Where is Darran?

This is a down and dirty how-to. I found that streaming via WebcamStudio resulted in higher quality streams than streaming directly to justin.tv. This approach also opens up some options not present in the browser based streaming solution justin.tv offers. WebcamStudio is not included in the Ubuntu repositories so we will have to download it manually.

1. Download WebcamStudio from the creators site at www.ws4gl.org. This will eventually forward you to sourceforge. Grab the .deb file from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/webcamstudio/files/

2. Install the deb file by double clicking it. This will open up the Ubuntu deb installer. The deb installer is now included in the Ubuntu Software on newer releases. Click the install button. (Note: If you have Synaptic open, the installer will hang until Synaptic is closed. This is a bug in Ubuntu)

3. WebcamStudio is installed on the Main Menu under the Sound and Video section. Click the WebcamStudio link to launch the app. You can also press Alt+F2 and type in webcamstudio.

4. Once WebcamStudio launches you will need to select your webcam under devices. Double click your webcam.

5. Everything else should be easy. Click the play button under the Source Layer section. To verify that your webcam is working, click the output menu on the menu bar and select Show Preview. This will open up a preview window.

6. As you can see the coloring is off. To fix this we are going to apply an effect by clicking the effect tab and selecting SwapRedBlue and then enabling the effect by clicking the move button.

7. Now that everything is good we are going to go to justin.tv and login to our account. Click the Go Live! button in the top right and the select webcam. If you only have one video source available on your pc, the video feed from the webcam we previously configured should be displayed.

8. Next, lets do something special with WebcamStudio. Select the Output menu on the WebcamStudio application and then select SinglePaint. This will open up another preview panel that has paint options. We can use this to paint anything on the video stream we would like. If you like these kind of things, make sure to check out the effects tab in WebcamStudio.

Please feel free to donate to www.ws4gl.org.

There is no denying I have let the site go on the fritz. Regardless of this disconcerting realization, I have decided to turn it around by making a few posts tonight. Additionally, I believe I am determined in my effort to exhibit better discipline in keeping some fresh content headed this way. I will keep posting the New Zealand tour progression(probably a bad idea to have started this) and then look to make some posts on some of the generalities around travelling/backpacking and some of the highlights I’ve had when getting out and about. Google Analytics says the How-To’s are where the traffics at. Apparently, people like to learn. I will look to putting out some more How-To’s, but my focus will most likely be travel related.

Note: This is not a complete fix, but more of a hack to get internet working on client VM’s when bridged networking does not allow client VM’s to access the internet.

After switching a Windows XP VM to bridged ethernet, the XP VM was no longer able to access the internet. I found a few solutions to this problem and this one seems to be the easiest.

To fix the loss of internet when using a bridged adapter on Virtualbox, configure the VM to have both a NAT and Bridged ethernet adapter. (see the screenshots below). To do this select the VM (must be powered off), click the settings button and then navigate to the network section of the Settings wizard. Configure Adapter 1 to bridged and then enable and configure Adapter 2 to be NAT. Press OK to save the changes and then turn on the VM. Give it a few seconds for the resources to be provisioned. You should now have access to both local and internet resources from the VM.

The NAT interface will be used to connect to internet resources, while the bridged adapter will be used to connect to local resources. This allows you to RDP  or console into the VM from other computers on your local network and still have internet access on the VM.

Adapter 1 (Bridged)

Adapter 2 (NAT)