The Webcam Part III

Well, there are issues.
I think the issues are with my web hosting company. I've had issues with them for a while with doing rapid FTP uploads, or having multiple attempts at downloading e-mail lock up. And after using 3 different web cam programs, that use ftp of course, to see what the issue could be, I determined it is not the software, but either the web host, or my somewhat flakey internet connection.

Given the fact I can still web surf even when the FTPs are failing, I tend to believe it is the web hosting computer freaking out from having a log in every 1 minute. Yea.. don't ask.. it's a really cheap hosting company, and you get what you pay for. The upside is that they are nice people.. at least the 4 times I required tech support from them, in the last 6-7 years.

So I set out to find a free web host with unlimited transfer to act as the back end for the web cam images. Yes, this is a little hokey to have my images hosted, on a different machine than the main server, but maybe I can find one that can deal with getting FTP'd to every 60 seconds. This is a practice known as hotlinking. Most places HATE hotlinking as it uses their bandwidth, with no compensation... more on that in a moment.

So far I found a list of them at http://www.free-webspace.org/ and the first expressly prohibits exactly what I want to do in its terms and conditions, I moved to the second one which seems okay, it didn't even seem to have terms and conditions... odd... maybe they figure that there is not much you can do with only 50mb of web space, and a file size limit of 200k.. well 200k is plenty for a webcam picture! ha! fools to them! I might even set up a real camera with better resolution... with 200k I could do something around... say 1.5 megapixels with a not too bad amount of jpeg compression. Also I don't know if the 200K size limit applies to ftp transfer, or only to their web interface transfer. I'll have to push that one, and give it a try.

oh... I could also just adjust the jpeg image compression on the fly to get it to 200k... so images with highly compressible areas, will have better resolution than those with less compressible regions... hmm interesting concept: on the fly compression to allow for fixed file size, with maximum resolution... Not sure anyone has ever done that. It seems rather novel. I doubt I'll find web cam software with that built in. so I'm probably going to have to start hacking up an open source one, or roll my own. I vote for hacking up a free source one... or maybe... maybe I can find a standalone image compressor to my specs, then just pipe the image from the capture software to the image compressor, then to the ftp server. I would definitely need a program to coble together those three parts, but it shouldn't be too hard.

Well... maybe later... but to the issue at hand. Hotlinking. Apparently the web service I am going with now, does not like images to be hotlinked. The main issue of hotlinking I think is theft of intellectual property, and copyright violations, but since I am not doing that, I figure I should be able to. Well, they have a techno way of defeating hotlinking images.. I'm guessing it's a simple .htaccess file on their apache server.

So I come up with a somewhat brilliant idea, of hotlinking a whole page in a frame, so that the requester for the image is local, and it get around their hotlinking restriction. This works. But I don't like the fact that I have to download other crap that is not my image... that actually uses more bandwidth. Granted, it's less than 1k, but it's still something.

So, option 3. I ran a little test where the webcam software stores the image with a non-standard extension. First I tried html, as I know that should work, and it did! So I went with something a little more descriptive. I called it a ".image" file. I believe my assumption of their using a .htaccess file is correct, based on this test and ultimate solution, as in a .htaccess file one would make rules regarding extensions, and how they are to be treated. Since they can't redirect ALL extensions to their "You suck, you hotlinker" page, I just needed to pick
one that wasn't in the filter.

-AllenKll

the webcam...

Grr. just set the bastard up, and am relizing there are issues with keeping a constant internet connection to my media pc. I blame the wifi repeater. But it could very well be the wireless PCIE card. I've never had problems with the card before, but then again, I never tried to keep up a constant internet connection before either...

Maybe I could write a little program/script that pings google every 5 minutes, and if it doesn't work, disable and re enable the wireless card, and renew the IP address. Seems a lot of work... well not really, but it does seem unnecessarily complicated.

Such is my life.
-Allen

Getting my Geek on: Sleep Learning and Peripheral Knowledge

Originally From MySpace

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Getting my Geek on: Sleep Learning and Peripheral Knowledge Current mood: sick Category: Art and Photography The following conversation happened earlier... ... al: i was never one to find hope in allagory JD: well you can read a not so hopeful poem instead if you prefer my fatalist side JD: i have them in reams al: not so much al: hey al: wanne hear something really wierd? JD: sure al: when i said this:"al: i was never one to find hope in allagory"... I typed it... then had to look up what allagory meant... becuase i honeslty had no clue... when i found it online, I saw the sentence had exactly the meaning i intended.. do you see the wierdness? JD: hehehe i do JD: i do that all the time ... That means there is some other part of my brain... working independant of my consiousness... that has knowledge that I don't! I have had a theory, for a while now, that with directed dreaming you can learn a previously unknown to you skill or area of expertise. Or as it were, not completely unknown, only "peripherially known." Peripheral Knowledge I define as that which you may have seen in passing; maybe read a book on in college, thumbed though a magazine, saw someone do it, saw a picture, or in some other way gained access to the a piece of information that didn't mean anything to you at the time, and wasn't really filed in your brain for later retrieval... here is an example: everyone has looked one time or anoher at the code numbers on fruits and vegetables in the supermaret, but who, besides checkout people, remember that a red delicious apple is a 4016? My theory suggests that you can take the volumes of peripheral knowledge, and with proper mental discipline recombine it into a useful part of your waking consiousness. I say during sleep, as that is when long term memory gets modified. Take learning to play the piano for instance. I don't know how to play the piano... But I have read about it, and have seen in passing the proper fingerings, and know the notes, and seen people play... all this "peripheral knowledge" locked in random, non-organized places in my brain. IF, I were to be able to direct my dreams to take piano lessons, or just reorganise that information into the proper spot, with no further external information, I would be able to wake up one morning and ne able to play the piano. This thing that just happened, in the above conversation, where I suddenly knew how to use a word I have never used.. and had not consiously knew the meaning of.. is an example of this in a waking state I peripherally learned the word... but not had it in my waking consious until just now. I think this needs more study by people more learned than I in such areas... or if I were to succeed in this area... I could do my own study.... I think I've peripheraled enough knowledge to culminate this sucker into a Nobel Prize... now to figure out how to impliment... bleh... I've always been a nuts and bolts guy.. but this one has me stumped. Geek: off 1:04 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos

Feisty Jackson

Um... I missed one. You spelled allegory wrong. At least you know what it means though... hehehe. Get your geek on all the time, I do love it so. Posted by Feisty Jackson on May 9, 2007 8:04 PM

Getting my Geek on: Snow

Originally from MySpace

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Getting my Geek on: Snow Current mood: thoughtful Category: Art and Photography It snowed today. Not a lot of snow, maybe half an inch to an inch. Just enought to cover the grass mostly. You can still see a fair amount of blades. Here is the Crux of the blog: Snow is a Low Pass Filter. As I crunched along, I began to think about the tranquility that the snow brings. why? why does the snow induce tranquility? The lack of color? perhaps. The dampened sounds? perhaps. I think those things play a part. But what is it that ties it all together? Softening. The world has a lot of harshness to it. Hashness is expressed as high frequency. Not necessarily high frequency sound, but the high frequency of objects and colors too. Leading me to the conclusion that snow is nature's low pass filter. On a graph, a sharp edge or corner is composed of the highest frequencies. In fact it is said that a square wave, has it's frequency at infinity at the moment it changes from low to high or high to low. Extrapolating this into the 3d world, all corners and edges are composed of infinately high frequencies. Snow rounds these corners, thereby eliminating the high frequencies, and thus is a low pass filter. Snow also dampens sound. High frequency noises are easily absorbed by the fluffy substance. A change from one color to another, also represents a high frequency response, and so the snow, by changing all to white, removes that high frequency. The general lack of high frequencies, or at least a severely reduced amount of them, as compared to non-snow covered life, induces that scerene feeling. There you have it. The tranquility of snow reduced to a mathematical theorem. In truth, I'd rather just watch it fall while snuggling by a fire, than to work out all the details on a chalkboard. Geek: off -allenkll 8:57 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos

Feisty Jackson

I am not being facetious at all when I say that there is not ONE thing I didn't like about this entry. I like when you get your geek on. Also, as I don't feel like leaving another comment on your main page I will say: 1) I love that your heroes are the Devils. GO DEVILS. (that game... was so awesome) 2) I took that inkblot quiz. I am an evil genius... I get that a lot, actually. 3) Motorcycle jacket? MEOW. 4) When I think about you, pedantic is the last word I think of. I was actually thinking about you while I was crocheting today and getting my groove on at the coffee shop while you were chatting up all the knitting ladies... and all I was thinking was... WOW, Allen is so INTERESTING. It's true. See you Sunday I hope! Posted by Feisty Jackson on Apr 19, 2007 2:42 AM