December 2005 - Posts

Waiting...and waiting...and waiting...

We'll be doing a lot of waiting for the next couple of months, I'm afraid.  Still, it's heartening to see that we've had so many hits in the first few days.  Seems like a lot of people will be watching with us, and keeping their fingers crossed alongside us!  Everything is working well, no hiccups in the system at all.

By the way, now is the time to ask for any additional features or capabilities of the system.  We can't do sound (yet), but some people have asked for a single-screen quad view of all the cameras.  I can do that; I'd have to buy another piece of equipment, but if enough people want it, I can provide it.  I'd need to get (or have donated) what's called a "quad processor"...they're usually used for security surveillance systems, to put multiple camera views on a single screen.  And we'd need one that can do color, so it would be a little more expensive. Thus, I won't do it unless I get enough requests for that capability.  Just let me know!

Happy Holidays to everyone, in case I don't get around to posting on this blog before then...

Ranger Steve

Syndication/OPML/RSS

Anybody out there know what these things at the right of the main Blog page, "Syndication" and "Opml" are?  I gather it's for some sort of "news" feed or push or something, but it's new to me.  It came as part of the free Forum package from the hosting service, so if it works great, and if not, oh well...but I'd like to learn a little more about it and see if it's useful or just another time-consuming Web "feature".

We're up! Live on 12/17/2005

We're up live, with the all-new KestrelCam.  Of course, my external camera *immediately* started messing up, so I'll have to fix that tomorrow.  The internal ones are working fine, though (although I may have to swap power supplies to get enough juice to the color one to make sure it's bright enough).

One of the advantages of living at KestrelCam Control is having audio this year...it's surprising how much noise there is out there at night...dogs barking, cars on the street, etc.  Considering that these birds are nesting in cavities wherein it is nearly pitch black, all of these noises must induce some pretty significant level of stress.

Almost there...

Just a few more things to take care of, and we should be back on-line within a week...