The Life of Lou Ruppert

I like to tinker. I like to tinker so much that I will make more work for myself than I have the time to do it. There are plenty of examples. Here is one:

I have two friends in West Africa now. They have cameras and a copy of Skype. Only days ago, I got their network connection sorted. So, I went out and bought a webcam of my own, a cheap Chinese gadget from Gamtec which claimed on the box (in some of the most horrible English I’ve ever seen, I might add) to be compatible with Linux. As with most cheap Chinese products, I’ve found that the label is only for decoration. No drivers are included in Linux for it. No drivers for Linux were on the included CD. No instructions for installing under Linux were available in the manual. No Linux drivers were available for download from their web site. And no instructions for Linux were available on their site, or on any site on the Internet that I could see from my Google search.

Here are the details for anyone coming here from Google:

USB ID: 06a2:0003 Model number mb-301 pc webcam

As an aside, why do Chinese companies insist on not having someone who actually speaks English proofread their materials? Gamtec’s paper manual was embarrassingly bad. Here’s an excerpt:

Thank for using the latest digital pc-camera of our company, it is the latest design and high technology digital product the function can reach ahead of world level, it has a good appearance and very easy take away, meanwhile is has clearly display and high frame rate, it can improve you communication with your-far away friends and make your life more wonderful.

Can you believe it? The first time I read it, I thought they were implying that the camera could somehow launch you into the future. I guess that’s a really creative way of accounting for all of the time you would inexplicably waste trying to get it to work. You didn’t really waste that time, you were just able to reach ahead of world level as part of the camera’s rumored ability to make your life more wonderful. And what’s with the hyphen between “your” and “far”? It’s as if whatever lackey they had sequestered in the sweaty “translation room” was afraid he would be forced to feel more shame if he was unable to show that he could use every single one of the funny punctuation symbols on the western keyboard they handcuffed him to. In any case, they could have done better. And I’m guessing that what I could easily understate as their profound lack of understanding is probably the main reason why they printed the Linux compatibility on the box. Beyond a certain point of illiteracy, words become indistinguishable from pictures. Someone probably just needed to fill a space on the side of a box with computer terms and pasted all of the ones he could find from the three or four English web pages not filtered by the Communist Chinese Government.

Joking about cheap and shoddy products aside, this camera very likely will make my life more wonderful. I have so many irons in the fire right now, not because I am cursed, but because I enjoy tinkering. In a strange form of English never seen by me before, this camera has challenged me to get it to work. I know that there’s a French guy who has gotten over three hundred of these cheap cameras to work. They all use the same basic chips inside, apparently. So, if I’m right, by following his technique, I can be one of the first people to see it work. That’s pretty cool.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the challenges of learning more about ourselves, about problem solving, and about the world around us, just by tinkering and building things. Most people just plop in front of a television and that’s their entertainment. If they can’t find what they want in life, they don’t build it. They escape to a fantasy world someone else rents to them. If something stops doing what they want it to, they don’t fix it or try to understand it better. Whether it’s a television, a computer, a piece of furniture, a spouse, an old friend, or a pet, they discard it like a spoiled rich kid and go try to find another one.

I read a couple articles today about how people are losing the skills needed to build and repair things. Nobody wants to be bothered. Fortunately, as evidenced by the fact that someone wrote those articles, some people really are interested in how things work. They love to invent and tinker and salvage things others would have given up hope on. I am one of those people.

So, I have a tiny black plastic tutor from China who is going to teach me about camera drivers for the next ninety days. If I figure it out, I keep the camera. If I don’t, I get my money back. There’s nothing that compelling on television these days anyway.

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