Ben Michael Ward is a Web Developer in San Francisco.

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Ben Cam

Once upon a time, on a website revision now somewhat more aged than I realised, I had a web cam. I don’t think many people used it (bar Jo, who could keep tabs on me and a few others who found it a useful means of seeing if I was on the phone and had neglected to set my IM status).

I tried plugging my extremely old Creative Labs webcam into the Mac yesterday, and although the light came on, I couldn’t make it do anything. Now it’s in the PC, and accessible from http://ben-ward.co.uk/cam/. I shan’t promise to turn it on, nor is it served using any advanced means (nor is the picture quality up to much) but heck, it’s a bit of fun (if you find a slightly chubby, early 20’s male staring at his computer screen fun, that is).

To celebrate, one of the first ‘test’ shots came out like this:
A webcam photograph of Ben Ward, wearing his new 'SimpleBits' T-Shirt and pulling a somewhat silly face

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7 Responses to “Ben Cam”

  1. Comment by Steve Marshall

    August 23rd, 2005 at 11:05 pm

    And Stevie’s insulting me again: why am I not surprised?

    It’s not so much an insult as it is reaffirming your existence :)

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  2. Comment by Ben

    August 23rd, 2005 at 3:11 pm

    How can you see the sexy look!? My eyes are out-of-focus and my c’mere lips are otherwise engaged with a coffee mug. That look is my little secret! Err

    The software I use (on Windows), which yesterday decided to start crashing is Booru WebCam. Free, pretty raw, but certainly used to do the job OK.

    A nights sleep has made realise just how truly awful that picture quality is. Anyone wanna buy me an iSight?

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  3. Comment by Graham Bancroft

    August 23rd, 2005 at 1:24 am

    Is that a Simplebits ‘T’

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  4. Comment by Ben

    August 23rd, 2005 at 9:29 am

    Yes, it arrived yesterday in fact.

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  5. Comment by Rob Mientjes

    August 23rd, 2005 at 3:01 pm

    OH MY GOD STOP GIVING ME THE SEXY LOOK ON THE NOW-STATIC IMAGE*cough* I tried to connect my QuickCam once and I didn’t get any coolness so I decided to find software. There was only one open source project supporting mine, so I tried that and the mini crashed. As if I needed to be reminded that 256MB RAM IS NOT ENOUGH

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  6. Comment by Fatty

    August 23rd, 2005 at 5:27 pm

    Anyone wanna buy me an iSight?

    Um how about no?And Stevie’s insulting me again: why am I not surprised?Oh, and Mmmmmmcoffee

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  7. Comment by Steven Marshall

    August 23rd, 2005 at 3:50 pm

    Some of us who own webcams (but not blogs, as you reminded me whilst writing this, you bastard) prefer not to let the rest of the intarwebs (read: perverts a.k.a. Fatty) spy on us

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