Marcus Hamaker is The Sleepy Geek

I made a brash comment on Twitter about this fact in the morning. In my opinion it should be a standard to have Blue-tooth on a machine nowadays but a couple of hours after spurting that out I started to really think of reasons that it wouldn’t be a good idea. I came up with a few. I decided I needed to write this down because people considering new machines need to think about this stuff. Another thing that came to mind was the web cam which I will touch on later for some of the same reasons.

First… Blue-tooth. It’s an awesome technology. This morning my 6 year old son asked me what happened to the picture I took of him and his sister at the park this weekend. I explained that it was just on my phone sitting there, not something that he could take with him to school. He asked if we could print it and I told him I would give it a try. Sure enough in 45 seconds the printer was buzzing and whizzing and a new print out was on it’s way. We have the HP 309 at home which is wireless and blue-tooth enabled. A quick share from my Blackberry and like magic he was able to bring the copy to school.

That type of thing amazes me. That we are in a day and age that we can do something like that. One of my first sensations growing up that was similar to this was in watching Star Trek TNG, The show seemed like a way of life that we would be able to lead sooner than later. The space travel and other species seem far fetched but does the tri-corder any more? Don’t we all have a device on our hip that is as powerful and can do things that even Gene Roddenberry didn’t thing of?

This is all fine and good for a technofile. If you know how to protect yourself then you are ok, but what about the person who doesn’t want to or doesn’t know how to protect their Bluetooth connection. Having it available on a laptop may be a security hole that you don’t want to live with. If you do end up with it on your machine you should be careful to keep it turned off unless you are using it yourself. That way would be hackers can’t get into your machine.

The same thing applies to the web cam on laptops (see – I was getting back to it!). I read a story recently about a school that had given laptops to their students and then used a tool to view the web cam remotely without the kids knowing. This is a scary story but one that actually got out there as so many don’t make it public. What happens if your teenager has mistakenly opened up a web page that installs a small trojan on that computer which does the same? That machine could be in their room and intruders could be looking at it without their knowledge. This is where one of my favorite security tips comes in… electrical tape. A small piece over the web cam when you are not using it is a great idea. Then you are sure that the only time you can be seen is at your discretion.

So like so often with computers and technology, if you aren’t willing to educate yourself then steer away from these things but if you are willing to take a few hints and put them into practice – make sure your next machine has them!

Geek on!

Our family is preparing to go on vacation next week to Maine. We will be meeting my brother and his fiance there who went down a week early for 2 weeks. Today he called me and while we were talking we got the big idea for him to head over to a webcam that we know someone is running 24/7.

Sure enough after about a minute I hit a refresh and there they are standing in the parking lot.

Now I know this isn’t the best picture – I can’t even tell if it is really them by looking at it. Some of you might miss them after even your second look but they are there, standing in the parking lot behind the black car. To think that we are so connected in this world that it was as easy as a 300 yard walk for me to catch a glimpse into their vacation!

That’s why I am a geek. I think it’s amazing that today we can connect to each other when ever we want to. Today and tomorrow we have new ways to connect and the old ways get better. Too awesome.

Keep the beach warm and the waves high bro… I will see you in 3 sleeps :)

Geek on!

I have been planning on starting a video stream on TheSleepGeek for quite some time but it takes planning and decent equipment. First I decided to use our family DV camera for the video source because it has good optics (Canon Optura 10) compared to most webcams. Next I plan to get a Samson C01U or C03U which has become the podcasting standard it seems for good quality audio and easy usability. Both those models are USB which will make them easy to connect and configure.

The problem after doing all this that is that the image that I am sending to my community is very generic. I don’t think for a second that my mug can hold viewership on the stream alone and so with ideas that I am admittedly stealing from Chris Pirillo and Leo Laporte, I need someway of adding other content to the video stream.

This is where Webcammax comes in! With all of the preparation and setup that I have already mentioned, I still would have an incomplete package in my eyes. Webcammax is allowing me to add features to stream that otherwise would be impossible. I am quite aware that there are products for OSX that people have raved about, but I don’t have an OSX system to dedicate to running the stream. With Webcammax I can manipulate exactly what I need to on the video stream so that I can enhance the viewers experience, all from my Windows machine.

from www.webcammax.com

The installation is as simple as it should be as far as I am concerned… Next, Next, Next – Finish :) Love those!

After that I opened the program (keep in mind I am running a demo version) and immediately I was greeted with a view of myself through the camera. The image is quite clear and in comparison to the preview window on the camera itself, I can’t complain.

Let’s get to the specifics of what I wanted to do and how Webcammax made it pretty easy to accomplish.

1. Add a topic to the top of the stream – This was done by creating a new text effect, modifying the text to the font, size and colour I like then saving it.
2. Add a black background to the topic that is the entire width of the image - After placing the topic from step one I noticed that the black background behind it was only the width of the text. I found that I could make an effect from an image so after creating a black bar in Paint (just make a black bar the width of the incoming source, for me this was 320 pixels) I did that and re sized it to fit close to the topic. The grouping order is as it is listed, so if something is over what you want to see, move it down the list.
3. Add the address of the live stream page to the bottom of the stream – This is important to me because I would like to record my better tips and tricks and upload them to Youtube or another similar site. This was as simple as step 1, just create a new text effect and move it to the desired location.
4. Add a live capture of a chat window – This is where things are slightly more complicated, but it works well. I have a copy of XChat open and logged into my chat all the time on that computer so I can monitor activity as it happens (actually when it starts to happen :)). I now used one of the PinP (picture in picture) sources to do a screen capture. I edited that to take a certain size capture and placed it over the area of XChat that I wanted people to see. After that I was able to move the image itself in the preview window to where I wanted it in the stream.
5. (not done but I have seen how to do it on a Youtube video) Add a scrolling image for sponsor logos – This is very easy. You can create a new effect, include your images and set a time to display each one. Then place it where you like on the screen.

I am very pleased with the product thus far and I am excited about it’s versatility. I have made a stream that is very similar to that of live.pirillo.com, which I know is very clean and works but the flexibility of Webcammax is good enough that I know I can make something original in the future.

It is also important to not that this is not the only way tho use Webcammax. It also has many effects and features built in that would make it useful for playful webcam chat over the most popular instant messengers, or for a professional internet video conference.

There is only one caveat which is to make sure you have a fairly powerful system with a lot of RAM to run Webcammax. Every effect and source seems to tax the processor and too much can bring your computer to a halt. Verify their system requirements before jumping in blindly.