I bought a new webcam today. Spontaneously I bought a cheap Creative Webcam Vista or whatever the heck it was called. It was dirt-cheap, I just couldn’t stop myself despite my official loathing for most everything from that hell-spawned corporation named Creative.
On the bus home I figured I’d be very surprised if it worked in Ubuntu, since the whole freakin’ package was smeared with “Vista Compatible” everywhere.
Turns out if works just fine in 8.10. In fact, it was easier to install in Ubuntu than in Windows XP.
Here’s the steps required to make it work automagically in Ubuntu 8.10:
* Plug the damn thing in.
* Wait four seconds. Or something, I wasn’t exactly using a stopwatch.
* Done!
Here’s the steps required when I decided I wanted to use it in my virtualized Windows XP-machine:
* Plug the damn thing in.
* Nothing happens except for Windows popping up it’s usual “What the hell is this? Give me drivers!”-box.
* Remember that you most likely have to install drivers before plugging it in. Stupid! Stupid!
* Unplug the damn thing.
* Download drivers and additional software from the maze that acts as Creatives website.
* Install drivers and additional software.
* Reboot.
* Plug the damn thing in again.
* Done!
Previous to buying this camera I’d been using an ancient Logitech QuickCam Web, made some time in 2001 I think. Worked fine for most purposes, except after upgrading to 8.10 it had stopped working in a majority of applications – most likely due to Video4Linux going through some heavy changes. It had never worked in Skype under Linux, and had enjoyed spotty support in general. For example, Cheese had never recognized it previously despite my many attempts at tickling it into service. No go.
This new one however, despite being Vista-branded up the wazoo, worked fine in all these applications. Skype? No problem. Cheese? Like a charm. Amsn? You betcha.
So I played around a bit with Cheese. Owners of gilded cages know what Photobooth is. Cheese is an open-source kind of clone of Photobooth. Cheese works in a similar way. You see yourself in the webcam, you push a button, it takes a photo. You can also apply cheesy effects. The effects are built-in and perform various oddities such as making you green and purple like the Hulk, or flipping you upside down, or making wobbly effects. Fun for about five seconds – until I discovered that it was possible to layer multiple effects. So after playing around with various combinations I activated ALL the effects, and here’s the result:
I assure you, that’s my face. Here’s one without any effects applied, just for comparison.
And just because I love uploading photos, here’s a screenshot of the interface:





