Malcolm

Our dog, Malcolm, died in April. This is a web that is a memorial to him: all that he meant to us, his background, his pedigree, and lots of pictures that I took while he was with us. In addition, many people sent us messages about Malcolm and these are recorded here.



Currently, I have not figured out how to make this work on multiple browsers, and so this web site will only work if you are using Internet Explorer versions 5.5 and higher on a Windows PC. I am working on fixing this. In the meantime, if your browser is detected as being different than the required browser, you will see a snapshot of the website with the only interactivity being going from page to page.

Presence Page


I've heard a lot of people talk about "Presence" on the Internet. The idea is that there is some set of services that you can use to keep track of how to reach you. So, I thought, how about combining my interest in internet video along with presence and new things, by setting up a page where people could go to see exactly where I am and provide some links so that you can communicate with me at those locations. Thus the genesis of my presence page.


Webcams have been around for some time -- largely the province of the voyeuristic crowd. Too bad: I think pictures and sounds are a much better form of communication for most interactions -- Thus the success of the telephone and television. So, why shouldn't we use these two media to their fullest potential for personal communication now that they are quite affordable. For example, the upper two webcams on my presence page are Intel cameras that cost about $70/camera. These cameras are attached to PCs running a program called WebCam32. The bottom two cameras are Panasonic Network cameras which attach directly to the ethernet in my home. Each camera is a standard-alone internet host complete with a web server. The lower two cameras are steerable. Click on the still image snapshot to explore.

TrackerCam

Update: I've taken this off line in favor of a more flexible set of cameras discussed in the entry above.



I've set up a fun device in my basement -- a trackercam. This is a little platform that is able to rotate a platform around a vertical axis as well as tilt the platform around a horizontal axis. Mounted on top of the platform is (in my case) a small ball shaped webcam. On my PC there is a web server running which allows you to both view as well as control the where the camera is looking. The software is able to do a lot of things, including serve as a steerable webcam, a survailance camera that can track objects that move, as well as a video conferencing camera. It's a pretty neat device and fun to watch it work. The image to the left shows the motion of the platform with the camera. To give it a try, click on the following link:



http://forsdick.dyndns.org:8090/



The best way to use it is to click on the "Live Pictures" button.