Four Island

This post is the second day of VisitorGrid Week. For more information, read the post linked to right there.

Many people on the internet have blogs. Many people have more than one blog. But do you have one?

There are many good reasons for you to have a blog. That's why I've decided to make a list! YAY! This is probably going to be terrible (as it's my first blog post list), but anyways, here we go!

1. Blogging is fun
2. Blogging is a method of telling people of the outside world your feelings
3. Blogging is a way to connect to people you don't know
4. Blogging is a good way to vent your feelings
5. Blogging is a good way to get feedback from your visitors
6. Blogging is a good way to have daily content on your site
7. Blogging makes it easier to have a reason to make a site
8. A blog can be an online diary
9. Blogging can be a way to speak your feelings to the world without revealing your true identity
10. People on the internet who have blogs can sometimes look more professional
11. Having a blog can be a good way to direct traffic to your site
12. A blog doesn't always have to be an updates archive. You can use it as a type of game
13. A blog can keep your visitors updated to the most recent events on your site
14. Blogging can be a way to keep yourself from being bored
15. Um.... insert more good reasons here

Ok, that was terrible. But I hope you enjoyed it!

By the way, if you have any ideas that you think would do well on this list, please comment!

NOTE: Verify blognomic.net, make sure it's not a different TLD

This post is the second day of VisitorGrid Week. For more information, read the post linked to right there.

Today I thought I'd vent some more of my anger towards Apple. It's time to be angry at the iPhone.

The iPhone.... GAH. It's so terrible, only an idiot would like it. So, naturally, I got an idiot to come in for an interview.

Hello Douglas, that is your name isn't it?

Hatkirby

Yes

Douglas

Ok. So, Douglas, why do you like the iPhone?

Hatkirby

Because it has a touch screen.

Douglas

But Douglas, the DS you are playing right now also has a touch screen.

Hatkirby

And I like it! So I like things with Touch Screens. It's also the only iPod with a Touch Screen so far.

Douglas

Um, Douglas. That's not exactly true. Ever heard of the iTouch?

Hatkirby

They're made at the same time. They're the same thing except the iPhone has a phone.

Douglas

Um.... ok. Any other reason you think the iPhone's good?

Hatkirby

It's awesome.

Douglas

That didn't exactly answer my question, Douglas.

Hatkirby

It's a phone. It's the first iPod thing that's a phone. It's very new.

Douglas

Um, that's quite apparent from looking at it. Well, iPod's are IPODs, not cellular phones. Why do you need an MP3 players with a phone in it?

Hatkirby

Because then you don't need to buy a phone and an iPod. Then you just have an iPhone.

Douglas

Well, that's a thingy. Anyway, thanks for coming today Douglas.

Hatkirby

Your welcome.

Douglas

Um.... that wasn't quite the answer I was expecting.

Hatkirby

You scare me.

Douglas

....Ok, this interview's over.

Hatkirby

Well, as you can see, the idiot has some good reasons for himself to want an iPhone. Which means, that if you have these reasons.... well.... um.... runs away

NOTE: If anyone was offended by this post, I am sorry. I am just expressing my immense dislike of Apple. No idiots were harmed in the making of this post.

I really don't like posting more than once a day, but this is necessary. I was looking through my logs recently when I saw that my webserver had a lot of email, somehow. I looked through it, and this is what I saw:

This is the mail system at host trindla.fourisland.com.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

                   The mail system

<****@hotmail.com>: host mx4.hotmail.com[65.54.244.104]
said: 550 DY-001 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail
for policy reasons. We generally do not accept email
from dynamic IP's as they are not typically used to
deliver unauthenticated SMTP e-mail to an Internet mail
server. http://www.spamhaus.org maintains lists of
dynamic and residential IP addresses. If you are not an
email/network admin please contact your E-mail/Internet
Service Provider for help. Email/network admins, please
visit http://postmaster.live.com for email delivery
information and support (in reply to MAIL FROM command)

Apparently, I'm not allowed to send emails to Windows Live Hotmail. Among the messages rejected were:

• The activation code for someone trying to register for the Fourm. Gryphic, this's probably your friend.
• A password reset email. Pyro, this is yours, sorry about that. Now you know why you didn't get the email.
• Various pingback and comment notification messages from Color Pencils. This is probably why Gryphic never noticed I commented on her "The Pigeon Reports" page.

I'm really sorry about this and I'll try to get it fixed by routing my email through my ISP's email server. Again, I'm sorry. If you have a Hotmail account and you haven't been recieving emails, this is why.

This post is the first day of VisitorGrid Week. For more information, read the post linked to right there.

A few weeks ago, I was cleaning my room up, preparing for the move back to America. I looked up on top of my bookshelf and found a big stack of papers I had completely forgotten about. They were old papers, stories and drawings I had created years and years ago. One that I found I particularly felt I had to share with you:

I drew that picture a verrrrry long time ago. Yes, quite a long time ago. That's right, it is a four. In fact, it's the original Fourie.

I had named it Fourie back when I had created it, but I had thought that I had lost it ages ago. But, now it's found again.

The interesting thing is to compare it with the modern Fourie. The original Fourie had a more angular body, while the modern Fourie has a curved one. (Actually, I have a strange way of writing the glyph 4 that other people seem to think is a U, a 9 or an h) Also, the original Fourie had dots for eyes while the modern one has vertical lines.

All in all, I'm happy to have found this old relic again, as well as the rest of the sentimental junk I found in that pile upon my bookshelf.

Ok, that was the LONGEST POLL EVER. Let's be afraid of the Poll Of The Four Months. And the paradox, how can you vote that you don't vote? Very strange, but at least Four Island's back up!

My Opinion - 22 vote(s)! No, even if I think "Yes" - 0 vote(s)! Yes, even if I think "No" - 2 vote(s)! I don't vote - 8 vote(s)!

For once, I've decided to run a weekly (as in, a full week, not once a week) special. Because of the How To Write a Good Blog Post tutorial I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I've decided to create a VisitorGrid.

I laid out the "wants" and the "needs" and then spent about 6 hours filling in the boxes. I filled them all out but two, and I chose 6 of the best ideas to actually implement.

Now, everyday this week (except Saturday, of course), I will be posting a post whose inspiration comes directly from my VisitorGrid. At the end of the week, on Saturday, I'll release my VisitorGrid so you can see the original ideas and the ones I decided not to do.

I hope this'll be a lot of fun!

EDIT: To JAL, Gryphic and Timbo94, I know your websites are down. Sooooorrry about that! I can't fix it tonight, but I'll try ASAP tomorrow! Sorry! I was tweaking :)

Ok, so the first week of Four Island being back up is coming to a close. Tomorrow I'll post my regular weekly poll, so don't worry. I just wanted to say a few things about Four Island.

First of all, that weird thing with the duplicate posts, yes, that was my fault. Don't blame Four Island. When I was manually posting the "I'm back!" post, I accidentally posted it twice, so I removed the second and posted the Lorelle post. But, I forgot to remove the Lorelle post from the pending queue, so Four Island decided to post it again the next day. Sorry about that!

Four Island's source control system has been changed from Subversion to Mercurial. This is because as I can't always be at the server now, I can make use of Mercurial's distributive property by downloading the repository and modifying that off the network, then pushing the changes back to the server later.

The project management system has also been changed from Trac to Redmine, an interesting-looking system that allows you to host all your projects in a SINGLE environment instead of many different ones. I hope it works out well, it was a chore to set up as it runs on Ruby on Rails.

By the way, I've been checking the new quotes queue recently and found quite a lot there. I just want to say, if you're logged in when you submit the quote, it'll go straight to the database without me having to verify it. That way, it's less work for me and your quote shows up instantly.

I know what you're thinking. I'm going to start this post with my "Recently, I....." line that I've completely overused. Well, forget it. I've already written the first line, and it's not "Recently, I....", it's "I know what you're thinking." See? I've outsmarted you. The "Recently, I...." line is in the second paragraph.

Recently, I wrote a post entitled Lorelle Link and Comment Challenge which included a link to a post on Timbo94's blog, Dream Weaver. Timbo94 seems to have a strange habit of including special characters in his blog post titles, which mess up the permalink badly. In fact, when I clicked on the link in my admin panel, it just came up as 404.

Because of this, I decided to change his permalink structure to not include post titles. I discovered Wordpress' page on Permalink Structure Tags, and I was soon messing around, trying to create the ugliest permalink structure I could. In fact, I ended up with the monstrous:

/%category%/%author%/%year%%monthnum%%day%%minute%%second%
        %post_id%/

While that was fun, it made me think. If you're going to have a permalink structure (if you don't, I'll be scared of your blog), make sure it's a good one that you won't want to change sooner or later. Changing your permalink structure can make old backlinks fail, but a bad permalink structure (like special characters in post titles), backlinks will also fail.

In the case of Timbo, he should either have used a different permalink structure to begin with, or simply omitted the special characters from his post titles. And, the latter's probably preferable because, well, fourisland.com/blog/permalink-structure/ is much prettier than, to take the example of Wordpress' default permalink structure, fourisland.com/blog/?p=18 (or whatever this post's ID is).

But, you should also remember, that when picking a permalink structure, if you're going to make it obnoxious like the monstrosity above, make sure you actually like it before setting it in stone.

This post is an attempt to complete Lorelle's Unusual Blog Subjects Blog Challenge.

I'm here to talk about two strange things that I saw recently. One, is the fact that when I logged in to write this post, I had to solve a reCAPTCHA. That's normal. What wasn't normal, however, was the fact that the second word I had to type in wasn't, in fact, a word. It was "3" and then a "one over two" fraction glyph. Now, there normally isn't a fraction key on the keyboard, is there. I just put in "3.5"

The other strange thing is this blog I found out about recently (on Plurk, in fact) called One Red Paperclip. It's the story about this person who takes a single red paperclip and trades it to someone for something of higher value. He then trades that item for one of greater value and so on until he receives a house.

That is a pretty strange idea, I thought. But apparently, apart from getting a house, he also because Mayor for a day, had a giant red paperclip constructed right outside his house, received $500, got the Key to the town, became Honorary Lifelong Citizenship and had a local holiday created to honor his paperclip quest. Goodness, that's one big prize! And all for one measly little paperclip. 8D

NOTE: I am sorry about the double posting thing. I don't know what's wrong, and I'm going to check it out as soon as possible. Thank you.

I've been reading a blog recently called Lorelle on Wordpress. It's a blog about blogging, and it's UBER GOOD. I don't know why, but it's like a jinxed book. I can't get off of it, there's so much good content on it.

Even if you do not have a Wordpress blog (like me), I'd still suggest Lorelle on Wordpress. Not everything posted there is strictly Wordpress related (like the title of this post, for example). A lot of it is just blogging in general.

And that brings me to the second point of this post. Dually inspired by Lorelle's "Blog Challenge" series (a type of post challenging you to post something belonging to some criteria on your blog--besides being fun, it gives you post ideas) and the comment thread of Dream Weaver's Entry 2 - "Are all Angels bad?", I've created a challenge of my own. But, since I don't want to copy Lorelle completely, I've decided I won't do a blog challenge. No, I'll do a comment challenge.

I want you to find a post on some blog (not on your own blog!) with some content that you can really reply to. Write a very long comment on it, like the ones on the DW post. Make sure you fill out the "Post Comment" form with your website's address in it, because when you write your comment, you need to comment on this post with the URL to the blog post you commented on and the username you are going as. Then, if your comment strikes me as particularly well thought-out and long, I'll post a link to your blog on my blog.

This challenge expires in exactly one month. I think it'll be interesting to see who actually cares enough about getting their blog linked to to actually manage to complete this challenge within the time limit. After the 30 days are up, I will take a day to judge, and then I'll post the results the day after. And comments posts exactly 30 days after this post will be rendered invalid.

Sorry about the excitement, I'm just so happy to be back up again!!!!! It's taken a lot of hard work (read: begging), but we're finally up again! I hope you people still like Four Island, even with our killer downtime. However, there shouldn't be many more of those as now, Four Island lives on it's own dedicated server!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In other news, I was recently in the database putting the links to the hosted sites into the main HatNav when I noticed Color Pencils' assigned AID, "lonely". I thought it was pretty funny at the time, but then I remembered that Gryphic's blog used to be called "Lonely Ramblements". Funny story, but Gryphic's blog has changed it's names several times (most of them jokes, mind, I really do hope she was kidding with "Three Island" :) ), and the result has been the lovely name you see today. (Gryphic, I know you'll change your blog's name to something hideous after you see this)

Anyway, I am so happy to be back and to be able to run my website again with all of it's fun perks. This is Hatkirby, and my closing statement is:

 * Hatkirby is listening to Running by No Doubt

It's good to be back.

EDIT: Oops, sorry, I'm back. I wanted to mention that while I did post a hidden post (Yay me!), I did disable my pending post queue for the during Four Island's downtime. The Entrecard post accidentally slipped through. Anyway, I have re-enabled the pending queue so you can get your daily Four Island fix again! (TimTam, I'm looking at you :) )