Four Island

Four Island has gone through a variety of design revisions since its creation. Here are a list of them. Note: Not all themes have pictures available. Theme versions prior to Four Island 3 (a.k.a. v6) also have an alternate name, which is listed.

v1 - Hatkirby CDI

Published: ?

Hatkirby CDI was the name of Starla Insigna's website before September 22nd, 2007, when she bought the domain "fourisland.com" and renamed her site to Four Island. She redesigned the site on the same day, creating theme v1.1, but before that, v1 looked very similar to v1.1 except without the background and with solid blocks of different colors as the backgrounds of the header, the main content and the sidebar. No official starting date is available for the same reason that the actual creation date of Insigna's website is not available: she created her blog ~1 week before purchasing "fourisland.com", but did not give her blog the ability to log the publishing dates of posts until October 15th, 2007.

v1.1 - Layout 1

Published: September 22nd, 2007

v1.1 was created after Starla Insigna renamed her website "Four Island" and differs mostly from v1 in that it features a new background portraying Four Island and a four character named Fourie.

v1.2 - Layout 2

Published: ?

v1.2 was a minor update to v1.1 that moved the sidebar into a purple CSS float. No starting date is available because, although it has for quite a while been thought of as a major layout update (for some inane reason), its creation was never documented in a blog post.

v2 - Layout 3

Published: December 3rd, 2007

v2 was the first theme version to utilize a navbar under the header instead of a sidebar like v1 had. It was also the first theme version to not use the entire width of the browser window and instead show its contents in a center-aligned width-restricted column.

v3 - Layout 4

Published: May 2nd, 2008 (first run); May 23rd, 2008 (second run)

v3 was Insigna's attempt at a more professional looking website. It uses several concepts from the design of phpbb.com.

v3.1 - Layout 5

Published: May 15th, 2008

v3.1 was a failed attempt at a minor update to v3. It looked almost exactly like v3, except the column was left-aligned and designed to look slightly like a notebook. It was disliked by most Four Island regulars and broke in most browsers/screen resolutions. Four Island reverted to v3 after only eight days.

v3.2 - Layout 4.5

Published: June 12th, 2008

v3.2 came out with Four Island 2, the first complete rewrite of the Four Island codebase. It therefore differs greatly from v3, not in design but more in organization. It also introduced the round-blue-bubble motif that would stick to Four Island for quite a while.

v4 - Layout 6

[gallery include="3584,3585" columns="2" size="medium" link="file"] Published: November 22nd, 2008 (beta); November 30th, 2008 (final)

v4 was created after Insigna started to get bored of v3.2--however, she didn't think things through carefully enough and ended up publishing a not yet completed theme on November 22nd, 2008. She continued to work on it the following week and published the completed theme on November 30th, 2008. However, due to complications, Insigna got the idea that v4 was not being well received and thinking v4 was receiving the same fate as v3.1, reverted to v3.2 on December 6th, 2008, only to bring v4 back later that day when she was told otherwise. It is the first theme version to have a sidebar on the left instead of the right. The v4 beta was the first theme version to not include the island backgrounds which had been present since v1.1; they were, however, added back in v4 final.

v4.1 - Layout 6.1

Published: January 1st, 2009

v4.1 was the first minor update to v4, and, responding to user feedback that the text could be hard to read, it encapsulated the content column with a border and a background, like v3 had.

v4.2 - Layout 6.2

Published: February 4th, 2009

v4.2 was another minor update to v4, this time adding semi-transparent backgrounds to the main content column making it easier to read the main content while still keeping the artistic backgrounds visible.

v5 - Layout 7

Published: August 9th, 2009 (officially August 13th, 2009)

After almost a year of v4, Insigna began to tire of the theme and wanted a newer, more professional, and less ugly theme for Four Island. v5 is the first theme since v1.2 to use the entire width of the browser window instead of a fluid width centered column. It also acknowledges user complaints that the sidebar was too long by moving several sidebar modules into the footer. v5 also brought with it the AJAXification of many processes on the site such as commenting, rating and voting on quotes.

v6

Published: September 22nd, 2011

Four Island 3 was released on September 22nd, 2011, after more than two years of v5 and more than three years of Four Island 2. The Four Island blog was switched to the Wordpress engine with Four Island 3 and underwent a large number of changes. v6 is a largely modified version of the Wordpress theme K2.

v7

Published: December 23rd, 2012

While looking somewhat similar to v6, v7 was in fact written from scratch. It brings the sidebar back into the main column and all links are now red.

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

As a potentially insane individual, I obsess quite a bit over music. I'm sure others can empathize, right? Well, aside from the need to scrobble absolutely EVERYTHING I listen to, one thing that annoys me is the decision "Where should I listen to my music? With iTunes or on my iPhone?" There are advantages in both directions: on iTunes, my Adium buddies get bombarded with my "listening to"s and I can easily open the lyrics for a playing song by going up to Audioscrobbler.app in the menu bar and clicking "Lyrics". However, the iPhone has the advantage of allowing you to get up and dance like an idiot while listening to music. Also, what if you started listening to a song and then saw a sock on the floor? MUST. PUT. IN LAUNDRY. Except, you just started listening to a song! Now you've got to either wait until it's over or pause it! Inconceivable! Plus, with iTunes, I sometimes get halfway through Мальчик гей before I remember that Audioscrobbler.app sucks with Unicode and the scream of scrobble-denial is heard down the street.

There is a solution, though, and it randomly appeared in my news feed about an hour ago! An iPhone/Mac app pair called "Seamless"! Seamless allows you to seamless transition from listening to a song on your iPhone to listening to it on your Mac, or vice versa. LOLOMGIWANT. The Mac app is free and the iPhone app costs $0.99, so it won't break the bank, and if you are crazy/have experienced the delusional problems listed above, this app is a must! "It saved my life!" claims random testimonial zombie one. "I won't listen to another song without it!" barks random testimonial zombie two. You've heard the people, this app pair is awesome!

You set it up by downloading both apps and then launching the Mac app. Then, you go to the iPhone app and tap "Add a Mac". It'll detect your Mac (as long as the iPhone and Mac are in the same network) and once you tap on it, your Mac will ask you if it's okay to associate with the iPhone. Click "Allow", and you're done! Now, the next time you start listening to Russian music with iTunes and you realize your mistake before the song finishes, you can just open up Seamless on your iPhone and tap "Transition Music from Mac"! HORRAY, SCROBBLING.

Okay, I understand that my warped ideals do not necessarily reflect those of everyone else (Я сошла с ума!) but there are uses of this app for other people too! The aforementioned ones, or the ones on the app's website! Oh, just go to the website and watch the author's video. Trust me, this is awesome. :D

Seamless | Five Details

Hello, everyone! It is I, your non-humble new leader, Rebecca Black! I was just on my way to Space Costco when I spotted a strange, four-shaped island in the middle of the Pacific that hadn't yet fallen to my Hypnotic Powers Of Tween Decisions Related To Which Seat I Should Take In A Vehicle Driven By A Likely Evictable Xenophobe Which Continues To Prove That I Should Be Buckled Up Because I Could Die So Much More Easily And No One Wants That, Amrite? (or HPOTDRTWSISTIAVDBALEXWCTPTISBBUBICDSMMEANOWTA, for short). I landed my RebeccaShip (made from the enslaved remains of Thursday and Sunday) and contacted the local Rebecca Black Fan (every country needs to have one!). Luckily, the silly human was also the ruler of the island and she handed over the power to me after only 45 autographs.

There have been some changes made around here recently, and I'm sure you'll all agree that they're for the better. First of all, I gave this hideous website quite a facelift, funrite?

I've also instituted a few new FRIDAY!~!!!!!11!!rules that take effect immediately.

1. No Monday. No exceptions. Our death squads are working on making this impossible.
2. FUN FUN FUN FUN.
3. From now on, whenever you're going to post something on the Fridaym, you must prefix your text with the following disclaimer:

Rebecca Black Is The One. She Sings Good Songs And Has Nice Hair. Let Us All Dance Circles Around A Gyroscope While Our Death Squads Eviscerate The Monday. Afun. 4. Sparly, my pet Friday, must be fed daily. He likes to eat Apple products. I expect the people of Four Island to pitch together to pay for Sparly's iFood. 5. All quotes have been changed to reflect that fact that I am the only person whose autotuned voice is worth listening to. For instance:

Rebecca Black: I'm afraid Drifty will laugh at me if Friday starts appearing on my last.fm Rebecca Black: lol Rebecca Black: Hey—the version I bought doesn't have the rapper in it! Rebecca Black: That actually made the song better! Rebecca Black: did you just say... bought? Rebecca Black: DON'T JUDGE ME Rebecca Black: lols Rebecca Black: lol

Quote #440: Friday

1. Everyone who isn't, must, and also should always, because without doing, it's just as not much fun. And the fun is the most important part.
2. All cars must have a front and back seat. Possibly even a side seat. No exceptions. On an unrelated note, I've placed resident Tamesis Gethin under double-FRIDAY!!@11~11-house arrest.
3. Anyone caught listening to anything other than their required 24-Friday listens-a-day will be made into iFood for Sparly.
4. There must be at least three pedophiliac rappers in every city of Four Island. This will surely increase the FUN to near FUN FUN levels.

I hope everyone enjoys living under my new Friocracy! These rules will most definitely increase the number of four-seater cars around and science has shown that more four-seater cars means more people driving four-seater cars and more people to pass four-seater cars down to their underage, possibly xenophobic kids. Which means more making out in back seats. And more head-on collisions in front seats. This place is going to be awesome. Rebecca Out!

FUN FUN FUN FUN

Dear God, it's me. I haven't posted in quite a while. Sorry, I've been busy with stuff and not busy with stuff and this apology is going nowhere because it isn't happening. Well. First of all, I've failed an annual goal and haven't posted in more than a month. I think that I have a ton of stuff going on right now and I'll try to post when I can, but it won't always be possible. Second, I'm doing a musical review! I haven't done one of these in a while and I usually sucked at it, but hopefully this time is different. Today, I'm reviewing the album Far by Regina Spektor, who just recently became my official favorite artist. :D Nowai.

Now, usually what I do is I create a list of the tracks on the album and review them individually. Well, that's what I'm going to do this time as well. Hopefully it works. :P Here goes:

1. The Calculation - One of the most upbeat songs on the album. It's really quite catchy, especially the chorus (Hey, this fire, it's burnin', burnin' us up), but you get a little tired of it after a while. 3 stars
2. Eet - A really quite beautiful song about comparing a breakup to forgetting the words to your favorite song. It's quite piano-y, but it's not really a ballad; it's more of a pop song in that it's also really catchy, and not just beautiful. 4 stars
3. Blue Lips - A similar type of song as Eet, but even more beautiful. The verses are powerful and dance-y, and then the piano comes crashing and into introduces us into the quiet, simple chorus, before jumping back into verse. The best part is the bridge, which is pretty fast-paced and awesome. 5 stars
4. Folding Chair - Another upbeat song, but this one is catchier than The Calculation and doesn't get too boring. There's not too much else to say about it. 4 stars
5. Machine - This is fantastic. A song about a futuristic world where people and machines have merged. The verses are metered and beautiful and then Spektor dives into the chorus which sounds like nothing you'd expect from her, with her practically yelling "HOOKED INTO MACHINE." I also quite love the verse/outro after the final chorus (Everything's provided / Consummate consumer / Part of worldly takings / Apart from worldly troubles...). It's just such an unexpected song and I love it so. My favorite on the album. 5 stars
6. Laughing With - A slow, piano-y song about God and peoples' interpretations of God, like those who say that he "hates us" and those who expect God to just do stuff for them "like a genie who does magic like Houdini." It's quite a beautiful song and it does eventually get stuck in your head. 4 stars
7. Human Of The Year - This a weird song about someone who receives an award "that obviously doesn't exist," according to Spektor. It's quite slow, with the chorus randomly bursting in with an enthusiastic "You've won!" The best part, however, is the bridge, which is perfectly metered and upbeat (Outside, the cars are beeping out a song just in your honor...). The rest of the song isn't too difficult to bear and I think it's worth it because of the great bridge. 4 stars
8. Two Birds - An incredibly upbeat song that nevertheless actually has a sad meaning, as it's (probably) about two people who are in a relationship, with one having commitment issues or something. The verses are fast and upbeat, and the choruses are slow and beautiful (I'll believe it all / There's nothing I won't understand / I'll believe it all / I won't let go of your hand). 5 stars
9. Dance Anthem of the 80's - Yes, I'm fully aware that should be "80s", without an apostrophe, but that's just how the song is titled, okay? It's an incredibly upbeat song about more sad stuff, which apparently includes prostitution, heroin and physical abuse. The bridge is just so beautiful, though, as it takes a break from the fast beat of the rest of the song and switches to a softer, quieter melody (I went walking through the city, like a drunk but not) before exploding into a passionate mixture of intense piano, quick lyrics and the harmonization with a vocoder. It's incredibly intense. My other favorite song on the album. 5 stars
10. Genius Next Door - A song about masturbating in a lake and then committing suicide. Not even joking. It's really quite a sad song and it's actually just too slow for my taste. 1 star
11. Wallet - A song about finding a lost wallet and then returning it. It's kind of catchy, but sounds a bit too thrown together for my taste. 2 stars
12. One More Time With Feeling - A slow song with a moderately catchy chorus that's sadly not catchy enough for me to want to endure the verses for it. 2 stars
13. Man Of A Thousand Faces - Spektor ends off the album with a really beautiful piano piece about a man with multiple personality disorder. The unwavering piano melody in the background is just great and the entire song, really, is singable. 4 stars

I don't think that was too horrible, now, was it? Totaling the scores together, however, reveals a 3.7 out of 5 stars. Ooooh, that's not too good. I think the disappointing few songs after Dance Anthem of the 80's really killed the average. Well, that's Regina Spektor. A very awesome artist. I may eventually do another Regina Spektor review, of her album "Begin To Hope", which is actually one of my favorite albums of all time from any artist. Also, if anyone reads this and then listens to Far (or listened to Far before reading this), comment and tell me if you agree with my opinions of the songs! Starla, away! flies away

Hi! Guess what came out a few days ago! The long-awaited iOS 4.2.1 jailbreak! Horray! At least, that's what I was thinking, having been stuck on iOS 4.1 for months. I eagerly downloaded Greenpois0n RC5 and tried to jailbreak. This was my horrific experience:

1. First, I downloaded Greenpois0n RC5. Not as simple as you would think because so many other people were trying the same exact thing. I finally managed to get it off a mirror, though.
2. Second, I upgraded my iPhone to iOS 4.2.1. It took quite a while and when it finished, it popped up with Error 1013 (or something like that) and demanded that I restore my iPhone to factory settings. I would rather not.
3. Going out on a limb, I tried using RecBoot to kick my iPhone out of recovery mode and, what do you know, it worked! I later discovered that Error 1013 was a result of having Cydia's TSS server in my /etc/hosts file and that practically everybody knew to use RecBoot at that point. :P
4. Now for the exciting part: untethered jailbreak. I ran Greenpois0n and... nothing happened. Greenpois0n said "Complete :)", but when my phone finished restarting, I could tell that clearly, nothing had happened. Wow. After a few more attempts with nothing happening, I gave up.
5. Still needing a jailbreak, though, I downloaded redsn0w and an ISPW file.
6. Then, I gained a tethered jailbreak using redsn0w. I was excited to see that, even though I had to reinstall all of my Cydia apps, all of my settings were still there.
7. Upset that I was tethered and slightly regretting upgrading at all, I tried to get an untethered jailbreak again and re-ran Greenpois0n. This time, instead of just failing like usual, it got my iPhone stuck in the Apple Logo Boot Cycle Of Death. You know, when the phone starts booting and then restarts over and over again?
8. Guess what the only solution to that is? Restore your iPhone. Great. Just great. I avoided having to do it before and now I'm ending up doing it anyway.
9. I waited like a half an hour for it to finish and you know what happens next? Error 1013. (Or something like that). So, I blanked my iPhone and it was still stuck in the boot cycle. I did some research and discovered the cause of the error was the entry in the hosts file, so I removed the entry and restored again.
10. Okay, better; it worked that time. Good thing I had a backup of my device from before I jailbroke, otherwise I would've been very annoyed at that point. Restoring from the backup also took a bit of time
11. Then, I had to sync all of my media. Goodness, that took a long time.
12. Finally, I was back to the point I was at during step 4, but this time, there was a new version of Greenpois0n to try: Greenpois0n RC5 v2. So, I tried to jailbreak and this time, instead of silently failing, it said "Failed :(". Wow, that's so much better.
13. I decided to get serious and took a peek at the logs. They were filled with libusb errors and such, so I did some research and downloaded the newest version of libusb from MacPorts.
14. Did that do anything? Nope. Very annoyed at this point, I opened my Twitter client and saw that some people suggested running the actual binary (instead of the bundle) from the Terminal as an administrator.
15. sudo Greenpois0n.app/Contents/MacOS/Greenpois0n
16. ohmygoditworked. :D Finally, after a whole ton my time was wasted, I got my untethered jailbreak back. Except, I didn't have Cydia yet. And the Loader.app wasn't working.
17. Not a problem, though, because I had previously read that the strain put on Greenpois0n's servers had stopped Loader.app from working and that you could instead install Cydia using redsn0w without breaking your untethered jailbreak, so I loaded up redsn0w again and installed Cydia.
18. Horray! Now, I just had to reinstall all of my apps (thankfully, the configuration was all still there, probably thanks to my backup) and I could finally listen to music on my iPhone again! You know, because I'm a last.fm nut and I can't listen to any music if it won't get scrobbled. :P

Upgrading to 4.2.1 certainly was an ordeal, but was it worth it? Well, so far as I can currently tell, not really. Well, sort of. I set up Find My iPhone and am very happy with it, though I think it's a bit unlikely that I'll lose my iPhone. You never know, though, right? Besides that, well, though I am very excited to have AirPrint, I'm not sure when I'll ever use it. Ditto to AirPlay, seeing as we don't actually have any AirPlay speakers and I would rather have an iTunes instance controlling AirPlay speakers. Also, I hate the new Voice Memos icon. Whatever; I guess it just best to always have the latest software.

Have you had any horrific jailbreaking experiences? Do you want to jailbreak and now can because of Greenpois0n RC5? Do you want a burrito? Leave a comment and I'll consider taping it to my fridge!

This is a problem. It's seriously a factor in why I don't post so very frequently. My website just really looks terrible. I want my website to look smooth, simple and easy to read. Instead, it looks like this:

Not only does it look bad, but its internals suck too. Why is three-year old PHP code from a time when I thought MVC and <!DOCTYPE> tags were bad running my website?

Four Island 3.

It's a comin'.

There's been a lot of speculation recently about the addition of four-fingered gestures to the iPad in iOS 4.3. If you don't know what I'm talking about, well, soon you will. Apple recently released iOS 4.3 Beta 1 and one of the new features is the ability to go to the home screen with a four-fingered pinch, open the multitasking tray with a four-fingered swipe up and switch apps with a four-fingered swipe to the left or the right. Now, this is all pretty cool and I support it 100%, but what I don't support is the mass-rumor that this is eventually going to lead to the removal of the home button.

No. Just... no.

Why exactly would that be horrible? Well, for one thing, the learning curve. Anyone who doesn't know about four-fingered pinch to exit is immediately stuck in an app forever and ever and ever, twirling down an infinite horror whirlpool to death do they part.... You get the point. The home button has always been an easily-recognizable, instantly-usable method of exiting out of an app and everyone knows it.

Second, the home button's dual-function of waking up the device when it's locked. Sure, the lock button also does that, but it's always seemed counterintuitive to me to press the lock button when I want to unlock the device, and besides, the home button is so much easier to press in those instances. Without the home button, someone looking at an iPhone for the first time at an Apple Store may pick it up, toss it lightly from hand to hand and maybe ask someone, "Hey, is this the new iBrick?"

Perhaps I just don't like change. Yeah, that's probably it. But still, the home button needs to stay. Because.

Mac OS X 10.6.6 was released this morning, and you know what that means! Actually, you might not, so I'll tell you: the Mac App Store! The Mac App Store is like the App Store on iDevices--it's an Apple-controlled repository of Mac apps that you can buy with your Apple ID. It also automates update delivery, which is pretty nice. All in all, I think the App Store needs some more development and some more features, but it's a pretty neat idea and I think it's a nice addition to Mac OS X.

There are some really cool-looking free apps available, like the long-awaited Tweetie 2 (renamed "Twitter for Mac"), a Solitare game with various versions of the game, not just Klondike (this will be great for those transitioning from Windows :P ) and an alternate to Spotlight: Alfred. The problem is, I can't log in. :( The Mac App Store seems to be having a lot of initial teething problems and one of them is the "MZFinance.NoGUIDTokenFailureKey_message" error. Yeah, great message. So, until Apple fixes the problem, I can't get any apps from the Mac App Store. Bummer. :(

The other thing I wanted to talk about in this post is the upgrade itself, and how it affects those who are using Mac OS X on decidedly non-Mac hardware (like me). Usually, OS upgrades can cause major problems, but this one was very easy. I really just had to install the upgrade via Apple Software Upgrade. It was really that simple! However, do keep in mind that if you use the SleepEnabler kext, you have to delete it and clear the extensions cache before installing the upgrade (like I did) because SleepEnabler kexts are version-specific. There isn't yet a new version for 10.6.6, but you can be sure that there will be one before long. But, other than that, nothing too bad went wrong. You may have to run MultiBeast again to reinstall some fallback kexts if you need them (I didn't), but the only thing I've really noticed about this upgrade is that my startup time seems to have increased. Which is pretty annoying, but hopefully it can be eventually fixe--KERNEL PANIC AIEEEE :P

Anyway, I hope that Apple gets its act together soon and fixes the App Store--I really want to play some solitaire! :P

EDIT: 24 hours later and the problem has been fixed. Now, time to download random apps! :D :P

It's that time of year again, folks! My favorite part of the new year is the Quote Of The Year! I love quotes, especially the funny ones, and now that a new year's started, I hope that the Quotes database will once again start filling up with funnylicious quotes. However, before we start a new year of quotes, let's take a look back on last year and its funniest quotes, shall we?

[li=10]#310 - Shifty[/li][li=9]#399 - Two Girls One Cup[/li][li=8]#362 - Don't Leave Me![/li][li=7]#341 - Desk Lamp[/li][li=6]#332 - I AM THE INTERNET[/li][li=5]#380 - THE JACKPOT PRIZEEEE[/li][li=4]#369 - Hatkirby's Virginity[/li][li=3]#334 - Have You Got It In You?[/li][li=2]#336 - The Floor Is Beneath Us![/li]

And the number one quote of 2010, and my personal favorite is....

1. #331 - Drive D:

Thank you, thank you very much! That was quite a good lineup, and there were several quotes there from my good friend Fourie. :P Hopefully this year turns out to be even funnier! Finally, just for good measure, let's see what the highest rated quote overall is:

#232 - Blank

We fail oh so much. :P