DAN’S BLOG

Here’s a sneak peek at the Halloween snapshot cam setup. We’re going to be taking higher resolution pictures this year and it will have better overlays with transparencies and de-interlacing. OOooooOOooo!!!!

You can view the snapshot cam on Halloween at http://halloween.gliebetronics.com

Here’s just a followup post. Mom and dad are back from their RV trip through Arizona. They came back with lots of pictures and video. You cna see some of the pictures on their blog at GliebeFamily.com. On their way home, about 70 miles away, they were hit by some wreckless driver. He was driving an older motorhome and was doing about 70mph as he passed mom and dad’s motorhome. He hit their driver side mirror, causing it to break and swing forward all the way. It was designed to move like that. The guy never stopped. What a total dork. Luckily the mirror was the only part that broke. The mirror motors and arm are fine.

Also here’s some pictures of the shed after I cleaned off the BIG BIG BIIIG mess on the patio and put everythign neatly away in the shed.

So it’s been a while and I should blog. I’ve been working on a few projects around the house the past few days. I have also done some jobs for some people. I did a files and settings transfer for the neighbors who got a new Dell. I also looked at and fixed a couple TV’s for a relative.

Earlier last week my LED sign kicked the bit bucket. It failed with the message flashing on and off rapidly. After turning it off and on again it was totally dead. So far I have been unable to fix it but I have placed one of my other two signs up on the wall. So Shoutbox should still be working fine. All I can tell so far is the problem is not power supply related and is not any of the socketed chips, ROM, or CPU. It’s gota be some other descrete part or a logic chip or something.

Last week I ran some more RG-6 cable in the attic. I moved the secondary CATV junction from the garage to my room with the rest of the CATV stuff. Now ALL the CATV connections in the entire house, just like the network, terminate in my room. LOL. I also bought a nice amp for the additional drops. The image quality is greatly improved on the additional TV’s. Even the Motorhome has a CATV hookup now.

I have been working on organizing all the crap on the patio to go back into the shed. It’s a lot of stuff to go through but I made major progress today. I think there will be even more space after my dad can go through all the paints and stuff to sort out what he wants to keep and what is bad. I have been keeping anything that is good and tossing away anything that is obviously bad.

Today I also started messing with the Halloween snapshot cam setup again. This year I am planning to take 640×480 de-interlaced images instead of 320×240. Also I will be using VLC instead of ChillCam. VLC has many more advanced features and the computers this year are faster too. I’m trying to improve the overall image quality and speed that it takes from the moment the picture is taken to when it is displayed on the headstones. I would also like to see if there is any good PHP thumbnail viewer scripts that I could use on the web page. I think it would be neat for people to be able to remember their image number and be able to recall it on the web page by searching for it when they get home.

Ok. I have fixed the Line 3 Pond Cam. I made my move. Now we’ll see if nature can take it! LOL. I really doubt that raccoon can chew through the nice durable waterproof connector I bought for the camera. It’s an outdoor waterproof RJ-45 connector. I just crimped the camera wires onto a RJ-45 plug and connected it to the waterproof jack. I placed the jack and wires in PCV pipe that goes under the ground and then up the fence. Then the wire runs along the fence to the junction box for the pond equipment and camera connections. I hope I never have to go up there again any time soon to fix that camera other than an occational lense cleaning.

This past Friday and Saturday my friends had a LAN Party up at their condo. There was about 14 people total there. We played mostly UT2K4 and Dawn of War - Winter Assault but we also got some Worms games in and Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory. John setup a linux box that hosted the game files and a LAN Party web page. It worke well. We did run into a few issues with some games but what’s a LAN party without a few glitches. We blew a circuit breaker once when someone used the toaster…which they wern’t suposed to use.  It was funny though computers go OFF and the toast pops UP.  Their condo has limited space but everybody managed to fit in easily. I brought a “loaner” computer that people could play gaems on when their own computers were having issues with various games. I also brought all the network cables and the switch and extension cords. LOL. I have a portable LAN party, haha. Thanks to everybody who hosted and planned the LAN! Especially John. It was great. See you next friday.

Alright.  This is getting annoying!  Yes the Raccoon is cute beyond all reason and logic… BUT he is totally messing up my camera!  Just look what he did tonight while I was away!  Pond cam (Line 3) will remain offline until I can find a better solution to this problem.  I probably sould run new wires that have a little more slack and burry the part that goes from the fence to the camera.  I also want to get some kind of interconnect that is designed for all weather.  I am sooo done with silicone and plastic baggies!

Score: Nature 2, Dan 1.

The past few days my pond cam on Line 3 has been erratic. Sometimes the video is blue, other times it is fine. But then one day the video totally died. I was too lazy to hike up the hill to see what was wrong at first. Day before yestarday I finally went up there. The plastic bag containing the connections was ripped to shreads! Some animal went to town on it and destroyed it. The power connection came apart too. SO that’s why it stopped working. I hate having to fix this connection. It’s hard working on the hill but I got it all fixed up with new double bags, silicone and cable ties.

The next day I found out who messed up my wires. It’s our old friend Itchy the raccoon! I can’t stay mad at him. He’s just too cute! He went fishing in the pond, dug up some bugs and took a short nap in our big tree. He didn’t mind me out there taking pictures of him either. SOOOO CUTE!!!

I have updated my Arizona posts to have various tweaks, spelling corrections, and a lot more photos.  Scroll down and check them out on my main page.