Is the remote dead?

So the other day the TV stopped responding to the remote. Ever looking for ways to solve problems with as little standing up as possible I had to think of alternatives to looking for batteries, so I thought hey- What happens if I point the remote at the webcam on my laptop? Sure enough, it looked like this-

That pretty conclusively confirmed there was no problem with the remote, so I moved on to the next possibility.

...it turned out the pile of DVD's in front of the TV had gotten too high, so if I'd been paying attention, I might just have noticed that in the first place, but hey. I still saved myself a search for batteries.

There are usually filters in cameras to block out non-visible light, but it's seldom going to be enough to block out the light from an LED at 5cm range.

Another thing I found out while trying to take the picture I used above was that I'd managed to uninstall the software that came with my laptop for taking webcam snapshots. Not to worry though, there's a way to use VLC as an (improved, I'd say) alternative.

In VLC, "Open Capture device" from the File menu brings up this:

From there, make sure Capture Mode is Directshow, and the video device name is your webcam. The video size option is blank by default, so make sure to type in 640*480 (or bigger if your webcam supports it) then hit Play.

You're then see your own face (should that be what lies in front of the camera in question), and can take a snapshot with shift-s (or Snapshot from the Video menu). They're saved by default in the logged in user's pictures folder. You can also record video if you click the arrow next to Play (in the above image) and pick convert instead. This gives infinite options for what video stream, audio stream and container are used for the output file. It's definitely not for everyone but if I can do it the complicated way (without getting on my feet), I will.

Maybe I should rename this blog "things that I'm learning in my twenties"