This is a test of my night vision webcam. It is actually a day/night web cam. I’ve plugged it in via a Pinnacle usb video conversion device.

Here’s my original article talking about the setup for this goofy experiment.
http://www.softduit.com/…dockffice/

Mobile post sent by brettbum using Utterz.  Replies.

That was the first test. Nothing spectacular and the audio could have been better. I have to figure the audio out a bit more as I fine tune my recipes for nocturnal web cam tests.

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This is a little silly but might actually be somewhat practical.  I work on a dock on a lake in North Carolina.  Out here with the bugs and the frogs and it is generally very peaceful.

The thing is that I do a lot of work with technology, including video conferences.  Now, at night if I run my normal web cam, it doesn’t pick up my image too well, because it is dark in the office.  If I turn on too many lights, it will be a bug magnet.

So a year or two back we had some break ins around the neighborhood in our old house.  I happened through Sam’s Club one day and bought a security camera with night vision capability for $40.  Its been sitting in a closet ever since.

But this evening, I am going to try and connect it up through my web cam connections and see if I can use it for a night vision web cam.

I’m sure there will probably not be too many people in need of this type of setup, but if it works, I’ll let you know!

Its this type of weird stuff that makes my job fun anyway and it sure beats the conversations I used to have about budget software, ERP systems, etc. when I worked as a finance manager. ….

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It may not be the most humane or insectane device in the world, but if you work on a lake in a Dock Office you need a good bug zapper!

In fact on some nights, you may even need two.

The trick is that you can’t put these in the actual office area.  You need to station them about 20 - 40 feet away so that when they draw bugs to them, they do not draw bugs in a cloud around the zapper and you in the office!

I’m actually looking at possibly installing a second bug zapper some where near my office soon.  The current bug zapper zaps a lot of bugs.  Every morning there is literally a pile of dead bugs below the zapper, but I need just a little bit more to keep my work area cleared out of the biting little buggers otherwise I will unjustly enrich the pharmaceutical companies buying up bug repellant and bug bite medicine…

Life could be worse but right now it is good!

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Last weekend I ran out of space on my primary computer hard drive.  My computer is a laptop and its about 18 months old.  When I purchased it, it was not quite the latest model, but it had a 120 gigabyte hard drive and a centrino duo processor and was fast enough for what I was doing at the time. 

It came with 1 gig of ram and the hard drive spun at 5400 rpms, which was slower than my previous laptop, which I had upgraded to 7200 rpms.  I always meant to upgrade the hard drive but just never had the time or extra few bucks to get to it.

Well, last weekend, my computer finally hit the 111 gigabytes full level and the computer wasn’t running right in my Dock-Office (Dockffice) because temperatures here are in the 90’s.

I’ve been doing more and more video work and that just fills up hard drive space very fast.  I hit the road and headed to Office Depot when I picked up a flyer offering a clearance deal before they reset for back to school stuff at twice the price.

I made it there and picked up a new router and wireless card.  Its a 1 gigabyte linksys router and card.  Then I headed to Best Buy where I picked up a 7200 rpm 200 gigabyte replacement drive for my laptop along with a 1 terabyte external western digital hard drive.  I intended to get the networkable drive from western digital but opted for the $140 cheaper drive that plugs in via usb. 

Next time the networkable drives drop in price, I’ll buy a 1 or 2 terabyte drive and then connect my existing 1 terabyte drive to that future drive and have 2 or 3 terabytes of space on my network.

I also picked up a high speed laptop cooling base station thing, to keep my laptop cool while it runs in my dockffice desktop (essentially a high top stocked bar).

All said and told I have a great deal more capacity and even more speed than I had before, which is definitely helping me get and keep things organized while I work more efficie ntly and effectively.

It has been a long time since I was impressed with a hardware buy ( I seem to recall with awe buying a 100 megabyte hard drive about 12 years ago thinking that was amazing). 

Now I have more space on my computer arrangement than I my entire company had working in a high rise in Atlanta including 30 some laptops and 3 servers running a $100 million dollar distribution business (owned by crooks in China that I turned into the IRS but that’s another story . . . .  ;)  ).

I’m sure this space will seem like a drop in the bucket after my video production moves to hi definition and I start working with multiple video inputs plugged in to a HDMI switch output to god knows what.  Maybe I’ll have to rent an exobyte (no idea how to even spell that ) from Google located in their new server room on the dark side of the moon operating at close to absolute zero temperatures or something.

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Over the last few months, I have fully embraced Skype.  I have been using it for years, but largely just for chat and the occasional phone call.  But a couple months back when my primary phone (cell phone- a treo 700 with Verizon) became completely unreliable, I started using Skype heavily until I could switch back to T-Mobile.

During that time I came to like Skype a great deal more, especially the video call capability.

However, it has also been a little problematic.  I sometimes lose sound or video for no reason and feel like I have to live in the Skype Options box, to keep the thing running properly.

The point that I am trying to make is that Skype is fantastic (and cheap) but it is only as good as your computer acts on your computer’s worst day.  That means that if you want to live by Skype, you have to be prepared to die by skype whenever and where every your computer might take a dump on you.

Rant Follows

I do not know why but for some insane reason, my computer likes to automatically change my microphone to mute from time to time without telling me.  It also likes to lose track of my video camera input as well.  Its one of those asinine problems that is about as fun to deal with as going to your doctors office and reading an obscure medical journal on lipovox reviews or something else almost useless for your day to day life.

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