Silent webcam

Time was when I was desperate for reasonably priced high-bandwidth internet to be available here in Bhopal so I could video-chat with my family and friends around the world. I even fabricated a small LED based light-bank, powered by my desktop supply, focusing on my face. It was perfect during times when I’m working late in the night at home and the room lights are turned down low.
Then about four years back we did get DSL and I was ecstatic. The world seemed at my feet at least as far as visual communication was concerned. I was finally part of the global internet community. The euphoria lasted for a month.
Today, my webcam has not been turned on for more than a month. I had simply unplugged its cable and forgot about it. Now I just use ordinary email for most of non-phone communication. There is no time to sit down and work out a schedule where both parties can come online at the same time to share a webcam. Especially since the people I talk to most are scattered throughout the world and the time differences make it near impossible to find common free time. Twenty years back I would have given an arm and a leg for this technology. Those days letters used to take fifteen days between the US and India. There was no other way to communicate. The technology and phone revolution in India started after my need for it was over, as is generally the case with life.
These days even my personal emailing is done once or twice a week for most family and friends and the only daily mails are from clients either sending proofs or giving corrections to the proofs I have sent. Most of the time they are just one liners.
Coming back to the topic at hand, my silent webcam. The initial excitement lasted less than a month. There was no thrill in just seeing a near still face with downcast eyes on my screen and I’m sure they felt the same at the other end. I tried all the usual stunts, manipulating the hue, the background, a ticker on the bottom… they all seemed tacky after the first hour. Then I finally gave up and I’ve never gotten around to picking it up again. Technology has changed quite a bit since the initial days. Now we have near DVD quality and fantastic colors in near darkness of my room. And there’s auto-tracking at a cost less than a tenth of what I originally paid for my first webcam. My first webcam installation and settings gave me nightmares for days. It wasn’t hot-swappable and I needed a blinding halogen in my face to see my own image on the screen. But it felt grand, I was exhilarated for weeks with it. It was a new toy and pretty entertaining as far as toys go. But at that time it wasn’t of much use on the web since I was on a dial-up and I think it used to send one frame every 5-10 seconds. I just used to make faces at it and laugh. I saw what people actually saw when they looked at me and not the mirror image I see in the mirror.
Now it just sits mutely on top of my screen waiting for me to switch it back on. Pity.