We purchased four of these inexpensive Loftek IP cameras; one has, apparently sprung a leak:
Water ingress, Loftek Nexus 543 IP camera
These are supposed to be fully weatherproof outdoor cameras. They have a one-year warranty from the manufacturer, so this should be an easy replacement under warranty. Still, it involves climbing up on the roof to retrieve, then sending the defective unit back to the manufacturer, etc. All the while, we are down one camera.
I guess this is what can be expected from an inexpensive camera. The units that are still online are working great.
Especially when that sink is located on the second floor, above the studio on the first floor. ‘Tis but a small thing really, one of those little details, but in light of the sink also being clogged, it becomes very significant. That, coupled with the fact that the building is uninhabited at night and disaster is afoot.
Clogged sink
The water was running slowly all night…
Wet ceiling tiles
It filled up the sink. It ran across the floor. It soaked the carpet. It seeped into the sub floor and out of the ceiling on the first floor and then into this nice Pacific Recorders BMX III console.
Pacific Recorders BMX III console, drainingPacific Recorders BMX III console, draining/drying
Do you know that burning electronic/plastic smell? Yeah, that’s it, mixed with stale funky water, wet wood and a nondescript mildewy odor; that is what the room smells like. Very pleasing. The furniture below the console was soaked too:
Studio furniture after water damage
Some of the input module edge connectors; didn’t fair so well:
PRE BMXIII burned edge connectors
The backplane for the power supply buss has to be replaced and these switches with the water bubbles in them, have to go too:
Pacific Recorders BMXIII buss select switch full of water
We dried out the furniture with an industrial strength hair dryer. By three PM we had unsoldered all of the bad parts and cleaned off the modules and the console back plane.
Parts for repairs are on order from Mooretronix. I doubt this will be repaired before next Tuesday.
Somebody came in and was all “awww, this sucks bla bla bla.” Well, maybe, but I get paid by the hour and frankly, there are much worse things that I could be doing…
The fourth dimension, at least in theory. We keep track of time in a linear way, each second marking a particular point that will happen only once and never be revisited. There will never be another 10:42:30.1 on April 17, 2013, for example.
Of course, there are several ways to record the same time:
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC): This is the time at the prime meridian, 0° Longitude. From there, time zones span out to +12 or -12 UTC, meeting again at the International Dateline. In military parlance, UTC is known as Zulu because it is in timezone Z.
Local Time: In any given location, is determined when the sun is directly overhead (± sidereal correction) at noon.
Local Timezone: One of twenty-four arbitrary divisions where the sun may be directly overhead (± sidereal correction) somewhere within the division at noon.
Unix Timestamp: The number of seconds that has transpired since 0000, January 1, 1970. Unix time stamp 1366209730 equals 10:42:30, April 17, 2013. In hex looks like 516F0260. Used by all Unix/Linux variants.
GPS Time: UTC – LS (Leap Second) + 19 s.
ISO 8601 date/time: 2013-02-17T10:42Z
Julian Date: A continuous count of days and fractions of such since noon Universal Time on January 1, 4713 BCE. April 17, 2013, 10:42:30.1 equals 2456399.946193
One thing to note and mark your calendars: Unix (and variants) may have a problem on January 19, 2038, because of a 32-bit integer issue. This is known as Y2038, and a smart man would start planning now.
