Security Cameras
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Geekiness on September 15, 2010
I have another project in the works… I bought a security camera and some accouterments recently with the hope that I can easily configure up to 4 for my house. We live in a safe [relatively] neighborhood and I’m really much more into this for the geekery of it rather than the practical value although I think it may have some value down the road if any of my customers are interested in security solutions.
Here’s the gear:
540TVL, LED 30pcs, 4.3mm Fixed Lens, 1/3 inch Sony Super HAD II CCD IR Bullet Camera ($62.61 at Monoprice)
Seems like a good price for a camera as solid as this is. I just got this on Tuesday but haven’t got it set up. I’m impressed with the construction and I did verify that the IR is working great (if you want to check for IR, you can set this up to shine its IR LEDs, turn on a digital camera and see the room bathed in “light”). As a side note, I’ve been REALLY pleased with Monoprice. Great prices and solid products. Their camera line is new as of this summer and so far, I’m impressed.
I also picked up some video baluns so I can run the power and video over Cat5e instead of running video and power separately. A lot easier to manage and install and you can terminate them using typical keystone jacks (which makes for a nice clear install).
PV-149 – 4 port video capture card (120FPS) ($154.95 at BlueCherry)
Might be overkill, but it looks like a nice solution. I haven’t purchase this yet, but hope to soon. I may stick with the 4 port model and save a few bucks. This should allow me to use 4 cameras at about 30 frames/second, which is ideal.
I’m planning on using ZoneMinder for the DVR solution. I’ve not used this before, so I’ll definitely do a writeup when I get it up and running. The hope is to get this streaming data to disk but also presenting the video display on a simple web server. I’ve been really irritated by the somewhat more expensive turn-key DVR’s that support video streaming using an ActiveX control. Not that friendly unless you happen to be running Internet Explorer. Yuck.
As I progress, I’ll post details on the install, additional hardware, ZoneMinder installation and configuration, and overall evaluation.
Death of a Monitor
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Actual Events, Geekiness, Ranting & Ravings on September 14, 2010
I have two of these at my desk:
I had for a while (since 2006 or so) and was really pleased with it. Good contrast and color, HDMI interface, very snappy. The controls are very awkward, but after initially configuring it, it was good to go. I purchased a second monitor intending to have a perfect matching set. The second monitor turned out to be a slight hardware revision that include a curved bottom bezel and a number of…. features that were quite annoying. First of all, unlike the first monitor of the same model number, it will not display it’s “native” format of 1920×1200 so I’m stuck with it in 1920×1080. Not terrible, but awfully weird.
About a month ago, it suddenly started acting up. It would randomly just lose the signal and then a little later snap back on (almost like it had a loose connection). This condition went from slightly annoying to unusable within a week and then it stopped displaying at all at 1920×1080. I was able to get an image by reducing the resolution to 1280×768 but it had weird red overlays. My assumption was that it was failing and I bitterly unplugged it and went back to using one monitor. There went my productivity.
But thankfully, although I’m still mystified, the story has a good ending. I plugged my monitor back in a week ago and low and behold, the news of its death was greatly exagerated! It’s been working flawlessly ever since. I think it may have been driver related but I’m just thankful it’s back.
At my full-time gig, I also have dual monitors, although the overall resolution is a lot lower. I’ve found that it’s a huge time saver… One side is my code, and the other is the dev web site. The problem is that now I’m spoiled; I tried to work recently on my 1360×768 laptop and felt like I couldn’t see anything.
How about your setup? Do you use two monitors? If so, can you live without your second monitor once you’ve used it for a while?
Lifehacker has some great tips and links to tools for dual monitor setups.
Where Did Summer Go?
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Actual Events on August 9, 2010
Ahh… My last post was ages ago. Lots has happened. Most of the family events have been duly recorded on our Family Blog.
I’ve been doing more biking, more work for the new business (especially system administration type stuff), lots of new exploration in C#, particularly in the ASP.NET MVC world, lots of time with boys who are growing up at an alarming rate, some time away with family in Iowa, as well as just the Wife and I in Victoria, B.C. for our anniversary.
I’ve been thinking about:
- Writing a time tracking system for use internally with the new business. Some of the initial code is written in Ruby on Rails as well as some design docs — oh, and a name: “Tempus Fugit”.
- Getting an irrigation system in place for the yard (plus some of those automatic hanging basket watering tubes if I can figure it out)
- Updating my favorite online bookmark system (Scuttle) with some more modern features. Development seems dead on it and I’m thinking of forking it and moving in a slightly different direction.
- Learning more about taxes, finances, and Quickbooks in order to do a better job with the company accounting.
- Starting in on a new programming language — I still haven’t decided which but I feel like I’m getting complacent with C# (and some C/C++). Your ideas/recommendations are welcome!
- Catching up on some cleanup projects around the yard (landscaping lighting needs some help in the back, Windsor block border around a bit more of the backyard, possible door in the back of the garage to the backyard, more top soil and reseeding of back yard)
- Posting more to my blog. Fat chance.
Project Idea #35: Auto Tasks via Email
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Geekiness on April 5, 2010
Create a program that is designed to parse and track projects and tasks from emails alone. The point would be to make it completely non-intrusive (albeit not entirely non-interactive). So for example, when composing a message to a client or customer you might be asking a question. You want a response (there’s a “task” outstanding that’s pending a decision or some action). You would simply BCC the special mailbox. The message would be parsed and tracked. When the user replies, the same program is monitoring your incoming mailbox items. When the message arrives it would attempt to interpret whether the task was complete or not. It could then fire a simple email to you indicating that it THINKS that the task is complete with a simple Yes/No form that would let you close the task or not and also possibly make notes or record anything of interest. Or alternatively you could manually complete tasks by forwarding the message to the same mailbox.
This probably is not incredibly value in its proposed form — I’m sure something similar exists. But it would be fun to work on and would be neat to see how smart you could train it to be. Introduction of learning algorithms that would adapt to particular users would be even better.
New Studio Speakers
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Geekiness on April 3, 2010
I went ahead and got some new studio speakers for my home office. These are the M-Audio BX5a. The Logitech system didn’t sound terrible (especially at normal volumes) but it was cluttery and was difficult to work with. The new system has less bass (no subwoofer) but they sound very clean and seem to perform quite well with everything that I’ve thrown at it. It’s a new experience to me because I’ve never really distinctly noticed the different between “muddy” sound and what I hear now.
Mine don’t look quite as nice — the exterior case design is a little older. But still a good buy overall.
To Christ on Golgotha
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Actual Events on April 2, 2010
We’re singing this piece for the Good Friday service tonight and I couldn’t find the music online for it. It’s a nice piece — I hope it gets more attention. This is from the Zions Harfe (Zion’s Harp) hymnal used by the Apostolic Christian Church.
An MP3 version of the MIDI file:
[audio:http://illusoryfollies.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/tcog1.mp3]Update: Our actual performance (just verse 3):
[audio:http://illusoryfollies.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/respresapril22010.mp3]To Christ on Golgotha (MIDI file — please redistribute this!)
To Christ on Golgotha,
My spirit fain would go
To Ponder on His words
and His exceeding woe.What pain unspeakable,
in this great cry we see
“My God, My God, oh why
hast thou forsaken me?”No Vengeance in His heart,
I hear Him plead, anew,
“Dear Father, pray forgive;
they know not what they do.”His mother weepeth sore,
He comforteth her now;
“Behold in John thy son”,
“O John, thy mother know.”“I thirst,” He crieth then;
There’s no affliction thus,
Which He, the friend of man,
Has not endured for us.He, “It is finished,” cries.
And bows His head, The End,
“Oh Father, to thy hands,
My Spirit I commend.”
Versioning for S3
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Actual Events, Geekiness on February 9, 2010
I just got this notice in my email:
We are pleased to announce the availability of the Versioning feature for beta use across all of our Amazon S3 Regions. Versioning allows you to preserve, retrieve, and restore every version of every object in an Amazon S3 bucket. Once you enable Versioning for a bucket, Amazon S3 preserves existing objects any time you perform a PUT, POST, COPY, or DELETE operation on them. By default, GET requests will retrieve the most recently written version. Older versions of an overwritten or deleted object can be retrieved by specifying a version in the request.
Amazon S3 provides customers with a highly durable storage infrastructure. Versioning offers an additional level of protection by providing a means of recovery when customers accidentally overwrite or delete objects. This allows you to easily recover from unintended user actions and application failures. You can also use Versioning for data retention and archiving.
This is some slick stuff. I’m amazed… I just wish I had more time to play with it. For now, Amazon continues to impress.
Recursion
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Geekiness, Somewhat Random on January 20, 2010
So w
hat happens when your can of WD-40 is left out too long and the trigger gets stuck and won’t stop spraying? Spray it with some WD-40?
Did you know that WD-40 stands for “Water Displacement – 40th Attempt”? Thanks Wikipedia!
Price Tracking
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Actual Events, Geekiness on January 19, 2010
Price tracking can be confusing online. Retailers like Amazon and Newegg (two that I buy from frequently) seem to sometimes change their prices daily. One expects prices to drop over time but this doesn’t always happen. I was surprised to find that prices for Solid-State Hard Drives have actually been rising recently (although the real deals appear to have been back in October/November). Thankfully there are some tools that can help. One of them is the Camelizer — a Firefox plugin. Alternatively, you can access the same data at the website camelcamelcamel.com (for Amazon) and camelegg (for Newegg). The same group also tracks prices at BackCountry, Best Buy, OverStock.com, and Zzounds,
Here’s an example of one of the SSD’s that I’m interested in:
In this digital age it’s nice to have something that keeps some history around. It’s easy to get information these days but it’s always easy to change information (which is why I’m also a big fan of the WayBackMachine — check out the original Google page!) We don’t keep coupons, flyers, or catalogs anymore, we just remember the website.
Anyone experience this sort of problem?
Happy New Year
Posted by Andrew Flanagan in Geekiness on January 1, 2010
It’s 2010 everyone! It’s ridiculuous how fast 2009 went by. I have high hopes for the year. We’ll see how things go…
StackOverflow
