Four Island

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

On the first day of Kirby Week, Four Island gave to me: An extremely weird rant on what Starla did last weekend.

Hi peoples, and welcome to the first day of Kirby Week. I'm sure you're all super-spectacularly excited for the upcoming holiday, yes? Well, today, I'm rewinding a bit to the weekend when Advent 2 ended and Kirby Week started. Some weirdly cool things happened that I fell like talking about.

First, on Saturday, I was bored. I didn't know why I was bored because I had plenty of things to do: work on Pillowcase, work on FourSearch, implement many of the pending renovations currently required around Four Island, work on the HKRPG site, work on one of my games, or anything else listed in The Bet. But, instead, I continued to be the queen of procrastination, and did nothing.

So, it was with boredom that I opened Google Reader. Oh yes, that's right, it's Saturday, none of my usual humor blogs had updated. I did notice, however, that TimTam's feed had over a hundred unread items in it. I decided to work that number down to a reasonable (0) amount.

That totally didn't work. The first post I read was a list of Lifehacker's best posts during 2009. Among that list was an article on how to install the Homebrew Channel on the Wii without needing the Twilight Princess hack. I had previously found out about the Homebrew Channel (it was The Daily WTF, actually) but was always annoyed because I didn't have, nor had any intention of getting, Twilight Prinecss.

Excitedly, I fetched my SD card from my broken camera and followed the instructions. Amazingly (because cool things that I want to do never work), it worked perfectly. The Homebrew Channel sat peacefully in the Wii system menu and I was ecstatically excited.

If you know me, you may not know that, among my normal programming, I also like to indulge in some homebrew programming. I've written for the GBA and the DS (both required special cartridges to put the homebrew games on and both have been lost by my evil siblings) but now I could possibly write something for the Wii! And as I was pondering this, the perfect training exercise that would get me into programming for the Wii popped into my head: I would port Maze Of Life to the Wii!

For now, however, I just wanted to play something fun. I ran back to my computer and looked through the list of homebrew applications to find something cool to play. As I was scrolling through the list of games, one caught my eye. POWDER. I sort of freaked out at that. POWDER is an extremely fun roguelike that I (during my DS homebrew days) had previously playing on my DS. I remember it to be an extremely fun game. I don't, however, remember being any good at it. :P

So I downloaded it (and a few other games including a super-cool looking port of SuperTux) and loaded it onto the Wii. I immediately became hooked. Yes, obsessively so. I played that game for two hours straight today, and many more not in succession. I even found the Linux version of POWDER and started compulsively playing it on my computer. I was even.... doing well, occasionally! :P If you've never played POWDER, you must do so. Seriously.

One other cool thing I did on the Wii was downloading the port of Visual Boy Advance (a GBA emulator). I had this emulator on my computer and (during my GBA homebrew days) used it to test my GBA games. However, it was difficult to play actual games on it because the keyboard isn't the intended controller for these games. So, I couldn't enjoy my Kirby Amazing Mirror ROM (I had lost the physical copy of this game years ago and really wanted to enjoy its amazing funness again). So, my grand idea was to use the Wii, VBA and the Classic Controller to play the game in its full greatness. And what do you know, it totally worked. Yippie for me. :)

So, I hope you've enjoyed this randomly long post. I'm off to play POWDER now.

Wow. Nobody even attempted to misguide me into thinking The Fourm was alive and well. And I'm pretty sure I voted "LADY GAGA IS AWESOME" three times. So there. :P

SADLY YES CRY O_O FSDSF - 3 vote(s)! Um.... whut? It's a series of electrical impulses, it cannot die. - 0 vote(s)! LADY GAGA IS AWESOME - 3 vote(s)! Indifferent - 0 vote(s)!

Sorry I updated late again, but yesterday I was having this weird problem where I wasn't able to log in. I tried logging in and it wouldn't even give me an error message. I eventually figured restarted Google Chrome and it worked, oddly, and that leaves me with no excuse as to why I didn't update the poll yesterday. Oh. :P

Anyway, has anyone realized what today is? Yes, it's Kirby Week! For those who can't be bothered to follow the link and find out, Kirby Week is the third week of advent, the week in which is candle is pink. I know, I know, I'm hilarious, right? :P

Anyways, it's become a bit of a tradition (how can I say that? I started it last year!) to do something special for the week on Four Island. Last year I wrote a series on how to write a blog system (and yes, that series was a total failure :P), but with my dismal posting rate this year, I don't think I can. This year, my Kirby Week goal is to publish one post everyday this week. Yes, you heard me, I'm going to post.

I can hear you all gasping.

I've prepared (okay, that's a lie, read: I'm going to prepare) 5 posts, one for each day of the week. They probably will not be related, but my goal is to ensure that there is at least one post in pending queue by 12:30 every day this week. Be prepared. Be prepared.... to throw things at me if I don't live up to this goal. Seriously, if I fail, throw full bottles of wine at your computer screen. Thank you.

And if you've noticed, yes, I'm continuing another Kirby Week tradition that even extends back to Kirby Week 2007, the Kirby Week poll. :P

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 :)

O_O ....I can't believe this. How could this happen???? Dogs won?!?!??!? dies 15 times Um.... Hi? is scared

Cats - 5 vote(s)! Dogs - 6 vote(s)! O_O I can't choose! - 0 vote(s)! .... I hate all animals! - 0 vote(s)!

Um, okay. Anyway, it's Pi day! 3/14 yay! :) And yesterday was Friday the 13th, which, for some scary reason, is always my lucky day. O_O But yay, because since everyone else finds it unlucky and I find it lucky, the luckiness is not spread amongst many people! (Or so is JAL's theory, because he likes the number 13 :) ) Anyway, happy Pi day! And I am a lazy procrastinator! :(

First, HAPPY NEW YEAR YAYS. Ok, I've gotten that out of my system.

Because I seem to get a lot of ideas from other blogs I'm going to write a list of goals for this year. I'd also write which of my 2008 goals worked out, but I didn't actually write a list of goals last year.

• Increase RSS subscribers to at least 10. And have it stay that way for a while. It's annoying to see 8 or 9 subscribers one day and only 2 the next.
• Write some good articles/tutorials that people will find interesting and want to comment on. Currently, the most popular post is, and has been for a long time, The Related Posts Game, which is kind of strange.
• Have, on average, at least one comment on every post. Because I suspect people won't like every post I write, the "average" part comes in. Please, I like comments. And no, comments by me will not count.
• Refrain from posting poll results late.
• Refrain from creating extensively random polls.
• Refrain from doing anything enumerated in yesterday's predictions.

Ok, I hope these goals aren't too extravagant. :) Anyway, I hope that I can accomplish them, and furthermore, that the year 2009 is a good year.

Just as a sidenote, I'd like a draw a little attention to the goal above about comments. The last part (about my comments not counting) is more important than you would think. I tested how last year would've done in this aspect by running this query:

SELECT COUNT( * )
FROM `comments` AS c, updates AS u
WHERE u.pubDate LIKE "2008-%"
AND c.page_id = CONCAT( "updates-", u.id )

It returned 104 as the number of comments posted on 2008's posts. However, when I added AND c.username <> "Hatkirby" to the end (so it wouldn't count my comments), it returned 49. Ouch.

Woo-hoo! Today's the last night of the year 2008. Tonight Four Island shall shed its red calendars and instead don the blue ones. It will look very strange as we've been looking at red calendars for an entire year. But, change is good. Sometimes. Not really. To some people. I guess. :)

Other websites, apparently, like to predict what will happen in the year to come. These predictions seldom come true unless they are highly cynical, so let's get started!

January 15th I release Layout 7, much to the annoyance of Bluemonkey who wished to release his BluemonkeyBlockLand first.

January 21st I release Layout 8, because random change is fun.

Feburary 2nd I re-install my operating system for no apparent reason.

Feburary 5th Everyone decides that they hate Layout 8 and thusly I revert back to Layout 7.

Feburary 19th In a fit of temporary insanity, I switch Four Island's blogging engine to Wordpress.

March 31st I finally break through my procrastination and switch back to my homebrew blogging engine.

April 4th Someone realizes that I've removed Wordpress and people start coming on Four Island again.

April 22nd phpBB discovers a critical security hole in it's software. In honor of Tri's CIEday, I am too lazy to upgrade The Fourm and someone exploits it, sprinkling pron all over My Little Art Gallery.

May 6th I realize that I accidentally committed my password to source control again. Time to change all of my passwords....

June 7th Much to my annoyance, my defective router spontaneously combusts on my birthday.

June 17th Due to a fault in the space-time continuum, the date June 17th is skipped over, thus allowing conversations that never happened to stay that way.

June 28th I finally have enough time (and I stop procrastinating enough) to buy another router and Four Island goes up.

July 4th I celebrate Independence Day. tonsofpron.com celebrates "Send Spam to Starla" day.

August 25th Because of Opposite Day, people decide to comment on my blog posts.

August 31st Yahoo misplaces my domain records and I lose the right to the domain "fourisland.com".

September 13th I inadvertently manage to mess up the Four Island source code at the same time as losing FourStar (my memory stick), thus leaving no backups, yet again.

September 14th I finally remember that I use a version control system and run hg revert --all.

September 22nd Finally noticing their mistake (because it's renewal day), Yahoo returns my domain to me and charges me extra for "domain transferral".

September 31st Another day, another OS. I install SLAX onto my server computer and immediately regret it.

October 5th I release Layout 9. It looks a bit like the still delayed-by-procrastination TGS site....

November 9th I will post a tutorial on my blog that people actually find interesting. Sadly for me, though, Slashdot decides to link to it. My SLAX server soon explodes from the strain.

November 31st I actually manage to acquire another server computer. I install Ubuntu Server 10.56 on it and praise the fact that I had backups.

December 12th Due to a security hole in the latest version of beep, someone hacks my server and, much to the delight of Four Island's small group of regulars, reverts the layout back to 6.

So, there we are. That's my list of things that cannot possibly happen next year. (Well, except for the layout changes.... and possibly the OS re-installations....)

I hope you got a laugh out of that. And now, please enjoy the new year.

Ok, I think I'm going to have to make a tag for "rants" because this is another one. :)

Anyway, while you're all enjoying Christmas, I'd just like to make a stupid rant on some Christmas songs. Not all of them. Some of them are great. Like Do They Know It's Christmas Time by Band Aid. However, a few are just strange.

This rant is on rock-n-roll'ized Christmas songs. You hear them all of the time on the radio, things like "Yo, Frasty was totally a snaman with a LAVA jolly soul-man!" The thought of such a thing is not only hilarious, but kind of bothering.... :)

Anyway, that was the short Christmas rant from yours truly. I hope that gave you a chuckle and now enjoy Christmas!

I couldn't think of what I should do for Christmas. A story? A picture? A song? An extremely complicated article about how to implement something, such as the MetaWeblog API? No.

Then I thought of it. I could lie and attribute it to Gryphic's Christmas Stories prompts and say the line "We can't be the only ones to celebrate Christmas. How do aliens/fictional characters/animals celebrate?" inspired me to do this, but that's not exactly true as I did this two days before Gryphic wrote that post.

I've been wanting to bring KFM back for a while now and thought that while I'm pondering that situation, I'll post one more KFM comic. I give to you "'Twas The Night Before Kirbymas": And, because I feel like doing what Gryphic often does, I'm going to post a song. It's called Do They Know It's Christmas Time by Band Aid and it's featured in the previous KFM comic:

It's Christmas time, and there's no need to be afraid At Christmas time, we let in light and we banish shade And in our world of plenty, we can spread a smile of joy Throw your arms around the world at Christmas time

But say a prayer to pray for the other ones At Christmas time, it's hard, but when you're having fun There's a world outside your window And it's a world of dread and fear Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears And the Christmas bells that ring there Are the clanging chimes of doom Well, tonight, thank God it's them instead of you

And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time The greatest gift they'll get this year is life Where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow Do they know it's Christmas time at all?

Here's to you, raise a glass for everyone Here's to them underneath that burning sun Do they know it's Christmas time at all?

Feed the world Feed the world

Feed the world; let them know it's Christmas time And feed the world; let them know it's Christmas time And feed the world; let them know it's Christmas time And feed the world; let them know it's Christmas time

Band Aid

Merry Christmas!