Presto vs tickets

**EDITED BELOW. NEW INFO IS IN BOLD**
New info has been used by me personally when my step dad and i had to go somewhere today

Recently I bought a Presto bus pass and was able to use it for a bus trip down to a local Future Shop store. Years ago i use to have to buy bus tickets to travel on the bus which was a pain to do and why i stopped using the bus. Here is my list of the pros and cons between old paper tickets and the new presto card.
By the way, this is for the Greater Toronto & Hamilton Ontario (Canada) area aka GTHA but I do know that some cities in the USA and other countries have similar systems in place.

Presto Pros

1. Can reload online using interact online.
2. Can check your balance and see transit history as well as get a print out for Public Transit Tax Credit from the Presto website.
3. Just tap the card on a Presto card reader at any stop and on any bus.
4. No need to wait for a transfer to be printed, Presto's system will see your transfer as a transfer if tapped on a 2nd bus within an hour after you tapped on the first bus. So your ride would only cost you for that first bus ride.
5. Very handy for those on a fixed monthly income. Load the card when you get paid and don't have to worry if you have money for the bus close to the end of the month.
6. Only need to carry 1 credit card size card, no need trying to find a valid bus ticket.
7. Can travel from Hamilton via HSR to Pickering (or Pearson Airport) via Go train/bus then transferring to the TTC with just 1 card. No need to buy different fees and tickets for different public transportation.
8. Tap and go. No need to try to get your ticket or money into the fare machine and no need to worry if you have exact change. Fare fee is deducted out of your Presto account that the card is set to.
9. No monthly, yearly or load fees.
10. Uses NFC technology to transmit the card's number to the receiving Presto fare box.
11. Presto has discount rates for students and seniors.
12. Presto offers replacement card for lost, stolen or damaged cards without costing any extra and you don't lose your balance.
13. Saving trees since the card is plastic and not paper.
14. Can pay for multiple passengers with just 1 card.

Presto Cons

1. Their website is not mobile friendly yet but it is accessible from any smartphone.
2. Takes 24 to 48 hours for your card to be fully active and registered. Have to wait 24 hours before you can register your card on their website.
3. There is a $6 fee when you first buy it and only load it with $10. For Hamilton as a promotion, its $20 and the $6 fee is waived.
4. No mobile app yet but they do say on their FAQ that they are investigating on doing a app.
5. Can't put holes in the card because that can damage the antenna and chip that is inside of the card.
6. Can only buy the card on the Presto website and at certain stores. For Hamilton they are only sold at most Fortinos stores.
7. Balance does not get updated until the bus(s) or train(s) arrives as a Presto wifi update station. This usually happens at night when the bus/train pulls into its maintenance garage for the night to be cleaned and refueled for the next day.
8. When loading your card, it won't show up in the Presto card reader till the next day for the exact same reason as number 7.
9. Have to tap the main box first to pay for your fare then tap the transfer printer for each guest and wait for that guest's transfer ticket to be printed then can tap again on that same box for your next guest.

Ticket Pros

1. Can get on the bus at a cheaper rate than with cash.
2. Can gift the ticket to a friend or family member very easily.
3. Can write stuff on the ticket before putting it into the fare box.
4. Most stores sell bus tickets.
5. Most stores sell different bus tickets for adults, seniors and students all set at their discount price.
6. If you want to kiss your money goodbye you can wrap it around some weed and smoke it.
7. Can get on a bus as soon as you buy a ticket. No waiting 24 to 48 hours.

Ticket Cons

1. Very easy to lose, your screwed once lost.
2. Very easy to rip which could cause the fare box to void the ticket forcing you to buy another to get on the bus.
3. No mobile app or website to store your bus ticket on. Its paper!
4. Can only use one ticket per bus. Have to get a printed transfer if you are needing to ride more than 1 bus.
5. To go from Hamilton to Pearson Airport would require you to buy multiple tickets for multiple rides along your journey.
6. Sometimes difficult to get your ticket into the fare box. Box sometimes can get jammed or filled up with tickets.
7. Depends on how many tickets you buy can become very bulky in your purse or wallet.
8. Can run out of tickets and money close to the end of the month if on a fixed monthly income.

So there you have it. Thats my lists between Presto and tickets for public transportation in the GTHA.

Overall i have to say that Presto makes it super easy and worry free to use public transportation.
I can seriously go from my place in Stoney Creek all the way to Pearson International Airport and back with just 1 card and not have to deal with multiple tickets and fare prices.
Granted, HSR, Go and TTC all have different fare prices but those prices are deducted from my Presto account, all i have to do is check the prices for all 3 and add that amount to my card a day before my journey then just tap and go.
And Presto is working on ways to better improve the system so it will soon be even easier to use the card. I know delivery and taxi drivers all carry mobile interact machines so im sure Presto will use the same kind of technology as those machines uses so when you tap, the fare is deducted right there, no waiting 24 hours.

Anyways hope this helps explain how these new cards work. Happy new years world.

4 reasons why not to use public standalone for opensim.

First off just like to thank by buddy Tim from Zetamex with doing this list.
This list is for public use of standalones.

1. Strain of having grid services and region load on the same instance.
2. OpenSim's HTTP service can barely handle the requests it has now, forcing opensim to serve both as a standalone just makes things worse.
3. Standalones are not able to contain large traffic, and often need restarting.
4. Limited to just a few regions that the computer can handle‏.

These 4 reasons are why Tim doesn't offer standalones and why i always suggest not using it as a public grid.
I do use a standalone with 2 sims for personal use and testings but i made it so no one else can get on which is fine for just testing scripts but standalone for others to visit and use is very bad.
I lag with just 2 standalone sims on a 12GB ram, 3.1GHZ quad core cpu, but of course i load balance my 2 sims when i boot it up. Most of the time its just unused files on my 1TB hard drive. But I will be converting my standalone to Robust in a few weeks so I don't lag as much as I do right now with it being standalone.

I have seen people use standalones as a public grid and usually the person who made the grid would put up like 10 to 100 sims then complain on social media that they are lagging. Well gee i wonder why. You're using a standalone to host 10 to 100 sims.

Lets break it down to simple terms.

Opensim.exe can only mostly handle sim activity like walking, local chat talking, rezzing, prim settings, physics, scripts, lighting, terraforming, and parcel's. Thats it. You then make the program have to handle assets, inventory, IM's, groups, search, currency, profiles, and logins / logouts its gonna choke and cause lag, even if you have just 1 or 2 sims, Opensim.exe will choke.

This is why experienced grid admins like me, Tim and afew others always strongly suggest opening a grid with Robust.exe cuz that can handle assets, inventory, IM's, groups, search, currency, profiles, and logins / logouts allowing Opensim.exe to just handle all the actual region stuff. Granted Opensim.exe still has to do alot and still chokes and lags when in Robust mode but its less compared to when its in Standalone mode because it doesn't have to deal with everything else that Robust can do.

Also with Robust, you can get as many servers you can afford and host tons of sims across those servers that can connect to your one robust server acting as 1 grid. That's how Linden Labs does it with Second Life, and it's how other big grids like InWorlds, 3rd Rock Grid and Metro does it.
With Standalone, you can only have 1 server hosting everything off of 1 Opensim.exe

So next time you want to boot up a standalone, please remember this blog and go with Robust.

new found hope

Just when i was starting to think i suck at making websites and i should just give up, some moron comes around and says more, what they would think, hurtful things to me which actually made me realize the bright side of my situation.
I R SMARTZ.
Atek grid attacked me on G+ and said they are going to inform the FBI that im a hacker.
Ok first off, good luck, ill be over here in CANADA laughing my ass off.
Secondly, ill be here laughing while the fbi sees that i make secured websites.
Third, laughing over all cuz Atek has made me realize that I am good at php and lsl. I have a very secured website that uses php and mysql in a secured way. The cookies for users are encrypted (even the user ID in the cookie is hashed), my lsl sends and receives secured POST data, i use the latest recaptcha to prevent bots from joining my site, i use bitcoins as a form of premium membership payment (dont worry im looking, researching and testing ways to pay with in world currency as well), only iframes i use is for the recaptcha so no loading external websites, i have drop support for gravatar, and my site is mobile friendly which means the site will load and resize automatically to fit any window/screen size.
What does Atek website have? Lets do a compare on this.

Feature - Vampire City - Atek
Legit SSL (HTTPS) - Yes - No
Secured Cookies and Sessions - Yes - Unknown but probably not
Encrypted transmission of data - Yes - Unknown but probably not
Use of iFrame - only for recaptcha by google - all over the place
Use of latest software - Yes (php 5.4) - No (outdated old ColdFusion)
Is the site for a grid - No - Yes (Vampire City is NOT a grid)
Multi Grid support - Yes - No
Multi Avatar support - Yes - No
Mobile friendly - Yes - No
Does it violate privacy policy laws? - No (well i hope not) - Looks like the registration page does
Website engine - Nginx Community Edition - Apache
Obey Cookie Laws? - Yes - NOPE! (Atek places 2 cookies for just viewing the site without informing the visitor, Vampire City only places 1 for visitors and 3 more at login but users are informed)

So the question here is, which site is better? Ignore the fact that Vampire City is my site and just look at that over all and tell me which site you rather visit? Then ask yourself, is Chris a hacker or just a guy who really knows his stuff?

I did this blog because it was actually bugging me that someone from the Atek grid would say things to me and call me a hacker all because I found some problems with their website that could pose a security threat to their site. In fact it is the same problems as i found with the CloudServ website. Now im not going to make the problems public but i do hope Atek fixes the problems that i found and quit calling me a hacker. I spent 5 years as a real life security guard so i bring my experience from that plus doing websites for 15 years to the metaverse. I will admit i have had my ups and downs, Vampire City was hacked, SQL injected and DDOS'd in the past but those mistakes has helped me learn how to protect the site from attacks.
And i gotta say, looking back at the past history of Vampire City, compared with Atek, i gotta say i am doing a fantastic job now.
So heres to a bright future of making a site i been wanting to make for years. A social networking and role playing website for vampire and lycan lovers.

12 steps to add a sim in opensim

This is just a quick way to add a new sim to a opensim standalone/grid. Mostly for those who dont know how to do it.
Hope it helps.

1. copy the Regions.ini file from one folder to another
2. in the new copy open the ini file and change the sim name that is in brackets.
Example: [Sim name here]
3. change the RegionUUID, can get a UUID from https://www.uuidgenerator.net/
4. change the location to where on the map you want the new sim to be at. Remember it can NOT be the same location as another sim.

5. ignore InternalAddress but change InternalPort to any port that is available on that server. I personally like to do 9000 for the first sim then increase the port number by 1 for each sim after so i can just look at the last created sim, get its port and add 1 to it.

[optional for varregions]

ignore 6 and go right to 7 if you are making SL size sims. Default is 256 which is SL like.

6. change SizeX and SizeY to the size desired/requested for var's. Ignore SizeZ since that is useless.7. save the new ini and close it then go to the console.

8. If the console for the sim is already going, go to it and type shutdown then hit enter. Once shut down start it back up.

9. Once back up the console will see the new sim, if this is a new instance for the sim itself then go to 10.

10. if its the first time for this console it usually will create the database tables IF the Opensim.ini in another folder is set correctly. Let the console do its thing.

11. Once the console is done and it sees a new sim it will ask questions like if you want to hook up the sim to a existing estate or to create a new one. This is up to you.
12. The console will then ask for the first name of the avatar who will own this new sim, enter the person's avatar first name, it will then ask for the last name. once done the sim loads up in world and that owner can do whatever he wants and you can go about your day again.

I quit Zetamex

For the past year before joining Zetamex i been fighting suicide and depression. I joined thinking that it would help me but instead it has been nothing but bullshit after bullshit from the opensim community. Not only has Zetamex been vocally attacked by others on Hypergrid Business and Google Plus community's but also by support tickets. My problem is that I have a mental problem of taking it personally and effects me, on top of it, i wasn't getting paid at all for what i was doing and putting up with. Not one Canadian penny.

I was going to seek help just after my 30th bday (jan 16) but then was hired by Tim as a volunteer so I was focused on that and it was good for while, then negative stuff and drama started and my stress kept rising. I started to feel like what Tim and I were doing was not good enough. Then Tim gave the company on the same day for the same reason as Notch selling Minecraft to Microsoft. It was that day i was going to quit and take care of myself but i held on.

Yesterday (Oct 24) someone posted a private convo i had with him. Now i have not read it and im sure some of it is lies because he said in the convo with me that i was threatening him. I never once did. Yes i told him the truth about AviWorlds because, well, its out in the open what Alex does when things go bad for his grid. I also informed this guy that i still live with my parents and they were sleeping so i couldnt talk on mic but the guy kept calling me so yea i got pissed off, thats when he went all paranoid and threaten to call the police on me. What you dont know is that he kept harrassing me by email till i blocked him. All of that was the night of Oct. 23. He then posted some of it the next morning. I found out through a dear friend and that triggered my anxiety which then triggered urges of throwing myself out of my bedroom window to 6 floors down to the ground and landing on a parked car. Instant death. That was then i decided that enough is enough and i need to guit Zetamex and get help and thats what i did. I told him that i quit and why then called the police who then later arrived and escorted me down to the hospital.

I do wish all the best to Tim and the Zetamex team and really hope they continue on making great products for opensim using php and what i wrote for them.
Now if you could excuse me, I have weight to lose, mental problems to deal with and a gay relationship to fix with my high school sweetheart.

Sincerely Christopher Strachan aka Chrisx84
Christina Vortex - Opensim grids.
VenumusVortex Resident - SL
Venumus - most World of Warcraft private servers and blizzard servers.

is this rollercoaster over with yet?

Its been a hella of a ride for me these past few months since coming on as just to make a vendor and rental system for Zetamex.
What was suppose to be a 1 month thing has end up putting me as 2nd lead website developer and CTO for Zetamex. Tim is always first even though he is learning php, html, jquery and bootstrap off of me.
Now with MyZetamex near completion and ZetamexTech only has about 1 month of testings, i have decided to announce here as to what is about to happen with me.
No im not leaving Zetamex, sorry to disappoint all you haters.

First off, I got opensim.directory to finish, zetamextech to launch, zetamexstatus.com to finish rewriting THEN, AND THEN!
I will be rewriting the following websites,
zetamex.com
gridpress.com
zadaroo.com
and zetamexlabs.com
As for the zadaroo site, will just be making it easier to navigate the website on any device, making API friendly calls and giving tim more control to do what he wants with it.
While i was working on the ZetamexWeb (formally OpensimWeb) i decided to test a theory to see if I could convert a copy of ZmW and turn it into a simple website system and sure enough i did as you will see with zetamexstatus.com
So all of the above sites, since they dont need so much security will be rewriten with zmws (zetamex web service).

As for projects outside of zetamex.
I will be getting back to my number 1 passion. /gasp OMG php is not my number 1 passion?
Music has always been my first passion with php as my second.
I plan to get back to finishing my 2nd album titled Spacial Radiation. It, as with my first failed album title Nebula, it will be alien techno. Basicly its music as if a alien from another planet was doing human music.
Also been thinking, and will talk to Tim about this, do Zetamex Radio.
That way with any future meetings/presentations we do on our office sim, we can do by voice via the radio channel instead of relying on vivox.
Yes it will have a auto dj but also would like to get some live shows and some news too. And as always Dj ChrisX (thats me btw) will return to the cyber air waves after a long 2 year absence since leaving a few Star Trek Online radio stations.
ON TOP OF ALL OF THAT!
I am also planning on getting back to making YouTube videos. I have returned to Minecraft but i still refuse to play anything past 1.7, and certainly not offical Minecraft. I been playing a Feed The Beast mod pack called Mindcrack which is a modified version of 1.4.5, when the game was perfect.
Anyways I will release a video soon about some stuff that all you Zetamex fans will be interested in ;)
Till then keep calm & party hard-core.

Prices are way to high

I get that the price to create, package and ship is costly but come on. $6 for a jar of coffee, $2 for a pack of halls, $3 for a loaf of locally made bread.
Or how about this. $169 for a simple android tablet or $1,099 for a Dell desktop computer.
For someone on disability those prices are just way to high.
I actually had to cancel my sim with Zetamex yesterday, not because of the recent drama with that company, its because after buying all i needed to survive for the month i had no money left.
Some of you may think that $15 is nothing but to me its alot since that is like 1 McDonalds value hamburger per day for 10 days.
Prices for food is just way to expensive for those on a small fixed income by their government.
Then all these tech company's tempt you with all these good gadgets and at first they are very nice and you want one but cant afford it.
"Everyone has a tablet" not really. If you look at the majority of Canadians and Americans. Most of them cant afford a cheap tablet because they either have no job or on a fixed government income that is very tiny.
I would love to have a windows 8 tablet but it's either that or food for the month. Clearly im not going to let myself die from starvation all because i want a tablet.
Same with cars. My parents car is falling apart and is close to being sent to the scrap yard but they cant afford a new car, not even a used one.

In short, price of things are just way to high for most people right now and i really wish company's would lower their prices before it gets really bad and out of control. I fear if life continues like this, there are going to be alot of suicides. People will become so depressed wanting and needed things that they just cant afford that they will kill themselves instead just to end the pain.
Don't worry im not going to kill myself but it is depressing me.
I'm just posting this so people in the same situation as I am in can know that they are not alone.
If you are feeling suicidal because of the way prices for things are to high for you to afford please take a look at this website i found. http://www.suicide.org/suicide-hotlines.html or just google suicide hotline

Anyways thats it for this blog. Thanks for reading it. And remember you are not alone.