Apr 2006
Skype video with DV Camera
23/04/06 00:36
Apparently not every DV video camera will work
directly with Skype. Why would you want to... higher
video resolution and low-light detection than a cheap
webcamera. Unfortunately our Sony MV450i seems to be
one of those cameras. Even though other software can
see the DV output Skype was not able to.
Fortunately, Skype forums had the answer. Either of 2 free softwares will allow Skype to see the DV video stream.
Once either of these is installed you can link it to your camera and then tell skyp to use "virtual" cameras that have the same name as the software that you are using.
Of the 2, Split cam seemed to show the biggest image, Trackrcam crashed if I tried to make the image too close to fullsize.
Also, at least for me, the camera mode of our Sony Camera would time-out if let unused for too long (a few minutes). This of course can cause a problem when the video just drops out. Our solution is to be sure that the DV camera does not have a video tape inside. Then, for some reason, the timeout seems to be much longer.
Fortunately, Skype forums had the answer. Either of 2 free softwares will allow Skype to see the DV video stream.
Once either of these is installed you can link it to your camera and then tell skyp to use "virtual" cameras that have the same name as the software that you are using.
Of the 2, Split cam seemed to show the biggest image, Trackrcam crashed if I tried to make the image too close to fullsize.
Also, at least for me, the camera mode of our Sony Camera would time-out if let unused for too long (a few minutes). This of course can cause a problem when the video just drops out. Our solution is to be sure that the DV camera does not have a video tape inside. Then, for some reason, the timeout seems to be much longer.
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Realbasic programming
22/04/06 07:47
Well I have finally bitten the bullet and got the
Realbasic programming Rapid IDE. I liked the
multi-platform potential (even though slashdot.com
is talking about
MacOSX offering native Windows XP apps one day
soon) and the larger .exe files were not a big
problem.
Aside from crashing (blipping out of existance) now and then it has indeed allowed me to rapidly come up with some nice stuff.
Not having seen .net I do like the IDE interface though it is a bit expensive to use SSL and I can only upgrade for 6 months before paying more money to get newer updates.
For now I am bouncing off the forums and the 2 manuals to try to get the little things that I need and overall people are friendly and I am finding solutions. Below are some of the free essentials that I found while learning to make my first program.
Most of these came from RBGarage which has a great list of useful modules and add-ons for Realbasic.
The only down side so far is that much of the examples seem to have a mac focus and I am more interested in getting a Windows program running.
Aside from crashing (blipping out of existance) now and then it has indeed allowed me to rapidly come up with some nice stuff.
Not having seen .net I do like the IDE interface though it is a bit expensive to use SSL and I can only upgrade for 6 months before paying more money to get newer updates.
For now I am bouncing off the forums and the 2 manuals to try to get the little things that I need and overall people are friendly and I am finding solutions. Below are some of the free essentials that I found while learning to make my first program.
- Windows Functionality Suite
-
XMLPreferences (even though the download is
.sit and so needs Stuffits file
expander)
- Utool
- String Utilities
- and the document Update Yourself at RBLibrary
- ChartPart
- TrayApp & Toast plugins from Control-D
- and of course going through all of the examples.
Most of these came from RBGarage which has a great list of useful modules and add-ons for Realbasic.
The only down side so far is that much of the examples seem to have a mac focus and I am more interested in getting a Windows program running.
Voyage Linux on my Soekris 4501
15/04/06 21:20 Filed in: Linux
I finally found a few hours free to load a Debian
Linux system onto a compact flash card. I chose
voyage-linux
for its customization options and rw filesystem.
It was a little easier than I had expected since
I was able to load the voyage install iso
through vmware directly into a Compact Flash
Card using and IDE adaptor. From there I just
followed the voyage instructions.
After that, it was simply a matter of configuring the prism and atheros wifi cards as clients to my network and running apt-get update. I've added in a few other useful softwares such as quagga, nano-tiny, ntpdate, iptraf, wavemon, iperf, whois, wondershaper, mc.
I wanted to also install ntop but I am having problems getting it to run in the ro environment. I just need to get Captive Portal working now, and maybe look at the mesh version. Every so often I run out of memory when I try to use dselect but using mainly apt-get works great.
After that, it was simply a matter of configuring the prism and atheros wifi cards as clients to my network and running apt-get update. I've added in a few other useful softwares such as quagga, nano-tiny, ntpdate, iptraf, wavemon, iperf, whois, wondershaper, mc.
I wanted to also install ntop but I am having problems getting it to run in the ro environment. I just need to get Captive Portal working now, and maybe look at the mesh version. Every so often I run out of memory when I try to use dselect but using mainly apt-get works great.
Moving XP Pro to a new motherboard/CPU
10/04/06 21:18 Filed in: Microsoft
Since I have a 478 socket motherboard, upgrading to a
3GHz was just as expensive as getting a new 775
socket motherboard and a 3GHz processor. Well, that
was an easy sell for the sales guy. However, as soon
as I'd swapped out all of the components I found that
my good and stable XP PRO system was just rebooting
and rebooting and rebooting.
I tried adding and removing cards/ memory/ BIOS motherboard BIOS upgrade but nothing was fixing this and I was getting worried that I would need to reinstall all of my Windows XP operating system. Fortunately I found that there is special Repair Install feature of Windows XP that allows me to reconfigure the system for the new board while saving my previous software configurations.
However, this meant loading up the original XP CD and waiting about 30 minutes for everything to finish. Finally I would need to reactivate the Windows installation.
Part of the problem was that I was using a SATA boot drive and the first Windows XP install CD's do not support this. This means that to do anything with my Windows XP CD I need to have a floppy drive holding the SATA drivers. These drivers are motherboard specific and should be on the CDROM that came with your new motherboard. For my new ASUS board they were under the RAID driver directory and ASUS even had a utility to make the floppy.
In the end I had a restored running system but I could not run any other updates and the system seemed to have a lot of problems. I finally just reinstalled it all and did all of the SP1 & SP2 updates. It might have been a problem with me adding a domain name where none existed before but if the sales person sells you on the new board be ready with a lot of transfer time.
Maybe make a nice backup to, while you are at it. Acronis True Image Home is not bad (though my backup seemed to have become corrupted for one of the 2 computers I backed up... so I guess 50% success is better than nothing.
Instructions for the Microsoft Repair Install itself are HERE:
I tried adding and removing cards/ memory/ BIOS motherboard BIOS upgrade but nothing was fixing this and I was getting worried that I would need to reinstall all of my Windows XP operating system. Fortunately I found that there is special Repair Install feature of Windows XP that allows me to reconfigure the system for the new board while saving my previous software configurations.
However, this meant loading up the original XP CD and waiting about 30 minutes for everything to finish. Finally I would need to reactivate the Windows installation.
Part of the problem was that I was using a SATA boot drive and the first Windows XP install CD's do not support this. This means that to do anything with my Windows XP CD I need to have a floppy drive holding the SATA drivers. These drivers are motherboard specific and should be on the CDROM that came with your new motherboard. For my new ASUS board they were under the RAID driver directory and ASUS even had a utility to make the floppy.
In the end I had a restored running system but I could not run any other updates and the system seemed to have a lot of problems. I finally just reinstalled it all and did all of the SP1 & SP2 updates. It might have been a problem with me adding a domain name where none existed before but if the sales person sells you on the new board be ready with a lot of transfer time.
Maybe make a nice backup to, while you are at it. Acronis True Image Home is not bad (though my backup seemed to have become corrupted for one of the 2 computers I backed up... so I guess 50% success is better than nothing.
Instructions for the Microsoft Repair Install itself are HERE: