My Technophilic Musings

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Did you know that instead of installing special software to view your webcam video, you can simply use mplayer for the same purpose, and with a lot of fine control. e.g. try running the following command with your webcam attached to your computer.

And you can use mencoder to capture and encode video from your webcam:

Have fun playing with the huge number of options available. You could even cat the test.avi file into a folder of your web server and have instant streaming video .

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Quote of the day: "When due process fails us, we really do live in a world of terror." - JC Denton

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: fun, linux, mencoder, mplayer, stream, video, webcam

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
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AMD has been taking a lot of flak lately in its processor business, and a similar (albeit milder) thrashing was being given to its ATi Gfx line up as well. But they seem to be on the recover track now, with the release of the brand spanking new HD3870X2 series, some people aptly calling it "crossfire on a card". All you gamers, please stop drooling on the screen now, and check out some benchmarks.

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Quote of the day: Homer: Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: AMD, ATi, benchmarks, crossfire, gamers, games, Gaming, Gfx, processor, video

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
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For the very post of this blog, I chose a subject that's close to my heart. Yes, its Windows Mobile. My trusted 900/1800 MHZ companion for the past couple of years is an HTC Wizard. If you have ever looked into the WinMob world, its pretty much common knowledge that HTC owns the 95% of market share of this niche little space. They are a huge organization and with huge profits and they do make jolly good phones. BUT it is not the quality of phones that helped them reach this height. Its their business plan. "Always keep the customers craving more" seems to be the motto of this taiwanese giant.

Each phone seems to give one extra "feature" (read UI enhancement) over the latter. With Kaiser, it seemed too good to be true, getting a one in all phone. And it indeed was. As I pointed out here , it finally turned into a reality against all hopes of fellow WinMo owners, and HTC declared that nothing is coming for the current crop. So, am writing this post just to put in my two bits to the cause of these drivers, if you can do anything about it, take a look here (and yeah, a 5000$ bounty awaits you as well)

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Quote of the day: Grandpa: My Homer is not a communist. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a communist, but he is not a porn star.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: Business, business plan, drivers, HTC, kaiser, market share, money, phone, video, Windows Mobile, wizard