onI like the dislike of baseball games, but seriously, people, vocabulary is key.
**voΒ·liΒ·tion** (v-lshn) n. 1. The act or an instance of making a conscious choice or decision. 2. A conscious choice or decision. 3. The power or faculty of choosing; the will.I was asking if you would ever go to baseball game because you actually wanted to, which 38% of us know is pure insanity. :P
Would you attend a baseball game of your own volition? Yeah (I am legally required to allow this as an acceptable answer) - 2 vote(s)! NO WAY runs screaming - 5 vote(s)! What's baseball? - 2 vote(s)! What's volition? - 4 vote(s)!
Okay, so I kind of failed at posting this week (or doing anything at all, really), but.... I have an iPhone! :P Yes, let this be a lesson to me: I have to stop putting down every Apple product that cones out just because it's an Apple product. Also, speaking of awesome iPhone, recent evidence suggests that iOS 4.1 will be released on Wednesday, so we can hope that a jailbreak will soon follow. Anyway, it's late and I want to go listen to Kate Nash, so here's your weekly Caption'd fix:
More, More, More
Exotic Animal Life
onOkay, so as I mentioned recently, I got an iPhone 4. Yes, yes, I am the same person that hates Macs and is supposed to be Apple apathetic but forgets most of the time and the one that use to insult iPhones all the time (though that may be because I was forced to watch a half-hour video on iPhones when they first came out by my cousin) until I got an iPod touch and really liked it and have now shifted my ray of insulting to iPads. Yes, amidst all of that, I recently got an iPhone and what's more, I LOVE IT. :D It is just so awesome. Feel free to call me a hypocrite if you want. :P
I think the core reason I like it so much is that I liked my iPod touch so much. Now, I basically have an iPod touch, just better! :P Here are some of the things I really like about my iPhone 4 that my iPod touch 3rd gen didn't have:
- Well, to be obvious: phone functionality. Calling and texting. It's just so nice! I love having my phone and my iPod in one device, so that now I won't leave anywhere without it. And being able to send MMSes is great too, especially as my old phone couldn't do that. :P
- Retina display. Yeah, when I first heard about the iPhone 4, I was like "Okay, so it has a clear display. So?" RETINA DISPLAY IS AWESOME. Everything looks so clear on my phone! After I synced it for the first time, I spent a very long time just staring at the various screens because they looked so nice! Apple was actually right: the only pixels I could discern were the ones in the icons for apps not yet upgraded to support retina display (as well as the apps themselves). Looking at my brothers' iPod touches felt weird after that. :P
- Camera. I don't really know why the iPod touch lacks a camera because it isn't really a phone-specific feature, but I love having it now! And there are actually two cameras--one in the front and a higher definition one in the back. Now I can take pictures (and videos!) with my iPhone too! :D
- Built-in microphone. As it's a phone, the need for a built-in microphone is obvious, but it's useful for other things like Voice Control and Voice Memos and Shazam that you would need to plug a microphone in to use on the iPod touch.
- INTERNET (pretty much) EVERYWHERE (in America). It's a smartphone. And what do most smartphones require you to get? That's right: a data plan. While I don't have an unlimited data plan (AT&T redacted those earlier this year sadly--incidentally on the same day that the iPhone 4 was announced), it's nice to know that if I'm somewhere without WiFi and I want to talk to my friends or check my email or look something up on Wikipedia, I can! As my plan isn't unlimited, though, after about a month, I want to write a post on the data plan, if it's enough data (200MB) and if AT&T is screwing me over or not. Won't that be fun? :P
- The device just looks so nice! As you probably know, the iPhone 4 features a new design that looks different to every other iPod touch and iPhone as it has a flat back and a silver band running around the edge. It's preeety. :P
Yes, I love my iPhone. However, not everything's sunshine and butterflies. I do have a small list of complaints about it:
- The attenuation problem. Yes, it's true, but really, it's not that annoying. It's only if you cover the tiny black band in the lower left of the phone and it's not too difficult to avoid it.
- No available jailbreak. iOS 4.0.2 was released a few weeks before I got my iPhone, meaning that it came with it preinstalled. As you probably know, iOS 4.0.2 fixes the hole that made the jailbreak for 4.0 possible, so there are no currently available jailbreaks. However, the iPhone Dev Team have said that they know of another jailbreak and that they would probably release it when iOS 4.1 gets released; so here's hoping that's soon!
Yes, those are really the only problems I currently have with my iPhone. :P Yes, I've done a complete 180Β°, but still! The iPhone! It's awesome! :P Okay, by now you can probably tell that I'm a bit insane, so I'll let this post end. Also, I wrote this post earlier this week and I only realized I hadn't posted it yet when it was 11pm on Friday night. :P So, I guess I'll post it now and you people can tell me if I'm insane in the morning. Anyway:
**Starla**: IPADS ARE DISGUSTING! Oh mah gawd I luve my iPhone!!!!! <3 :D :D
onWow, it seems quite a few people have witnessed the horrors of Fourie! Nah, I'm just kidding, I love Fourie and his disturbing humor! Come on, all, let's all go on IRC! :D
Has Fourie abused you horrifically yet? YES: I'm so scarred! - 5 vote(s)! No, why? DOES HE DO THAT SORT OF THING? - 4 vote(s)! Lol, yes, but I love Fourie! - 1 vote(s)! Other/Indifferent - 0 vote(s)!
So, yes, as I mentioned yesterday, I now have an iPhone 4. Yes, I know, I'm such a hypocrite, BUT I LOVE IT <3. :D I will probably write a post about it tomorrow. Also, now that I actually have a data plan, it would probably be useful to me if Four Island wasn't so freaking large, so I'm planning on making a mobile layout for Four Island (possibly even before 3.0 is released). Gah, I wish 3.0 was already done because it would make everything so much easier. Four Island 2.0 is just such a mess.
Anyway, CAPTION'D!
Dance Dance Revulsion
Blind Date
Okay, anyway, I know I'm procrastinating my music review now as I now have three in the backlog. I will try really hard to get over my procrastination and write some good posts for this week, because it should be an awesome week and I don't want to waste it. hugs lots of people
onYesterday, I had the horrific experience of being forced to attend a baseball game. The situation was comparable to being injected with cyanide, only slightly worse. Yes, I don't like sports.
I really don't know why this was necessary. Unlike me, most of my family are sports fans and my immediate family are fans of one baseball team while the rest of the family are fans of another team and oh god, please just stop bickering about that. I. Don't. Care. Next, we arrive at the "OMG STATIUM" which is apparently super cool or whatever and everyone I'm with is like "OH MY GOD! YOU HAVEN'T BEEN HERE SINCE THE RENOVATIONS! YOU'RE GONNA LOVE IT!" Well, with more grammatical mistakes.
The stadium? What could possibly be so exciting about a stadium? Well? Nothing, in my opinion. It was a place.... where people "watched" "people play sports" and got fat from hotdogs. Nothing interesting happened there AT ALL.
When the game finally started, I learned something about baseball. THEY'RE NOT PLAYING HALF THE TIME. There was a very loud speaker behind me (and probably other places in the stadium) and it would just randomly start playing sound bytes like "LET'S GO NAME OF TEAM" and "annoying clapping noise" and, on at least four occasions, "JUST GONNA STAND THERE AND WATCH ME BURRRN; BUT THAT'S ALRIGHT BECAUSE I LIKE THE WAY IT HURTS". Oh god, just kill me. They would be like walk and then the speaker would be like "OMG BUY POTATS--THE OFFICIAL POTATO CHIPS OF US" and then walk and then the speaker would be like "AHM RIDIN' SOLO" and I would throw a hockey player at it and then walk and then the speaker would be like "IM NICK CANON! YAY TEAM!" and then hit ball with bat and the whole, horrible process would just repeat AGAIN AND AGAIN AND OH MY- shot
I think I was about half-dead by the time that we left (because our "team" was losing by like 5 points, lol) and I had only managed to get through half of "Life, The Universe And Everything" before my brain totally shut down. But you know what? I think it was worth it. What, attending the game? Heck, no. It was worth surviving through it; because, now, I HAVE AN IPHONE 4! :D It arrived this morning and, gosh, I don't care about what people say, I LOVE IT. :D I will write about it in another post because I am tired right now and this post is about bad stuff and is rather rant-y and insane. Because baseball is horrible. Yes.
onSeriously, a lot of you don't have iPods. Whatever. Anyway, RESULTS:
Have you jailbroken your iPod/would you if you had one? YES YES NO I WAS KIDDING I MEANT "YES" - 3 vote(s)! No, which may be because I think it's illegal even though it's not - 2 vote(s)! Don't have one, yo - 4 vote(s)! Indifferent - 2 vote(s)!
Anyway, I'm in Pennsylvania right now and I probably won't be able to post until Tuesday because I have restricted access to my computer. I do have Internet, though, and I'll hopefully be able to wish someone happy birthday using my iPod! :D Anyway, CAPTION'D! :D
She's Quite Violent, Isn't She
Religious Experience
Anyway, I have to go now, and I have to stop saying "anyway" so often. Um.... CHEDDAR! :P
onLet me show you a quote from our IRC conversation two days ago. We had gotten onto the topic of .NET technologies and other Microsoft products after I told Smiley that I had started to look into learning a bit of ASP.Not (I mean ASP.NET--I just like to make fun of them :P ) just a few hours earlier and Tamasys was, as usual, berating me for my usual lack of excitement over Microsoft products (I say usual because I quite like C#--on Mono, that is :P ). When I asked what "Silverlight" was:
(12:39:57 AM) Smiley: suddenly ninjas, thousands of them (12:39:57 AM) Tamasys: O_o (12:40:05 AM) Tamasys: how do you not know what Silverlight is? (12:40:08 AM) Tamasys: **attacks** (12:40:18 AM) Hatkirby: Hmm, let's see, I'M A LINUX FANGIRL YO (12:40:20 AM) Tamasys: silly Linux person..Yeah, and there's a reason for that.
So, yesterday, I was working with ASP.Not a little bit more. I was following a tutorial from the Microsoft website and it would occur quite frequently that something wouldn't work and I would have to jump through some massive flaming hoops to get it to work with Mono. After slaving over DbLinq, switching to PostgreSQL, switching back to MySQL and adding foreign keys just to find that I couldn't have something called "navigation properties", I was like "yo" and decided to try writing an ASP.Not website using the official, Microsoft IDE.
Yeah, no. At first, I tried installing it in my virtual machine, but then I realized that that was really, really stupid and it was just so stupid that it was stupid. Then, I tried restarting into my Windows Vista partition and installing it there. I clicked on some Microsoft Web Platform thing which was linked to from the tutorial and decided to install it. When the wizard came up, I noticed that "Visual Web Designer Express" was missing from the list somehow, but I shrugged it off and pressed install.
Then this happened. Twice.
I AM GOING TO HIRE SOMEONE TO KILL YOUR FAMILY, WEB PLATFORM INSTALL! This download manager was surely the spawn of the devil. The first time I tried installing stuff, it hung at the first item (IIS), it's stupid indeterminate progress bar giving me no indication whatsoever that something real was actually happening. I eventually had to cancel the wizard after about 10 minutes of nothing happening, which, after 5 minutes of "cancelling", told me that I was an idiot and everything was going fine until I rolled along. I stabbed it with a knife and tried again.
The second time I tried installing stuff, it told me that I had already installed IIS and some other stuff which I surely had not as nothing new had appeared in the Start Menu and the program once again hung at the first item. However, this time, it wouldn't cancel and it started dancing around the screen like an epileptic tapeworm on ice and the Task Manager didn't help anything at all by joining the dance party and winning three awards. I had to use the command prompt to kill Task Manager, which somehow, instead, made it stop dancing, and then used it to kill the installer. God.
After that, I started getting errors such as "Your operating system is not supported." Wtf, I was running Windows Vista. Granted, it's one of the worst operating systems of all time, but surely it was supported by Web Platform Install. I mean, I just ran it twice. I clicked the link and read that only Vista Service Pack 2 was supported. I checked my computer and sure enough, I only had Service Pack 1. So, I, being the optimistic trashcan that I am, decided to install it.
No. Just.... no. First, Windows took 20 minutes installing auxiliary updates (after which I had to restart, of COURSE) before actually allowing me to start the upgrade process, which it warned would take around an hour. Okay; I took out my summer reading book and worked away at that while Vista downloaded and then installed the upgrade. I checked the screen after every page so that when the computer inevitably restarted, I could tell GRUB to boot into Windows again.
About an hour later, after I had finished about a chapter and a half of my book, I looked up and saw something horrible, something truly hideous on my screen.
WHAT THE AMANDA PALMER'S MIDDLE NAME?!?!?!?! So it decides that after an hour of installing pointless garbage on my computer and reaching 100% on all three stages of the upgrade that NOW it would fail? If there was something seriously wrong, it surely could have been checked during the installation, or even before it. Anyway, I was now too furious to continue reading my book and I sat in my chair, waiting for perhaps 20 minutes while Windows uninstalled the service pack. God.
When the computer restarted again, after it had done some more uninstalling, it finally let me back into Windows. But really, what was the point? Nothing happened--I was still on service pack one. On a whim, I decided to run Web Platform Install again. Despite having even less available items to install this time, it actually (sort of) worked. I left it running in the background and 10 minutes later, it told me that it had installed one item and wanted to restart. "Oh god, please shoot me," was probably what I was thinking at that point.
So, find, I restarted the computer. Except, when the computer turned back on, it said "Uninstalling Service Pack". WTF? You already did that! Plus, it can't be anything serious--I was just using Windows! OH MY GOD I THINK I MIGHT EXPLODE. I was really quite angry at this point--and suddenly, I had a vision of what might happen if I had to use Windows all the time. I drew a little comic of what it might look like:
Image of me copyright Drifty. Image of Laptop probably copyright Acer. Image of window copyright I don't know and I don't care. :P
Later on, when my computer had finished it's reboot and finished installing everything, I found that not only was I right about Visual Web Developer not being installed, but that it was also the reason I was getting the error message before! The only reason I was able to successfully install the other stuff was because I used a different link to download Web Platform Installer, one that didn't include Web Developer and now that I did want it, I would have to upgrade to the latest Service Pack.
It was at this point that I decided to stop being so lazy and just write the one extra query needed to replace the need for navigation properties.
I'm a Linux fangirl, foo. :P
onOkay--remember The Grand Upgrade back in January? When I was updating all of those outdated pieces of software on my server? Well, I did forget to mention one fairly obvious outdated piece of software that is used perhaps more often that any of the others listed. Well, maybe I didn't forget to mention per se seeing as I didn't update it that day. Well, yesterday I finally did.
If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm talking about The Fourm. Yes, The Fourm is a freakishly old piece of software, as it used to run on an original copy of phpBB 3.0. That's nearly three years old. whistles Yes, I know, it's commonly believed that The Fourm ran on phpBB 3.0.2, but I vaguely remember, two years ago, trying to upgrade The Fourm to 3.0.2 and encountering some difficulty that required me to revert the changes (even though The Fourm still ended up saying 3.0.2), which is probably the reason that I have been too afraid to upgrade The Fourm since as it left me the impression that I had hacked The Fourm too badly to upgrade it. That, and the fact that 3.0.1 and 3.0.2 were released after the launch of The Fourm, is what leads me to believe that our friend The Fourm was actually previously running on an original copy of phpBB 3.0.
Anyway, yesterday, I set myself up at my computer and worked at upgrading The Fourm to the newest version available. I ran it through once on the testing copy on my laptop, learned from my mistakes and wrote down a checklist and eventually did the real thing. And good golly gosh, it worked. The Fourm is sparkly clean and brand new. :D 355 bugs fixed, 54 new features, 88 general changes made and 4 security holes patched. Once again, whistles
One of the things that I am especially excited about for The Fourm is the new ability to use reCAPTCHAs on registration forms rather than the home-brand one included with phpBB. I have had a real problem with spam registrations in the past on The Fourm and it has led me to disable user registration several times. I last opened it up again some time in late July and by the time that I upgraded phpBB yesterday, I had to delete 375 freaking spam registrations. Whut. I know.
Anyway, while the spam registrations weren't too much of a problem since most of them couldn't be activated due to The Hotmail Bug, which has spread to a lot of other email providers, it's a good thing I've plugged that hole with a reCAPTCHA because I have finally fixed The Hotmail Bug! Incidentally, I suggested the solution that I used nearly two years ago and I once again ignored myself. :P Yes, I know I claimed to have fixed it, but I really don't know why I would have said that because when I looked at my server yesterday, the fix was clearly not there. Perhaps The Grand Upgrade, which happened a day after that post was posted, messed with it somehow. I dunno. :P Anyway, it's great that Four Island can now actually email people and though this opens the spam activation problem up, that problem is neatly solved with phpBB3's new reCAPTCHA module. :)
The third awesome thing which ties into the first: my server has been broken out of it's jail! I mentioned the restrictions placed on my server before and never really explained what they were, but it's not necessary anymore because they're gone! And you know what that means: reCAPTCHAs (AND PINGBACKS :D) actually work now! I had previously removed reCAPTCHAs from Four Island anonymous commenting due to the fact that they never worked and prevented people from commenting, but I have now added them back! Also, if my server hadn't been freed, reCAPTCHAs wouldn't have worked on The Fourm either, so I'm glad that this had happened just in time. :P
Anyway, so The Fourm now has no spam registrations, Four Island has less spam and I can finally receive email notifications from The Fourm again. Hoo-ray. However, there's one last thing I want to mention: WE NEED TO REVIVE THE FOURM!
Click the link. Read. Learn. Act. Because I've typed too much in this post already and it's nearly half past 11. Goodnight. :P
onYay! Quite a few people said that they would quit Facebook (though I must admit--I voted twice :P). I would be interested to know, though: for those who said they don't use Facebook, what alternatives do you use? :P
Do you think you will ever quit Facebook? YES! some other words - 5 vote(s)! No, Imma miss all me bffls and chinese fud! - 2 vote(s)! Lol, I don't use Facebook. LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY - 4 vote(s)! Indifferent - 1 vote(s)!
Okay, so this weekend, I'm away. AWAY. And I spent most of yesterday writing a fairly long post, which I may post tomorrow three hour distraction okay, so, um, let's just skip to caption'd! :P
Snowball Fight
I See You!
I'm actually rather proud of myself--I posted quite a few times this week! Anyway, I've really got to work on those music reviews--especially as I'm buying a new CD this Friday! :P Hopefully this week's as good as last week! :P
onOh my god, I have to share this.
This is a tangential story, but not one with a particularly happy ending.
Yesterday, while I was bored, I spent a whole bunch of time reading quotes from the XKCD Quotes Database. I came across a quote that linked to TV Tropes. I was doomed before the page even finished loading.
For those who don't know, TV Tropes is like Wikipedia multiplied by a hundred million. It's about devices and conventions that authors can and will use in their works, many of which have become clichΓ©d and a list of them and the works themselves. This site is infamous for it's ability to keep you trapped within it's walls all day. I went from LaserGuidedAmnesia to FairlyOddParents to LotusEaterMachine, sidetracked temporarily to 1408 (scared myself a bit reading about that), back to Oubliette, to HighOctaneNightmareFuel, to NightmareFuel and finally to FridgeHorror. While I opened many tabs off of FridgeHorror, I never got to read them. Sitting inconspicuously in the middle of the page was the link that brought would inevitably be my downfall. As TV Tropes would call SchmuckBait:
"Animal Crossing is made of this trope. If you don't know what I'm talking about, see here, but don't expect to sleep at all for a few days. No, really."
I DIDN'T LISTEN.
The link led to a story called "The Terrible Secret Of Animal Crossing". And let me tell you, it is quite scary. The fridge horror can be quite amusing the first few times (I love how Tom Nook says "Everyone who works here wears a uniform!" AND THERE ARE NO OTHER WORKERS :P). Don't get me wrong, it's unbelievably awesome story, but it's most likely the same awesome as The Ring or The Number 23. It's like creepypasta with Animal Crossing. I don't know what creepypasta is, but I wanted to say it because it sounded funny. Now excuse me while I get my DS and empty my inventory of gyroids. has a heart attack when she inadvertently digs up a gyroid GET IT OFF OF ME- shot
It was a bit exciting, too, as my favorite Animal Crossing character Tangy appeared in the story a few times. She appears in my (not as insane, but still pretty weird) Animal Crossing story "Obsession" and is the first character I ever met in my copy of the game. We quickly became best friends :P. Also, our birthdays are on the same day, WHICH IS AWESOME. :P
Anyway, I invite you to read it. The Terrible Secret Of Animal Crossing. Read it. I can't say that it's more insane than House Of Leaves (which I also love!), but seriously, be smart and read it during the day. I didn't. And look what's happened to me? :P
Finally, if there's one thing that I've taken away from this experience (and you'll understand when you read the story):
I am *NEVER** going to summer camp again.*
onSometime last year, after MSN became uncool and before I realized there was such a thing as Google Talk, Skype became the primary method of communication in my circle of friends. I have to say I regret this decision SO much, and it's due to one single fact: I am insane. Lol, no, but the problem is, as I've mentioned before, I have to have a log of every conversation I've had with my friends and while Skype will log your conversations for you, it makes it very difficult for you to interact with them. You have to actually use the Skype client to read your chatlogs--they aren't stored in text files and you can't just go find the files and read them. Also, Skype displays all of your conversations with a contact at the same time and you have to wait while Skype loads them all. Clearly, for an insane person like me, this isn't acceptable.
Since then, I have mainly switched to Google Talk and so have a few of my friends. Some of them still use Skype, however, and so I am forced to use the skype4pidgin Pidgin plugin to communicate with them. Sure, it requires that Skype is kept open, but it doesn't matter to me because Pidgin logs our conversations and that's all I really care about.
However, there is still one problem: all my logs from before the switch are still trapped inside of Skype. How do I get them out? I've searched around on Google quite a bit and finally found a solution: Skype has a feature in it called the Public API. With a bit of coding skill, you could use that to get information out of Skype. Perhaps even, chatlogs? :P
Anyway, the only bindings for the Skype API I could find were in Python (Skype4Py), so I quickly learned the basics of Python and set myself to work. And soon enough, I had a little script that could export all of your Skype chatlogs into HTML files, similar to how Pidgin stores your logs. I was really quite excited about this and decided that I wanted to share it as it was probably a common goal of many people.
Here it is, my little script that could: Download skypelogs2text.py.
Here's how to run this script. First off, make sure that Skype is running and that you are logged in. Next, if you run Linux:
sudo apt-get install wget python python-skype mkdir skypelogs2text cd skypelogs2text wget http://other.fourisland.com/skypelogs2text.py chmod +x skypelogs2text.py ./skypelogs2text.pySkype will ask you if you want to allow the script access to the Public API and you should let it. :P Anyway, if you have Windows, since you are probably less familiar with the terminal interface, let's run through this graphically:
- Download Python from its website and install it.
- Download Skype4Py from Sourceforge and install it.
- Download my script into an empty folder.
- Double click on my script.
- Skype will ask you if you want to allow the script access to the Public API. Click "Allow".
Either way, you will then have to wait. Depending on how many conversations you have stored in Skype, this may take quite a while. I had 371 on Linux and it took eight minutes and six seconds. Regardless, when you are done, you should have a folder called "logs" that contains a folder called "skype" that contains a folder with the same name as your Skype handle that contains all your logs. Isn't that great? The logs folder can be integrated with your normal Pidgin logs folder and then you will be able to read your logs from the Pidgin log viewer. :D
So, now that I've accomplished this, what's next on my checklist? Get my friends to stop using Skype! (And Facebook Chat, for that matter, but that's going to be taken care of :P) I would like it if more people switched Google Talk (my favorite feature of theirs is that all conversations are logged on the server so even if you cannot log from your client, they will log for you :P), but it's lack of accessible video-chat may be stopping that from happening. However, you just wait: when FourChat comes out, there will be no stopping me! laughs evilly :P