Monthly Archives: July 2007

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hoo-boy

It’s been a while since I last updated.  I was in Pasadena last week for an offsite.  It was great.  Sometimes I get the heebee-jeebies at my current job but then I spend time with some of these folks and I get all jazzed about things.   So traveling took some time out from me keeping up with the updates and I feel like I should post a minor update… even if it seems a little disjunct.

While in Pasadena, I presented on VoD and IPTV. I didn’t present on the technology behind it, (leave it to the NetEng guys…) but rather the market and the analysts’ predictions.   It was well received and I enjoyed doing the research on it.

Sunday morning, our audio receiver finally died.   Today I placed an order for a new replacement.  I can’t wait for it to get here! It will be a world of difference!  Thanks to the members over at AVSForum.

I’ve been doing some cool stuff with the Webcam/Linux/Motion set up.  I got in trouble with my wife so I pulled it all down.   In the meantime, I am learning Ruby on Rails to make it better.

I’m also spending a lot more time with Subversion for personal docs and projects, since my webhost gives me a ton of space.  I’m debating if I should just punch holes in my firewall or use my webhost for svn storage.  The jury is still out.

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Linux Webcams

Oh boy! I’m using the Safari beta on WinXP tonight. I have to say, that I was getting tired of Firefox slowing down my Powerbook that I decided to try Safari. So far, so good. I liked it so much, I am trying the Safari beta at home. So, I’ve been busy. Things have been good and I feel like I’ve been flexing my mental muscle. I’ve been spending my last few nights trying to get webcams working under Linux. I have a cheap-o webcam and was trying to help someone set up a situation where their family from overseas can “check in” on them from time to time.Again, as in most of my projects, I don’t want to pay for software and I want to remain legit. For WinXP, I found this site to be really useful:

(ah, a bug with safari… mental note and switching back to FireFox).

This was an incredibly useful site. I found this software linked from it:

I was really impressed with YawCam. It did everything I could imagine and then some.

  • live stream
  • password protected (various users)
  • scheduling
  • logging
  • tweaks

If you are running Windows, I’d recommend using that. It was really great. But, I wanted to take it further. I have an old Dell Laptop running Ubuntu. I’ll write a much more comprehensive post later about all the different options I found, but in the meantime, I have come to love Motion:

Motion For Linux

I ended up building it from source, (which was a pain in the ass getting all the right dpkg’s installed). But it is slick. Ken is my new hero:

  • Kenneth Lavrsen’s Web Cameras

The tar.gz Ken distributes has config files that are outdated. It took me a little while to figure that out, but if you read the wiki, then you should be able to figure it out. Maybe I’ll release my configs.

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A guest post…

I’m not typically one to promote myself shamelessly, but I do consider it an honor in some regards.   I recently had a guest post on the Earthlink blog, Earthling.    This is my personal blog, not related to Earthlink in any way and is my own commentary.  However, the post is work related.