2011 In Review: Quotes

Published on January 2, 2012 in Four Island. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

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:

  1. #472 – Samson
  2. #465 – Hurricane Irene
  3. #463 – NO ONE MESSES WITH MY OVARIES
  4. #456 – My Baby Is Erect
  5. #454 – Fourie’s Soul
  6. #443 – Is This A Thing That Happen
  7. #440 – Friday
  8. #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

My 2012 Goals

Published on January 1, 2012 in Four Island. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

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.

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Random Predictions of 2012

Published on December 31, 2011 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

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!

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iOS 5.0.1 Untethered!

Published on December 27, 2011 in Apple. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

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.

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iPhone Immortality

Published on October 25, 2011 in Apple. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

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.

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The iOS 5 Semi-Tether

Published on October 24, 2011 in Apple. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

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.

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Love Don’t Live Here Anymore

Published on October 2, 2011 in Music Review. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

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.

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“delete plz”

Published on September 30, 2011 in Four Island. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

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.

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Four Island 3

Published on September 22, 2011 in Four Island. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

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.

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Irene, iOS 5 and Four Island 3

Published on September 3, 2011 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , .

So, as you may have noticed, Four Island was just down for about a week. Nearly. Well, you may have not in fact noticed this because you may have instead noticed that I haven’t posted for about four months. Yikes. I have some weak, barely feasible excuses that I will talk about later, but I first want to talk about Four Island’s recent downtime.

As you may know, Hurricane Irene recently hit New York, bringing with it a huge reaction of “WHAT THE FRUGALITY IS GOING ON I DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS AND THAT MAKES ME ANGRY” from virulent New Yorkers who have never seen a hurricane before and really just wanted something to overreact about. Sure, if you add the earthquake a couple of weeks ago, we have been experiencing some natural phenomena that we aren’t really used to as East Coasters, but Irene was just downright exploitable. I’m getting kind of sick of the “HURT BY IRENE? WE’VE GOT YOUR BACK–AND YOUR TORSO TOO! LOL” commercials all over the radio. Oh, and I don’t care that Irene was only a category 1 tropical storm by the time it reached New York, it has an official name. That name is Hurricane Irene. Stop trying to be so smart.

Irene did have quite an impact on Four Island, anyway, as it caused a record number of power outages across Long Island. Yeah, we were all quite angry at LIPA. I’ve never been in a power outage longer than a day before and this was pretty ridiculous, especially considering LIPA completely refused to give out any information to anyone. I walked down the street I live on (since by the third day, everyone around us (we live on a corner) had regained power and it was pretty much just our street that was still out) and saw a broken box with severed wires hanging from the power line and took a picture of it, as can be seen to the right, but apparently that can’t possibly cause a power outage. :| The actual problem was a whole bunch of fallen power lines down at the end of the street, but still. At least power has finally been restored.

Now, on a completely different subject, as an official iOS developer (check out the business my friends and I set up! Apathetic Ink), I have access to some neat prerelease stuff. This includes iOS 5 beta, which has been tempting me for a while and god I just have to try it out. My dilemma? No untethered jailbreak. I wasn’t really sure if I would be cool with a tethered jailbreak, but I eventually figured that the main and almost only reason I jailbreak is for scrobbling, right? Well, if I tethered jailbreak, it’s A) unlikely that I’ll ever really be more than a day away from my computer, so I’ll always be able to rejailbreak pretty quickly and B) I could find some ugly app on the App Store that scrobbled in the foreground and use that when I lost my jailbreak. Sounds okay, right? Besides, iOS 5 just sounded so great and I had to have it.

Well, how did it go? Well, first of all, iOS 5 is just amazing. Can’t wait until Apple releases it, hoping they first polish some stuff up. Notification Center? Freaking amazing. I love you, I love you Notification Center! iMessage, too, is amazing and makes me wonder why I even installed WhatsApp. Syncing in the background, though I already had that functionality through my jailbreak, is another great feature and all the other little features Apple has sprinkled over this update really just… make it difficult for me to go back to 4.3. Why would I do that? Well, remember when I said I would only have a tethered jailbreak? Yeah, barely. Somehow, before upgrading to iOS 5 (perhaps because I hadn’t read it yet), I missed this paragraph in the text about redsn0w for iOS 5 beta:

THIS JAILBREAK IS INTENDED ONLY FOR DEVELOPERS OF JAILBROKEN APPS! There are just too many broken components (Apple’s official apps, 3rd-party App Store apps, Cydia apps, MobileSubstrate apps, etc) for this to be useful to anyone but those truly looking to fix bugs in their iOS 5 jailbroken apps. (Seriously!)
iPhone Dev Team

There was one app, ONLY ONE APP that I needed to work on jailbroken iOS 5… and Scrobbl disappointed. Gah. I tried to find some way to survive; I downloaded iScrob from the App Store, and as you can see to the left, it is rather ugly. Sorry developer. Sitting here, listening to Adele (darn this is catchy), I decided I really was not very happy with it, and I was especially not very happy with having to break away from the official Music app. I’m fairly sure now that after I’m done writing this post, I’m going to restore to iOS 4.3.3. Thank god for SHSHes.

Apple, please listen to me: INTEGRATE LAST.FM INTO iOS. You integrated Twitter, why not last.fm? Spotify has it, please join the party. You would make a lot of people very happy and I probably wouldn’t even jailbreak if I could scrobble songs from the official Music app.

Now, finally, I’m going to talk a little about Four Island 3. I’ve been mentioning the new version of my website for quite a while now and while I don’t want to get any hopes up, it may be coming out fairly soon. As soon as I get a good upgrade plan down (god I’m busy), it should be good to go. The reasons I haven’t really been posting lately are A) April-June was an ehh time for me and posting wasn’t really my first priority and B) once I finally had some free time around August, I decided I didn’t want to post until Four Island 3 came out. Then, Irene and iOS 5 happened and I realized that, ugly as my website is at the moment, I really want to write stuff and have other people read it. I’m really hoping, though, that I’ll get around to releasing Four Island 3 soon because it will be great and awesome. Expect a massive post explaining a whole ton of superfluous stuff when it gets released. :P