Relaunching this site sometime soon. Will clean things up, reorganize, and start off with a new database. Of course, the old content will be made available in some way.

I was pleasantly confused today when I was checking my facebook invites.  I was invited to an event called “The Black Plague”.  I decided to look at it since it was about a raffle to win some money (which I lack).

When I read the description, I thought the idea was brilliant.  It played on current events, targeted the proper audience, and had already raised some money.  Sadly, I didn’t come up with the idea.

Here’s what “The Black Plague” is (not the disease, but the fundraiser).
One of the groups at our school is doing fundraising for Relay For Life.  Many organizations have tried raffles before, but most of them were unsuccessful.  Even though this one hasn’t officially started yet, it’s already half-way towards the goal.

The key to a good fundraiser is know your audience.  The first item up for grab is a $50 BestBuy gift card.  We go to a tech school, that’s a plus.  The second way it targets the audience properly is what the fundraiser actually is: “Give us money, or listen to Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’ all of this Friday.”  It’s a catchy title because the singer’s last name is Black, and the Black Plague is a widely known historical event (yes, I have to point out the obvious).  There’s a lot of people who hate the song, and this is a tech school, so a large majority of the students hate the song, and those that don’t are pressured into pretending they hate it.

The second good point about this fundraiser is a call to action, which there are two.  The first is donating to Relay for Life.  The second is Buy a Raffle Ticket or listen to “Friday” all day long (which is part of the first, but is the killer part in this).

The fundraising goal was to make $300 in a day for Relay for Life.  From what I’ve heard, the fundraiser has already made $100, and it’s not even close to Friday yet.  So I think it’s doing pretty well.

So how’s life on your guys’ end?

I’ve been trying out VPS hosting recently, and I must say it’s pretty awesome.  I’ve tried a few providers like WebbyNode, ChunkHost, and 6sync.

I think 6sync is the best at the moment.  WebbyNode felt sluggish in comparison, but some of there development tools are awesome.  ChunkHost went down several times while I was testing them out.

If you need a VPS with an API, Development tools, and what not, go with WebbyNode.  ChunkHost, not so much…  just avoid them for now.  WebbyNode is good if you use their services like rapp, or need access to an API.  6sync is currently working on their API, so it should hopefully be available soon.  My only issue with WebbyNode, as stated earlier, was that it was sluggish.  The connection speed wasn’t as fast as 6sync, and the server was slightly slower (I’ll try finding out the hardware information here soon).  They are relatively quick at replying to support questions.

ChunkHost… let’s just say my short lived experience with them had a reason.  Within the first week, the VPS went down for 6 hours.  Their twitter says “An inbound DoS attack“, and then they had some “DNS updating delays“.  It was just a few too many issues in a short period of time to be a warm welcome.  They’ve probably fixed most of the issues by now, but I’m content at 6sync.  In terms of responsiveness, their machines were more snappy than WebbyNode.  The connection speed (from where I was) was slower than 6sync, but faster than WebbyNode.  ChunkHost currently doesn’t have an API or any development tools.  It took a while for them to respond to questions I had.

6sync is where I’m at in terms of VPS hosting (shared hosting is still at webFaction).  Their servers are quite snappy, and I’ve had awesome connection speeds with them.  They’re currently working on an API, but don’t have any development tools.  What they win me over with is their support and control panel (Biscuit).  They’re almost always active on twitter or on irc (#6sync on freenode).  Their friendly and responsive, and you can tell that they’re trying to create a good community.  They have most of the same features of Linode or Slicehost, but are slightly more affordable.  They are relatively quick at replying to support questions.  As for what I’ve been hosting there, it’s mostly been some small proof of concepts, and private group chats (something like murderBear, but private and less buggy).

Currently, if you need VPS hosting, 6sync is doing a giving away of a free month of hosting (until supplies run out, which they say is $32,000 worth of servers).  So go ahead and sign-up.

Yeah, the 6sync links are affiliate links, but I do use them for real, and I’ve been with them for 6 months and all’s been well.  If you don’t want to use an affiliate link, just use this one.