Far Side cartoon about a store that sells happinessIf a store like this existed, I think it’d be even more popular than Ikea.

The big excitement on Saturday was me getting a webcam and figuring out how to use it. That was much less difficult than it seemed, mostly because I was using xawtv to test whether it was working, and xawtv is designed for tuner cards, not webcams. When I used luvcview to test it, it worked perfectly, and then I tried ustream.tv and that worked fine.

So, I signed up for a Skype account, then used the webcam to do a long video conference with John, Marcus, and Kevin in Royal Oak. They were all having a get-together, and wanted me to participate virtually. I did this, almost everything worked on the first try, and the main problem that we had was that John’s computer couldn’t play other video files while also using Skype. I put Moira in front of the camera. She seemed interested in the screen when I maximized the window and the others were moving around a lot, but eventually got tired of meowing at the microphone and went to sleep.

Also heard what the other guys had been up to. Marcus thinks he may graduate soon if he has enough stuff to publish. He is, however, not sanguine about finding a postdoc position anywhere.