I have a very simple example here that can get you started with comet. It covers compiling Nginx with the NHPM module and includes code for simple publisher/subscriber roles in jQuery, PHP, and Bash.
http://blog.jamieisaacs.com/2010/08/27/comet-with-nginx-and-jquery/
A working example (simple chat) can be found here:
http://cheetah.jamieisaacs.com/