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I’m sure you have heard the saying about asking a boy to do a man’s job? Well, that is exactly what we have going on here. Every couple of days it is necessary to reboot the computer that is doing the webcam on Shampoo, the rabbit. Actually it may need rebooting more often than that if I were to keep a closer eye on it.

A couple of weeks ago I watched as the computer came back on and loaded the program that runs the camera. As I did, I noticed something that I had failed to notice before. The program is set to take a picture of the rabbit every 10 seconds and send that picture to the web site. I knew that things weren’t happening on the site the way they should. I just figured that was because our internet access speed is so slow. Well, now I know what the problem has been all along. We are asking a boy to do a man’s job.

The computer is a 350 mhz with 256k of memory, an 8 gig hard drive running XP Pro. Do the math. This is an OLD machine with very little resources and we are asking it to process a photo and upload that photo to the web every 10 seconds? Then start all over and do it again and again and again, hour after hour, day after day. It just isn’t going to happen.

I watched and about the fastest time I saw for the process to complete was 14 seconds. Some were taking close to 20 seconds. So we are asking it to process and post a picture in less time than the machine is capable of doing. The result is, it doesn’t take long before it says “I’m done” and locks the program up. Reboot time.

This weekend Tiger Direct has a 3.33 ghz machine with 512 meg of ram and Vista home basic for $239.99. It would be nice to upgrade the memory to at least one if not 2 gig.� � Anytime you are asking a computer to process video you need lots of speed, lots of ram and lots of hard disk space. My laptop is running at 1.2 ghz and it took 14 hours to process a video I did recently. Now keep in mind that the desktop computer that does the webcam is 350 mgz and the one from Tiger is 3.33 ghz. The difference between a mgz and a ghz is huge. We are talking boy vs MAN. The process we are asking the computer to do should take less than 2 seconds. That would get the images to the web site in plenty of time and not lock up the program in the process.

At this point we have been directing all of our efforts into getting the funds for the God’s Family project. But if someone felt of the Lord to invest in a new, faster computer, it would sure be a blessing here. Vicky and I will be leaving soon and be on the road doing Bible schools and camps for six weeks. It would be nice to know that the webcam was working because there won’t be anyone here to reboot it.

Tiger Direct is also one of our affiliates so they send us a cash rebate on all orders.
www.jestkidding.com/support/affiliate-program/

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 8th, 2007 at 4:15 pm and is filed under General.