Italian Tomato Garden:
An old Italian lived alone in New Jersey . He wanted to plant his annual tomato garden, but it was very difficult work, as the ground was hard.
His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament:
Dear Vincent,
I am feeling pretty sad, because it looks like I won’t be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I’m just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over.. I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days.
Love, Papa
A few days later he received a letter from his son.
Dear Pop,
Don’t dig up that garden. That’s where the bodies are buried.
Love,
Vinnie
At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left.
That same day the old man received another letter from his son.
Dear Pop,
Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That’s the best I could do under the circumstances.
Love you,
Vinnie
I’ve read a lot of reviews of people hating this product, and generally I think they’re a little unjustified. It’s a perfectly reasonable wireless webcam – it does what it says it will do and it does an OK job. What you get in the box is quite impressive – the camera, power supply, ethernet cable and the camera has standard tripod mount sized holes on top and bottom and a mountable bracket with tilt/swivel so you can mount this anywhere you want. A few notes:
1) There are two versions of this – the original and the “Rev-R”. If at all possible get the original version. The original used Java to stream the video, whereas in the Rev-R for some completely unknown reason, they moved to ActiveX to serve it – this means Internet Explorer only (ish – see later).
2) You don’t need any software at all to set this up – you can do it all from the web interface. By default the IP address is set at 192.168.1.200 for the Rev-R devices.
3) If you do have the Rev-R version you can watch the video on OSX/Linux, Safari/Firefox etc. by going to
4) It’s simple to get it set up for viewing over the web, it has Dynamic DNS service built in, although you are limited to a single provider, which I think is chargeable after an introductory period. But most modern routers do this for you nowadays so you don’t really need it.
The device is a little flaky, though, and does tend to lock up now and then. This is usually fixed by cycling the power, but that’s obviously not ideal if you’re trying to view it remotely. There’s apparently a firmware upgrade available – but every time I try it informs me I’ve not got the correct type of file, despite downloading it from their website.
All in all, it’s OK and does what it says and is simple to set up, but it’s not worth the £90 that Amazon are trying to sell it for. I got one off eBay for £25 which is probably worth a punt, considering what else is out there. I’ve got it as one of three cameras running in my Ubuntu/Motion setup, and it all works pretty well (except when it locks up).
If only it had telnet/SSH access, it would be ideal – if anyone can point me in the direction of that, I’d be very grateful!
The PS3 is an absolute beast of a machine. It fully wazzes all over the XBOX 360 and the Wii. Not only does it play games, it plays Blu Ray video, outputs 1080P HD video, 7.1. HD sound, gets you online wirelessly, and, amongst other things, will play happily with DLNA servers, which, in short, is a protocol for streaming a variety of media, such as video, over a network.
To get streaming working, you need some sort of DLNA server, i.e., an interface between the actual video file and the PS3 – i.e., something which tells the PS3 what is available, the PS3 then does the rest. PS3 Media Server (PMS) is the best solution out there, apart from its unfortunate acronym. It’s free and multi-platform, which means that if you’ve got an old computer lying around (Linux, Mac or dare I say it, Windows) then you’ll be getting the most out of your PS3 before you know it. In my case I have an unused G4 PowerPC Mac Mini running 10.4.*. Installing the software is a cinch and then configuring it is a piece of piss. PMS literally spews out logging info, so you can usually find the problem if it won’t work. (Main thing is making sure UPnP is enabled.)
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