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 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.

I was asked if I knew PHP and could help someone debug an error in their site.  I was ecstatic, no one usually asks for PHP help anymore.  So I went to help them, and low an behold, the source file they opened was like a foreign language.

Okay…  I understood most of it, but I was shocked at how rusty I was.

Lately, I’ve been working in Perl, Python, Common Lisp and MatLab.  The P* languages are my favorite so far, Common Lisp has some cool aspects, and MatLab is awesome at Math.

But I knew I had been doing some web development lately, but I couldn’t figure out why I kept getting even more errors when I was trying to help someone with PHP.  Shockingly, I had been using Python for far too much web development recently, and I kept telling them things you’d do in Python, and not in PHP (import being a big one)…

Anyways, I’ve been working on some new projects.  I’ll share them here once I get things setup and working.  I hope you’ll like what you see.  But in the meantime, you guys should download the latest version of Chrome, Safari, or a Beta of Firefox.  I’ve been dabbling in some HTML5 and whatnot (don’t get too hyped up, it’s amazing to me, but kindof basic).

It feels like it was only a little while ago that I took a big step up from the incomprehensible days of high school into the easily understandable days of my college career.  Oh how time flies when you have projects and reports to turn in.  I feel like I’ve grown so much, approximately 2 inches taller to be exact.  My foot size remains the same, but the amount of knowledge I’ve gained ceases to bewilder me.

Anyways, this year seems like it’s going to be awesome.  I’m taking Artificial intelligence, and we just received our first awesome assignment: programming a bot to play a game similar to chinese checkers.  Okay, so the assignment isn’t too “artificial intelligency” like SkyNet or something, but it’s something fun and interesting to do.

I’m also taking Computer Vision, and our next assignment is to do feature recognition.  I believe we’re given four photos, then we pick out major features.  Then, we take a database of other photos, and try to identify if anything from the first four photos are in any of the photos in the database.

So for those of you who don’t know, I’m getting a degree in Computer Science and (wait for it) Mathematical Sciences.  I was originally supposed to minor in Computation Mathematics, but some of the courses aren’t offered this year.  So I got some course substitution forms, and now I’m getting a Bachelor’s in Mathematical Sciences as well.

After this year, I’m still going to be in school though.  I’m going for my Master’s in Computer Science, and if things go as planned, I’ll continue for my Doctorate’s.  I’m not sure if I want to be called “Doctor” yet though.  I’ve always felt that it was a bit too much.  Just the thought of “Mister” makes me cringe.  When I become a professor, my students will simply call me “Professor.”  It doesn’t make me feel old or anything.

That’s what’s currently on my mind and happening.  So wish me luck, and hopefully I pass all of my classes…

So PHP 5 added a whole slew of new features to PHP, but I’ve been stuck in PHP 4, so I figured I’d learn some of that.  I’ve also been stuck to relational databases (and that’s usually what they teach at school), but I’ve started to see some of the sites I know and love switching to non-relational databases.  So that was also something I wanted to learn how to work with.

I went online to search, and the three major contenders seem to be Cassandra, CouchDB, and MongoDB.  I decided to go with MongoDB since it seemed like the easiest to use and setup, and I liked the idea of document-oriented storage.  CouchDB can be ran on webFaction as well, but I’m not too sure about Cassandra (I’m guessing you can with effort).

So here’s my guide on getting it setup and ready to run.

So installing MongoDB on Webfaction:

1. Create a new custom application listening on port called mongodb
2. Create it and take note of the port
3. Login to your account via SSH
4. Switch to the directory of the mongodb app you just created
   cd ~/webapps/mongodb
5. Download the latest version of the 32-bit version of MongoDB (1.4.3 as of writing)
   wget http://downloads.mongodb.org/linux/mongodb-linux-i686-1.4.3.tgz
6. Extract the files from the archive
   tar -xf mongodb-linux-i686-1.4.3.tgz
7. Create a data directory for your MongoDB installation
   mkdir data
8. Start up MongoDB
   /home/[user]/webapps/mongodb/mongodb-linux-i686-1.4.3/bin/mongod ‒‒dbpath /home/[user]/webapps/mongodb/data/ ‒‒port [port]

Doing that will launch MongoDB in the terminal.  To have MongoDB run as a background process and restart should it quit can be done with a few scripts.  My way isn’t probably the most elegant way to do it.  If mongoDB doesn’t exit cleanly, then you have to delete the lock, run repair, and restart the daemon, so there are 3 parts to my way and a dummy file, but you can probably easily merge it all into one file (I’m just too interested in playing with PHP and MongoDB to do so yet).

This is mongo.sh, it checks if the mongo daemon (mongod) is running, and it calls the appropriate action.

This is startmongo.sh, there’s a dummy file called “isnt_running.txt”  If it exists when startmongo.sh is ran, that means that mongod didn’t exit cleanly.  If it didn’t exit cleanly, we have to delete mongod.lock and run repair on the database.  Otherwise, we just try to start up mongod.

#!/usr/bin/env php
<?php
// Check if MongoDB did not exit cleanly
if(file_exists(“/home/[user]/webapps/mongodb/isnt_running.txt”)){
unlink(“/home/[user]/webapps/mongodb/data/mongod.lock”);
exec(“/home/[user]/webapps/mongodb/mongodb-1.4.3/bin/mongod ‒‒dbpath /home/[user]/webapps/mongodb/data ‒‒port [port] ‒‒auth ‒‒repair”);
exec(“nohup /home/[user]/webapps/mongodb/mongodb-1.4.3/bin/mongod ‒‒dbpath /home/[user]/webapps/mongodb/data ‒‒port [port] ‒‒auth”);
}else{
exec(“nohup /home/[user]/webapps/mongodb/mongodb-1.4.3/bin/mongod ‒‒dbpath /home/emokid/webapps/mongodb/data ‒‒port [port] ‒‒auth”);
$fp = fopen(“/home/[user]/webapps/mongodb/isnt_running.txt”, “w+”);
fwrite($fp, “Starting up”);
fclose($fp);
}
?>

This is runningmongo.sh, it just deletes our dummy file letting us know that mongod is running.

#!/usr/bin/env php
<?php
// Check if MongoDB did not exit cleanly
if(file_exists(“/home/emokid/webapps/mongodb/isnt_running.txt”)){
unlink(“/home/emokid/webapps/mongodb/isnt_running.txt”);
}
?>

I just add mongo.sh to the crontab.  Mine runs every 20 minutes, but you can make it run sooner because if it does run every 20 minutes, that mean that the database could be down for 40 minutes.  Make sure to change [user] and [port] to your username and the port number you were given.

crontab

*/20 * * * * /home/[user]/webapps/mongodb/mongo.sh > /dev/null 2>&1

The PHP Stack

In order to run PHP with the mongo drivers, you need your own installation of Apache and PHP.  WebFaction makes this somewhat easy to do.

1. Create a new custom application listening on port and call it phpstack
2. Take note of the port.
3. SSH onto the server and go to the phpstack webapp directory
   cd ~/webapps/phpstack
4. Download the PHPStack setup script (this is the one for PHP 5.3.1).
   wget http://wiki.webfaction.com/attachment/wiki/MiscellaneousFiles/build_php_worker_531.sh?format=raw
5. Rename the script to build_php_worker_531.sh
   mv build_php_worker_531.sh\?format\=raw build_php_worker_531.sh
6. Make sure the script is executable.
   chmod +x build_php_worker_531.sh
7. Run the install script and specify the path to the phpstack, and the port number
   ./build_php_worker_531.sh /home/[user]/webapps/phpstack [port]
8. We have to install Pear twice in order to get PECL.
   1. Download the go-pear.php installer script
      wget http://pear.php.net/go-pear
   2. Rename it to go-pear.php
      mv go-pear go-pear.php
   3. Run it with the php_fcgi version of php
      /home/[user]/webapps/phpstack/php_fcgi/bin/php go-pear.php
   4. When it asks you about the paths, set $prefix to:
      /home/[user]/webapps/phpstack/php_fcgi
   5. Then run the installer.  Repeat the process for php_rawcgi
   6. For each installation (php_fcgi and php_rawcgi) run
      /home/[user]/webapps/phpstack/php_fcgi/bin/pecl install mongo
   7. Then in each php.ini (php_fcgi/lib/php.ini and php_rawcgi/lib/php.ini) add
      extension=”mongo.so”

To keep things easy, you can place all of your website stuff inside of the phpstack/htdocs, or you can edit the httpd.conf to point towards one of your other webapps.

Now you might want to secure your MongoDB a bit, and read up on how to use it with PHP.

I already stalk her on twitter and subscribe to her blog.  Lately, some big issue came up about breast feeding in public.  I for one support a mother’s decision to feed their child when the child is hungry, whether it be breast feeding, bottle, injections, or whatever.  Breast feeding in public is probably the most loving thing you could do for your child, so take a picture and show it too them when he or she is older because when your child grows up, they’ll probably appreciate it.

In the argument, someone was arguing that Jem was a bully.  What a shocker.  Jem has her “pants” award (last one given out in January 2009)…  She rants and raves about everything, but she does it in a way that grabs you and hooks you into reading.  She’s actually quite entertaining, but back on topic!

People kept bringing up “Freedom of Speech” and “Cyber Bullying.”

Jem is in the UK, and those “targeted” were in the USA.  I’m not too sure about UK laws, but there’s not a lot of Federal laws in relation to cyber bullying (at the moment).  Currently, if Jem threatened to kill, kidnap, or injure someone, then she’d be in violation of USA Federal laws.  If she were to commit slander or libel on someone, then she would also be in violation of the laws (and I think the UK has a similar law about online content and Internet Service Providers about it?).

In terms of harassment online, several states have laws against it (not too sure how that plays out internationally), but there is currently a bill trying to become a law.  H.R. 1966 makes it if you harass or intimidate someone online, then you can face some jail time or a fine.  I understand the point of the law, but I personally think it’s too vague as it is.  An online argument would get you fined or jailed, but a verbal argument wouldn’t?

So Jem currently has nothing to really worry about.

Some of the other people have something to worry about.  Freedom of Speech does not cover inciting riots or acts of violence.  So be careful, because this could be considered illegal soon.

The target (not jemjabella above) of the alleged attack was complaining about how she would respond and keep getting more and more replies.  Lesson 1 in keeping web site visitors and traffic, maintain good communication.  If you want people to shut up, don’t reply.  If you want attention and conversation, keep on replying and writing about it.  Jem provides a wonderful example of this.  Jem has written 4 blogs posts around the topic of breast feeding and she has over 116 comments on those blog posts.  That’s good communication.  Jem is my hero.

Don’t start thinking I condone or encourage cyber bullying, I don’t.  Jem is defending her right to breast feed her child in public to someone who publicly voiced their opinion on the issue.  (Facebook and Twitter are public by the way, I mean, if the privacy settings let it be seen).  If you’re going to voice your opinion, prepare for the backlash from the masses.  Hope for the best, expect the worst.

So who do I think was right in this whole argument thing?  No one really.  I just think it’s something fun and interesting to read.  If you can’t handle the arguments or criticism, then turn off the computer.

As for breast feeding in public, go for it.  Don’t flaunt your stuff, but if the baby needs food, the baby needs food.

In other news, my mom raised twins, and I know she breast fed them.  I’m wondering how that worked out in public when both were hungry…

This semester was fun and challenging.  I took the hardest math class offered for undergrads and passed (I won’t say with what though).  My GPA for the semester was a 3.5.  I made a ton of new friends, did some fun new and exciting things, and had a blast all along the way.

Some of my highlights from this semester:

• Did the Spring play, “While the Lights Were Out”
• Participated in “Humans vs. Zombies” which is a massive game of tag
• Made a tons of new friends
• Got a Nikon FG SLR (which takes awesome photos)

And yeah…

Enough about the good stuff though, the semester was great overall, but this summer was supposed to be more productive, but it won’t be due to some people who lack communication skills.

I originally wanted to dual major in Computer Science and Mathematical Sciences.  So I filled out the form and turned it in.  At the end of the semester, I was told they lost the form.  I was also told that courses they said I was exempt from, I wasn’t exempt from.  So I signed up to take summer courses.  I called the school I was going to take summer courses at and asked if they offered the courses I needed to take for the summer.  They said they did, I went online to register, but the courses weren’t listed.  So I called back, and this is how the conversation went down

Me: Hello, I called earlier and was told you offered Biology and History for the summer?
Them: Yes, we do offer Biology and History for the summer.
Me: Well, I checked online and they aren’t available for me to register for.
Them: Oh!  That’s because we aren’t offering them this summer.

If someone calls to ask about courses for the summer, which summer would they refer to?  I guess they technically weren’t lying, but in the first conversation it was something like “Do you offer History and Biology for the summer?”, “Yes”, “Is it too late to register for summer courses”, “No, please fill out the form online”, “Alright, thanks.”  They didn’t say the courses weren’t being offered this summer then…

So next semester, I need to argue to get exempt from a few courses, and then I need to convince some people that I can handle 21 credits a semester if I still want to dual major.  I might just switch it to a minor and see if that works out.

So how did your guys’ schooling go this year?

I’m running into a, well not an issue, but a hurtle or something like that.  I really want to learn how to use it and take good photos, but I’m hearing and reading the strangest things.  People compare film brands.  I understand comparing them for which one’s better, but I’ve been told that Kodak is good for pictures of people, while Fujifilm is good for landscapes and other things.  Off brand films might be Fujifilm, or some random brand.

I’ve also looked at filters.  There’s far too many.  I understand the ones for different lighting, and some people say to use them in unintended environments for cool effects.  Somewhat easy for me to understand.

The main thing I have issues grasping is how people know what settings to use on the camera.  I’m guessing it comes with experience.  I love film cameras, but when I don’t have the experience, sometimes I wish I could see the results instantly instead of taking a number of shots and waiting for a surprise from the photo lab.  But it’s all fun none-the-less.  The main confusing part is the f-stop or aperture setting.  I understand it changes how much light the lens lets in, but it still bewilders me.

Anyways, I bought some film to play around with, and hopefully I can get a hang of it and take the camera off of automagic mode.  There’s supposed to be a photo center that offers lessons, but they specialize in digital cameras, and I’ve been told they aren’t cheap…  So I’m hoping to go the experience route

Anyways, I’ve started a new photo blog which will hopefully be kept alive.  You can see it at photos.km-w.net

I do love finding a program that I say, “Oh, I can do all of my needs in this one application.”  It’s awesome because I feel less bloated in a way.  Take for instance, VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop 5.  They both do the same thing, but VMWare Fusion has (in my opinion) a better Unity mode than Parallels’ Coherence.  But Parallels has better support for OpenGL and 3D Graphics on their virtual machines, but VMWare feels more stable with the features it provides.  So, what do I do?  I have both (and use the both evenly just to let you know).

Anyways, back on topic.

Word processing has always been an issue for me on a Mac.  Windows keeps it simpler, somewhat.

Word Processing on Windows

In terms of user interface and design, I think that there are 3 main holders of power in Word Processing on Windows.  There’s Microsoft Word, Corel WordPerfect, and IBM Lotus Symphony.  Sure that are some more out there, like OpenOffice.org and AbiWord, but they follow the trend, and don’t try to set trends.  You may argue that IBM Lotus Symphony itself is based upon OpenOffice.org, but the user interface of Symphony sets it apart.  Symphony has it’s own look and feel, not something like “Hey, use us, we look just like the expensive stuff.”  I think OpenOffice.org and AbiWord are great projects and very useful, but they don’t really try to stand out among the crowd.

All of them pretty much have the features I need, it’s just the interface or pricing.

I love the interface of IBM Lotus Symphony.  The only problem right now is how bulky it is.  I can’t use it because of how slow and clunky it feels.  If it were snappier, it’d be my word processor of choice, but right now, I just keep my eye on it hoping for speed improvements.

Corel WordPerfect is a great tool.  I know people who refuse to use anything else.  I could never really get into it.  I’m looking at it now, and I like what I see, but now I’m on Mac, so I don’t see a point in buying it.

Microsoft Word is pretty much the standard.  I personally don’t like the “ribbon.”

On Windows, I currently use AbiWord or OpenOffice.org (the build from Go-Oo).  Sure I bash them for following, but they’re reliable and useful.  I also don’t use Windows very much, so I just need something cheap to open up documents when I am on Windows.

Word Processing on a Mac

On a Mac, you get the same basic choices that Windows has, MS Word, OpenOffice.org (or NeoOffice), and IBM Lotus Symphony.  You also get a load of other choices like Nisus Writer, Mellel, Bean, Mariner Write, iWork’s Pages, Pagehand, and much more (not to mention things like Scrivener or WriteRoom).

MS Word is still the standard for most people.

OpenOffice, NeoOffice, and all the other derivatives still aim to provide the same feature set of MS Word.  I really hate the user interface on the Mac because it doesn’t flow.  Even though it no longer requires X11, it still looks like a Windows MS Word 97 clone.

IBM Lotus Symphony looks the same as it does on Windows.  I still love the user interface, but it’s still bulky and slow to run.

PageHand is a relatively new player in the Mac OS X Word Processing game.  I really like what it has so far, but it still has a long way to go.  I really need footnotes, headers, footers, and some other things that PageHand currently doesn’t provide.  I want to buy it, but I’m reluctant (although buying it would probably aid in development and get me the features I need).  Another one of my concerns, yet also my likes is it saves to the PDF format.  The actual markup is a comment in the PDF (I believe), which makes me concerned about necessary file size when sharing the document (but I can always Print->PDF I guess).

Mariner Write feels really old.  It’s still updated, but there’s times when I believe, that a meeting should be called, and an update to the modern age should happen.  Sure it’s friendly, but it feels like it’s designed for old people.  Not sure how to describe it, but I feel like I lose control in the wrong direction with it.

iWork’s Pages, on the other hand, makes me feel like I lose control in the right direction.  I really like Pages, but I don’t see me using it in my day to day writing.  I enjoy the interface, I enjoy the features, but when it comes down to some of the parts of the document I need to edit for classes, Pages needs a few more steps than what I want to take.  Mainly for custom footers and headers on every page, easy foot notes, and some other things (although I’m probably doing things wrong because I’ve been told it’s actually easy to do in Pages).

Mellel is a word processor that I keep looking at, trying, and finding myself hating for tampering with.  It’s a great tool, but the learning curve is too steep for me to make the jump.  I’d like to learn to use it, but I can’t find the time nor patience to do so.

Bean is a free minimal word processor.  It has the basic features most people need.  I think it’s okay for basic word processing, and it’s fast as can be, but it lacks the power I need.

Nisus Writer Pro is what I currently use.  I love the interface and the features, but it’s still a bit rough around the edges in comparison to some of the other things out there.  I rarely use images in my documents, but when I do, I always question why I’m trying to do it in Nisus.  Other than that, foot notes, headers, footers, and a lot of other things are easily.

I really like Nisus Writer, PageHand, and Symphony because the most common things I need to do are easily and readily accessible.  MS Word, OpenOffice, and some others have floating windows and a bunch of other things to customize regularly accessed or regularly changed  parts of a document creating too much clutter (in my opinion).  The person working on PageHand probably read my mind or something because they way it handles typography is simply beautiful to me.  I love the way it works.  I wouldn’t have bought Nisus Writer Pro if Symphony worked well enough for daily use on my computer (sorry Nisus).  Symphony is great project, but I think they need to work on making it more usable (or tolerable?).

My main issue with word processing on the Mac is that there are so many choices, and each choice handles things in its own way, which is both a blessing and a curse.  On Windows, it’s more of choose the one that opens the right file formats, or which one works nicely with your wallet.  On Mac, the concern is how do you, as the user, want your word processor to work with you (or how do you want to work with the word processor).

I think there are many great things coming out in the future.  OpenOffice is working on a new user interface (at least for Impress?), MS Office 2010 is supposed to come out soon, and PageHand is still relatively young and growing.  I haven’t heard that many rumors about an iWork ’10 (other than there probably won’t be one).

Anyways, what do you use for word processing and why?