Skip to main content

On Internet Webcams

When I tell people that I bought a webcam it almost always illicits a, "what the heck kinda creep are you?" reaction. I'm going to assume that I'm a fairly non creepy person and that it isn't because of my personality that people think this (I may, however, be completely wrong). I completely understand the inherit fear people have of webcams because it means that, if I wanted to, I could record and post everything on the internet that happens within the private walls of my house. I wouldn't do that because that does sound creepy but none-the-less I have a webcam.

There was a day in the fall where I accidentally left my girlfriend's dog (Ricci) outside all day while I was at work. I felt so bad because I had neglected him and, worse of all, didn't even realize it happened until after I got home. Now, this wasn't an issue because it was spring and a beautiful day, but it sets me up for a worrisome day that winter.

It was especially cold one day and Ricci asked to be let outside before I left for work. I won't leave you in suspense, I let him back in before I left. The problem is that, for the entire day, I couldn't remember for sure if I had let him in or not. I worried about it all day and if it wasn't for back-to-back meetings that day I would have taken off to make sure. I let it get to me so badly that I bought a webcam that day before I left for home. I knew that it wouldn't help me now but it would allow me to solve this worry in the future and that piece of mind was worth so much to me in the moment and I have never been in the same situation since.

The best part about having the webcam is that I set it to take random photos periodically and upload them to my private FTP server. So far these photos have been very boring, but there is some fun at going through them every now and then to see my life as captured by a 3rd party. As an example, to the right is a fairly uninteresting photo taken by the webcam at 6:15 AM on the morning that I wrote this. You can see Ricci staring longingly out the window and a few bits of "teacher scrap" left on the floor from the night before.

I've been enjoying the webcam because it's nice to know what's going on in my house but it is also an interesting conversation topic. Ashlee loves to ask people if they want to see her puppy and proudly pulls up the live stream on her phone. The only problem with webcams is that they can be very addictive; I think I want a few more, is that creepy?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"The Push-up Experiment" or "How I learned that being able to see progress is motivating..."

I've found that when I'm able to visualize progress it motivates me. I'm not a productivity expert or a psychologist but this makes a lot of sense and I figured I'd share it even if you've heard it before. Since March 28th, I've been doing push-ups and tracking the number of push-ups I achieve in a spreadsheet. Yes, I know this completely classifies me as a total nerd, but I'm OK with that; I'm writing a blog post about my push-up spreadsheet, I'm well aware of the overall nerdiness going on here. I won't get into the nirty-gritty about how I used IFTTT  to send me a Google Drive survey every morning on my phone reminding me to do push-ups as well as providing a convenient place to simply enter the numbers. I won't go into the details about how that survey automatically goes into a Drive sheet and the graph (pictured below) automatically updates with each response. No, I won't go into that because I'm afraid that you will think
Post a Comment
Read more

Mentorship Education

Disclaimer : This is a work in progress, I'm mostly curious about what you think about this idea. Also, sorry about the wall of text. As a software developer, I try to identify places were technology can help people. I've had many conversations with a few people about how the education industry is on the cusp of a large reform because of the Internet. I'm not sure if that's true but I'm going to act like it is for the sake of argument at the moment. Many people believe that this is going to come in the form of a centralized education platform or standard that delivers online education. We're already seeing things like this, Kahn Academy ( https://www.khanacademy.org ) and Lynda ( http://www.lynda.com ) are two excellent examples. I'd like to look at how technology can help education from a different perspective because I think the idea of online education (or eLearning) is flawed in one very serious way; it completely ignores the human aspect of learning
Post a Comment
Read more

I'm Restless

I've been thinking about doing a lot of different things lately. I've been wanting to learn the violin, go rock climbing, start a side business, and drive to the west coast, just to name a few. I'm not exactly sure where these urges started or why they're just now coming up but it seems that something in me is stirring. Part of this may be caused by my age; I'm not old by any means but in October of 2012 I turned 30. I've been living in the same house working at the same job for roughly 8 years now and I wonder if I'm starting to feel like I'm letting life pass me by. I'm sure this is a very normal feeling around my age and probably every milestone birthday from here on. I want to make sure that when I hit 40 I don't think to myself, "What did I do for the last 10 years?" I want to be able to look back and say "Wow, look at all the fun I had, the people I met, and the work I accomplished." I'm going to start right now,
2 comments
Read more