Four Island

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

HAPPY NEW YEAR YAYS! :D It's me, your favorite Internet failspaz, wishing you a grand 'ol year! Hopefully it's a good one--I usually get so attached to the old year that I get angsty on New Year's Day, but it's such a weird day and all! Hopefully I actually remember to backup my server today, unlike last year. Oh god, it feels so odd saying "last year" to refer to 2010 because, well, 2010 was yesterday! OH GRAND SMACKS! Well, anyway, I thought it would be fun to start off what should hopefully be a very good year for Four Island with a bit of an old favorite/godforsaken-horror-from-the-mist: my annual goals!

GOOD LORD, STOP HER!

Wait! Before you scream and run away, just listen! Yes, I know I took my goals last year a bit too seriously and it got a bit out of hand and I eventually just had to say "stuff it" to some of them, but relax. This year's going to be different. This year, I'm going to understand my goals for what they are: guidelines, goals, destinations, not the immutable laws of physics that I was treating them as last year. Anyway, even though I know I failed most of my goals, let's see how I did, shall we? :P

• Increase RSS subscribers to 15 - No. Fail. That said, I didn't actually really do anything to achieve this goal, which is probably why it failed, but I didn't do anything in 2009 and I somehow got up to 10 subscribers then! However, it has stayed at 10 pretty much all year, so I'm going to have to think of some ways to improve my work this year. :P
• Write a post a week - This, here, was the godawful king of horrific annual goals. I took this goal SO SERIOUSLY for more than half a year and then finally decided that I couldn't take it anymore and just blew it off. Thank goodness I did, because I did so many bad things in the name of this goal. Needless to say, it will not be making another appearance this year. :P
• Update the POTW on time - Hmm, not only did I fail this once or twice last year, but I actually ended up disintegrating first the poll post (at the same time as I called off my previous goal) and then the actual poll of the week. Well. Fail. :P
• Don't post random polls - I was actually quite excited at the idea that I may have actually passed this goal, but as I looked back at last year's polls, I did find three that I deem to be pretty random: Sally Cohn (bless her), Gap Senile and Baseball Volition. And now I don't even have the chance to succeed at it this year. :P
• Average around 1 comment per post - Nope. There were 111 comments posted on blog posts last year and 72 if you don't count comments by me (which I don't). I posted 108 times last year which means that once again, this goal has failed. Darn it. Got to write more interesting posts.
• Reach 9000 posts on The Fourm - Yes! Surprisingly (and perhaps attributed to my oft-quoted "annual four month popularity spike"), The Fourm passed 9000 posts pretty early in the year--perhaps some time in February or March (I can't remember and I was sure that I had written a post or something about it on The Fourm but I can't find it now...).
• Write 10 articles on Fouripedia - Not even close. There were in actuality only two new articles posted on Fouripedia last year: Student and Pumpkin. Both articles are actually quite awesome and I invite you to read them if you haven't done so yet. :P
• Write 2 True Falsities a month - This one has a big fat "N. O." stamped on it. True Falsities really flopped around like a dead fish last year. Out of the 24 new stories I promised, I wrote but one, "New Year? Not Yet!" Then, in March, I went on a save-true-falsities kick and pledged to write a True Falsity a day for an entire work week. Once again, I wrote but one: "Happy Birthday Pyro!" Huge fail. I don't really know what's going to happen to True Falsities, to tell the truth. I really think it may be time to archive it. I really think it may be time to actually make that archive. Hmmm...
• Release 2 seasons of Pillowcase - Sadly, no, not even this goal was fulfilled. I did create and publish one successful season back in March which ran until June, but I never got around to making another one. I guess I can't do anything right.

Wow, look at that! A whole year of failure for me! Mix that in with my inability to do anything for the holidays on Four Island and we've got a loser! :P Out of my 9 goals last year, I passed 1. Yeah. Not so very good. This year's going to be better. 2011 is going to be a shining year of glory for Four Island, aye? :P Let's enumerate those goals:

• Write at least four posts a month. It may seem like a low number, but remember, previous years' months were padded out with poll posts. This year, I mean real, solid posts. Also remember that this is a guideline. I may post more, and I hope I post more. If I don't meet my goal one month, well, that's just too bad. Nothing to exploit loopholes over. :P
• COMMENT! For the third year in a row, I'm going for an average of one (1) comment per post. Every year, I've gotten closer to achieving this goal and if I write nice, substantial posts, well, I could actually get people interested and wanting to comment! I mean, look at Annetenna! Nearly a year later, and people are still commenting on it. Aww, how sweet. :P
• Exploit the annual spike of popularity for The Fourm! The Fourm currently has about 12,000 posts. Let's see if we can bump that up to a smooth 15,000 by the end of this year. We can do it! POPULARITY SPIKE! :P
• Continue with Pillowcase. I expect to have released (and completed) at least one season of Pillowcase by the end of the year. Let's do this.
• Get programming! When was the last time I released something? I want to release at least two things (that I actually programmed) by the end of the year. It could be a website, or another version of something already released, but it has to be something I actually programmed, which means that last year's Randomlog wouldn't have counted. Last year's Skype chatlog script wouldn't have counted either because it wasn't really a thing I released--it was just an informational and helpful blog post. Do some real work! You're awesome! Aaah!

Okay, that was getting a bit odd (I think I may still be a little tired from last night--I always write my New Years post on New Year's Day), but I certainly believe that these goals can be achieved (though I will probably be a little weirded out by the green calendars this year--they remind me of 2007 :P). This year's going to be great. Once again, I hope last year was great for you and I hope that this year will be better. Let's do this.

Hi, remember me? I'm the failspaz that failed to even fail during Kirby Week and instead failed even more and hasn't posted since. No Christmas post (well, that's happened before). No December 29th post. What? Anyway, we can hope that will end soon because my first prediction for 2011 is that, as with previous years, Four Island will suddenly become popular amongst its frequenters again on January 1st. Here's hoping! crosses fingers so hard that nothing happens

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, predictions. Last year's 2010 in Song was a major fail (oh god, that seems such a short time ago), so I'm going to revert to something better that we'll all enjoy: random predictions! Are you ready? I'm not ready. Let's go!

January 1st Four Island, due to it's annual four-month-popularity spell, suddenly becomes popular and as a result, Starla's other router explodes, forcing her to put the only other router in the house, her new Apple Time Capsule, in the dirty, gross, disgusting basement. As a result of that, Starla prints "WANTED" posters for her Time Capsule and drops a pile of them in the spot where it used to live.

January 28th Someone realizes that Four Island isn't up. In fact, it hadn't been up since January 1st because Starla, in her infinite intelligence, forgot to forward the ports. Random sidenote: backing up from the basement is slow.

February 2nd Drifty writes a story about police constables rushing a Russian prison and saving Regina Spektor, who had been imprisoned because the government didn't approve of chemotherapy. Unsurprisingly, Starla thought the story was real and Drifty's email service soon fell to a denial of service attack. Which is rather stupid if you think about it because Starla and Drifty both use Gmail.

February 3rd Starla's printer, Matilda, bails her out of imaginary jail for DoS'ing one of Gmail's servers, platonic.superman.kindle-porcupine.gmail.com. Matilda gives Starla a stern talking to, and then prints her out an ice cream cone in FORTRAN.

February 8th iOS 4.3 for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch is released, giving the devices such new features as time travel, peace-making, house construction, reliable mortgage analysis and the ability to view a page in MobileSafari without it refreshing every five minutes.

February 21st The world comes to an end. Or at least begins to. IANA officially runs out of IPv4 addresses and someone, somewhere finally realizes that "Oh god, this is serious." In unrelated news, Google founder Lawrence E. Page decides to run for U.S. president. He pledges to put AdWords in all of our subways and replace cable TV with YouTube.

March 3rd Apple announces the successor to the iPad, the Max-iPad, which is "bigger, better and has a name that's even easier to make fun of." Needless to say, everyone immediately pre-orders one.

March 15th Starla releases Season 4 of Pillowcase. The first comic depicts a pillowcase buying an iPhone and jailbreaking it. Needless to say, everyone is confused.

March 16th The iPhone Dev Team release a new jailbreak for iOS 4.3: PillowBreak. Needless to say, everyone is even more confused and Starla is pulled aside for questioning.

March 28th Apple releases the Max-iPad. The first 1000 people to arrive at the Apple Store in Manhattan witness a shipping blunder as Apple unpacks the newly released Max-iPads and realized that FedEx accidentally sent them the wrong thing. Happy Apple customers walked away with $500 hygiene products and didn't realize the mistake until they tried to play Angry Birds on them.

April 4th Optical media officially becomes obsolete. Smiley is seen jumping around in the background shouting "HA! I WIN! TAKE THAT!" Starla is sad until she realizes that obsolete != nonexistent (they still make vinyl records, you know) and buys a subscription to "I'm Old And I Still Like CDs Magazine".

April 17th Prices of condos go up after presidential candidate Lawrence E. Page announces that if elected, he will make it mandatory by law to install spam filters in all USPS mail trucks.

April 18th Prices of condos go back down after it is realized that 2011 isn't a presidential election year.

May 1st Starla gets "May Fever", as she calls her nonsensical obsession with the month May, and releases a remix of "Girlfriend in the City" by Nelly Furtado that is supposed to illustrate why. Needless to say, it doesn't.

May 5th iTunes 11 is released with new features such as "Even Uglier UI!", "More Annoying Social Networks!", "When You Buys Songs From Us, We Make You Sign Your Name In Blood!" and worst of all, the inability to import songs from CD. Starla doesn't upgrade to iTunes 11. For some reason, everyone else does.

June 6th Pyro achieves the fastest time for solving a Rubix cube while doing her nails and saying the word "serendipity" in a questioning manner: infinity.

June 7th Starla gets a MacBook Pro and is so excited about it that she accidentally spills kerosene on her server.

June 17th The iPhone 5 is released with a CDMA chip. AT&T immediately goes out of business.

July 7th Someone says "Hey, maybe we should start switching to IPv6 soon." He is ignored.

July 29th Tumblr experiences some downtime. Starla's old computer also has a kernel panic, someone makes a jokes about the Max-iPad, a cat is found in a tree and the sun rises in the east.

August 3rd Nicki Minaj dies a horrific, lack-of-talent-related death. Justin Beiber, Jason Derulo and every rapper start worrying about the likelihood of releasing another album.

August 8th Timbo94 writes a True Falsity about purchasing the rights to Cardcaptor Sakura. Everyone is so surprised that someone actually out-waited the latency to write a True Falsity that someone, somewhere is sued and something, somewhere explodes.

September 9th The first Homestar Runner video of the year is released. Everyone immediately forgets about the hiatus and watches in excitement as Homestar says something funny and is subsequently stuffed in a bread drawer.

September 22nd In celebration of Four Island's anniversary, Starla releases Four Island 3, a grand rewrite of Four Island in Ruby on Rails. Everyone is so stunned with the beauty and magnificence of the new website that Starla is immediately arrested and a background search is done based on the suspicion that she stole the website from someone.

September 23rd fourisland.com expires.

October 10th Starla is released from prison due to the fact that she talked about The Crucible and Kate Nash too frequently. She subsequently opens her web browser only to find that fourisland.com has been replaced with porn.

November 10th The world actually comes to an end as the RIRs all run out of IPv4 addresses. All Mayan-superstion believers are surprised as armageddon arrives a year and a month earlier than they expected it to. Starla laughs at them from the side, and then realizes that the end of the world isn't necessarily a good thing, so she backs up her server and runs off with her Time Capsule.

November 11th Nobody is around to troll the Internet about a certain redundancy of the date because the world ended.

There you go! Random Predictions for 2011. What's interesting is that while my predictions for February 21st and November 10th are humorous, they are actually going to happen (albeit possibly on earlier dates). Not the Google presidency thing, the exhaustion of IPv4. It's going to be interesting to see how this year pans out because this is actually rather serious and it's going to happen. Lol, I can't wait to laugh at 2012 believers. Anyway, I hope you've all enjoyed 2010, because tonight, it's all going to be over! And let me be the one to say: "Oh GOD, that was fast." :P

On the second day of Kirby Week, Four Island gave to me: a tutorial on pretty error messages.

Disclaimer: The post assumes you have Rails 3. It may work with Rails 2, but I dun know about that. Just to be safe, go ahead and install Rails 3. :P We good? Great.

Hi, 'yall! It's me! Do you know what's sort of annoying? Rails is really wonderful with all the things you can do with models. Specifically, validations are just great, and most of the time, they're really pretty too (because Rails is about Readability!), so you can write beautiful code like this:

validates_presence_of [:anon_name, :anon_email], :if => :anonymous?

You see? In one line, I made it so that the model checked for the presence of "anonname" and "anonemail" when "anonymous?" returned true. That's just great. However, there's a problem with this that you may be able to foresee. Let's see what kind of error messages are returned when "anonname" and "anonemail" are left out:

Anon Name is blank Anon Email is blank

That's not really that user friendly, is it. Oh well, we can just change our code a bit, right? Make it a bit less pretty?

validates_presence_of :anon_name, :message => "Your name is blank", :if => :anonymous?
validates_presence_of :anon_email, :message => "Your email is blank", :if => :anonymous?

It's a bit longer and clunkier, but it should work, right? Nope.

Anon Name Your name is blank Anon Email Your email is blank

D'oh! After searching around the Internet, the only solution I could find was this disgusting jumble:

validate do |comment|
  if comment.anonymous?
    comment.errors.add_to_base("Your name is blank") if comment.anon_name.blank?
    comment.errors.add_to_base("Your email is blank") if comment.anon_email.blank?
  end
end

Now the error messages are correct, but the code itself is horrendously disgusting. I can't settle for that! Well, it turns out that there's another way. A way that works with the first method of validation shown above, the one that validated both fields in one line. Yes. Go back to that. Next, look inside your config/initializers folder for a file called "inflections.rb". Add the following to the bottom:

ActiveSupport::Inflector.inflections do |inflect|
  inflect.human "anon_name", "Your username"
  inflect.human "anon_email", "Your email"
end

Now, restart your server and check your error messages. Guess what?

Your username is blank Your email is blank

This works because the inflector is used to humanize the names of fields before they are prepended to the error message. By customizing how the inflector humanizes the field names, you can effectively customize your error messages! Horray! The inflector can be a good ally once you learn how to use it properly because Rails humanizes things in a lot of places. Let the inflector be with you. Okay. I should end this post now. :P