iSight in Linux
I spoke previously about getting the iSight to work in Linux.

you'd think the iSight is plugged straight into my laptop, notice the 4to6 pin adapter plugged into the laptop
I tried again today to get it working, connecting the power supply from an iPod charger, my firewire hub and my PC together. This definitely worked better then plugging the iBook, the iSight and PC together, however I still didn't have any success. Coriander claimed not to be able to find the iSight. I checked just about everything I could think of, including the firmware on the iSight (which appears to be the latest).

providing power to the iSight, observe the iPod firewire charger on the left and firewire hub on the right
I'm fresh out of ideas on how to make it work, anyone who knows how to get one working should mail me, or add a comment to this blog post, because I really want to get it working. If it's relevant, I'm running Linux 2.6.x.

Laptop Plugpack
As I've also covered previously, the plugpack for my laptop stopped working. Unfortunately, I had to return the one I was borrowing. This means I needed a quick solution in order to keep my laptop charged until the new power supply arrives. A quick trip to Jaycar got me an almost suitable plug that seems to work ok.

plug hackery (large version)

Work
Spent a lot of time dealing with random issues at work: patched a phone network just so that I could get a fax line, had a client where a failing DSL modem was causing some sites to fail but others to work fine (it seemed like it was having MTU issues), another clients printers chose to jam up with a CUPS error I've seen before, recovering a laptop (got to demo Knoppix), enough for the first solid weeks work I've done in a while. Still lots of work to do next week, which will be fun given that Simon is going on holidays and I am meant to start school again next week.

Life
Stephie, Alex, Liz and I are still looking for a new place to live. We found one place further up the road, but it's expensive-ish for what it is and is being repaired for the next week. It does have these cool mezzanines though, so the house is laid out in about 1 ¹/₂ floors.

a somewhat loose sketch of the house we looked at
I made us all pancakes for breakfast this morning. Nothing tastes better, or can fill the kitchen with smoke faster then pancakes for breakfast.

(if images are slow to load in this post, it might be something to do with IPv6 being turned on on this server. I don't think it quite works as well as you'd think it should. It is definitely slower.)