danny’s space

Been wanting to do this for a while, so finally went out and bought a webcam (albeit a Microsoft one…) for use as a security ‘monitoring’ device. Quite a bargain as well - the price was mislabelled so I got $11 off there, and there’s a $40 rebate on the thing as well. Sweet.

So anyway, the next step after the relatively painless install was to look for software that’s able to:

• Do motion detection - taking a picture every 30 seconds not only takes up disk space but may miss action when it occurs
• Upload via FTP - what happens if your computer is nicked? The photos go with it…
• Timestamp - what’s the use of a photo if you don’t know when it was taken?

Those were the basic features that I wanted in the software. There’s quite a few free programs out there that can publish webcam shots, like Yawcam (doesn’t do motion detection), CatSpy (great for video, but no still image support), LogiSphere (slow, takes up alot of resources), and WheresJames Webcam Publisher (many features, tricky to set up).

I ended up going for the WheresJames program, and it works quite well. A few spurious features (e.g. decorative frames) but overall well-designed. It doesn’t take up that many sytem resources because it has its own link to the webcam instead of relying on the webcam software (like LogiSphere does). Yet to get the video working though. Also, uploading to FTP isn’t that trustworthy within the program, so I had to use an FTP synchronisation setup using SyncBack which was scheduled to run every 15 minutes with Solway’s Task Scheduler (since the minimum interval of Windows task scheduler is 1 day).

So if you have a webcam, you can easily hook it up for it to act as a security device. Hope this helps someone out there catch the crooks that break in and steal stuff.

Online tests used to be the craze in high school. Dodgy websites asked you questions about your kitchen utensil preference and bowel habits to determine what type of dog you were. Sometimes personality tests also have a bad wrap, putting people into distinct ‘categories’.

But there are some uses that stem from knowing your ‘personality type’. They can help you understand in a more concrete way how you relate to people, how you deal with stress, what to watch out for, and so on.

A good one to use is the DiSC test. This is useful in group situations, figuring out how each person in the group handles tasks and relates to each other. We did this at our church’s leaders’ retreat earlier this year and it was quite helpful. It categorises people into the categories of Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness (there are other descriptions that are largely similar). Free online versions of this test are available at this link and also on this current website (I didn’t realise this was like the DiSC test until I did both!). A description of the DiSC personality types may be found here, or within the temperament survey. Note that the DiSC test should be performed in terms of a ‘role’ - that is, you should take the test in terms of your mindset in a particular role or position, like youth group leader, team member, etc. It makes a difference.

One test that’s been around for ages is the Jung-Myers-Briggs test. This is the more well-known test that assesses your personality in terms of four factors: Introversion/Extroversion, Thinking/Feeling, Intuition/Sensing, and Judging/Percieving. The most useful indicator I find is the introversion/extroversion factor, which tells you where you need to gain ‘energy’ from (very useful to understand!). A nice description of this test can be found here. Free online versions of this test can be found here, here, and here.

So go forth and find out your personality types. It might help you understand how you relate to people or how to recharge your batteries. For DiSC, I’m a high D and high C. For the Jung-Myers-Briggs, I’m an ISTJ.

In these days of YouTube and Google Video, it’s nice to be able to put up a short home video online without having to use these services. For example on a blog site, which may be still largely accessible to the outside world but at least isn’t on one of these mass video sharing websites. Unless of course that’s what you want to do…

Anyway, the file format these services use is called Flash Video with the file extension flv. A free encoder is available that will transcode AVIs, WMVs, MPEGs and whatnot into the FLV format. Then just upload the FLV to your site, and use the free Flash Video Player to embed your video. You can view an example of these on the 180 videos site. The process is pretty painless if you know basic HTML.

The good ol’ US of A style with turkey! Apparently these start in the early afternoon; and there I was thinking it was actually like a traditional Asian ‘dinner’ which started around 7. But it was great of Michelle (from Penny’s lab) and her husband, both relatively fresh from the US, to host an early thanksgiving dinner for the associated labs today. Nice to get everyone together in an out-of-lab setting for food and chat. Only problem was that it was in Quakers Hill, which is about as far west as Prospect Reservoir. A few observations about westie roads:

• Everyone drives at the speed limit.
• Roads are very wide. A two-lane ’surburban’ road easily trumps the Pacific Highway in width.
• Pedestrian users of westie roads are scary. They come right up to your car while walking past (ever heard of the footpath???) and stare at you.
• There is an unbelievable amount of road-side parking.

So anyway, back at uni tomorrow to do some follow-up work on my project. Hopefully won’t be too long. Sara finishes tomorrow which is good. Many movies to catch up on, like Da Vinci Code, X-Men III, Bridget Jones’ Diary II (I didn’t just type that…), High School Musical… Fun!

Also, another thing about being on ‘holidays’ is that you actually don’t get much holidays because people (who are still going with exams and whatnot) pile things onto you. I’m not complaining, it’s great to be able to help; it’s just an observation. Today after church was a bit crazy - Nuggy and I were running around trying to recruit people for ministry teams next year while trying to organise the signing of Ernie’s farewell book and also trying to entice people to go to Ernie’s farewell BBQ. Not a big list so far which is disappointing.