Coming Into Focus

As Hurricane Sandy's impact is finally starting to be felt around Massachusetts I, like most people, have spent the day with my television set on in the background giving me constant weather updates. While things around these parts have been alright so far especially when compared to other parts of the country, I can't help but continue to worry about my house down the beach. Frankly, the local news is not doing a very good job to calm my fears, because they have not been providing many updates for that area of the Cape. Now, knowing the news business the way I do I should probably be happy about this, because they send crews where it will be the worst so they can get the most dramatic pictures. (Before you feel bad for reporters standing out in the wind and rain, just know 90% of them love this stuff. They think it makes them look rugged and tough and they immediately put in on the resume tape.) So, no news is really good news - if they aren't reporting from that area it is because there is nothing to report. You'd rather hear silence than see Al Roker on your front lawn. Still, I would prefer just one update from some sort of official confirming my theory rather that just have to assume it on my own. A video is worth a thousand words and all I wanted all day was one shot on Swift's Beach to let me know how high the water is.

With that in mind I started searching all over the world wide web, hoping to find one resident of the area who had set up a webcam that would give me a brief glimpse of the beach. Not only could I not find what I was looking for, I started to become rather annoyed at the lack of options for any place near the beach. The closest camera I found to let me know the weather on the Cape was several miles away, looking at an mostly-empty rotary from across a totally-empty IHOP parking lot. That doesn't help me on any level. We're always being told that there is no such thing as privacy anymore because between traffic cameras, ATM cameras and in-store security cameras every human gets their picture taken dozens of times every day. Well, here is the one time all those cameras would actually serve a purpose. But if Big Brother is really watching he sure has a crappy view because I never got an angle of anything interesting. Even worse than the fact that the webcams I did have access to weren't showing me anything useful was the fact that the lenses were full of drops of water and the camera had zoomed out so that the drops were in focus and the background was fuzzy. Even if you aren't going to show me a helpful picture, the least you could do is have it be in focus. Not that the professionals' pictures were any better.

At one point one of the local newscasts went to a reporter on the street to show us a tree which had fallen on a house and then caught fire. At least, that is what they said we were looking at, because all I saw were different colored blobs. There was so much rain on the lens that everything had become smudged. This bothered me for a couple of reasons, the first of which was that the cameraman knew when the studio would be throwing to them, which means he could have wiped the lens right before they went live. I'm not going to begrudge a picture that gets worse when you are broadcasting from the middle of a rainstorm (even if most camera crews are above a mid-report cleaning), but there is no reason to start out this way. [Sidebar: All storm long I have seen shots of cameras being wiped with what appears to be the camera operator's handkerchief. These cameras cost thousands of dollars and they're using a napkin to clean the only part that really matters. Meanwhile my glasses were less than $100 and if I do that the smudges get worse.] The fact that we haven't come up with a way to keep rain off camera lenses is rather annoying. NASCAR has a system in which the camera appears to be behind a rotating piece of plexiglass so any debris which flys up will quickly move over and won't ruin the picture. If they can do that on a car travelling at 200 mph you would like to think it is possible on a stationary camera.

So, between the webcams and the news teams I not getting much help. This is exactly why my father and I talked about setting up a webcam for the house. It would be nice to be able to click it on, do a quick scan to make sure the street isn't now a river, and turn it back off. Not only would it do wonders for my peace of mind, it would free me up from checking out the TV every couple of minutes and I would stop criticizing the news. However, since we turn off the internet and the electricity as soon as the season is over there is the small issue of how we would power such a webcam as well as get the feed. A better idea may be to convince the town they need to put one up and say it will help with tourism. But, those feel like logistical issues and once we figure them out it will be smooth sailing. At least this way we'd be looking at something useful to us, which is in stark contrast to the official webcams. I'm sure there is a time when people will desperately want to know how long the wait will be for their breakfast at IHOP but now is not one of those times.