The Code

I won’t waste your time, here’s the source code.

package {
	import org.flixel.*;

	public class StarField extends FlxObject {
		public static const NUM_STARS:Number = 75;
		private var _stars:FlxGroup;

		/**
		 * @param	ang This is the angle that the starField will be rotating (in degrees)
		 * @param	speedMultiplier
		 */
		override public function StarField(ang:Number = 90, speedMultiplier:Number = 4):void {
			angle = ang;
			_stars = new FlxGroup();

			var radang:Number = angle * Math.PI / 180;
			var cosang:Number = Math.cos(radang);
			var sinang:Number = Math.sin(radang);

			for ( var i:int = 0; i < StarField.NUM_STARS; i++ ) {
				var str:FlxSprite = new FlxSprite(Math.random() * FlxG.width, Math.random() * FlxG.height);
				var vel:Number = Math.random() * -16 * speedMultiplier;

				// change the transparency of the star based on it's velocity
				var transp:uint = (Math.round(16 * (-vel / speedMultiplier) - 1) << 24);

				str.createGraphic(2, 2, 0x00ffffff | transp);
				str.velocity.x = cosang * vel;
				str.velocity.y = sinang * vel;
				_stars.add(str);
			}
		}

		/**
		 * Rotate the starField
		 * @param	howMuch Input the amount of rotation in degrees
		 */
		public function rotate(howMuch:Number = 1):void {
			angle += howMuch;

			var radang:Number = angle * Math.PI / 180;
			var cosang:Number = Math.cos(radang);
			var sinang:Number = Math.sin(radang);

			for ( var i:int = 0; i < StarField.NUM_STARS; i++ ) {
				var str:FlxSprite = _stars.members[i] as FlxSprite;

				FlxU.rotatePoint(str.velocity.x, str.velocity.y, 0, 0, howMuch, str.velocity);
			}
		}

		override public function update():void {
			_stars.update();

			for (var i:int = 0; i < _stars.members.length; i++) {
				var star:FlxSprite = _stars.members[i] as FlxSprite;
				if (star.x > FlxG.width) {
					star.x = 0;
				} else if (star.x < 0) {
					star.x = FlxG.width;
				}
				if (star.y > FlxG.height) {
					star.y = 0;
				} else if (star.y < 0) {
					star.y = FlxG.height;
				}

			}
		}

		override public function render():void {
			_stars.render();
		}
	}

}

Now to use it, simply add the following in one of your states:

private var sf:StarField = new StarField();

// state constructor
override public function StarState():void {
     this.add(sf);
}

Get the star field demo source code

I also used this star field class in my FIRST ever flash game. Face Defender.

Setup your external MongoDB

I use MongoHQ to host my database (your first 16MB database is free). Make sure to take note of your connection string for later.

Custom PHP.ini

This part is somewhat tricky. Luckily, if you are using dreamhost, it is well documented on their wiki. Thus, I won’t go into detail of that here. Follow the directions and proceed to the next step (or leave a comment asking for help if you have issues).

After setting up your custom ini file for your domain, add the following lines to the very end of your php.ini:

extension_dir = "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/bin"
extension = mongo.so

NOTE: This step loads the MongoDB extension but, we don’t have it yet! The next steps will fix that.

Compile MongoDB: Part 1

Using SSH, cd into your home folder (/home/YOUR_USERNAME) and type the following:

mkdir bin
cd bin/
wget http://download.github.com/mongodb-mongo-php-driver-1.0.6-0-gd261d7a.tar.gz
tar zxvf mongodb-mongo-php-driver-1.0.6-0-gd261d7a.tar.gz
cd mongodb-mongo-php-driver-gd261d7a/
phpize

If you receive the error Cannot find autoconf after running the command phpize, follow the next section. Otherwise, skip it!

Compile/install autoconf

wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.66.tar.gz
tar -zvxf autoconf-2.66.tar.gz
cd autoconf-2.66/
./configure "--prefix=$HOME"
make
make install

The configure line will tell make install to put the library (.so) file into our home/bin directory (eg, /home/YOUR_USERNAME/bin). Quickly check that you have a few autoconf folders in your bin directory and continue on.

IMPORTANT: You must now tell linux to look for libraries in your home/bin directory. To do this, you must change the PATH as follows:

EXPORT PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH

Compile MongoDB: Part 2

Remember that phpize function? Yea, try it again:

cd $HOME/bin/mongodb-mongo-php-driver-gd261d7a/
phpize

This time, you should not receive an autoconf error. Now, we actually compile the extension.

./configure "--prefix=$HOME"
make

And, for some reason, the make install commands ignores our prefix… so we can just manually copy the needed (.so) file to our bin folder:

cp modules/mongo.so $HOME/bin/

Now double check that Mongo.so exists in your home/bin directory (eg, /home/YOUR_USERNAME/bin/mongo.so)

Test it

Now, here’s a simple script to test if you can insert something into your external Mongo database.

<?php
   $m = new Mongo("mongodb://YOUR_USERNAME:YOUR_PASSWORD@YOUR_SERVER:27046/YOUR_DATABASE");
   $m->connect();
   $db = $m->YOUR_DATABASE
   $collection = $db->YOUR_COLLECTION;

   $collection->insert(array('name' => 'super test 5000'));

There! You should have just inserted a new record into your database collection. Test by changing the insert line to the following:

$cursor = $collection->find();

echo $cursor->count() . ' documents found. <br/>';
foreach ($cursor as $obj) {
   var_dump($obj);
   echo '<br/>';
}

Now when you run that last script, you should see at least the one record you JUST added!

Conclusion

This is the approach I am currently using for one of my smaller pet projects. I’m going to be doing a lot of testing on my local machine using XAMPP, then going live with it using Dreamhost. It is also unfortunate that I’m forced to use an external DB. But, considering the first 16MB of database from MongoHQ is free, I’m totally satisfied with this for now.

Before

After

The main difference is the the navigation “dock” and the color scheme. It’s a lot more simplistic which I like.

How to use it

I will assume that you already have the Flex 4 SDK already setup for FlashDevelop.

To use the template, simply copy it into the “projects” folder in your FlashDevelop installation directory. For me, it was “C:\Program Files (x86)\FlashDevelop\Projects.” Then, in FlashDevelop, simply go to Project -> in the toolbar.

Then, there should be an option to create a new Flixel 2.0 project.

That’s it! The new project will include 4 basic files on top of the flixel library (the current stable release as of today).

Update Flixel version in the template

To update the version of flixel in the template, go to where you extracted the template originally (mine was in C:\Program Files (x86)\FlashDevelop\Projects\410 Flixel 2.0 Project\). Then, in the “src” folder, you will see another folder called “org.” Simply overwrite the org folder with the org folder from the latest Flixel distribution. That’s it!

Things to look for

Spelling Errors?
Check out spam case 1, “sunlasses shop.” The biggest reason for its classification is the mispelled word “somwhere.” Fix the spelling and test it again. It should show up as “ham” now! The original is an actual spam comment I received on this blog a couple days ago, I changed the links and e-mail slightly, however.

Hyperlinks
Check out spam case 2, “Jim Boots.” It’s obvious if someone posted this comment on your blog that they are simply trying to promote a product. However, what makes it spammy is simply because the hyperlink to Mr. Boot’s website also has the hyperlink text as the website. If you click on ham case 1, you will notice the hyperlink text says “here” instead of “www.cowboyboots4thawin.com,” and is no longer identified as spam. Although, interestingly, if you change where the hyperlink actually goes to in the original spam case (eg, leave the hyperlink text as www.cowboyboots…, but change the link to go to a naughty site or something)

Finally, look at ham case 2, “Trustworthy Guy.” This is the perfect comment: solid spelling, grammar is good enough, and no hyperlinks at all. This is simply an example of what a comment should look like!

Conclusion

If you want your comments to show up on blogs (or whatever Akismet is safeguarding), it might be helpful to test it with this form before submitting your comment.

Days 1-3

Friday last week was the start of the experiment. The night before I got a solid 4.5 hours of sleep (midnight to 4:30am). Waking up wasn’t too hard since I “slept in” the night before. I started to get tired around noon and ended up taking a 1.5 hour nap at 1pm. I spent the morning before my nap programming and being incredibly efficient. After the nap, I spent more time socializing than anything. Overall, I felt pretty chipper and excited throughout the day since I was starting this new experiment. Energy: 95%.

On Saturday, waking up was slightly harder than on Friday with only 4.5 hours of sleep. I woke up early from my alarm, and I suspect it was so difficult since I was in a deep sleep when it went off. Although I was tired for a solid hour, I felt pretty chipper the rest of the day. I felt especially chipper after the nap, so it was a pretty good day. Energy: 80%.

On Sunday, I almost overslept. That is, I woke up after ~4.5 hours (around 6am) and just about threw in the towel… I wanted to sleep more. This was by far the hardest day so far. I was in “Zombie mode” until my nap, which I took an hour earlier (noon-ish). The nap helped a bit and I was able to get myself going afterwards, although I played video games most of the day. Energy: 60%, Mental Ability: 30%.

Days 4-6

Monday was about as hard to wake up for, but I must’ve woken up at the right time since I jumped out of bed a little easier. Besides, it was Memorial Day! I went over to my parents place for dinner. It was delicious, but I could sense following the schedule might be hard with all the meat we were eating (we did some grilling). I went home after hanging with my parents for a bit and went to bed around midnight (although I forced myself to stay awake until then). Energy: 70%.

On Tuesday, I had my first oversleep! I woke up around 6am, which means I overslept by 1.5 hours! This shows that eating a lot of food (especially meat) and trying to go to bed only causes problems (obvious right?). The oversleep helped quite a bit to get my energy up and I spent much of the morning programming. I decided to take the usual nap around 1pm and I felt even more energetic after that. Around 4pm, I had dinner… which consisted of a frozen pizza. I had a few slices then went to play tennis and eat ice cream with a friend. Overall, it was a good day, but I was really tired after tennis, I went to bed around 1am. Energy: 90% with oversleep.

On Wednesday, I had my second oversleep! This time it was a big oversleep, I got a solid 9 hours of sleep. I remember waking up after 4.5 hours AND after 6 hours and remembering not wanting to get up at all. I woke up around 10am and didn’t feel energetic at all (it was definitely because of too much sleep). I suspect this oversleep was a result of all the unhealthy food I ate the day before and the heavy physical activity, which I haven’t done in quite a while. I spent most of the day with friends, starting at noon. I had tea at about 3pm and the caffeine helped me get energized a bit. Pre-nap energy: 75% with caffeine.

Later in the night, I decided to still to take a nap around 8:30pm. I managed to take a solid 1.5 hour nap and it helped a lot! I woke up very chipper and I managed to get some programming done as well as socializing. Post-nap energy: 95%.

That night, I was determined to get back on my sleep schedule.

Day 7

So, I woke up chipper as ever Thursday morning (yesterday) at about 8:30 after a solid 4.5 hours of sleep. I spent the morning being quite efficient. I also ran some errands and finished up a lot of stuff that’s been needing to get done for a while. I took a nap around 2:30pm. It was a solid 1.5 hour nap and I felt great after that. A few hours later, I went to a bar & grill with my roommates, ate some BBQ wings and had a few beers. I came home a little after 11pm and the power was out! Energy: 90%

I fell asleep around midnight, but I didn’t wake up until around 9am this morning (Friday)!

Preliminary Conclusions

From this weeks test, I can conclude a few things that seem to make it a lot harder to follow the schedule:

• Eating lots of food before sleeping
• Eating more than one serving of meat
• Eating “junk food” (aka, frozen pizzas and ice cream)
• Any amount of alcohol

I was thinking of adding “exercise” to the list, but the reality is that I had a frozen pizza before playing and ice cream right after playing. I’ll be playing tennis again next Tuesday, so I’ll make sure to eat healthy that day and see if I still oversleep after the exercise.

Discussion

It is said that it takes 30 days to build up a habit. If I’m going to really test this biphasic thing, I’m going to play it at least that long. Hopefully I’ll have less slipups this coming week. I’ll especially try to following my own advice above (eat less junk, etc).

You know that energetic feeling you get after a great night of sleep? That is the time I tend to be most productive. In fact, I didn’t realize this until recently… but during the busiest times of my college career, I was actually a biphasic sleeper. I would get 6-7 hours of sleep at night and grab a 20 minute nap sometime between lunch and dinner (the so called “siesta” time).

Studies have shown time and again that nappers are more efficient people. Some countries even have “house rules” where very few people call each other during the 3pm-5pm hours. However, the latter is most likely because those countries tend to eat the most during lunchtime, which inevitably causes a person to crash. But, if you just had a BIG lunch and you’re feeling tired right afterwards… why would you continue attempting to work? Why not sleep now, and pick it up later feeling refreshed?

Why?

Lately I’ve been really packing on the sleep pounds. I just graduated with my B.S. degree (about to head to graduate school in the fall), and this summer I’m doing freelance work. I love freelancing, but it doesn’t require a set sleep schedule. While I was going no more than 8 hours each day/night during the school year, I’ve been sleeping up 9-10 hours each night since summer started, while waking up slightly later each day. I suspect that if this keeps going, I’ll find myself sleeping 10pm to 7pm and completely miss daylight! Well, to avoid that… I’m going to implement a new sleep schedule that takes advantage of that midday siesta too!

Modus Operandi

Technically, it’s called a biphasic sleep schedule. The plan is to get 4.5 hours of sleep starting at around 12am (midnight), and another 90 minute nap sometime between lunch and dinner.

I’ve also heard (anecdotal evidence) that people who are vegetarian, or even vegan, tend to require less sleep. I can’t say for sure if this is true, but I’m attempting to make the transition to a biphasic schedule a little easier by eating less meat. I’m also completely eliminating fast food from my diet.

If I can change from sleeping 9-10 hours a night to this new schedule of 6 hours, imagine how much more time I will have for work and other things! Consider the average recommended amount of sleep (8 hours) vs what I’ll be getting (6 hours). That means, if I keep to the above schedule, I’ll be gaining 2 hours each day over the recommended value. That’s 730 extra hours per year, or 30 extra days per year. That means, I have a whole month of things to accomplish over the average person. Imagine what I can accomplish in one month!

Is it really possibly for me to go from 9 hours to 6 hours? I think so. I did it for whole semesters before. The 9 hours thing was simply out of a lack of structure of my day. I also noticed that I’ve been yawning much more after starting the 9 hours sleep gig versus when I was in school (perhaps I’ve been oversleeping). The only thing a person needs each day/night is ~4 complete sleep cycles and if a sleep cycle takes ~90 minutes to achieve, I’m meeting the requirement!

Conclusion

That’s all for now. I don’t suspect to have too much difficulty with this, but I’ll definitely give a weekly update.

If this goes really well, I may even try a polyphasic experiment in the future.

Copy/Overwrite

Copy/overwrite app/config/core.php, in this file change the following

• Change cipherSeed value to something other than the default
• Change the salt value to the same value you had before

Copy/overwrite app/webroot/index.php

Lastly, completely copy over the latest cake, plugins and vendors folders. I didn’t need to do any other modifications to the app folder other than those stated above.

Add to Code

Add ‘Session’ to the helpers AND components array in app/app_controller.php like so

<?php
class AppController extends Controller {
	var $components = array( ..., 'Session');    // Components used in controllers
	var $helpers = array( ..., 'Session' );         // Helpers used in views
}
?>

Also,
If using the Cookie Component anywhere, change any reference to del() to delete()

Lastly, $session->flash() no longer auto echoes (this code is probably in your layout). I had to change it like so in my code:

<?php
echo $session->flash();
echo $session->flash('auth');
?>

Debug Information

The variable $cakeDebug no longer exists. Instead, use the following code

<?php echo $this->element('sql_dump'); ?>

That’s all I had to do! Everything I mentioned here can be found in the CakePHP migration guide.

This is in addition to my previous post about creating a simple contact form. This post will utilize the Akismet service to classify some messages as spam.

The Prerequisites

To follow this tutorial, I assume you already have a simple contact form in place.

Akismet PHP Library

The folks at Aching Brain created a nifty PHP class to make utilizing the Akismet service easier. Download this library then put it in the same directory as your contact form file.

There are implementations available in other languages as well.

The PHP

This code will completely replace the PHP code from the previous post. However, I assume the HTML used is unchanged.

First, include the Akismet library:

<?php
require "Akismet.class.php";

Now, create a more generic function for sending an email:

function send_mail( $name, $email, $website, $ip, $is_spam, $message)
  {
  		$subject = '';
  		if( $spam == true )
  			$subject = "[SPAM?]";
  		$subject .= "[Your_site.com] E-mail received from ".$author_name."//".$author_email."//".$ip;

  		mail( "send_to_this_address@to.com", $subject,
		$author_name.", ".$author_email.", ".$author_website. ".\r\n\r\n".$message);
}

If the $is_spam parameter is set to true, we simply prepend “[SPAM?]” at the beginning of the subject line. This allows us to see right away what it is in our inbox. Further, you could create an e-mail filter to automatically put these messages in a different e-mail folder.

Now, we have to set-up the Akismet class. This will require a WordPress API Key. If you don’t have one, it’s easy and free to get one.

	if(isset($_POST['action']))
	{
		$wp_key = 'xXxXxXxXxXxX';
		$our_url = 'http://www.your_website.com';

		$name = $_POST['name'];
		$email = $_POST['email'];
		$website = $_POST['website'];
		$message = $_POST['message'];
		$ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

		$akismet = new Akismet($our_url, $wp_key);
		$akismet->setCommentAuthor($name);
		$akismet->setCommentAuthorEmail($email);
		$akismet->setCommentAuthorURL($website);
		$akismet->setCommentContent($message);
		$akismet->setUserIP($ip);

		send_mail( $name, $email, $website, $ip, $akismet->isCommentSpam(), $message);
	}
?>

That’s it! Now if a line of spammers hits your contact form, you have a safe guard against it. If you have questions about this piece of code or anything else, feel free to leave a comment!

In conlusion, Akismet is the best!

The HTML

			<form id="contact_form" method="post" action="contact.php">
				<input id="name" type="text" name="name" tabindex="1"/> <label for="name">Name</label>
				<input id="email" type="text" name="email" tabindex="2"/> <label for="email">E-mail</label>
				<input id="website" type="text" name="website" tabindex="3" value="http://" /> <label for="website">Website</label>
				<textarea id="message" tabindex="4" rows="10" cols="60" name="message"></textarea>
				<input type="submit" value="Send E-mail" tabindex="5" />
			</form>

This is just a simple form. I included two things that increase usability quite a bit: Usage of the label tag and usage of the tabindex attribute of the various form inputs.

The label tag allows you to click the text next to an input box and have your cursor go into the textbox. You do this by setting the label’s “for” attribute equal to the “id” attribute of your input box. Find more information at w3schools.

The PHP

<?php
if( isset($_POST['action']) )
{
		echo 'Thanks for the E-mail!';

		$name = $_POST['name'];
		$email = $_POST['email'];
		$website = $_POST['website'];

		mail( 'send_to_this_address@to.com', "E-mail received from $name, $email, $website", $_POST['message'] );
}
?>

Now, simply put the php code followed by the HTML code into the same php file (I called mine contact.php), and upload it to your webserver!

The php is pretty simple. We grab all the form variables and put them into php’s mail function. If this function does not work, you probably need to install/configure postfix.

Discussion

The code is really simple. You can find more information in the php manual online. A big thing that I did NOT talk about, however, is how to prevent spammers from attacking your contact form. In fact, for a large site it’s a big problem (my blog gets 10+ spam messages per day).

Luckily! There is a great service available to detect and reject spam messages. It’s called Akismet. Expect a blog about this and other ways of protecting against spam in the near future.