Four Island

This sort of goes hand-in-hand with yesterday's post of drastic changes. I often get the urge to switch to Wordpress for my blogging engine, instead of the homebrew one I currently use.

I mean, I have pride in my own work, my own, extremely customizable, hand-typed code, but sometimes, Wordpress just really looks attractive with all of it's power and the more dedicated work put into it by a team of people.

I just started reading Lorelle again, and the first post I saw was about the new release of Wordpress that came out yesterday, 2.7. I was a little interested, but what really caught my attention was the new admin panel. It looks soooooo good! How can I resist?

It's hard, resisting a wonderful looking package (that, by the way, Color Pencils and Dream Weaver use) for my own work, but it's worth it. While I don't get the same degree of power and looks, I get the power that I want that Wordpress can't provide as easily: complete freedom.

If there's something my blog isn't doing correctly, I can just go into the source code and fix it. If there's something in Wordpress, if I was using it, that I was unhappy with, I'd have to go hack it or try to write a good plugin.

For instance, at one point, when I was developing the 7th layout that will not exist, I was using Wordpress on the development machine. However, the first, instantly noticeable problem was, "How am I going to have a pending queue?" The thing that I find most useful with my blog is that I can just write posts to it and they're posted on a daily basis, without any required intervention from me.

Wordpress can't provide that the way I want. It does have a scheduled posting feature, but with that, you have to provide the exact date and time you want each post to be posted. That wouldn't work for me, because sometimes there's an emergency post I have to post instantly, and let the pending queue delay for one day. With Wordpress, I'd have to manually edit each post and change the post date.

This would also happen if I decided to make a simple change in the order of the posts in the pending queue. With Four Island, I click on the "Move Up" or "Move Down" button next to the necessary post. With Wordpress, I'd have to manually edit both posts in question. And what if I wanted to move a post more than one space? shivers

So, in conclusion, and without a reason to care, I don't want to use Wordpress, no matter how.... tempting it may be. And I'll try to stand by that. And if that means forcing my readers to yell at me and not read my site anymore if I switch to Wordpress, so be it. :)

Yes, this is a reference to TimTam's I Was Sleepy. It made me think. How may of us blog people like to make random, drastic changes to their websites without thinking of the consequences and hating it later? Or is it just me?

Speaking of randomly induced drastic changes, I almost decided to release a layout #7 for Four Island, so soon after the 6th layout was released, but in the end, I decided to use the theme for the TGS webs----oops! Wasn't supposed to say that yet. Oh well, I'm going to be posting about it soon enough anyway. :)

So, how many of you out there do this? Random drastic changes? Not even just your blog! I once changed my username on the Fourm to "Starla", quickly realized that it went against my statement of anonymity (though everyone knows my name anyway) and changed it back to "hatkirby". (I actually also then changed it to "StarlaXY". It was meant to be "StarlaXYZ", but I seemed to have missed the "Z" and was too lazy to fix it)

Omigosh, I just realized, I just made another stupid question post. Oh, don't groan! I love it when people contribute! COMMENTS! GIVE ME COMMENTS! AND PINGBACKS! :)

So, anyways, here's the link to the last question post: Say What?

Ok. I'm going to admit it without caring about the abuse I will get from various people for not admitting it earlier (I'm looking at you, TimTam). I like Firefox more than Internet Explorer. There, I said it.

I don't really know why I didn't say it before, I guess it's just part of the "pride" package that comes with not using Wordpress for your blog. :)

The reason I'm bringing this up is because IE is being SO ANNOYING. Any viewers out there use IE? Yes? You're lying. If you were, you couldn't read this post. For some reason, IE is hiding the text of all of my posts, horribly disfiguring The Fourm and generally being mean to Four Island.

Does anyone know why this could be? It's not just IE 6, 7 is doing it too. I've tried using the IE 7 script (the one that makes IE into a standards-compliant browser) but it doesn't work for me. So, if anyone has any ideas, I'm open! I guess this is a question post, then.

The standard seems to be to link to the last question post in all question posts, so I'll try to do that here. I think the last one was Tag Clash, but I may be wrong. :)

And yes, this post's title is a clear indication that I've been watching too much Hannah Montana. :)

This always seems strange to me. Why do most people on the internet that provide software packages, such as Linux packages that do not have standard distribution formats, or PHP sites like Wordpress, always distribute their software using gzipped tars? As in .tar.gz

I mean, really. Bzipped tars (.tar.bz2) are a much better way to compress things. Bzip2 is a much more effective compression algorithm than Gzip. I always use bzipped tars to archive my data.

Or wait. Is there some kind of deficiency with the algorithm that I don't know about? Am I going to wake up one day and find all of my backups useless? Oh dear, now I'm scared. :)

So, what is with bzip2? Is it just that people can't be bothered to switch to it, or is there some huge bug that'll eat Four Island?

Ok. So, I found about Automattic's new commenting system thing, IntenseDebate from CSS-Tricks. The features list made it sound really good, so I tried installing it, and I also got Drifty and Timbo94 to install it on their blogs too.

Well.... it's interesting. I mean, it does have it's good features, which are great, like reputation and threading and generally looking nice. But there is a problem.

It's so slooooooow! I mean, it loads quickly enough, but when I sit down to type in a comment, I'm way ahead of it and the letters are appearing the box one.... by.... one.... very.... slowly and I'm just sitting there, waiting for everything to appear so I can figure out what spelling mistakes I made.

So.... I guess IntenseDebate is pretty good. However, I'd like to argue about it with someone, so we can do that here. :) I've uninstalled IntenseDebate for the time being because I can't really have it perfectly yet until I hack the Wordpress plugin, so we're back to Four Island comments for now!

Or, even better, we can deblatog about it!

Well.... I can see now that Layout 6 has to go. Oh well. I have to stop trying to change. :)

YES!1!1!1!1 - 2 vote(s)! It's, like, ok - 6 vote(s)! No - 10 vote(s)! Indifferent - 0 vote(s)!

So yes, I guess we are once again back at Layout 4. There have been two unsuccessful attempts to move to a new layout. It seems Layout 4 is quite popular. I'll try to resist the urge to change again, kay?

So, you people will start coming back to Four Island now that Layout 6 is gone, right? Right? :)

EDIT: Oh dear, it seems like I'm just being paranoid. People actually do like Layout 6. So, we're back to it. However, Layout 6 still clashes with IE. GAH, have to fix that.

Ok. Recently, I (OMG, I didn't mean to!) attempted to help an acquatience activate their copy of Windows XP, which was expiring in a day. Their computer was really old, and it had a copy of Xubuntu Gutsy on it, but they preferred Windows XP for some strange reason.

So, I though, this'll take five seconds. Oh, but I forgot to mention, their computer didn't have internet access. Oh well. At least there's an automated phone service used to handle Windows activations (toll-free!).

So I called the number for my region and waited. It asked me a few questions like "Are you activating Windows XP?", but it wanted me to say yes or no. Confused, I answered, but the next part was the GAH.

The computer at the other end told me to recite the Windows XP activation code to her. This is a some 32 digit long number and I have to TELL her it instead of just typing in the numbers on the phone.

Warning: If you're ever trying to do this, get someone to do it who has no emotions. I giggled after the first block of numbers and the computer said: "I did not understand that. Good bye."

Oh, and by the way, it turned out that they had an expired version of Windows XP anyway, so the time I spent was futile. Oh well, at least it was funny. :)

Oh dear. About a month after I started developing InstaDisc, I was notified by Bluemonkey that things such as client side RSS readers did exist in this realm. I knew that, but it had elapsed my memory for about a year. Poop.

Now, I wonder, what is to come of InstaDisc? The only real difference I can see between InstaDisc and RSS (other than the fact that InstaDisc seems to be a whole lot more complicated) is that InstaDisc offers Push technology to INSTAntly notify you of your fixes--I mean subscriptions--instantly. However, this only works with clients that are simply behind a modem without a router in between.

So, I ask now, what should I do with InstaDisc? Discontinue it? Continue it? Completely destroy it? Run off and cry? Pass out and cry? It's up to you, readers of Four Island. Well, it's probably actually up to me, but I really like it when you people comment!

I guess, then, that InstaDisc isn't much use. I'm sad. So anyway, I guess you peoples should use Liferea Feed Reader, if on a Linux-based system, otherwise Mozilla Thunderbird is also pretty good.

Recently, I (GAH) read an article on CrunchBang called Closest Booky Wook. I like Memes, so I'm going to help propagate this one, as well as sending a Pingback. Why do I like Pingbacks so much?

Anyway, as per the instructions, here are the rules, repeated:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

I tried this instantly, with strange results. First of all, the first book I found didn't even have 56 pages. The second book I found didn't have any words on page 56. I finally found a book that fit the critera, and here's the quote:

Comprised of a basic Cross stitch with each of the four legs tacked down by a short stitch.

Encyclopedia of Needlework by Donna Kooler

....kay. I just posted the encyclopedia description of a "Rice" needlepoint stitch on Four Island. Strange.

I am OBSESSED with TiddlyWiki. Well, one TiddlyWiki in particular :)

TiddlyWiki is a wiki package that works without a server. It's completely HTML and JavaScript, self-contained in one file and is handy to carry around on a memory stick. It's so useful, like a lot.

It's easy to set up, fun to carry around (and keep away from other people :) and stuffs. It's by default a little strange, as if you click on a link, the page shows up in the middle column along with the other ones you've opened, but there's a plugin called SinglePageModePlugin (warning, that site is VERY slow) that allows you to have only one page open at a time. It's really useful.

TiddlyWiki is also themeable. Since I use mine for my diary, I decided to go with Kubrick (the default Wordpress theme). There's a link to a site with lots of themes on it at the TiddlyWiki site.

If you want to use your TiddlyWiki as a diary/journal as well, I also suggest the CalendarPlugin (same site, same slowness). Put it in your sidebar, and then the day numbers will link to the journal entries (if you use TiddlyWiki's built-in "new journal" thing)

Anyways, TiddlyWiki is the best and you should use it. Yay.