Four Island

Lol, the classic Hatkirby shift-of-interest never ceases to irritate me. Let's see what project THE PEOPLE want me to do next!

The TGS Website - 3 vote(s)! Four Island 3.0 - 3 vote(s)! Frigid Earth - 2 vote(s)! Other/Indifferent - 1 vote(s)!

People actually voted for Frigid Earth without knowing what it was? Interesting. Anyway, if you've seen Thursday's post, you'll know that I've already done a 180 and have another project in my lineup. A two year old project. Lol. Here's my current project queue in the order of when they'll be done:

1. Xidet
2. The TGS Website
3. Four Island 3.0
4. Frigid Earth
5. FourPuzzle

Yes, I'm clinically insane. Anyway, I'm really excited about Xidet and I can't wait to work on it because it will make working on those other projects easier and more productive.

No, I'm not parodying a song that I don't like, I'm actually asking if anyone remembers Xidet. If not, let me remind you. Xidet is a text editor. A text editor that is so freaking customizable that it isn't really a text editor anymore. Xidet is basically just a window with a textbox in it but it revolves around the concept of plug-ins so much that you can do pretty much anything with it by writing a plugin. To quote the odd little conversation that the voices in my head just had:

Voice 1: Hey, what's Xidet? Voice 2: What do you want it to be?

Voices in Starla's Head

Yes, I'm that zen. Anyway, Xidet was originally conceived due to my extreme frustration at NetBeans, the IDE I was using at the time to develop Tetrgi. While NetBeans and I have since made up, recently, I've just been very annoyed with the existing text editors. Especially now that I'm starting some Ruby on Rails projects, I really just want a text editor that is simple yet extremely productive. As in, I've already got all of the keyboard shortcuts memorized and it knows exactly how I like to format my code (so many text editors disregard my strange formatting style! :P) and I can deploy projects from within the editor and such. How is this possible? Well, my revised idea for Xidet is:

1. We start with a window with an empty text area in it. Yep. That's Xidet.
2. Then we bring some plugins in. Xidet will come with a default set of plugins that add things like File and Edit menus and the ability to save your document. These plugins will be installed and enabled first-run, but they can be removed if you want as they are plugins (though why on earth you would want to do that is beyond me).
3. Bring in the big stuff. More plugins can be written like a syntax highlighting framework, followed by plugins depending on that plugin that contain the rules for highlighting certain languages. And the thing will be that not only can you choose which of the huge matrix of plugins you wish to install, but they will all be totally customizable from Xidet. You can choose which colors the syntax highlighters use or select from a series of pre-defined sets. You can choose which keyboard shortcuts do what and how to auto-format your code. Anything's possible if you only beliiiiiieve! :P

Yes, 'tis awesome. I know what you're thinking, though. "It's the classic Hatkirby shift of interest! She always comes up with some project that's better or more important than the one she's currently doing!" Well.... yes. :P But this time I'm serious. The productivity that Xidet will provide will make it much easier to work on The TGS Website (which is my "current" project :P). I promise! I'm just very excited about this new idea because it would help enormously.

I would also like to know if there's anyone out there that knows Java or Ruby that would like to work on this project with me. It would be insanely cool to be able to collaborate with someone using version control and Redmine. It'd be like:

Voice 1: Okay, there's a bug in the plugin dispatch method. I'm going to write a ticket about it and assign it to you. Voice 2: Great. I'll work on that tonight. * later * Voice 2: I've completed the change and marked it complete! Voice 1: That's awesome, but your recent commit conflicted with mine! Voice 2: Oh well, I guess it's time to merge our changes!

Voices In Starla's Head

Yeah, maybe I should stop sharing what goes on in my head. :P

Sometimes, I think that I'm the only one who knows what I'm talking about. Come on, nobody else liked InstaDisc? It was awesome! Anyway, here are the results:

InstaDisc - 2 vote(s)! Xidet - 0 vote(s)! Project Soshibi - 1 vote(s)! Other/Indifferent - 7 vote(s)!

Anyway, this week's poll is about what project I should work on now. I'm currently undecided between Four Island 3.0, Frigid Earth and The TGS Website, though I do think I should do The TGS Website before Four Island 3.0 to increase my Ruby skills :P

Does anyone remember a post on this blog a few years ago about a program called "Nonsense"? A few blog posts have gone mysteriously missing for no reason (like 2008's Christmas Day post) and that bothers me. You see, I have an obsession with archiving. I MUST KNOW EVERYTHING THAT EVER HAPPENED AAAARGGHHH!!!! :P (That, btw, is the reason I hate Skype, because its chat logs are stored in a proprietary binary format. You'll see, I'll all convert you when Four Island 3.0 comes out. Just wait and see.... :P)

Anyway, I bring this up because TimTam recently asked me about it. I have mentioned Nonsense before in random posts such as Four Island is destroyed by Color Pencils and A Short Tribute To Doctor Who but, other than in 2008's mysterious vanishing post, I've never really explained what it was.

Remember Humorix? Well, on their website, they have a Downloads page with a few random oddities. One of these oddities is an interpreter called "Nonsense". To quote Humorix,

Nonsense generates random (and sometimes humorous) text from datafiles and templates using a very simple, recursive grammar. It's like having a million monkeys sitting in front of a million typewriters, without having to feed or clean up after them. From the Slashdot homepage to absurd college courses to buzzword bingo cards, Nonsense is a good way to waste time.

Humorix

During Four Island's extended downtime (omg, that was such a long time ago! :P), I wrote a script for Nonsense that generates humorous Four Island quotes (and American Pie parodies :P). Originally, some of the diction that I used has some innuendos and the quotes came out sounding quite wrong. :P Recently, however, I've revamped the script so as to make it sound more appropriate (but just as funny!) and grammatically correct. You can find the script here. Download the Nonsense program from its website and run the script like this:

./nonsense -f hatkkirby.data Quote

You can replace "Quote" with "AmericanPie" for a parody of American Pie :P

However, I know most of you scalawags don't use Linux and probably don't have a Perl interpreter installed. So, I've included a few examples to make you loffle!

#536 + (190) - [X]

JAL: I'm going to a toilet while listening to Happy Ending, listening to My Interpretation and asking Hatkirby "What are you doing?" with my sexist Madonna.
Hatkirby: Hihat!
JAL: HIHAT BLUEMONKEY I'M WHAT THE FSCK SMELLY DRAWING A PICTURE WITH SAMMI9494 HAHAHAHA!
Hatkirby: Are you stupid?
JAL: I'm asking Bluemonkey "Are you smelly?"
Hatkirby: ****! That's so alive that I think I'll start being hyperactive!
Hatkirby: Byee!
JAL: ....cyas
Ozzyfrog: SMILEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OH MY T_CASE!!!!!!!! YOU SLOWLY OWE ME 141 MOVIE THEATERS!
Sammi9494: I am drawing a picture with Timbo94 with Pyro's cinder block in North Dakota.
* Hatkirby is eating Douglas
* Bluemonkey thinks Hatkirby is stupid
* Pyro is going to wow-pie.de

#534 + (143) - [X]

Sammi9494: I hate Sammi9494 because she's so gross!

#474 + (959) - [X]

Tamasys: I desire JAL because he's so noobish!
* JAL is making a Star Rod
Tamasys: I collect Hatkirby's phones.
Hatkirby: I annoyingly collect dead Adenosine Triphosphates.
* JAL is listening to music
Tamasys: 23
Bluemonkey: I am radioactive when I am asking "How are you doing?".
Sammi9494: My pasta is listening to Headlock by Imogen Heap, as well as being hyperactive, as well as falling 1993 floors off a high building at Four Island, as well as asking Pyro "Do you want a jawdroppingly thin cinder block??" with my lollipops and eating Mary Poppins with my Douglas with my oneric computer.

Lofflecopter. Also, an online version of my script has existed for a while but in a very bad shape. I've fixed it up so that it's usable so now, you don't even have to download Nonsense! Just go to the online version and loffle. :P

Hmm, it's pretty equal. Some people actually think I can do it? Okay! I can safely say that I've passed the first full week of 2010 without failing yet. Let's see how it goes from there.

YES YOU ARE THE BEST - 5 vote(s)! No. Yuo fail - 5 vote(s)! Wh.... who are you? - 0 vote(s)! Indifferent - 1 vote(s)!

It seems in my post strike last year, I neglected to do the obligatory Christmas Day post. Well, actually, I completely missed out on Christmas Week. Last year (lol, two years ago) I did some fun things like reviewing an extremely odd play that I had written when I was young (I had written another play that I planned to review this year, but.... :P), writing an extremely corny story and temporarily reviving KFM.

Actually, looking back at 2008, you will not find a Christmas post. That is because, somehow, the contents of the row were deleted from the database (even though the actual row wasn't deleted). I keep meaning to check my backup (yes, you read that correctly, I only have one pre-October '09 backup) and restore the post, if possible, but anyway, back to last year.

The main thing I was going to write about in my Christmas post was the most important Christmas present: a new laptop! Oh my god, I know! :P It took two days to transfer my files, set up Ubuntu and install all of my programs, but it was worth it! However, I currently have one problem that doesn't want to be fixed.

When I installed Ubuntu, I opted for the new ext4 filesystem rather than ext3. It seems I made a mistake. Today, while on my Windows side, trying for the fourth time to mount my Ubuntu filesystem, I discovered something terrible. First off, as you may know, while Linux is very nice about foreign filesystems, Windows has remained blind and apathetic. I had previously managed to mount my Linux partitions on my old computer (which had an ext3 filesystem) using a third-party IFS driver that was actually for ext2, but as ext3 was backwards compatible, it worked okay.

Both last week and today, using four different IFS drivers, when I mounted my partition, all I could see were the root subdirectories (such as "home", "usr" and "bin") and nothing else. These folders didn't contain anything either. It was very frustrating until I remembered that I had ext4 and I realized that that was probably what was causing the problem. At that point it became very annoying because I would now have to either remember to transfer files while still on Linux or use a memory stick. It gets worse, however.

When I next booted into Ubuntu, I looked back to the screen to a horrible sight. "Why is it in terminal mode?" I wondered, "Oh god, is it a kernel panic?" It wasn't, but the error message wasn't much better. "ERROR MOUNTING ROOT PARTITION - LOADING MAINTENANCE PROMPT - PRESS CONTROL-D TO RETRY". I crossed my fingers and pressed ^D, but I just got the same error again, along with some more information, however. It now said "OMG RUN FSCK MANUALLY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (not verbatim :P). So I ran fsck, pressed ^D again and it now worked. It gave me quite a scare, though.

So, when deciding which filesystem to use, if you dual-boot with Windows, go with ext3 but otherwise, you should go with ext4. I really don't know what extents are but I'm just going to assume it's better in some way. :P

So, does anyone remember the Quote Of The Month? Lol, AGES ago, I used to post about the highest rated quote that month. Well, I only did it once last year and that was in January. So, I've decided to skip QOTM and instead replace it with the Quotes Of The Year!

2009 was an.... odd year. Four Island kind of exploded during 2009 and not much happened. There were some good quotes, however, and I'm going to list them for you! Here are the 10 most popular quotes from 2009!

1. #248 The Lollipop Desert
2. #229 The CHEESE BLOCK EQUATION
3. #212 Earthrandoms
4. #200 I'm Naked!
5. #186 Smiley Is Slimey
6. #171 Hatkirby by Rihanna
7. #272 HLFS
8. #223 Fangirls
9. #265 Buried The Kitchen In Fat

And the number one quote of 2009 is....

1. #232 Blank

Yes, I see the irony. :P Anyway, 2009 had some really good quote. Most of the quotes up there spawned memes. Anyway, those were the quotes of 2009! I'm hoping for some more hilarious, meme-spawning quotes in 2010! Get to cracking jokes! :P And just so you know, the most popular quote overall is:

#112 Loading Very Slowly

It's 2010! And what better way to start a new year than by having people actually vote on my poll?

YES....... yes? - 7 vote(s)! Nawwwwwwwww - 0 vote(s)! Who's there? - 1 vote(s)! Indifferent - 0 vote(s)!

That's odd, people are actually voting! :P Anyway, this year I'm hoping to actually complete my annual goals and, well, that'll be good! Yay! Have a great new year!

It's January 1st once again! And before we go anywhere, let me wish you a HAPPY NEW YEAR YAYS! :P I like the repetition thing. So, anyway, exactly 1 year ago, I wrote a post about my 2009 goals. I'm going to write a list of goals for this year as well, but first, let's see if I successfully completed last year's goals!

• Increase RSS subscribers to 10 - Yes! This is surprising, but I've been noticing all year that my RSS subscriber count has been around my goal level. I requested at least 10 subscribers and the count has been flucuating between 9 and 11 for a while. Currently, it's at 11, so I consider this a pass!
• Write popular posts - I don't know exactly how to grade this one. For one thing, I barely posted last year (poll posts don't count!), but I did write some posts which were long....ish. Some inspirations such as Kirby Week and The Bet helped me to do so. The goal, however, quotes the Popular Posts module, and as you may have noticed, there is a 2009 post in the list: The Mystery Of The Ancient Fountain Of Dreams. Odd. :P So, for this one, I'm just going to say NEUTRAL and I'll make this year's goals clearer. :)
• Average around 1 comment per post - Comments? There were 68 comments posted by people other than me last year. How many posts did I post last year? 92. That's right, even with my dismal posting frequency last year, there were less comments than posts. Sad.
• Update the POTW on time - Wow, I seriously failed the late poll posting goal. For a while in the last quater of 2009, I was updating the POTW on a bi-weekly basis. Fail.
• Don't post random polls - Yes, I made random polls. I really need to come up with some good ideas for this year. Fail.
• The final goal was a joke, if no one noticed. :P

So, I passed 1 of 5 goals and failed 3 of 5. Wow, I did really badly last year. I hope I can do better this year. So, without further ado, here's my 2010 goals!

• Increase my RSS subscriber count to approx. 15 subscribers.
• Write at least one non-poll post every week. This is important because I am ashamed at my non-postiness in 2009. In 2008, I posted nearly every day!
• On that note, don't neglect to update the Poll Of The Week! It must be updated once a week on Saturday.
• Try not to post random poll posts. Make a list of upcoming polls if you have to.
• Get people to comment! Once again, I'm aiming for, on average, 1 comment per post. This allows for unpopular posts because people may comment frequently on popular posts.
• Revive The Fourm! Get people posting! I'm aiming for us to pass the 9000th post sometime this year. I mean, it's definitely possible. We had around 6000 posts posted in 2008. I think we can manage 700.
• Revive Fouripedia! There's a lot of new content that hasn't been added yet. I expect to see at least 10 new non-stub articles on Fouripedia by the end of the year. I know, it's not that big of a goal, but I was seriously lazy last year.
• Revive True Falsities! True Falsities was actually a 2009 project, so I can't compare it to 2008, but in the first half of the year we had so many people writing stories. Nowadays, there's one or two stories a month. I want at least two stories every month on True Falsities this year!
• Omg. Freaking. Revive. Pillowcase. I've been promising Season 3 for so long now and I've postponed it many times. Finish the season and post the comics! 2009 saw two seasons of Pillowcase, and I expect the same this year. And no cop-outs!

Wow, I'm really being harsh with myself this year. Well, I was incredibly lazy last year and I didn't get anything done. Anyway, 2009 is over and it is now 2010! Welcome to the new decade! I hope you all had a wonderful New Year and I hope 2010 is a good year for everyone!

It's New Years Eve! OMG! This is so exciting, soon it'll be 2010 and Four Island will be different yet again! Does anyone remember last year when all of the blog posts had red calendars next to them? Lol, we've been looking at blue calendars for so long.... And tomorrow it will change again.... to purple! :)

So, last year on New Years Eve, I posted a list of random/cynical predictions of what was to occur in 2009. Did any of them come true? Well, I did make a seventh layout, but not until September. :P And I did reinstall my operating system once, but on my personal computer (because I had somehow deleted the contents of /sbin.... :P) not my server.

This year, because I like the whole annual tradition thing, I will also be writing a list of predictions. But not in list form. I wrote an extremely strange song! :P

In the year oh-ten No-thing would hap-pen Because everyone will be busy typing "Greetings :)" into Yaplet!

Starla will change her site Into an Imogen Heap fan...site And then she'll realize she's pronouncing "Imogen" wrong and change it back like that!

TimTam'll make a wiki About a witch in Helsinki Then we'll all mob him from stealing a joke from Sabrina!

And Drifty, she will write A hundred stories in one night Then she'll post them all to FourFiction and my server will explode!

And Smiley, he will post Exactly one post, about toast And he will receive a medal for not posting about com-pu-ters!

And Sammi, she will draw All over her grand-maw Then she'll get grounded for so long that she'll actually write on her blog!

Then Bluemonkey and I Will collab on Layout 9 Until I realize he's trying to write it in ASP and I m-fire him and he m-quits and I realize that I skipped Layout 8! phew

And Pyro will perform A hostile-takeover of the town Jorm Then every day and every night will be a national holiday!

And Ozzyfrog, he will fly Right up in to the Sky And then receive a ticket for flying into a cable company!

And maybe J-A-L Will invent some sort of smell That makes iguanas want to eat toast and he becomes very rich!

And Timbo.... (oh, right, he discontinued his blog) will breathe air!

And True Falsities Will run another story About New Years being redirected to /dev/null and nobody knows what that means!

My router will explode (again) My website will be hacked (again) And Google will be acquired by Soy Products Ltd!

"2010 In Song"

Ummm.... that was weird. :P It.... sort of follows the melody of the first verse of Different Town. :P Anyway, have a very Happy New Year and I will see you tomorrow for my annual goals post!