2008-03-02 On The Road

Busy day! It didn't rain, so I left the house as soon as I woke up. It's one thing to stay home because you don't feel like going out, but it's completely different when it's raining and you can't do anything, even if you wanted to. Today I felt like it, so I decided to go to the Botanic Gardens. After all, they are one of the reasons why I decided to work in Christchurch.
But before that I checked out the pawnshop across the street. It's called Cash Converters and every day when I come home from work I walk by their shop window. I just had to go in this time. Hell, I almost bought a guitar! Honestly, I came this close to going home with a guitar, an amp and a cable! (You can't see it, but I'm holding my thumb and index finger very close together.) Learning how to play the guitar has been on my list of things to learn for quite some time now. But not today. They also have nice jackets, I might get one or two before winter starts. Anyway, I managed to leave without buying anything. Next stop: Cathedral Square.

What's so cool about bagpipes? I saw at least five bands of bagpipe players when I crossed the Square. They played five different songs at the same time. Due to the architecture of a bagpipe, a single player can perform this difficult task. So why would you need more than one? Unless you're planning to attack England, of course, but I think I would have heard of that. Or maybe not, I'm too much into politics. Is New Zealand planning to go to war with England? Leave a comment if you know more! Next stop: Botanic Gardens.

Well, not yet. Next to the main entrance, on the right, there is a museum. I went in for a brief glance. From outside it looked so tiny, but I almost got lost inside! (Don't say it! I know it doesn't take much for me to get lost...) And it seems to be quite interesting, too! On the next rainy day, when I feel like going out anyway, that's where I'll be. But not today. I didn't rub sunscreen in my face to spend the day in a museum.
As you can see in the picture, there was a brass band in the Garden. They were playing the James Bond theme when I got there. After two more songs, which I didn't recognize, it started to drizzle. No worries! There's a sort of green house in the area, where I found shelter. It turned out that it was not just a greenhouse, it also had a section for cactuses (see the panorama below) and one for insect-eating plants. Amazing! No ticklish weed, though.


The rain didn't go away, so I sought refuge in the Art Gallery. Just long enough to let myself be inspired from their postcard rack. Then I went home.

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Quotes of the day:

#1) "What do you know about being a superhero? Have you ever changed cloths in a phone booth?" [Dragon Ball, episode 56]

#2) "When she was good she was very very good, but when she was bad she was fabulous." [postcard in the Art Gallery]

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If you're tired of reading about my computer issues, you can stop now. If not: get a life!
Anyway, I made it halfway through getting my webcam to work on Ubuntu. The camera manufacturer and model are Suyin and OrbiCam, respectively. lsusb revealed the following:
Bus 005 Device 003: ID 064e:a100 Suyin Corp.
Obviously, the kernel knows about it, since dmesg |grep 064e -A3 told me this:
[ 15.780000] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device USB 2.0 Camera (064e:a100)
[ 15.780000] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo
[ 15.780000] USB Video Class driver (SVN r189)
After modprobe uvcvideo, which didn't occur to me before, ekiga was able to show my face. Unfortunately, neither camorama nor streamer could do it. This makes me believe that my webcam requires software that supports v4l2, as opposed to the older and more common v4l. Looks just like I'm going to have to work my way through the list of tools that support v4l2. I'll probably have to compile some of them myself, too.