Thinkcorps

Finally got the camera working on XP last night, after checking for a new version of the windows software. It’s so amazing and wonderful that people do this, as part of their jobs and for fun, and then share the results with the world. It’s not the same thing as open source, there’s strong developer-only reasons for that, it’s more that the net connects us to ourselves more easily—allowing us to discover or rediscover more about ourselves – to do more and be more through tiny, almost insignificant collaborations. Whatever, i’m getting all weepy here.

the dakota is fun. $11 and a soldered up hotsync cable i bought off ebay. its pictures are pretty good actually. i scraped the glue off the lens and messed with it—it definitely has a very small focusing sweet spot—but fuzzy picts are interesting too. the only problem of course is that when adjusting the lens, you have to dl the picts to check your results. technology/antitechnology playing back and forth. the software worked fine, though XP hung on shutdown so I did a system restore. not sure exactly where that problem came from or if the rollback solved it.

the dakota supposedly supports a webcam mode (least one of the chips does), and i’d be interested in adjusting exposure to build a digital pinhole. not sure that’s possible, but i can always hope. who cares? i’m going out to buy another one today.

key reference page: DakotaDigital at maushammer.com

first test shot

way out of focus shot down the hall to living room