Tag: Yodacam

RIP Yoda

Me and Yoda together for the last time
Me and Yoda together for the last time

Sadly, after having Yoda for just over 20 years, he was put to sleep on 01/05/2017.

He lost a lot of weight and muscle over a few weeks and on returning home we found him on the bottom of his viv not being able to walk on his left leg.

While at the vets we found a golf ball size tumour in his lower abdomen.

I hope Yoda enjoyed his life with us as much as we enjoyed him being in ours.

He has been through and seen a lot with us – numerous other pets – cats, dogs, salamanders, rabbits, guinee pigs, snake, giant millipedes and fish.
Yoda has also seen us get married, move house and have 2 children, not to mention moving house 3 times himself.

His website, YodaCam, had over 350,000 camera views and was online for over 13 years.

I am so gutted to have lost a family member, nothing will be able to replace him. It will not be the same not seeing him looking at me as I walk down the stairs every morning, seeing him asleep on his shelf when I go to bed or having him look at me as I bring him his bowl of veg.

Rest in peace big lad, you will be missed.

yodacam is 10 years old

10 years ago today I launched Yodacam.

Starting off as a bit of a laugh, I added an IP camera in with Yoda, so I could see him from work and see what he was up to. I then decided to add another camera as he was always in the wrong place.

After a drunken discussion with a friend, I went and bought yodacam.co.uk and published him to the world!

After a few years of monitoring for availability I purchased yodacam.com for him.

Yoda has since moved house with us, and gained a new home, which is now on the back of our house in our conservatory, built around a window so that we can see him as we go up and down the stairs. I added a third IP camera in with him as there was more space and more to see.
The 3 original IP cameras are still in with him, I am somewhat amazed that they are still going given the amount of heat they have to endure.

Yoda is now around 18 years old, we got him in February 1997 when he was a few months old, hopefully he will be online for a good few years to come.

Rexcam, like Yodacam but with a snake called Rex

I’ve had yodacam running for nearly 10 years now, recently I added a few pages for Rex, H`s corn snake so people could see them both, and for H to record shedding and feeding as a bit of a project.

He kept asking me when it would be going live so he could tell everyone, which got me thinking about adding a webcam in with Rex.

I got out all my IP Webcams out and got the smallest one I could find, made some authentication adjustments to the .Net code that pulls the image and put it in the corner of rex`s vivarium.

I then decided to buy rexcam.co.uk so that Rex could have her own bit of web space, and H had more to tell people – for a few quid and an infrastructure that was already pretty much set up, a new logo, a quick copy, paste, ctrl-h and replace all, Rex had her own website ready to go.

There is currently one webcam in with her and I’m working on adding a second, i just need her vivarium to be a bit bigger so that i can put the webcam somewhere out of sight or somewhere that is not that obvious.

But for the time being, H is happy and he gets to show of his snake to everyone, and I guess that its all about making your kids happy isn’t it?

IE10, desktops.exe and noframemerging

Today I upgraded my Windows Server 2008 R2 server to IE10.
Having used it on my work pc and my various Windows 8 installations for a while I thought it’s time to upgrade my server.
A quick install and reboot and it’s all done.

As I use my server for most of my work, it’s on all the time as it hosts Yodacam and is accessible remotely, it is a god send to have it all there when you need it.

I use Desktops from SysInternals to split up my work on to 4 separate desktops to keep the clutter to a minimum. My desktops are split into the following

Main Desktop – various email accounts, web browsing, Excel, Word etc
Development Desktop – php/asp.net websites, mysql and any think VB.net
[Undisclosed] Desktop – used for an [Undisclosed] task
Remote Access Desktop – for RDP/TS sessions to various computers and servers

I was working away on the Main Desktop and the Remote Access Desktop when i needed to do some work on some php files. Loading up a IE10 browser windows resulted in nothing showing. So I clicked it again but still nothing. I checked Task Manager and could not see anything that looked like a hung iexplore.exe process but there was nothing.

I then switched to the Main Desktop only to find several new IE10 windows open on the desktop. It would appear that every time I clicked the IE icon it would open a new window on the main desktop, which is not how it was in IE9.

I done a bit of digging and found a switch for IE10, `-noframemerging` which said `Internet Explorer 8 and later versions. Prevents Internet Explorer from opportunistically merging new frame processes into existing frame processes.`

I created a new shortcut to IE10 and added the -noframemerging switch to it. Now every time i load up a IE10 window it opens on the correct desktop.

Oh and Yes i know other browsers are available to use and I now there are other multiple desktop programs out there, but I am used to using IE and Desktops.exe and will continue to do so. GOI