Of My Awesome Webcam (R.I.P.)

People, hailing from the land of Skype (map can be found here) often ask me to turn on my webcam. Not because they’re interested in seeing the person they’re talking to, but rather to confirm I am really a 15 year old blonde Eurasian girl who’s like, totally new to the net and stuff.

For the last year and half, I’ve been using an awesome Creative PC-CAM 900

She’s a beauty isn’t she? It is a multi-purpose cam that had been discontinued for a couple years now. Hence I got it for cheap.

Turns out it was discontinued for a reason. It is terribly glitchy. You literally have to play Dance Dance Revolution on the selector keys just to take a decent picture. So naturally I stuck to the webcam thingy.

First the selection knob gave out. It came down to a point where the slightest pressure would change modes. Scotch Tape to the rescue! Then the USB jack got loose.

So naturally it was time to open it up. This, I did last august.

Since then, I’ve been using it in the following condition, fixed to a Pringle’s can, weighed down with coins. Sadly by the time I got the idea of making a post for this, I’d been trying to fix the camera for a week so you, dear reader, won’t get to see it in it’s natural environment. Sorry.

 

The actual camera. The lens is like a knob. You have to turn it for it to focus properly. How old school yeah?

 

That little bit of copper wire is what kept my awesome camera permanently in webcam mode. Don’t worry, it’s jammed in there, with superglue sealing it in place.

Of Con-Men and Kurosagi

In this world, there are three types of swindlers…

Those who defraud other people out of their money….

 

Those who deceive others by manipulating their feelings….

 

 

And then, using these two as his only source of food…

 

…is the ultimate swindler in history…

 

…a swindler of swindlers…

A year ago, I saw an 11 episode series about swindlers. Kurosagi. It’s one of those awesome shows that keeps you guessing what will happen till the last moment. Old school plot progression that fleshed out the main characters each episode all the while juggling new ways to evade the good guys, and bringing the smack down on the bad guys. Not to mention the soundtrack was amazing

 

(I’m a sucker for good stories and soundtracks)

 

So naturally, after watching Kurosagi, I became a bit more educated in the various conspiracies around me that wanted to cheat me out of my money. Some investment people came to work (yeah this story is that old) and wanted us to invest in their organization and recruit other members to invest too. Basically a pyramid scheme.

 

Fortunately I saw an episode of Kurosagi where this exact scam took place. I remember yelling Sagi! and walking out of the auditorium (which in hindsight is what probably bought me into the sights of the upper management as an employee they could do without)

 

By the way, Sagishi is a swindler or a scammer. Sagi hence is scam (Ataka, correct me if I’m wrong).

 

The reason I remembered this is because I nearly got scammed twice today. In the span of one hour.

Would Be Scam #1

I was at Corporative Market looking to buy a framed slate with Quranic Letterings on it. Loh-e-Quran if you want to be really technical about it. Mum forced me to go buy it since a family friend living abroad wants two.

So I found a sober, decent looking one at a roadside stall at an intersection. The owner was a springy elderly gentleman. I asked him if he had another one in stock. Now the slate cost 300/- and I had a 1000 rupee bill. So, he asked me to give him the money and he’ll go get me my second slate. While he was doing that, he asked me to sit by the stall and keep an eye. Wore his jacket and went.

 

I sat there like an idiot for a few minutes, and suddenly I feel the urge to hum “Daite Daite Senorita” . . . which I remembered happens to be the theme for Kurosagi. My mind started to work in overdrive with turbo-boost.

• The guy asked me for money before delivering the goods.
• He didn’t let me follow him.
• He wore his jacket and went (it was quite warm at the time)
• He slipped away without telling any of his neighbouring roadside stalls to take care of his stall.

Now for the next 15 minutes I was freaking out. I half expected the real owner to walk up to the stall and ask me why I was sitting there. I even contemplated taking that one slate and making a run for it, but the tailor from the nearby shop was staring at me (which further reinforced my being scammed theory)

 

Finally the old dude came back. With another slightly different slate. Honestly if our craftsmen had their way they’d cover every single picture of the Kaa’ba with glitter and mirrors (forgive my blasphemy but if you saw the Loh-e-Qurans I saw, you’d be saying the same thing.)

 

In short I didn’t get scammed, but the possibility existed in spades. Also note, if you ever go to buy Loh-e-Quran there are two variations. A 15 block one and a 9 block one. Who knew?

 

Would Be Scam #2

 

Finally with one slate in hand, I was heading home. The problem with being poor is you have to depend on buses to get you places. Buses also have a habit of being late or at times unreliable. So I went asking every Taimur, Dilawar and Hamza where I could catch Z-2 from.

 

I was in the middle of asking my 13th Dilawar when a Hamza rudely interrupted me asking me how weak my eyesight was. (I hate being a Leo – fucking curious as a cat)

 

I answered, which probably in Hamza land… (btw these names are a stretched out play on Tom Dick and Harry in case it escaped your mind) …meant lets start with an “OMG True Story” type routine.

 

He has a son, who had a –6 when it came to his vision. And you wouldn’t believe it, after a full herbal treatment he was back to 20/20. Hamza then told me about these herbs I was supposed to get from some guy from some shop. Sounded interesting but the herbs he told me about went over my head. So, I ended up following him through an alley to this guy’s herbal medicine shop. Hey, atleast I was cautious enough to firmly grip the 8 inch long micro-Phillips head screwdriver I bought moments ago, ready to take an eye or something if he started to undo his zarban.

 

Shady medicine shop. Hamza asked Taimur #14 to get a bottle of 60 rupee herbal paste. Sealed and it even had a hologram on it. wooo! Since I seemed interested, Hamza got Taimur #14 to add the necessary herbs in to the sealed bottle after breaking the seal. About one and a half tablespoon of something that looked like white pepper went into the paste, and roughly the same amount of powdered ginger. Hamza ‘authenticated’ the herbs by dabbing his pinky in the powder and rubbing it on his gingivitis infested gums. How drug-dealer-ish innit? 

 

Apparently these powders were given out in doses costing 30-70 bucks per dose. Guess how many doses in a tablespoon? 11 freaking doses. Taimur #14 was busy mixing what looked like flour (what is it with powdered herbs and white? Where is the shocking pink herb or the sparkly diamond dust)

 

Hamza, now running at full steam, was busy mixing the “medicine” and telling me how I’ll be throwing my glasses away in a month’s time. He took a butter knife from somewhere and scooped some of that slimy green goo and told me this was the required dosage.

 

Just then, totally grossed out by the paste, I looked at the receipt book Taimur #14 was filling out. The paste and three powders were currently at 580 or so. I faked a coughing fit and headed out the door for some “fresh air” I heard Hamza tell Taimur #14 to add the anti coughing herb (which I’m guessing would be Plaster of Paris.) Still ‘coughing’ and with Hamza following me, I quickly walked out the alley.

 

 

 #1 is where I found Hamza. #2 is Taimur#14’s shop. Blue is my escape path trying to lose Hamza. #3 is where I finally stopped (it is, in fact, the next road) I didn’t double-back intentionally, I got disoriented. –_–  

Of Tik-Tok

Til we see the sunlight…

…Tick tock, on the clock…

…But the party don’t stop…

…Woah-oh oh oh…

…Woah-oh oh oh…

NO WAY!

Tom-foolery aside. this has got to be one of the most awesome posts I’ll ever do in a while.

Second semester at uni came with a course called Digital Logic. We learnt about pre-computer generation parts. Gigantic chips that when combined in the right order would tell you if your answer matches with the answer key, or you could even make a calculator that only adds numbers together and gives you a sum. Such stuff.

Each course this semester required us to make a project for it. For logic people made counters, traffic lights, alarms, and other basic shit.

I proposed I’d make a clock. A decent AM/PM clock. With an alarm. Since I reasoned, that once these people made their useless counters and alarms, few would have to foresight to integrate it into their everyday lives. Hence I told the prof I’ll make a clock.

I had no idea the shit I got myself in.

(Below this line things might get technical, still I’ll try and keep them simple for most of you)

• The 555 circuit I made to drive the clock’s seconds kept speeding up for some unknown reason. so in 5 minutes it would be counting 30 seconds for every real second. in ten minutes the minute display would turn into the new second display.


• The 7490 and 7492s I used to count the seconds, minutes and hours were retarded. Theoretically one poke means one count. They would either ignore a poke or count it as 5 like there was some sort of animosity between them and the 555.


• No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the hours to move. even though I made simple double-delay poke thingy that would reset the hours from 12 to 1 instead of the normal zero.


• Since the hours weren’t resetting I couldn’t toggle the AM/PM light, which worked beautifully.


• And various glitches involving AND gates, negative feedback and god knows what else.

Why is it that whenever I try to make something it has a ton of glitches. So, after a long talk with a friend of mine, I went back to the book I tracked specifically for this purpose (TTL Cookbook by Robert Lancaster) Due to desperation and a looming deadline I ended up changing a few things at the last moment. I’m noting going to even go into the design phase.

Sheet #2	Sheet #1
Sheet #4	Sheet #3

Sheet One. Crystal Oscillator vibrates, goes through dividers, gives 1Hz pulses. 74160s count seconds and minutes. 7493s are easy to reset.

Sheet Two. Soon as the hours turn 13, it switches back to zero in an instant. The pulse that resets the clock also gets delayed and hits the count pin of the 7493 advancing it to 1. So in a fraction of a second, 12:59:59 turns to 0:00:00 to 1:00:00. I connected the reset clock pulse to the clock-pin of the edge triggered flip-flop which toggles AM/PM lights.

Sheet 3 is just the alarm logic. Each 10’s of Hours, Hour, 10’s of Minutes, and Minute is basically a Binary Coded Decimal (BCD – No I’m not making this up) The purpose of the circuit on this sheet is to check if a certain pattern is present and to eliminate the possibilities of it finding other patterns, When all 4 patterns match…

Sheet 4. A pull-up resistor (or a transistor) will power the two 555s in tandem create a two tone frequency that is used as an alarm.

Overall, it took me a day to fix all my problems and get it to work on breadboards.

Yeah, 8 breadboards, and I still need to wire the alarm logic. Feel free to question my sanity.

Oh, and it got the first prize in the Second Semester Hardware Contest. Wooo!