So I bought a bunch of cheap video cameras, but they all have “video out” and not USB. So then I bought a cheap video-to-USB converter (less than $10) and I was sure I was going to have trouble with it. Sure enough, the disk it came with was defective and Amazon was willing to give me back my $10, but I wasn’t about to let the thing defeat me. So I searched on the net and got it cobbled together under Windows XP in a virtual machine on my Mac. Then I found a driver for Linux, which is where I wanted it anyway. And now I got it running, and I got qmotion (a motion detection program) running. Whenever something passes in front of the camera, it displays it.

I’m going to see if I can get it running from scratch on a lightweight version of Ubuntu and install it on my sister’s netbook. I’m not sure why I’ve decided to do all this, but there must be some reason to it all beyond simple neurotic geek obsession.