Mostly Harmless

Fun with Webcams

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The student interns are up to something. It's easy to tell because they haven't yet learned to control the smirking reflex. Cracking them was just a formality, although it was easy partly because I'm a cyclist.

The interns have taken agin the speed humps (sleeping policemen) which limit the speed of traffic around the lake. It's not that they have a perverse desire to increase the danger of our environment (at least, I hope not!) but more that they feel that push-bikes are disproportionately affected by these inverse pot-holes.

You'd think that as students they'd be hard-up but that doesn't seem to preclude owning some fairly high-tech bikes. They don't want to go down in a cloud of carbon nanotubes when their sleek machine buckles or tips negotiating the jump. Site Planning And Maintenance point out that the sidewalks are also for cycles. However, since July 1st in this land the sidewalks have become too dangerous, peopled as they are by glaze-eyed zombies hurrying to the smoking areas in the car-parks. These poor indigents only appear to have seen you. In reality they have paused mid-stride just to check (again) that they have everything they need, and will soon forge ahead without warning and on an unpredictable bearing.

Anyway, it turns out that the students' revenge is so inventive that it's worth describing in detail:

A couple of days ago they formed a sociable crowd around a lamp-post near one of the speed humps. While the outer students chatted the inner members of this crowd removed the maintenance plate from the lamp-post and inserted a small wireless PC, webcam and powerful integrated amp and speaker. This was all patched in to the lamp's power cable and the cover replaced with minor modifications for the camera and speaker (a few carefully positioned holes).

They contacted the PC from the office and checked that the camera images were good. Next a neural network was trained to recognize certain cars as they approached the hump. This job was facilitated enormously by Donna's SFW1000 which eats that kind of problem for breakfast. The student's included one of their own cars as a test and then tuned the tracking between visual match and arrival of the wheels at the hump.

The result is that when certain cars (and only those) traverse the hump the noise of a loud squeaky toy emanates from the lamp-post. Some of the resulting camera footage is absolutely classic. I would prise it away from the students but I think they are planning to sell it online to recover the funds they lost by buying smart bikes and mini wireless PCs.

In one sequence the victim stops, reverses and tries again. Again the squeak. He gets out of his car and waits for someone to go around him. No squeak. He scratches his head and inspects the tough plastic speed hump - and then actually begins to jump up and down on it to see if he can elicit the squeak! He gets in again and reverses with such violence that he nearly takes out a would-be smoker who has stopped briefly in the road to check his pockets. He drives forward again gingerly - squeak! - he stops and can still just be seen in the camera hunched over the wheel and staring wild-eyed from side to side before making for the nearest parking space.

With another victim we see the same reversing strategy, but then the guy gets out and starts rummaging in his boot (trunk - whatever). At length he pulls out a dog's squeaky bone toy and deposits it in the nearest bin.

I don't think this anarchy will achieve any useful result - but full marks for imagination!

Posted at 10:59AM Jul 23, 2007 by John Alderson in Lake Guillemont  |  Comments[2]