One of the tasks in my job is to get our technology running on anything with a chip inside. 'cause I am the Linux-Dude there I was quite amazed how easy new webcams can work on linux if they just follow the USB Video Class specification.

Thanks to: linux-uvc.berlios.de and the USB standard commitee to introduce a specific class for these devices live video capture is much easier. If now only somebody could implement the same driver for Windows. The Logitech drivers are an absolute pain. To get the thumb sized Quickcam Pro for Notebooks running you need to install a behemoth of a software package that btw. does not separate the driver from the software any more. Additionally the brute-forced installed software stays in the tray and any option provided will be conveniently ignored on restart.

In related news, I added GStreamer support for AR Toolkit (in the CVS, no release yet). This positions the Linux version way ahead of the mess that the Windows version with it dependency on DirectShow is.

I never thought I need to learn an IDE (or a development environment in general) again after having a Visual Studio Black belt, beta testing Anjuta 2.0.x, fiddeling around with anything autotools, mastering emacs or using vim with a plethora of extensions installed blindfolded.

Naivly I thought: Never! But I am admitting hereby I am a newby right now without a single clue. Seriously, this Eclipse thing is a monster, pandoras box etc. pp. Are Java programmers 'crazy' or what kind of sane person can work with this thing right away? Right now, for me, total darkness. Waiting for being enlightened.

I just updated my notebook with Ubuntu 6.06 LTS via the Desktop CD. I never had an easier and quicker install and it only took me about 2h to set up my complete development tools. There are two little hickups. One is that NetworkManager, which is a great tool btw., does not update the icon cache on installation and thus does not start up. Manually updating the cache fixes that. WPA, WPA2 etc. all work out of the box. The other problem is that SMB shares are shown in Nautilus but browsing just produces odd error messages. SSH etc. work as expected. Overall great job and a nice platform to work on! As developer I especially appreciate the thoroughly chosen settings the developer packages are compiled with, no need to compile my own versions as I would need to do in crazy Gentoo land.