Four Island

While I love my newly jailbroken iPod, I really do have to say that I think the word "jailbreak" was a poor choice for the process of opening up your iPod. To some people, the subword "jail" means that the process is illegal and bad things could possibly happen. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Jailbreaking is the name of a perfectly legal method of opening up your iPod so that you can run homebrew apps on it. I jailbroke my Wii last year and no one batted an eyelash, though I admittedly didn't call it "jailbreaking" at the time.

Basically, in this post, I want to run though exactly what jailbreaking is, what it isn't and why it might possibly have a bad reputation. This was sparked by the fact that a few days ago, when I told someone I knew that I jailbroke my iPod, he was astonished that I would do that. I asked him why and he said "Well, that means you get all the apps on the App Store for free!"

....

"Whut?" I spluttered. "That's not true."

"No, it is!" he yelled, "Jailbreaking is illegal!"

It turns out that his poor source of information was a friend of his that I wouldn't normally consider to be the most intelligent person ever. He apparently learned somewhere of a hack allowing you to pirate apps that utilized a jailbroken iPod and automatically assumed that that was what jailbreaking was. He also decided that jailbreaking was dangerous and could destroy your iPod after he, note, went into Settings and deleted all of his content. Manually. By himself. And he blamed it on the jailbreak.

....whut.

Sure, I won't deny it, you could theoretically use a jailbroken iPod to pirate apps, but that's not what jailbreaking is for. To quote Wikipedia:

Some jailbreakers also attempt to pirate paid App Store applications. This focus has caused some strife within the jailbreaking community, as it was not the original focus of jailbreaking and is illegal.

iOS (Apple) on Wikipedia

Jailbreaking is not the act of pirating apps, it is the act of using a bug in Apple's software to install a third-party app. It's for those people who want to write iPhone apps but don't want to have to pay Apple $99 a year or those who want to write apps that do stuff outside of the official API (like the awesome Scrobbl (live scrobbling) or Backgrounder (true multitasking)).

Also, jailbreaking started out with a completely different use. Not many people know this, but when the iPhone first came out, there was no App Store. There was literally no way to get apps onto your iPod... other than jailbreaking it. And that's what jailbreaking is really for: getting apps onto your iPod. The only reason piracy got dragged into this is because jailbroken iPods allow for the installation of apps that haven't been approved by Apple, and could therefore do bad things. As stated earlier, piracy is not the intent of most jailbreakers and my brother's claim that "If you say 'jailbreak' to any American, they will think you are pirating apps" is a complete falsity. And not a true one, either. :P

The other reason that jailbreaking has a bad name is because there is one other illegal thing you can do with it: SIM unlocking, which is the act of allowing the iPhone to use another network besides AT&T. In America, AT&T has a monopoly on iPhones (which is technically the reason the iPhone was created--as a secret deal between Apple and AT&T) and using a network other than AT&T with your iPhone is not allowed. However, this is basically the extent of bad things you could do with a jailbroken iPod; Apple has even said that they will not attempt to break jailbroken apps other than ones that perform SIM unlocking. So you don't have to worry about anything; unless you are actually trying to do something illegal, your jailbroken iPod is protected.

Last thing: the claim that jailbreaking your iPod is dangerous is also untrue. I've had my jailbroken iPod for a week now and it's not a brick yet (though SpringBoard did crash once, but that was easily fixable by uninstalling an offending app). The claims that you can destroy your iPod while jailbreaking it are too unrealistic as most jailbreaking methods require you to install a new firmware on your iPod and iTunes will automatically make a backup of your device when you do that, so that you can restore to a working firmware if anything goes wrong. Also, with the new jailbreak that I pointed out last time (which is awesomely codenamed Star :P), the entire jailbreak is done on your iPod and has a very small chance of failure (though it is suggested that you backup your iPod with iTunes before jailbreaking anyway).

So there it is, folks. Jailbreaking is awesome and there is nothing wrong with it unless you are trying to make there be something wrong with it. I want to write Maze Of Life for the iPhone; is that wrong? No! Not at all. :) Incidentally, the original reason that I preferred a BlackBerry over an iPhone is the fact that you can easily write programs for the BlackBerry, but now with jailbreaking, you can do that for the iPhone too! Yay!

Also, I just wanted to point out that I am awesome and a trend-setter as after I jailbroke my iPod on Monday, TimTam followed suit. Drifty has jailbroken her iPod, as well as a few others', apparently. :P Jailbreaking for the win!

As most of you may know, I am filled with a contempt for Facebook that is a lot of contempt. Why yes. Dot dot dot. Anyway, though I have not yet posted my reasons for quitting Facebook on Four Island, I will make sure that I do so before I completely quit. Yes, I'm only going to gradually phase out of Facebook because a lot of people still use Facebook for a ton of various things and while it's going to be difficult convincing my friends to use these alternatives that exist, it will hopefully be possible.

You may notice that this post says "Phase 2". That is because I have already been doing Phase 1 for quite a while: stop logging into Facebook. I haven't logged into the Facebook Website (though I still log into Facebook Chat via Pidgin) for quite some time now; the only exceptions being when people specifically tell me to go look at something. So I think Phase 1 has been a success.

Phase 2 starts today. As of August 6th 2010, I have disabled email notifications on Facebook messages. That means that if you send me a Facebook message (instead of doing the proper thing and just emailing me), I will not know about it, I will not read it and I will certainly not respond to it. Sorry if this sounds a bit mean, but I am very tired of receiving emails from Facebook notifying me of messages that I have to go back to Facebook to reply to and not being able to have my entire email archive IN my email account and having the nice pretty email threads that GMail does.

I will probably not implement Phase 3 for a month or so, just so people can get used to Phase 2. While Phase 2 isn't really too difficult to do as most people have normal email accounts (in fact, you need to have one to get a Facebook account), Phase 3 is a bit more dangerous because it assesses the laziness of my friends. YOU CAN DO IT, FRIENDS! BE STRONG! :P

So, remember, the next time you want to send me an asynchronous long message, what do you do? Email it to me. Because if you Facebook Message it to me, it would be equivalent to writing a letter and then burning it. Because I may never, in fact, see it.

EDIT: Oh yeah, you may have noticed: I changed the font on Four Island for Layout 7. It's a webfont called Delicious (with a fallback of Verdana) that I think looks quite beautiful and just the right size. This is a pleasant change from Lucida Grande (with a fallback of Arial) which, though I LOVE Lucida Grande in the desktop environment, I think made Four Island rather ugly and difficult to read. Hopefully this works well! :D

Yes, I am going to yell at Apple in this post. But, first of all, let me make something clear: while I have been largely negative toward Apple in the past (and I still am apathetic towards the Mac, which was my original target), I love my iPod touch. I don't know how I lived without it. I mean, as I type this, I am on vacation, at a hotel, swinging on a swing while listening to music. I know, right? :P (Though I really do want an iPhone; I mean, seriously, Internet everywhere? Awesome!)

But right now, I'm fairly annoyed at them. On July 31st, I got two iTunes giftcards and used $5.99 off one of them to purchase an upgrade to Palringo Premium (a version of Palringo, an awesome instant messaging app for iPhones, that has features that I need like Message Logging :P). My account was debited, but I never received the upgrade. Shock. And horror, I guess. I tried to report this to Apple, but when I went to iTunes to do so, the link simply sent me to Apple's support site. What? Something was definitely wrong, because if I tried to report a problem with any other purchase, it would let me. This made me very angry. I sent an email to Palringo's support team and have not yet received a response. A response better come or else.... I'LL START SINGING KATE NASH SONGS! :P

Anyway, on a lighter note, I did something yesterday that made me love my iPod even more. That's right, I jailbroke it. :P I had been trying to find a way to jailbreak my iPod, but newer iDevices (iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch 2 MC model and iPod touch 3) with iOS 4 had no available jailbreaks and I was sad. However, when I was searching around again yesterday, I found something amazing. A brand new (it literally came out like yesterday or the night before) userland jailbreak for nearly every iDevice, compatible with iOS 4.

I think, at that point, I started jumping around and spitting out my cream soda, which was a bit of a shame because you can't get cream soda anywhere and I do love it. The best part of this jailbreak, though? IT'S SO EASY. You literally just have to open a page in Safari, slide a bar to the right to activate the jailbreak and wait a few minutes. You will likely have to retry quite a few times because the jailbreak is brand new and the servers are clogged (rebooting helps too), but it's soooooo worth it. Here, read this tutorial.

Anyway, now I have something that makes me happy. And what's that? LIVE SCROBBLING ON MY IPOD OH YEAH FIRE MUFFINS. Seriously, I told you before, I'm insane. And the iPod scrobbler that I used to have to use on my computer would either scrobble each song far too many times or take a very long time doing the right job. And either way would result in completely falsified timestamps because the iPod could only track the last listen of a song. Now, with the Scrobbl app, songs are scrobbled AS I LISTEN TO THEM and if I don't have WiFi at the moment, it'll queue the songs for scrobbling for the next time I am connected. THIS.... THIS IS JUST AWESOME. GIVE ME A HUG, SCROBBL. GIVE ME A HUG.

Anyway, I am very excited about that and doing more jailbroken-y things on my iPod. What's that? I could do what? I COULD MAKE APPS FOR MY IPOD NOW?!?!? Yes, that would be AWESOME: I could make apps for my iPod now that it's jailbroken! I could totally write Maze Of Life or something, create my own Cydia repository and put it up! IT WOULD BE GREAT-TASTIC! Of course, I'd have to learn Objective-C and all of Apple's garbage APIs, but wouldn't it be fun to develop apps for the iPod? Yes, WOULDN'T IT?!?!?!?

Oh, by the way, that reminds me: I've had a new version of Maze Of Life that I've been meaning to release for quite a while. I should do that soon. :P

Hello, it's me again! Before you scream and run away to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time, and I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats and they're coming to take me away ha ha, they're coming to take me away, LISTEN. Yes, I'm ranting about something in uppercase letters that doesn't pertain to the English language. Shock and horror.

Anyway, this rant is mainly about my "No WWW" policy and EDUCATING the CHILDREN with THE TRUTH. THAT'S RIGHT LITTLE JOHNNY, THAT WASN'T SANTA CLAUS UNDER THE MISTLETOE! IT WAS YOUR REAL FATHER! Um, anyway, I felt the need to do this because first of all, I run Four Island at a Class B no-www compliance level and I've never actually talked about it and because last week, after explaining a bit about how the World Wide Web was not the same thing as the Internet to my cousin, she rebounded with this: "So, does that mean that Four Island isn't part of the World Wide Web because it doesn't have a www?"

No, Keke Palmer, it doesn't. (Lol, seriously, no offense, I like ranting! PLEASE DUN KILL ME- static) Let's begin with what a URL actually needs to be part of the World Wide Web. No, it's not the "www.", it's the "http://" that most people have only seen in their community college's Computing 101 course where they get to learn how to increase the font size in Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.03. The World Wide Web (which was invented by Tim Burners Lee, who is awesome) actually goes by another, less common to non-techy people, name: The Hypertext Transfer Protocol. I'm not really going to go into it much because I'm afraid my popcorn will get cold but basically, the Internet is full of many, many different ways to transfer information and the way you use the Internet to see webpages is HTTP. That's what that "http://" in front of URLs means; that it's going to let you see a webpage or a picture or a sound file. Or a picture of a sound file... or something like that. The reason that it's necessary is because, as I said earlier, there are many different ways of transferring information on the Internet and you have to tell your computer which one you want. However, many people don't know this because most web browsers created after 1650 automatically add the "http://" if you "forget" (read: don't realize the existence or necessity of) it.

On the other hand, there's "www." I have witnessed some horrible things with "www."s such as someone reciting a link to someone at a computer and the person at a computer MANUALLY ADDS IN a www. even if the other person didn't say to add one. I see people go "Hey, let's Google that" (which, by the way, you shouldn't say because it's trademark infringement (yes, I went the Googleplex last week and it was awesome (YOU GET FREE CANDY AND SODA! SO WORKING THERE! :P))) and go to their computer and type in "WWW.GOOGLE.COM". Yes, in all caps, but that's not the point; the point is that they added four completely unnecessary characters to what they had to type WHICH MADE THEM MORE SUSCEPTIBLE TO CARPEL TUNNEL! SEE, FOLKS? USING WWW. IN FRONT OF EVERY URL CAN KILL YOU! DON'T DO IT!

The use of "www." in front of URLs most likely came from the old standard of putting your servers at subdomains corresponding to their function, such as "www" for web servers, "mail" or "smtp" for email servers and "ftp" for FTP servers. However, THIS ISN'T NECESSARY! IT'S JUST A STANDARD! In fact, as some of you may know, if you leave out the www. in a URL.... IT WILL STILL WORK! OH MY GOD! HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?!?!?! It's possible due to a magical thing call DNS and the kindness of your local detergent salesperson.

The reason why I don't like "www."s is because it makes me angry when I see people think that it's necessary and that the Internet is the same thing as the World Wide Web and was invented by some guy named Bob. I'm sure some guy named Bob has set up an intranet in his local laundromat that wants to go "TOTALLY DOT COM", but he didn't invent The Internet. Also, I think domains look prettier without the "www." in front. www.fourisland.com. fourisland.com. Yeah, someone's winning Hottest Domain Of The Year.

Also, while, I'm at it, no, Obama does not have a button that can turn off the Internet. There is no conspiracy or CIA cover-up because IT'S PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT BLOWING UP PLANET EARTH. (However, you could theoretically disable the Internet for people who aren't insane and memorize IP addresses by blowing up the 13 root nameservers of the Internet, but they're heavily protected (seriously, people have tried to attack them. Twice). Wow, that would be an AWESOME movie: "NO! WE HAVE TO SAVE THE INTERNET!!!! NAMESERVER G IS GOING DOWN! HAND ME THAT ETHERNET CABLE! WHY ISN'T DMAP INSTALLED ON THIS COMPUTER?!?!?")

I'm sorry, I'm off to file copyright papers. That idea is just too awesome to let go.

OH MY GOD THIS ONE ANNOYS ME VERILY. Okay, so, do you have any younger siblings or sapient pets that have a VERY LOOSE GRASP ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE? I actually have a couple of those (guess which) and while they are very good as a source of content for my RANDOM ENGLISH RANTs, their vehement denial that their English is incorrect makes me want to take up bulldozing and drop a mastodon on their rooms. Here is their latest English horror that makes me cry:

**Starla**: None of your friends have email?
**Younger Sibling Or Sapient Pet**: All of my friends don't believe in Internet.
*** Starla** starts screaming and shooting
**Starla**: NONE OF YOUR FRIENDS BELIEVE IN INTERNET. NONE NONE DOOMSDAY HAS FALLEN RUN FOR YOUR LIVES- *shot*

While that is a bit exaggerated, my point is sort of clear. While combining "all" and a negative verb like "don't" may actually be grammatically correct as I cannot currently find anything on it, IT SOUNDS QUITE HORRIBLE. JUST SAY NONE. JUST SAY NONE. JUST LIKE YOU WOULD SAY NO TO DRUGS. JUST SAY NONE. IT'S A FEWER NUMBER OF WORDS! ISN'T THAT BETTER OR SOMETHING? JUST SAY NONE. SAY IT NOW.

Here are some practice questions to test your new knowledge. If the sentence is incorrect, correct it, otherwise, write "Correct."

1. All of my friends hate you.
2. None of those potatoes have been washed recently.
3. Coach Z looks fat in that photo.
4. All of those tapes must give us dogs.

Okay, I couldn't bring myself to type THE INCORRECTION, regardless of the fact that I did earlier in that semi-fabricated conversation I had with my younger sibling or sapient pet. Anyway, I hope that by now, I've successfully established myself as a prescriptivist. Thank you for your time.

Okay, these appear to be becoming regular, lol :P. Anyway, today's topic is on ABUSED-AS-A-CHILD COMMAS. No, seriously, I mean COMMAS THAT ARE USED INCORRECTLY OR NOT AT ALL. Some examples:

Notice that when the orb in motion comes in contact with a stationary orb, it reduces the counter on the stationary orb by 1. Once an orb's counter reaches 0 it explodes and is removed from play, and you receive 1 point for doing so. This is the only way to earn points.

Jay Is Games

Read that bolded part out loud. Seriously. Is there no pause after the zero? Replace the number with a word and it'll become clearer. "Once an orb's counter reaches zero it explodes." There should be a pause in there because "Once an orb's counter reaches zero" is like the cause and "it explodes" is the result. "Once an orb's counter reaches zero, it explodes." Aw, how lovely. Here's an example of the opposite:

Every widget is derived from GtkWidget. This means, changes to the properties of GtkWidget will effect all widgets. Furthermore many other widgets have "parent widgets". For example properties of GtkButton will also be applied to GtkCheckButton unless it is explicitly stated otherwise.

Gnome Live!

That pause between "this means" and "changes to the properties of GtkWidget will effect all widgets" is ENTIRELY UNNECESSARY!!!! OH MY GOD! brain explosion I'm very sorry, I'm just VERY easily annoyed by what I consider poor English, which may also be considered perfectly normal English by those who aren't insane. Who? Oh, and by the way, it's "affect", not "effect". Pwned.

iOS 4 came out! About two hours after yesterday's post was posted, I believe. Yes. It took another half an hour to download and install the update, but it was pretty much worth it. Check out it's awesomeness!

Home Screen Wallpapers These look REALLY NICE. Seriously! The default ones look really boring in the options menu, but when you put them on, most of them look really nice! I chose the fifth row, second column. The one with the shades of blue. It looks nice!

Multitasking As I ranted about yesterday, this has been a bit of a disappointment because apps have to be updated to support it, but I have seen some of its capability because Wordpress has been updated to support fast app switching! I just switched out and then back in and IT WAS IN THE SAME PLACE!!!! :P Anyway, I just really hope that Byline and Palringo get updated for iOS 4 because that would be awesome :P.

Omg Problems Speaking of Byline, I think the current version conflicts with iOS 4 or something because it now crashes randomly, which is really annoying. Meh!

iBooks OMG! iBooks is awesome and I never thought I would say that because I'm really a "real book" kind of person, just like I'd rather purchase CDs in the store than online, but iBooks is cool because there is a fairly nice selection of free books that you can get that you can just read when you're bored and you don't have a book on you! As we all know, Winnie The Pooh by A. A. Milne (but not the sequel) is available for free (and I'm a huge Winnie The Pooh fan, seriously :D), but there are also some other good books like Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carrol and The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. I'm having fun! :P (Though I do like to make fun of the large number of names I recognize in the free list from Social Studies class like Adam Smith and Karl Marx and John Locke, lol :P)

Orientation Lock This is very useful. If you're laying down and you want to read your iPod, but it keeps changing orientation, what do you do? Double press the home button, swipe to the left and tap the lock button! Now it's locked in portrait mode! :D It's very useful, but one thing that annoys me a bit is that you can only lock in portrait mode, not landscape. Meh.

Folders Folders are pretty cool. I have so much more space now! :P And it's pretty cool, if you put two apps that have a number on them (like notifications) in one folder, the folder will have a number that is the sum of the numbers inside it! WOW I COULD HAVE WORDED THAT BETTER! :P One thing that annoys me, though, is that the icons for the folders are a bit ugly. It's just a black square with smaller versions of the contained icons. It could've looked better, that's all I'm saying.

Anyway, enough about iOS 4. It's quite awesome and I look forward to my favorite apps coming out with multitasking ability, but there's something else I have to rant about. Remember yesterday when I told a story about how I had to maintain an old version of iTunes on my virtual machine so I could sync my iPod? And how I thought that iOS 4 was out because iTunes 9.2 was out? Yeah, I have come to realize exactly what iTunes 9.2 does, and the thought did cross my mind sometime yesterday, but I dismissed it, hoping that it wasn't true.

It was true. You need iTunes 9.2 to be able to sync with iOS 4. Ouch. Anyway, I have been spending a horribly long time converting my VirtualBox virtual machine to a VMWare one and IT WORKED. iTunes 9.2 worked! I don't know exactly what's wrong with VirtualBox (and I did like it better, VMWare seems a bit slow to me), but I am happy that I can now sync my iPod.

One last thing. While I am happy that I can now sync with iTunes, I did mention yesterday that I would be very happy if I could sync with Banshee. Well, guess what! Someone spent a week hacking Banshee and apparently got libgpod to work, which includes iPhone/iPod touch support! WOOT! It's not out yet, but you can read about it here: http://monotorrent.blogspot.com/2010/06/hackweek-v.html. I hope it comes out soon and that it's as awesome as possible! :)

Well, at least not at the time of writing this post. Which is about 10:30am EST. And I'm not really insulting iOS 4, I just think it's been a bit overhyped and some new revelations have really diminished it's wonder for me.

First, I want to start by writing about the horrific time I had trying to upgrade to the firmware that I thought came out already. I know, I should have read more into it, but I was excited for some of the new anticipated features. Anyway, this story needs a bit of an introduction. I have been an iPod user for about three years now and although I remain apathetic towards Apple, I do have one huge complaint: there is no version of iTunes available for Linux.

While this is a major inconvenience for me, I have been able to survive for a while. While I had my second iPod, a yellow Chromatic which I loved (rest in peace), I had to restart the computer and endure Windows Vista's mind-numbing slowness if I wanted to add a single song to my iPod, which is why I generally added songs in batch, which grew pretty annoying because I would then have to wait to be able to listen to a song (I'm obsessed with play counts, please help me). Anyway, I finally became sick of this and tried some Linux media players that have claimed to be able to sync with iPods.

Rhythmbox made me sick. It really did. I just did not like it at all, and half the time I listened to a song, it wouldn't scrobble to Last.fm (again, I'm obsessed, keel me). Next, I tried Banshee which I eventually fell in love with. It was smooth, sleek and worked very well. However, I don't know if I ever managed to sync my iPod with it because my iPod died right around then. It was very odd, the buttons just stopped working while the rest of the iPod clearly worked because shaking it skipped to a random song.

Anyway, I eventually got an iPod touch two weeks ago and while I do love it, I needed to find somewhere to sync it. Banshee wouldn't work for two reasons: it had no iPod touch/iPhone support (even for music) and I wanted to be able to have apps. Eventually, I realized that a virtual machine would probably work perfectly and so I downloaded VirtualBox and set up an installation of Windows XP in it. It was all fine and dandy until I installed iTunes and it crashed every time I tried to open it. What?!?! It turns out that versions of iTunes 9.0.3 and up do not work in VirtualBox. There was a workaround, though, install iTunes 9.0.2 instead, and I did and it worked perfectly. And for the last two weeks, I've been running 9.0.2 and syncing with my iPod touch peacefully (except for one incident in which I accidentally updated iTunes and had to downgrade again and re-import all of my music, but that was before I got my iPod touch).

My problem was probably the deceitful early release of iTunes 9.2. I immediately assumed that it meant that iOS 4 was out as well, because, well, it made sense! Anyway, I stupidly tried to update my copy of iTunes and what do you know, it starts crashing. So I had to spend an hour downgrading, re-importing and then re-syncing because of course, iTunes didn't recognize my iPod after I reinstalled it. And I have 600+ songs, so that took quite a while. Anyway, when that was finally done, I restarted to my Windows partition and planned to use the iTunes there not to sync, but just to update. Lo and behold, iOS 4 WASN'T OUT YET. I think I started talking to the computer at that point "WHAT DO YOU MEAN 3.1.3 IS THE CURRENT UPDATE? I THINK YOU'RE WRONG. YOU ARE WRONG. I AM RIGHT AND YOU ARE WRONG."

Anyway, that's my story about trying to upgrade to a not-yet-available firmware, now let's talk about how iOS 4's new feature lineup may be a bit misleading. Let's start with the big one: MULTITASKING. Probably the most anticipated feature of iOS 4 is the ability to run more than one app at once, a feature which most other mobile devices have had as a stable since forever.

Well, let's get something straight here: it's not really multitasking. Apple introduced seven new features that make it seem like more than app is running at a time, but they're really not.

1. First, background music. Apps can choose to keep playing audio once you've switched to another app, something that the iPod app has had forever. This allows you to do something like play a song on Pandora while doing something else: Pandora isn't really still open when you switch to another app, it's audio is just still playing.
2. Second, background VoIP. For most people, that means Skype. This one I find a bit confusing because it's fairly specific, but basically it means that you can continue a VoIP call even when in another application.
3. Third, background location, which I'm not even sure I understand, so I'm going to skip that one. Read about it yourself.
4. Fourth, push notifications, which allow popup notifications to be sent to your iPod while doing other things. Don't be fooled, however, this has been out since iPhone OS 3.
5. Fifth, local notifications, which are basically push notifications that don't rely on Apple's servers. I don't really understand this one either, but dun kill me, I have more to rant about.
6. Sixth, task finishing, which allows a task that you have started in an app, such as uploading a photo to Flickr, to even while you aren't in that app. Really, that app isn't open anymore, it's just offloaded a task to a background process. This one scares me a bit because you never know if an app has task finishing enabled or not and you could potentiality cancel an task you didn't mean to by switching apps, thinking that it'll still continue working.
7. Finally, the most deceitful of them all, fast app switching, which allows apps to save where they are when you close them so that they start right back where they were when you open them again. Really, when you close the app, it is closed and nothing else is being done, unless something was offloaded to task finishing, it's just that when you open the app again, it remembers where it was.

All of this put together really isn't multitasking, it's just a facsimile that looks a bit like multitasking on the outside. While this is probably good enough for most people, there is one more rather huge catch when it comes to iOS 4 multitasking:

Applications have to have multitasking features enabled.

When we all upgrade to iOS 4 in a few hours when it gets released (my bet is noon PST, which is 3pm here), not every app is suddenly going to have these seven multitasking-like features. Developers have to add these features to their apps using new APIs and then re-submit them to the App Store. So unless the author of your favorite app is reasonable and committed, you ain't gettin' multitasking. In fact, I've already heard that not only is the new Facebook app hideous, the developers have neglected to update it for iOS 4. How do you like dem apples? Not that much, thanks.

Anyway, hopefully iOS 4 will come out later today and I will get it and hopefully multitasking won't be as horrible as it sounds. And I'll write another post about the things I do like about it. Yeah, right. No, seriously. :P

HEY KIDS, IT'S ME AGAIN!!!! I'm feeling very English-angsty and I have that urge to throw stuff again, so it's time for another RANDOM ENGLISH RANT! Today's topic is LONELY ADVERBS. THOSE LONELY, MISUNDERSTOOD ADVERBS. (Why do I keep misspelling lonely as lovely? Well, adverbs are quite awesome. So they're LOVELY YET LONELY ADVERBS. We can work that into the script. It's okay, subconscious, I'm on your side.)

Nothing gets my "I THINK I'M GOING TO LAUNCH NUCLEAR WAR ON A FIVE YEAR OLD" up like "I didn't do that good on that quiz." NO, YOU DIDN'T DO "GOOD" ON THAT ENGLISH GRAMMAR QUIZ, JOHNNY. YOU FAILED IT. YOU WILL NOW BE DEPORTED TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN.

Grammar lesson, kids. An ADVERB is a descriptive word, usually ending in a telltale "ly", that modifies verbs, adjectives or other adverbs. An ADJECTIVE, like "good", is a descriptive word used to modify nouns and pronouns. Now, let's look at that statement above again, shall we?

"I didn't do (verb) that good (adjective) on that quiz." What is modifying what? If you're an idiot, you may say that "good" is modifying "quiz", in which case the sentence would translate to "I didn't do that good quiz." Are you copulating with that quiz or talking to it? No, good tries to modify "do", or more specifically, how you did on that quiz. But adjectives can't modify verbs, can they?

NO THEY CAN'T.

Here comes my best friend, "well". Why? Because Samara Morgan lives there. No, really, because it's an adverb! Adverbs are lovely. (My subconscious is happy.) It's actually rather sad. Adverbs are far more important (in my opinion) than adjectives, yet they're often shifted off to the side when it comes to parts of speech. Adjectives get their names in headlines (FAT MAN FALLS OFF STEEP CLIFF ONTO IMPORTANT BUSINESSMAN) while adverbs have to be content with living in obituaries (Melinda Jones died peacefully in her sleep, though a chainsaw-wielding madman was just about to sneakily sneak into her room and murderously cut her head off.) Adverbs are great. Just embrace them.

Anyway, using adverbs, that sentence turns into "I didn't do that well on that quiz." HORRAY. I AM VERY HAPPY THAT YOU DIDN'T DO WELL ON THAT TEST BECAUSE IT IS FAR BETTER THAN NOT DOING GOOD ON THAT TEST. Seriously, you could use that as a double entendre because "good" can be used as a noun too, sometimes. "Johnny did good on his test? How, did he recycle it or something?" Loffle. (AHH THUNDER)

This is one of my most commonly heard transgressions in the English language. PEOPLE, HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO ADD AN "LY" TO THE END OF YOUR WORDS? "I ran so fast the other day!" Okay, all of my examples so far have been irregular, but you get the point.

Oh god, I'm going to end up as an English teacher. And some kid is going to come in and complain that he did bad on his Math test and I'll throw a textbook at him. And I may possibly have to go to court for it, but if any of that happens, it'll happen on Four Island, which I am the sovereign leader of and have already created a law that allows abuse on the grounds of incorrect grammar. Except if I accidentally does it. That then does count not at all.

Though I sort of just lost all of my English teacher cred by starting a sentence with a conjunction. Oh well.

Hey, look everybody! It's time for a Random English Rant! This is a segment in which I see something happen OVER AND OVER AGAIN, and then go a bit insane. THERE I GO AGAIN! ... ... ... ... AGAIN!!!!

Anyway, today's topic is on the fact that....

PREFORM. IS NOT. A WORD.

Well, it is, but it doesn't mean what you think.

Preform is commonly used by people who don't know better as a synonym of perform. In fact, it's probably a typo, but the users of said typo often don't know that it's incorrect. Le gaspez! I myself used to be frequently guilty of this horrible transgression. :P

To perform something is to bring something about. To preform something is to, as it sounds like, form something beforehand. I have never, ever, ever, ever, EVER heard the word "preform" used normally in context. :P So, don't use it! I PERFORMED THE ACT OF MURDERING EVERYONE WHO SAYS PREFORM. I PREFORMED A SWORD SO THAT I WOULD HAVE SOMETHING TO DO THE MURDERING WITH WHEN IT CAME TO THAT.

Sound easy? It is. Or it isn't. That really depends on your IQ. :P

Okay, I probably sound really rude now, so I'm going to leave before I get lynched. And remember, kids! Performing a play is good (as long as you get good reviews), but preforming a play (before you can get those silly copyright use approvals) can get you chased down Main Street by a torch-wielding mob! And we all know which one of those is better for the colon, don't we?