Category: Personal Life

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I’m Getting The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation Book by Jono Bacon

Art of Community

I’m getting “The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation“, a book written by Jono Bacon, Ubuntu Community Manager (UCM).

In this book, Jono offers a collection of experiences and observations from his involvement in building and managing communities, including his current position as Ubuntu Community Manager, arguably the largest community in open source software.

The content of the book, will help you to:

  • Develop a strategy, with specific objectives and goals, for building your community
  • Build simple, non-bureaucratic processes to help your community perform tasks, work together, and share successes
  • Provide tools and infrastructure that let contributors work quickly
  • Create buzz around your community to get more people involved
  • Track the community’s work so it can be optimized and simplified
  • Explore a capable, representative governance strategy for your community
  • Identify and manage conflict, including dealing with divisive personalities

This book is useful to those who are in a position that manages and responsible towards online communities, including day-to-day management, governance, managing conflics and how to promotes the community effectively.

An online preview is this book is available from Amazon Bookstore
“, a book written by Jono Bacon, Ubuntu Community Manager (UCM). website.

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Where all the Blog XML RPC ping sites have gone…?

I found out something interesting when I’ve gone through my WordPress setting, it seems that the once famous XML-RPC ping sites are either out-of-service or have been taken down.

The one standing up until today is Ping-o-Matic and venerable Weblogs (the first blog XML-RPC ping service).

I once tried to run one of such services to in order to study spam blogs behavior, but it ends up eating too much server resources with too much noise coming from all the submission, I ended the experiment just over one-year.

Probably this is what happening around the world, ping sites gotten shut-down because of being overwhelmed. The remaining option of promoting blog posts is through social status updating site such as Facebook, Twitter and Buzz (also identi.ca!).

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5 things that I look for when getting PHP / MySQL Web Hosting

1. SSH Access
Ftp access is not enough anymore as it is insecure (password is being transfered in plaintext). Besides, SSH access enables me to download updates and patch and updates directly inside the web server instead of having to upload it bit-by-bit from FTP server. Normally, some web hosting provider refuses to give SSH access out fear that their security would be compromised, well those providers aren’t for me.

2. PHP / MySQL release
Alot of webserver claimed to have the *latest* release of PHP and MySQL running on their webserver but is it true? Not all latest software are good/great, I will always ensure that the one offered by the web hosting is the most suitable for my application need.

3. Customizable DNS Record (NS)
A feature noticeably lacking in CPanel (I hate CPanel, with a passion). A customizable DNS record allows you to freely change your domain A, MX and CNAME record to point somewhere else. Sometime the domain registrar (ENOM comes in mind) lets you customize your own DNS Record without web hosting providers help. The ability to change DNS Record is important because it lets you host part of your web application somewhere else like by using Google Apps, etc.

4. Shared Hosting or Virtual Private Server (VPS)
Shared Hosting is probably the best choice if you are just starting to learn on how to host your own php/mysql application. Things to look in Shared Webhosting is whether you are within a ‘bad neighborhood’… meaning that whether my website has to share the same server/ip address with notorious spammers as this will affect website reputation. Plus, bad neighborhood is also the main cause for frequent downtime and website slow downs.

VPS is probably a better choice, but it requires some administrative skills from the site operator (read: you!) side. Things to look for in VPS hosting option is the total RAM and processor slice. If you are hosting a busy website with more than 5000++ unique visitors per day, then do not take a VPS with less than 512MB RAM, because you may find that it won’t cut it. Busy websites require higher RAM, it would also help if you use lighttpd or nginx webserver instead of the resource-hungry Apache. One more thing, when surveying for VPS provider, I will almost certainly look for the one that allows on-the-fly resource resizing or at least offer the option of letting users to re-size resources by themselves.

5. Mod Security Filters
This is in case of shared hosting — Mod security in Apache enhances the security of Apache-hosting websites. Although this feature is rarely advertised on the web hosting providers’ site, It is actually one of the most important feature to have, especially if you are going to host high-risk web application. I would prefer one that allow customization in ‘.htaccess’ file.

That’s it, the FIVE (5) things that I always look for when surverying for web hosting provider. Some of you might notice that I didn’t mention SLA (eg: 100% uptime guarantee or money back guarantee, etc). Well, to me SLA as promised by most Web Hosting provider aren’t even remotely realistic as it is not predictable, and most of the Web Hosting provider (including one that offers VPS) grossly oversell their service, so as a result, most of them fail to meet their own SLA. Don’t get me wrong, I rather host with a provider which have great track record with efficient service.

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Rant: About Computer Sciences/IT Classroom Assignments

When I was an undergraduate (i took Computer System & data communication major), one of the assignment requirement was to design an SIC/XE (link: http://tinyurl.com/3fyxjc8) simulator machine. Basically I’ve to understand how a microcomputer works by studying the SIC machine architecture, implementing the register understanding its opcode, etc.

The final outcome was the SIC/XE simulator written in C language which I was able to come out in a few days of spending time in front of computer. I compiled it with gcc, and it happily runs all of my opcodes and instructions.

In another assignment, I (and the rest of the class) are required to study BNF about a quarter of the semester, and we had to come up with an assembler for that particular simulator. Basically we have to create a fully working/executable assembler that spits out object code to be executed with the SIC/XE Simulator.

In short, we have to built a working computer simulator, and an assembler to enables programmer to write a program and executes it on that particular simulator in a course of one semester, and to me.. it is still a lightweight.

oh yeah, in another assignment I was tasked to write my own substitution/transposition cipher and integrates it with Java JCE and its cracker based on differential analysis. of course it only represent only 10% of the whole marks of the course.

And when we spoke about multimedia, we really mean about drawing a straight line in 3-d space by using spatial drawing algorithm and how to use OpenGL (in C) effectively to generate a computer representation of whatever object that the lecturer had just shown us. and the object must be interactive and must be accompanied with sound effect (thanks to libSDL – http://libsdl.org/ ).

Knowledge of actual physics and linear algebra, advanced calculus and numerical methods are a must, because you won’t be able to create a body in 3D space without those math shits. advance calculus helps you with handling the volume of the model. linear algebra, well.. helps you to get the model aligned within 3d space, vector and physics helps you to get around the environment within opengl without looking like a complete idiot.because you need to code stuffs in lines of C first without the benefits of seeing the output in a WYSIWYG environment until the point of compilation and running the actual code.

Kids nowadays grumble when they got an assignment that *only* requires them to use Java/PHP language to create a part of login system which implements basic (built-in!) hashing, which to me is completely doable under 15minutes with the benefit of the internet and free codes lying around.

Moreover there are several cases of Final Year Degree Project (FYP) that only requires a student to put together a mobile based web registration system using XHTML (and probably with PHP as the back-end) — they complained that the task was damn “too hard”….. which in my opinion is not suiteable at all to be a degree-level FYP (and it can be completely done under one week!)

Well, back in my days, those FYP examples aren’t even qualified for a class project that worth more than 5% of the semesters’ grade and those who aren’t capable in interpreting TCP/UDP packets or those who are not been able to do network programming will be having hard time graduating from the degree program (duh, its about Data Communication!)

Is the standards going down?