|
Current Weather Conditions Friday, Jan-27-2012 at 03:22 PM Temperature: -0.4 (°C) Wind: 20.63 (km/h) WNW Barometer: 1020.8 (mBars) Falling Rain 0.00 today; 5.18 this month (mm) Forecast: Rain Sunrise: 08:21; Sunset: 17:18 |
The main page has been slow to load since I brought the new camera on line. I’ve been (as usual) kinda ignoring that fact but I finally decided to find out why. I now know. And, it’s odd.
The webcam software writes out a file called “YardCam.jpeg” every 30 seconds. Problem is, the software actually writes it out in .PNG format; not .JPEG. So, your browser asks for the page and:
So, there you go. My mistake and it’s been fixed. My apologies and I am a little ashamed.
Some. Not a whole lot, but some.
Really.
Over the years, I’ve gone to the closest hospital emergency room a few times. In the past ten years, say, maybe once every two years. It’s always been frustrating; slow and overall, not a great experience. But, I’ve never walked out again thinking that I wasted my time there (Well, except the time I was taken out in a wheelchair five days later. I did not and could not actually walk at all at that point so we can still call that a positive outcome. I walk fine now, thank you; the system does work). You have a problem; they do their level best to help with that problem; they get you better enough to at least go home and sleep through the night and then get back into your normally scheduled medical system.
Much of the emergency room process is, of course, hidden from us, and I’ve seen various odd things in the course of my visits. Shrug. As above, I’m pretty satisfied with the care I’ve been given.
Then … I discovered a blog:
That blog is written by an ER nurse in a smaller US hospital who is: honest; at times sarcastic; usually funny; sometimes depressing; at times frightening; and very, very much worth following. I spent the better part of an entire weekend reading from today all the way back to the first post. Highly recommended. Check it out.
I now understand a lot more about the stuff in the background that we don’t see, and I have even more respect for the people who work there.
Thank you, Nurse K – your work is appreciated.
For many years now, I’ve been running a server in the basement; it was file storage and the web and email server for the house. Over time, I’ve moved those functions over to different machines and the server eventually was an inefficient space heater and not much else. I kept it running for a while to make sure there was nothing on it I still wanted and finally shut it down for good.
Jump forward a few months and I’ve dragged it up to the computer workshop to see if I could actually repurpose it to do something useful. To its credit, it did power up. But, it was noisy due to four years of dust stuck in the fans. I got the worst of the dust out from the outside but it obviously needs a complete clean inside, too. So …
I shut it down in preparation for an outside “open the case and hit it with as much compressed air as I had on hand”. What do I get? “Installing update 1 of 68″ followed by “Do not turn off your computer; it will turn off automatically”.
Sigh.
It’s very likely that I’m going to do a format and clean install of something else – maybe I should just pull the plug and let the updates fail? Or, we’re up to update number 43; maybe I’ll just wait it out.
New camera tech is in place!
I’ve upgraded the video capture device to something that will capture up to 720×480 and I’ve found a wonderful image capture program that does a whole lot that I don’t want but will let me grab a snapshot every thirty seconds and save it for display above. The quality is much, much better and it’s more or less in place effective now.
More or less? Yeah, well. 780×480 is way too big to display in the page header, so it’s resized down to 360×240 for the moment. I’m going to have that auto expand up to a full resolution pop-up once I find and/or create some JavaScript code. As it is now, the scaled down image is a whole lot better than what I had yesterday.
Next steps: as mentioned above, do a mouse over to see the full sized image. The new program will stream the live video stream; I’d like to get that working inside the house. This will likely never get published out to the Web due to bandwidth concerns but it would be nice to have privately. Finally, it looks like I damaged the new video cable when I put it in – if it isn’t lying JUUUUST the right way all I get is noise. Can’t blame the dogs for this one, I’ll have to fix it somehow* and move on.
There’s always something …
(* To be fair, the cable ends in a BNC connector and I have to use an adapter to change it to RCA anyway. If I cut off the BNC and solder on an RCA I can eliminate the converter and also make the cable wiggle-proof. Win win.)
I’m still not happy with the image that I’m getting from the yardcam. The camera is capable of much better quality; the wiring is all new; so the problem must be upstream from that. Two choices: the video capture device I’m using; or the software that grabs the image.
Video capture is over a video to USB thing – it has native Windows 7 drivers but I’m not sure what resolutions it’s capable of decoding. It was cheap and I’ll admit it is suspect. I’ve been looking for a replacement but without actually buying one it’s not clear if that will help or hurt.
The software is and has been an ongoing fight. So far, I’ve tried about thirty different image capture programs (both free, paid, and compile it yourself) and all but one either locks up the machine to the point where I have to power it off or just returns a blank image. The one I’m using is not ideal but at least it grabs a more or less usable image. Or less: I’m really getting annoyed that I can’t grab a full resolution image and I’d like those annoying jaggies to go away. Sooner, please.
“Live” as in it updates every 30 seconds. There is, of course, a story.
I’ve had cables running outside for many years now and the cables inevitably get damaged. Either dogs, weather events, random vandalism (someone actually ripped my temperature sensor off the fence at a previous house. Why? I have no idea). Anyway, the first job was to make sure that all of the cables were inside hard plastic conduit. The existing weather station is pretty much standard phone extension cable and it’s all inside 1/2 inch inside diameter conduit. So far, so good and it held up to the last round of foster puppies with no issues.
Continue reading
The new smartphone is still keeping me happy. There are, however, some minor annoyances.
First, the phone gives you audible cues that something has happened: a warble when an email comes in; a beep when the battery gets to 20% and then 10%; a weeble when there is a voicemail; etc. Problem is, if you hear a random sound and turn the phone on … there is no indication of what exactly triggered the sound.
Continue reading
The weather station is now reporting live values; both on the front page and on a dedicated ‘Weather’ page. Next, I have to learn the secret of permalinks so we can deep link to specific pages inside the site. I think.
The site is now running on the Weaver theme. The image at the top of the page is subject to change but so far, the rest of the site looks okay.
The non-existent yardcam page is hooked up and ready to go. Waiting on, pretty much, the actual yardcam. To be fixed; once the stupid April snow storm has melted away a bit.
The Internet still amazes me.
When I brought up the new site, it came with user comments enabled. Registration is required but I didn’t turn on moderator mode so anyone who registered could post a comment. Overnight, two people had registered. Now, a week in; I have six people registered.
Continue reading
