Quickcam Fusion Linux CLI

Today I wanted to setup a QuickCam Fusion webcam to capture snapshots from the command line (Ubuntu Hardy 8.10 specifically). I tried several programs such as luvcview and streamer but both gave me problems. Finally I came across uvccapture and it works perfectly:

uvccapture -x960 -y720 -oimg-`date +%Y%m%d%I%M%S`.jpg

Dragon*Con 2009: The Mad Scientist Ball

This weekend I spent the majority of my time at Dragon*con thanks to an extra pass from Will. The dealer room and art show seemed very similar to years past; however, my main focus was the Mad Scientist Ball. The event consisted of three performances: One Eyed Doll, ArcAttack, and Rev. Ivan Stang.

I decided to actually dress up this year since I had an idea of what to expect from the ball. It was a lot of fun walking around with a lab coat, TI-86, glowing tubes, pens, and welding goggles.

My primary interest was ArcAttack because I had the chance to see them last year. The show was bigger and better than before. They managed to obtain a larger room which allowed for bigger Tesla coils and more electricity. Since I recently purchased a Flip Ultra HD camcorder I took several videos of the performance which are available on my YouTube channel.

Switching to Blogger

I use my server for hosting demos, testing, and other content. For quite some time I also hosted a wordpress blog for myself. I got tired of worrying about uptime and patches for my blog so I finally moved it to Blogger.

During the transition I found Wordpress2Blogger to convert my exported Wordpress WXR file to a Blogger XML file. This tool converted my text content perfectly but stumbled on images. I was pleasantly surprised that it even imported comments. Hopefully I will have all of my posts updated in about an hour - not a bad amount of work for performing a clean transition.

Logan has arrived.

Logan Matthew Schrier was born on Aug. 16, 2008 at 7:57 PM. I posted numerous tweets during the progress but I have been extremely busy and not had time to write about the experience.

Jenna's doctor planned to induce labor on the 15th; however, the hospital was full so we were delayed until 4am the next morning. Jenna was immediately placed on medication and her water was broken four hours later. Sadly she had to endure contractions for approximately eight hours before the doctor decided to perform a c-section.

I was allowed to stay with Jenna throughout the entire operation. I had never witnessed surgery before, especially on someone I care about as much as her. While it was difficult to watch my wife be cut open it was still very interesting and I handled myself well. It was shocking and amazing to watch Logan emerge from her body - I snapped numerous pictures but I doubt I will be posting them. It was an amazing feeling to hear Logan cry for the first time. Approximately an hour later Jenna was stitched up, Logan was doing well, and we were headed for recovery.

Once we were in the recovery room all responsibility for Logan was given to me. I'm not sure why but I expected the nurses to be slightly more involved than they were. Nurses were in the room every couple of hours checking Jenna and, to a lesser extent, Logan. We stayed in the hospital for four exhausting days. Jenna recovered better than I ever expected and was walking Tuesday and showering by Wednesday.

We were ecstatic to return home. Even though we were alone and responsible for Logan we felt much more comfortable. Our routine is improving each day and Jenna and I are enjoying the time together.

Beginning Eclipse

Vim has been my editor of choice for quite some time; however, I recently started investigating Eclipse for my development. Eclipse appealed to me because of it's support for GWT and AppEngine but is still difficult to use at times.

I installed Eclipse 3.4.2 (Ganymede) and found myself rather disappointed for file types other than Java. HTML and CSS are poorly handled by the default text editor. I immediately started searching for a plugin and stumbled upon Project Amateras. Amateras provides a nice environment but I have had numerous problems with soft tabs and indentation.

I spent a bit of time fighting with formatting because of these problems; however, I was able to write nearly all of the CSS and base HTML for MealTicket. The first bit of code has been checked into my SVN repository and will hopefully improve each day.

Peter Manis pointed me to Aptana which I hope to try tomorrow. The product looks a bit more polished so I'm hopeful that it will excel past Amateras.

New project: MealTicket

I started working on a new personal project today called MealTicket. The goal of the project is to help arrange group meals (at restaurants) by providing a simple voting structure similar to Google Moderator. I am using this as my first real attempt to work with Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and plan on documenting the process.

Today I created an initial design of the user interface in photoshop. I only worked on it for a couple of hours since it's a holiday and I wanted to enjoy some time outside. There are numerous features that I have to create which may, or may not be, evident from the mock up:

• Support single day and re-occuring events
• Event invite since events will be private (maybe add public events eventually)
• Ability to mark a restaurant as visited with the option to not re-appear for X days, months, or ever
• Integration with Google Calendar
• Possible Yelp integration
• Resturant suggestions based on your history (and maybe based on other users)

I am comptemplating a rating system where each member could rate, and potentially comment, on the visit. If a particular user does not rate the restaurant well then it will not show up in suggestions. This could also improve the suggestion for other users but may be a conflict with the Yelp integration.

Vacation: Hilton Head Island

Last week Jenna and I went on vacation at Hilton Head Island, SC. We decided to take the trip as a last attempt to relax before the baby arrives in August. The trip was a success and very relaxing since the majority of our time was spent walking on the beach and lounging at the Mariott hotel. The island is obviously known for its array of golf courses but neither of us are interested in golf so this was not a big deal for us.

We decided to stay at the Mariott because it was one of the only hotels with a true ocean front room available on hotels.com. I think this was an excellent decision because we had a wonderful view and a near constant breeze coming from the ocean. The hotel also had hammocks and lounge chairs which we frequently used. Our only complaint was our rather pitiful air conditioning unit which was bothersome at night when we closed our patio door.

Overall the trip was fun but we had to be mindful of our budget. The liquor at the hotel was overpriced as expected; however, there was a liquor store a couple of miles away. I purchased a bottle of rum and some pineapple juice which kept my camelbak well supplied. There are several resturants to choose from on the Island including chains and unique family owned resturants. We opted to sample the family owned resturants and one resturant in our hotel, Blu.

I also used the trip as an excuse to play with the 50D some more. It seems that the more I use the camera the more I love it. I didn't take as many photos as I had expected but that was probably because I was afraid to take it onto the beach with the frequent wind gusts which left my mouth tasting like sand. I have posted a few photos on flickr but they are mostly sunrise and sunset scenes.

This is a great place to visit if you are looking for a beautiful beach, golfing, and a relaxed atmosphere and you are willing to deal with high prices of a very tourist driven economy.