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Live Video From The Fabulous Wireless Webcam!!!

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Live Video From The Second Fabulous Wireless Webcam!!!

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Thursday, July 29, 2004
8:59 AM

Career Alternatives

As most of you can hopefully see, the live webcam is now up and running! Yay!! If it isn't working for you, let me know because it is now set up right on our end and everyone I have talked to can see it. Right now it's pointed at the overflow from the pool into the spa.

I must admit that I am quite proud of our ability to figure the whole thing out. It is amazing how complicated these systems get. For example, did you know that your computer has thousands of "ports" which can be accessed and used for transmitting data over the internet and other private networks? And that the ports are generally assigned numbers that are used universally in the industry? Webcams for instance are, by default, assigned to port 80. So all you have to do is make sure that port 80 is open on your router, that your camera is configured on port 80 and that your java applet template code references that port. However, some ISPs specifically block port 80 to provide additional security. If so, all you have to do is reconfigure the settings on your router to reassign web traffic to the webcam to another port, then assign that port to the camera and again change the template code to properly reflect the new port. Of course you first have to make sure to assign a private LAN IP address to your camera (assuming it has its own server) and make sure to tell the router to feed any incoming requests to your public IP address on the new port to the camera's new port through its private IP address.

Did you get all that? We didn't. At least not at first. That, in a nutshell, is what has been plaguing us for the past almost a week. Can you believe all that technical mumbo jumbo? And I truly am not just making it up. That is exactly what we had to do to get the webcam to work. A week ago I could hardly remember what "ISP" stood for. Now we know how to assign private IP addresses, activate and reassign ports, and all sort of other now useless stuff. At least we know that if the whole law thing doesn't pan out we have a future in tech support for wireless networks.

But, in the end, I think it is worth it, because right now I can watch two birds hopping around our pool at home while working in my office. I think that is very cool.

Now that the webcam woes are behind us, I can refocus on learning Front Page to redo the site. My apologies to Dana for not incorporating her changes yet. Soon, very soon.

Meanwhile, Petey has a new nickname. He's now known as "Big Fat Petey". I weighed all the cats last night. (I know it sounds silly but Petey has been feeling heavier and heavier and we wanted to know what we are dealing with.) Turns out that Little Boy and Little Girl, who looked like giants when we first got Petey, are back to their "little" status. They each weigh 11.5 pounds while Petey and his rather oversized tummy are up to 13.5!! That's almost 20% more than the others! Hence the Big Fat Petey label. He really does have quite a tummy. We'll see about getting him on the webcam, but we're not sure he will fit.

That's about it from us. Hope all is well with everyone else.

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