When I made my previous post, the title came out incorrectly as ?Error ID10T? when it should have been ?Error ID10T: PEBKAC?. Somehow, any text after the colon was being swallowed up somewhere. It didn't take long to find the culpret in the function PairNew() and this bit of code:

  src  = *psrc;
  p    = todelim(src,&sname,delim,eos);
  name = malloc(sname + 1);

  if (name == NULL)
    return NULL;

  memcpy(name,src,sname);
  name[sname] = '\0';

  if (*p == delim)
  {
    src = p + 1;
    p   = todelim(src,&svalue,delim,eos); // WRONG!
  }
  else
    svalue = 0;

This function is used to parse a header line like Title: Error ID10T: PEBKAC and turn it into two values, TITLE and Error ID10T: PEBKAC. It's the line labeled ?wrong? that points to the problem?I was checking for another occurance of delim (in this case, it's a colon) and ignoring anything past that when it shouldn't.

Sigh.

Like most bugs, the fix is easy, but what I do next is difficult. I (try to) use semantic versioning for CGILib, although there are two issues here?one, this is a bug so obviously the fixed version should be 8.0.8, but on the other hand, this introduces an incompatible change so the next version should be 9.0.0. On the gripping hand, it changes what I consider incorrect behavior and aligns the function to better reflect its name, so maybe version 8.0.8?

I think for CGILib this is largely academic, as I don't think anyone really uses the library except me. I shall have to think on this one.

Only it did not print properly. No black was being printed. We futzed with it for some time, and Bunny was able to get enough of the crossword puzzle to work with it, but overall, the black was problematic. I was fearful that we to buy a new printer.

After a night's rest, I had a thought?Bunny mentioned a problem with the printer yesterday, and when I checked, it stated it was out of black ink. I opened the printer up, and removed the black catridge, but the existing cartridges we had were for the previous printer. So that's when we went out running several errands and eating dinner. There were several hours when the printer was open, sans an ink cartridge, so maybe whatever ink was left in the print head had dried up, blocking the ink from flowing. Maybe some denatured alcohol could clean that up.

I removed the new cartridge, cleaned the area where the ink goes into the print head, and when I was putting the cartridge back in, I noticed a small tag on the cartridge sticking out.

Don't tell me, I thought. Did I forget to remove the ?remove me before installing? tag?

Yup.

D'oh!

The printer works fine now.

Sigh.

For starters, you need Windows to configure the device. The CD that came with the device only had two types of files on it?PDFs and Microsoft executables. Undaunted, I figured the device might also some with a web-based interface. Or at least, I hoped it did. Not only did it come with Wi-Fi (and the antenna had definitely seen better days?it was only later when putting it back in the box did it start disintegrating, but I'm getting ahead of myself here), but it came with an Ethernet jack. Easy enough to plug into the ?wireless service unit.? Then I just had to find it on the network.

No go. Reading the manual, you can reset the device to factory settings by using a paperclip to hit the rescessed reset button. That's easy enough. But then I read that the factory setting uses an IP address of 192.168.0.20.

That was going to be a problem.

At some point since this device was made (back in 2004 according to a date in the instruction manual) commerical network devices went from assuming a private network address of 192.168.0.0/24 back in the day to 192.168.1.0/24 in these more englightened times. But I'm not going to renumber my entire network for a camera. Okay, think ?

I pulled out of storage a laptop with an Ethernet port, and a small, five port Ethernet switch. It would be easier to set up a small network of three devices. I power up the laptop, log in, and find that the space bar doesn't work. Every other key works, except for the space bar. Okay, think ?

First, I try Deoxit, assuming maybe the spacebar switch has oxidized. That failed. Then I tried using some denatured alcohol to clean the actual contacts. That failed. It was not going to be easy to type commands into the xterm to reconfigure?wait a second! I have an xterm running. There's a space character on the terminal! I can copy the space character into the clipbard and use that!

It wasn't pretty, but it meant I could type

ip<paste from clipboard>addr<paste from clipboard>add<paste from clipboard>192.168.0.1<paste from clipboard>dev<paste from clipboard>eth0

and continue on with the increasing weirdness of the situation.

I was correct that one could configure the device from the web. I set it up to obtain an IP address via DHCP so I no longer needed the ad-hoc network and a spacebar-less laptop (this only took three attempts to get correct).

I could now reach it from the normal network, only I never saw a picture. I can't use the Active-X link because I'm not running Windows (and is Active-X even a thing in 2025? I honestly don't know). The Java applet didn't run because I'm not up to date on Java (I don't use the language for anything) and the links to update it are long gone for my OS. And the static image from just the web doesn't work because the link the camera generates doesn't exist on the camera!

Well then ? so much for an Internet camera. Back into the box it goes.

Unfortunately, Jack Black wasn't anywhere nearby with Lava Chicken. Ah well ?