me in the upcoming months), but I decided to check her out on iTunes anyway. I listened to the song Love Is Dead and, you know, after recovering from the ensuing fainting episode, I decided I had to have the album. It would have to wait, though, because, as I said before, other albums were calling my name. That's right Christina Perri and Adele, I'm talking about you.

Fast forward to September, and next up on my list of albums is Biophilia, Björk's new album. The only problem was it wasn't out yet. It had, for some reason, been pushed back to October, so, seeing as my next album after that had to be purchased in October (I have a schedule for Regina Spektor albums, don't laugh!) and the album after that was also only coming out in October, it appeared I had a vacancy. So, it was with glee that I walked into a Best Buy near the end of September and purchased one of their two copies of Love Is Dead (which surprised me seeing as they were the only Best Buy in the area that even had the album). When I got home, I ripped it and immediately started listening to Love Is Dead, the track, I mean, but also the album. You know what I mean.

The Highlights

Love Is Dead (the track) is fantastic. I mean, I feel like that song has been swimming within me for months, ever since I first heard that snippet on iTunes back in June/July. Have you ever heard a song you really like, but don't want to listen to until a certain date and then you spend months trying and failing not to listen to it in your head? No, that's just me? Yeah, that's what I though, and perhaps I was setting myself up for this experience, but Love Is Dead gave me shivers. A truly spectacular song, it's like the epicness of Björk's Army Of Me meets the heartbreaking pain of Fefe Dobson's Scar. Seriously, it's not a common occasion that the verses of a song make me want to sing along just as much as the chorus does. The song is a journey, it really is: the song starts and it's epic and Kerli sings you through what's happening and suddenly, BAM, the song explodes into the chorus and although she's not screaming, you can hear the pain in Kerli's voice as she almost dejectedly sings "But love don't live here anymore" and muted, almost childish voices back her notion up: "Love is dead, love is gone, love don't live here anymore." Repeat that, and then, without losing flow, the song dives back into the verse with my favorite line of the song: "I know that you think of me when you're beside her, inside her." After another passionate verse and chorus, Kerli goes into another chorus and suddenly the pain is palpable and Kerli's life is being sucked from her as she repeatedly, losing strength every time, sings "Love don't live here anymore!" until she can't sing another word and the pain consumes her. Looking back at this paragraph, I'm almost definitely insane, but trust me, this is an epic song which is worth a listen or sixty seven. Trust me.

Next, Walking On Air. I actually didn't think too much of this song (though I didn't openly dislike it) the first few times I listened to the album, but after I showed the album to my good friend Drifty, to whom Walking On Air stood out as the best track, I tried it again and realized it was actually a really powerful song. Unlike Love Is Dead, this is a song whose chorus really stands out as the best part of the song, and that's because it's just flows so well. Kerli manages to sing us a mostly-monotonous chorus and make it magical at the same time. Combined with the the backing music/beat (is that clapping? Who knows, it just sounds amazing) and the incredible catchiness of the thing, Walking On Air is definitely my second favorite track on this album.

Creepshow, for another, is a really intense song. I've noticed that I'm picking out all the singles here, but whatever. Creepshow basically consists of Kerli taunting her listeners because she's "from a land called Secret Estonia" and "nobody knows where it's at." I'm not sure if Estonia actually has ice cream mountains, chocolate skies, cinnamon houses or licorice ties, but she's probably right about the nobody knowing where it is thing. Nevertheless, it's actually incredibly catchy, even when Kerli continually insists via yelling that it's a creepshow. The only weak point is the bridge, which is actually in Estonian and, well, to be honest, sounds like a bunch of made up words said in a creepy childlike voice. Still a very good song.

This album actually manages to hide a lot of gems amongst its somewhat-popular singles. The Creationist is a song that almost seems too happy for Kerli, considering most of her other songs, and I didn't like it at first but it's really grown on me. Life is awesome and all of that, yeah. I Want Nothing is another change of direction---instead of dark pop, it's some kind of rock. Once again, very catchy. Kerli wants nothing from you but to listen to her album. :P Hurt Me returns to the dark pop, but you'll find that the yelled line "go on if it makes you soar!" from the chorus gets stuck in your head pretty easily. Anger is an instrument, it totally is. Butterfly Cry is a beautiful, heartbreaking song in which Kerli is trying to convince someone that everything's okay ("Yeah, 'cause the world is wonderful..."). A slow and beautiful song. Finally, Fragile, a slow and solemn ballad, makes me tear because I associate it pretty strongly with someone for some reason and shut up why are you asking me so many questions. Listen to this album, it goes in every direction possible and manages to do it wonderfully.

The So-Sos and the Shadows

Of course, not every album is perfect and I'm not going to have deep, emotional connections with every song. For instance, the song Bulletproof, while strong and saddening, didn't make the list of best songs. It's emotional, it's painful, but it's not as powerful as Love Is Dead or Butterfly Cry. Beautiful Day is another departure from Kerli's usual dark pop, but it sounds far too much like a song better sung by Lily Allen and it's just not as catchy as The Creationist. Seriously, go listen to LDN by Lily Allen and tell me Beautiful Day doesn't sound anything like it. Strange Boy, for a third, is another rockin' song like I Want Nothing, and don't get me wrong, it's really good. This will get stuck in your head: "Strange boy, innocent, you're here, magnificent." I feel guilty for putting these songs in the "so-so" section now, I just couldn't put every song in the highlights, you know? :P

Finally, there was one song that I just didn't like. Well, an album can never be perfect, can it? Well, unless it's Soviet Kitsch by Regina Spektor, that thing was flawless. But I digress. The song Up Up Up really just didn't do anything for me. It didn't have a cute melody, no people breaking into tears of angst, no hip-hoppin' dudetastic beat, just, meh. Kerli, I'm disappointed. But not really.

The Verdict

Love Is Dead is an insane album, and it manages to go in so many directions that it actually amazes me how much of it I love. If I average the tracks, Love Is Dead gets 3.75 stars out of 5. Goodness, you know, I'm happy with the way this album review reform worked out, but I really need to find another method of getting a final rating of an album because one straggler brought the entire album down. Whatever. I really recommend you listen to this album, and if I pay her $5, I'm sure Drifty would recommend you listen to it too. It's on iTunes, dudes! You can listen to free samples! Or you could listen to the whole thing on Spotify or Youtube, whatever floats your boat. :P Starla out!

When I logged into Four Island late yesterday, just to check on things before going to bed, I was greeted by my lovely Wordpress dashboard. At least my website doesn't think it's ubiquitous anymore, eh? Nothing really seemed out of the ordinary---Google Analytics looked like it hadn't even changed---but I was interested in the list of links under "Incoming Links." I mean, most of them looked fairly shady. I decided to click on the one from someone called Amy Starlight Lawrence, since a) it wasn't blatantly obviously spam or b) me leaving a link to my site in a comment on another site. It led to a legitimate-appearing news article, which was interesting but didn't contain a single link to Four Island. Okay. I decided to check out the comments and a moment later emerged, coughing, from a sea of poisoned spam. The spam on that article was atrocious. What really disturbed me, however, was this:

What exactly is a Four Island domain doing in a link in a spam comment? What, I ask you, WHAT? I clicked the link, however, and things started to make sense.

The Nest

thenest.fourisland.com is a Four Island subdomain that most of you probably haven't heard of, and that's because the project it represents really never took off. For another thing, it wasn't really my project: TimTam had an idea and asked me if I could host it, because I happen to really enjoy hosting things for some reason :P. Believe it or not, it's also incredibly old: it was September 28th, 2009 when the following Google Talk conversation happened:

TimTam: i had an idea that we should have a forum TimTam: just as normal TimTam: but everyone has to act as a made up person TimTam: i would soooo be TheDarkOne Starla: :) Starla: Like Fourm RP? TimTam: yes TimTam: except that you are jus one user TimTam: rather than lots TimTam: it would have to be a full forum though TimTam: rather than just one topic TimTam: as in, a new board TimTam: i would be so happy

We developed the idea a bit, and I put up a new phpBB3 installation at thenest.fourisland.com. We then promptly completely forgot about the project until December, and then a little bit of work was done in January, and then The Nest pretty much officially died. What a valiant life it led.

Spam

Four Island has had a long-standing problem with spam. I've frequently been forced to completely disable user registration on The Fourm because of spam registrations. I decided to open registration back up around January of this year, and was buffeted by the influx of Fourm spammers. I found, around the same time, the website Stop Forum Spam, which is basically a database of usernames, email addresses and IP addresses of spammers. I joined and decided that I would use my situation for The Good Of Mankind. I developed a daily routine in which I'd, at lunch, go through the 30 or so emails I'd received in the last day from no-reply@fourisland.com and check the new user's details in the Stop Forum Spam database. If the email address matched at least once, or if the IP addresses matched a large number of times, I'd submit the spammer to the database (strengthening the evidence against that spammer) and then delete them from The Fourm. I actually think it was kind of awesome how skillful I became at doing this quickly, using keyboard shortcuts and muscle memory; so impressed was I that it took me at least two months to realize that writing a Ruby script to do the entire thing for me would be incredibly easier and wouldn't take nearly as long. So, I did. Eventually, after 3330 spammers, I got tired of this, and just disabled Forum registrations again.

Now, mid-February, TimTam suddenly brings The Nest back up. Why? Oh, you know, it's just covered in spam. Still in my Stop Forum Spam frenzy, I got all excited and decided that I would also prune The Nest of spammers daily, and since user verification wasn't required on The Nest and spammers just started spamming as soon as they registered, I didn't have to check the spammers against the database and could simply submit them as spammers. I could even use the contents of their posts in the "Evidence" field on the submission form. Anyway, like I said before, I eventually stopped spam pruning and eventually completely forgot about The Nest again. Until today.

Go to The Nest now. I dare you. Go to it, look at the topics, but don't click any links in any post. In my spam pruning absence, the Nest flourished with spammers. There are 57336 posts on that Forum and approximately 78.30 posts are posted every day. It's complete and utter mayhem, what with there being over 5000 users and a registration rate of ~7.46 new users a day.

I find this fascinating.

It's like my own little AI simulation, like that XKCD I once actually tried to emulate before getting laughed at on some random IRC chatroom when I asked them for viruses. Every one of those 5000+ spammers on The Nest is an automated program. Sure, they're all incredibly stupid programs, most of which can't form actual English sentences (or phrases), but they all try to some degree. Every one of them had to input some information about themselves when they registered: their birthdate, their location, their occupation and interests; it's just so interesting. Look at the bottom of the forum index: look how many spambots' birthdays it is today! How cute! The interaction between the spambots is what most interests me, though. We have our really active members, like sesiaMopejelp who rules the site with 5434 post and seems to really only want to help us get that free Viagra, and our incredibly inactive members. It just warms my heart to see spammers replying to other spammers' spam. Some cute stuff findable on The Nest of Spam:

• old man group sex, a topic in which poor ol' Optiomiut posts over and over again, hoping that someone will read his topic and find his elderly pornography. Seriously, the topic is 160 pages long and as far as I can tell, all 1500+ of those posts are his. Double post, anyone?
• Free sim cards - The Normal Sim Card Provides. Wow, is that English? Not very good English, but it's definitely readable. Good on ya' sara356. Too bad arrodortecy just wants to talk about his porn. Sigh, it's okay sara, just go back to your job as an "CalndrOprator,ArtfcalLathr."
• This dude, Plomeshes, has never even posted, but his website is an IGN article about lift chairs. Really. What.
• Hello very cool site!!! - innottmag is understandably very excited about his first day of spamming.
• Если разрешение 800х600 вас убивает, то можете скачать патч - The amount of Russian spam on this site is very amusing, though if I were at the level at which I could actually read the spam, I'd probably be less amused.
• cerita ngentot menantu - Awww, it seems like grerfergy doesn't have any confidence in his spamming. "delete plz" is right. Oh, don't worry though, Optiomiut's got his back.
• The Adjustments Bureau - What the eff, is that Lord of the Flies in there?[1. Have I mentioned my screenplay about how much I hate Lord of the Flies? :P]

It just goes on and on and on and on ad infinitum. As fascinating as this computer to computer interaction is, it's probably not very good for Four Island. First off, I can't start getting linked to by other spammers like in that Amy article waaaay back at the beginning of this post. I might get marked as a spam site on Google and Lord knows that wouldn't be good for my traffic. Second of all, the MySQL database for The Nest is over 360MB. That's several times larger than even Four Island (the blog, the Fourm and the Quotes DB combined) is. The database is so big that if you try to search for anything using the search form (that is supposing that you can manage to come up with terms that aren't deemed "common" by the forum software), you get a long error message saying that the table crashed. Something has to be done.

Time to end this. As of now, I've disabled posting (by setting the flood limit time to a very high number) and disabled new user registration. What else I should do is up to TimTam, since it's technically his site. I also don't really want to delete the entire thing because then the links in this post would be broken. So, at least for a little bit longer, The Nest is in limbo. TimTam, it's your call. What should be done about the failed RP-project that hilariously ended up turning into a vibrant spam farm?

Well, it's finally here. I'm sure a lot of you weren't convinced that it would ever happen, but here it is. Four Island 3.

For those of you who don't know, Four Island 3 is the third major revision of the Four Island codebase. Basically, I've reimplemented the entire site, a feat I performed once before: Four Island 2. Four Island has been running on the Four Island 2 codebase for quite a while (three years as of this June) and as I've worked on it and modified it over the years, it's become incredibly messy. In fact, I wrote the entire thing back in a time when I may not have had the best knowledge of design patterns anyway. It's been time for a change for quite a while now, and finally, it's happened.

Now it's time for me to bore you.

History

Four Island 1, or The Original Four Island, was pretty horrific, let me just say. It was 2007, I really didn't have that much experience with website design, the only other real website I had created being The Private Site for my cousins and I. The Original Four Island was a hideous mess of code that somehow fit together and resembled a working website. The very very first revision of the codebase, I literally threw together in a day when I decided I wanted to make a public website. It was a simple blog, and I called it Hatkirby CDI. It was so simple that it didn't even record the dates on which I published posts. Comments, for Pete's sake, were stored in static HTML files. Over the following months, I gradually added more features while also doing my best to make the website less aesthetically hideous. It worked, for a while, but let me tell you that I still have nightmares about that code sometimes. Not really. I do still have the latest revision of it, though. It's quite an interesting piece of history.

Sometime late May, early June of 2008, however, I realized that Four Island simply needed a whole ton of work. Back in that time, I had an obsession with integration. The Four Island blog is my website, but so is the Fourm and the Quotes DB and the wiki--they should all be integrated into one website! A fool's dream. The New Four Island (Four Island 2) came out June 13th 2008 and while the code was a whole lot better than Four Island 1, it wasn't perfect--not by far. I was rather proud of myself for throwing together a rudimentary routing system, but didn't even learn about MVC until quite sometime later. Also, all of the components of Four Island--the blog, the Fourm, the Quotes DB, the wiki...--all of it was merged together into one visually constant website. As I would come to learn later on, this didn't really work too well.

It wasn't really until January of last year that I first voiced my intention to rewrite Four Island again, but it would be a long time (as you can clearly see) until a finished product revealed itself. The first reason is revealed in that same Fourm topic that I just linked to, two posts down, when I say that "any code to be used as a base framework for Four Island must be written by me." I've, for a long time, been incredibly opposed to using any code not written by me (other than phpBB and MediaWiki, of course) on my website, and for what reason? I think it was pride. I think I had pride in being able to completely design and build a website from scratch, but just because you can do something, should you do it? Just because you built your website from scratch, does that make it better than a website running on Wordpress, a community package worked on by tons of people for years in order to get it as perfect as possible? Just because you want people to know you're awesome, you don't have to make yourself suffer. Really, after all of this time, and perhaps with a little growing up, I've realized that the smart thing to do, the reasonable thing to do, is to switch my blog from my own homegrown code to Wordpress. Really, three years ago, what was my biggest argument against Wordpress? It didn't have a pending queue. I don't even use a pending queue anymore, and even if I did think pending queues were a good idea anymore, I'm sure there are plugins available to provide that functionality. Seriously, getting over my obsession with homegrown code was a major breaking point for Four Island. If I hadn't had this breakthrough, we may have never seen Four Island 3, or if it did ever come out, it would suck eggs. I originally planned to rewrite phpBB using Ruby on Rails. Try telling me that's not mentally deranged.

This brings me to my second fault. Integration. I was obsessed with integration. And... why? I haven't a clue. Maybe it was cool or something? Perhaps it was comment lust. I've realized, though, that independent entities with distinct functions work far better than a kludge of several completely different things mashed together in some kind of website facsimile. My blog is my blog, the Fourm is the Fourm and the Quotes DB is the Quotes DB. You shouldn't need to be able to log into my blog with your Fourm account in order to comment. It's simply not necessary. This brings to mind my third problem with the original plan for Four Island 3: absolutely effing insane feature creep. Feast your eyes on the original Four Island 3 specification. Yes, I recognized that my commenting system was terrible, in fact, I blogged about it. That post also contained the idea to not only reform my commenting system, however, but also to create an independent commenting system package like IntenseDebate or DISQUS which, aside from using on Four Island, I could put up for download and let other people use on their sites. I wanted to create a network of users called FourNetwork which would allow you to single-sign-on to any FourNetwork site and comment/post/whatever. It was even supposed to have control of ACLs for each website. I wanted to create a freaking chat system, which would run on an XMPP server configured to recognize FourNetwork accounts, and would also have a Facebook chat-like interface present on Four Island, so any freaking person who visited Four Island could chat with their other Four Island buddies. I'm sorry, but while I would love to have a nice XMPP-based chatting system to use to talk to my friends with (because a few of them still insist on using Facebook instead of Google Chat, and I'm sorry but Facebook really seriously just sucks eggs), it's not at all appropriate to integrate into my personal website which exists for the sole purpose of other people reading it. Did I perhaps think, for a moment, that I was creating a new Facebook? If you haven't already, read the entire specification--some of the things in it are quite hilariously insane. A freaking search engine for Pete's sake--and the sad thing is that I had already implemented it, back in 2009. It just never ended up getting integrated.

So, what, after all of these revelations, did Four Island 3 eventually turn out to be? Not an insane integration-amalgamation of random stuff. Not The One Website with everything you could possibly need in it. No, Four Island 3 is a newer, cleaner and better working version of my personal website, with a Fourm and a Quotes DB, both of which, however, have been separated from the blog. I may eventually, some day, do some of those other things, but most of them probably won't be integrated into Four Island.

Features

Here's what you've all been waiting for. What the heck is new in Four Island 3? Well...

The Blog

• The blog now runs on Wordpress, which means it's much stabler and, well, doesn't suck.
• Commenting is now not something you do as a last resort before your escape pod runs out of oxygen--no, now you no longer need either a Fourm account or a heck-load of patience to comment on my blog. You can either comment anonymously, which is totally awesome and not the huge hassle it used to be, or you can comment using your Facebook, Twitter or OpenID account.
• I may get into a posting groove now that I'm able to use MarsEdit to publish to my blog :P.
• On that note, emoticons now no longer shift blocks of text around with their larger-than-text-height.
• Unlike after the transition from Four Island 1 to Four Island 2, all legacy-style links to posts will be 301 redirected to their new locations. Backlinks, awesome.
• An entirely new theme, which is a modified version of K2. I've also written a whole page about Four Island's themes. As a side note, the Theme Switcher has been abolished.
• Four Island also now resides at www.fourisland.com, breaking my No-WWW vows I took so foolishly, for the sole reason that Bluemonkey gave me in a comment on the post I just linked to. How silly am I? :P
• Ding dong, the witch is dead, which-o-witch, THE BBCODE! Finally, with Wordpress, I've abolished that silly BBCode Four Island's been using since Four Island 2 came out, and possibly even before that. Now, users comment with whitelisted HTML. It's all good. :D
• A mobile layout, for those of you (including me) who like to visit Four Island on his or her superphone. :P

The Fourm

• The Fourm remains mostly the same, though it has been upgraded to phpBB 3.0.9.
• It also features a brand new, beautiful theme, one that was not descended from prosilver and one that does not look horribly like the rest of Four Island.

The Quotes Database

• The Quotes DB was rewritten entirely in Ruby on Rails and separated from the Four Island blog.
• Quotes now keep track of how many upvotes and how many downvotes they each received, rather than simply their ratings.
• Quotes can now be tagged.
• Quotes can now have notes attached to them, separating information about the quote from the quote itself.
• You can now, after having voted on a quote, revoke your vote by voting in the opposite direction. For instance, if you upvote a quote and later decide to downvote it, you can downvote it, returning the quote to a non-voted on state, and then downvote it again.
• There's a pretty stats page now.
• You cannot use a Fourm account to bypass moderation when submitting a quote. However, quotes entering moderation are now emailed to me, ensuring that I'll get to them quickly.
• Spam prevention techniques have been put into place for submitting quotes.
• Nonsense, the weird quote generator, has been integrated into the Quotes DB.
• The Quotes DB now resides, as it did in Four Island 1, at quotes.fourisland.com. However, legacy-style links to fourisland.com/quotes/ quotes will 301 redirect to their new locations.
• I've selected an assortment of humorous one-liners from quotes and other Four Islander situations, which I can continue to add to, one of which is randomly displayed at the top of every page in the Quotes DB, along with a citation link (or none if no web source is available).
• An entirely new design, which while looking nothing like the rest of Four Island, was actually adapted from one of the early designs for Layout 8.
• Quote flagging, now that every quote must go through moderation, has been removed.

Well, how about it? How excited is everyone? Four Island 2 is behind us, Four Island 3 is a go! Can't wait to enjoy it with all of you by writing posts, communicating on the Fourm and reading quotes. Now, since Four Island 3 just came out, I can't be sure that everything's going to work perfectly. If you find anything that doesn't work as it should, or if you see something that didn't quite survive the upgrade (such as missing pictures from posts), please either email me or comment on this post. I'd love to hear from you!

Oh, and, in case you didn't know, happy fourth birthday Four Island. :P