Four Island

First of all, I apologize. This post was released at 12:30 as usual, but a glitch in the cronjob replaced the post's content with "S". The reason the cronjob was different from usual is that it has been modified to use the new Four Island's post adding functionality as to allow the posts to be compatible with the new Four Island.

Some more info about the new Four Island! First of all, it's nearly out! I just need to finish the Wiki and do the Admin Panel and then it's done! In fact, if I'm super productive, I may even finish today! Wow!

Also, the new Four Island's blog will support Pingbacks. This is exciting. If you don't know what Pingbacks are, well, here's a short explanation:

Suppose that there are two blogs: Alice's blog and Bob's blog. Alice posts a link to one of Bob's blog posts on her blog. Because of this, Alice's blog then sends a "pingback" to Bob's blog notifying his blog that Alice has posted a link to him. When Bob's blog recieves this Pingback, it posts a comment on the post in question saying that Alice has linked to him.

Pingback will be very useful as Gryphic seems to have a fun tendency to post replies to my blog on her blog. I ask one thing, though. Peoples (that includes you, Gryphic), if you wish to post a reply to one of my blog posts on your blog or reference it in some way, please include a link to the post of mine that you are referencing so that I can recieve a Pingback. Thanks!

After seeing some people be VERY annoying on our Yaplet channel, I've decided to write up a list of behaviorial rules because sometimes people just start..... fizzles away<!--more-->

1. DON'T impersonate people! It's lying, confuses people and can get you into trouble! For instance, see what happened after bro01 pretended to be tamasys at #117.
2. DON'T NPC unless you're being useful! Senseless NPCing confuses new users who don't understand NPC! It makes them think a new user is online! So, as a collary of this rule, DON'T change your name!
3. DON'T stream numbers!

5 4 3 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 .... 9 8 7 6 5 4 4 4 4 4 4

Timbo94

That can ACTUALLY annoy people! Who knew? 4. As an extension to the streaming numbers, DON'T endlessly repeat ANYTHING! Constant :('s that go on forever because you are Ctrl-Ving them ceaselessly can slow down Yaplet! 5. DON'T use real names! I shouldn't even have to say this. 6. DON'T talk about eggs! It's taboo! I don't know why, but when you start talking about eggs, the smell of eggs suddenly appears....

I can't think of any more right now. But please, adhere to these rules. You can seriously annoy people if you don't.

Goodness, I don't think I've ever seen so many people vote No on a poll before. I guess you all just felt very strongly against it. Thank's for your opinion! This poll was actually important because, as I'm rewriting Four Island, I wanted to know what I should do for a home page and I was going to take these results into effect. Here are the results:

Yes - 1 vote(s)! No - 5 vote(s)! Huh? - 3 vote(s)! Indifferent - 1 vote(s)!

I'd also like to point out an interesting pattern I've noticed recently. I've been sick for the last two days so I haven't been on The Fourm or on Yaplet. Now, remembering that, read these notes:

• I am (normally) always on Four Island.
• It is rare for two people to log on within 5 minutes of each other.
• When someone logs in, and there is no one already logged in, they will wait 5 minutes for someone else to log in. If they don't, they log out.

Now, process that with me being sick. Ahhhh, bad effects, right? Also, I'm sorry, I was going to talk to you peoples about how the new Four Island was doing, but I'm still not feeling very well. Maybe later.

A little explanation. Does anyone out there program in PHP? If you do (woohoo!), you may have experienced a:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CASE in /path/to/file on line 7

Or perhaps, maybe a:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ECHO, expecting ',' or ';' in /path/to/file on line 12

Or maybe even a:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING, expecting ']' in /path/to/file on line 12

No need to panic. Well, I guess I did the first time I saw one of them. But it turns out that, while it is hard to find information about them on the internet, the solution for them is quite simple.

They just mean that you're using bad syntax. For instance, the T_CASE may mean that you have a switch statement somewhere and forgot a ; after the break. The T_ECHO could mean that you forgot a ; after an echo statement. And the what-on-earth T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING just means that you left out a ['s matching ].

That feel better? I knew it would.

Sorry, I'm just really random sometimes, but it WAS difficult to find information about these errors on the internet.

The word in the title may not be a real English word, but I don't care. What I do care about is the unfair treatment of people with phobias. I'm not just saying this because I myself have a phobia that has been exploited, I have met and befriended people with phobias themselves. Note, I'm also not pointing this at any individual, this is a notice for the world.

I have seen two different methods of dealing with someone with a phobia.

1. Generally ignore it, but warn the person in question if something that violates the phobia is nearby so that they can avoid it.
2. Try to discourage the phobia by informing that person of the way in which the thing they have a fear of surrounds them and is everywhere in their life.

Number two is a little difficult to explain, so here are some examples.

Example 1 is me. You should know that I'm mycophobic, which is a fear of fungus. People know this. And all I've heard is things such as "Fungus is everywhere", "Hatkirby, you eat bread everyday and yeast is a fungus".

Example 2 is a friend of mine who happens to be a pyromaniac. Because of this, she's highly hydrophobic. But all she's heard is "There's water in the air", "There's water in orange juice", "There's water EVERYWHERE" and "You are 70% water."

In my experience, this does nothing to help the person with a fear. All it does is frighten them and if in the case of telling them that something they like contains something they fear, it just puts them off of that things. (Air in the case of the pyromaniac which isn't such a smart thing, though no water isn't such a smart thing either)

I'm not pointing fingers, no way. I'm just posting a note of advice. Phobias hurt people and people with phobias don't need people attempting to help them by scaring them.

EDIT: Gryphic has posted a reply to this on her blog called Phobica.

EDIT: Gryphic has written another post in relation to this post, but not really on the subject of Phobias. It's called Pyromania =/= Hydrophobia (and other firey stuff).

Recently, I came upon a web servive entitled reCAPTCHA. reCAPTCHA is a CAPTCHA system. For those who don't know what CAPTCHA is (shame), CAPTCHA is a method of preventing bot spam on your website. A picture is generated with one or two distorted words on it. A user doing whatever it is you want to protect must type in the words (s)he sees to be allowed to submit his/her comment/whatever.

Many CAPTCHAs annoy people. It seems that all they do is obstruct and prolong the time taken to do something. But reCAPTCHA is different.

reCAPTCHA doesn't just help stop comment span on your website. It helps digitize books. reCAPTCHA sees CAPTCHAs as a way of harnessing human power into doing something useful that cannot be done by a bot. This way, you are not only verifying that you are not a bot when you fill out a CAPTCHA, you are also contributing to a cause.

The people at reCAPTCHA have scanned many books and attempted to convert the scanned pictures into words with OCR software. OCR software cannot always get all of the words, so the words that the OCR doesn't understand are send to be used in a reCAPTCHA. reCAPTCHA then generates a picture with one word that is known and another word that isn't known. The reCAPTCHA assumes that if one of the words are correct, the other one should be as well.

reCAPTCHA can be used everywhere. They've exported their API to many platforms and written plugins for many web applications. For some of these and some better explained information, please visit the reCAPTCHA website at http://recaptcha.org.

I would also just like to mention that the website has a page with a demo reCAPTCHA that you can use to digitize books without verifying anything. It's at http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html and it's really addicting.

Gryphic's had her say, but now it's my turn. And I fully defend the word "color" and it's proper spelling.

Pretty much my biggest argument is the pronunciation. Color is pronounced color, not coloure. Thus, it should be spelled color and not colour. Another thing. Contrary to what Gryphic has ranted about, the letter U is actually an ugly letter, at least it is in my view. Why should it be placed into a word that creates such beauty and design?

NOTE: This is simply a rant. Please do not take this post entirely seriously.

Oh, and by the way, I would just like to point out that the Golden Compass is not The Golden Compass. The book is called Northern Lights and the device is called an alethiometer. Normally I'm on the American's side of things as I'm American, but there isn't a single instance of a golden compass in that book. So there.

I'm sorry, I would have thought of a better thing to say here, but I am short of time. Here are the results:

Love it! - 3 vote(s)! Hate it! - 2 vote(s)! Can't be bothered to see the picture - 3 vote(s)! Indifferent - 1 vote(s)!

Sorry, I'm just in a little bit of a hurry. In the lack of anything else to say, I'll just advertise yesterday's post. GO TO THE QUOTE DB!!!!!!! laughs

This poll..... was so random somebody could explode from it. I am certain that fuhsdiufgsadiufgaisfioas is going to become some sort of internet meme. Or at least my brother is. (See the Bestest Quotes topic on The Fourm) Anyway, here are the results:

I don't know! - 0 vote(s)! Wo bu shi dao wa! - 1 vote(s)! What? - 3 vote(s)! That's an interesting question! - 3 vote(s)!

I'd also like to say, that for this week's also-random poll, you are required to have this image inside your brain to answer this week's poll. The above image can be clicked on to increase the size.

Done that? Now that you have, vote on this week's RANDOM poll!

The Fourm* is here.....

I've created a fourm for the website. You can go to it, register for free, and post what you want. Please, do so, PLEASE!!!!

Oops, sorry about that. But I'm really excited about The Fourm. Look at the above screenshot. Anyway, please go and try it! I bet it will be a wonderful way to converse and yes...

*NOTE: I am saying Fourm on purpose. On the Fourm, you are supposed to say Fourm not forum. (Four, get it?)