We can approximate the eyeball as a sphere with a circle on which corresponds to the pupil. We’ll describe the size of the pupil by the radius of the sphere and the angle between the lines from the centre of the sphere to the centre of the pupil and to any point on the edge of the pupil, see figure 1.

Figure 1 - The major axis

If the eye is looking directly into the camera the pupil will appear to be circular (assuming minimal or corrected camera lens distortion). We will define the center of the pupil in the image plane in this case to be .  Since the pupil will appear to be a circle all its axes are equal. The red and the blue lines in figure 1 have the same length. This length can be calculated by:

.

Figure 2 - The rotated eye

As the eye turns away for the camera the pupil image will become elliptical. Consider the eye following some line on the image plane which passes through by rotating the eye through an angle in the plane defined by our line and the center of rotation of the eye. The pupil will now appear to be an ellipse with its major axis the same length as before (the red line) but with a shorter minor axis.

The length of the minor axis can be calculated from the internal angles of the quadrilateral to calculate the angle . Note that is the angle BED and is equal to the angle BFC

so we have

We consider it in 3D by just rotating orthogonally to the plane of rotation of .

Figure 3 - Blow up of the angles from Figure 2 and  rotation by the second angle

These two rotations can move to pupil to any place on our model eyeball. There are two nice properties of this circle on a sphere. Firstly the line passing through the minor axis of the ellipse in the image passes through the centre of the eye in the image . This fact means that the center of the eye can be determined from two images of the pupil in different positions by finding the intercept of the two lines defined by the minor axis.

This property allows us to calculate the angle from the angle of the minor axis and the position of the pupil relative to

The second useful property is that can calculate \gamma from the ratio of the minor axis.
We can will consider the ratio of the major and minor axes. This measure will be invariant as the pupil size varies.

From this we can directly calculate as follows:

If we have at least two images of the eye we can describe the rotation of the eye by . These angles can be used to generate the unit vector where

These unit vectors then have to be rotated to align with the real world. The rotation matrix can be described by three scalars.

Further work

In this analysis we assume that the eye is a sphere, rotating about it center: a fixed point relative to the camera and that we are able to accurately extract the ellipse describing the pupil. We do not consider the effects of noise, error or perspective. I’ve also assumed that the edge of the pupil is always on the edge of the sphere – when in fact it is more like a circle on a plane cutting through the eye (ouch). I have a feeling that this is not a problem as it is equivalent to the eyeball changing size as the pupil changes size.

This post describes the relationship between the different factors I consider in my eye tracking interface set up. I go through the geometric model which I plan to use to constrain my system.

To use eye tracking to interact with a computer it is necessary to map the location of the pupil in an image (from a head mounted camera for example) to the fixation point of gaze on a screen. Most systems require calibration to account for the variations in the positions of the cameras, the user and the screen. To calibrate the system you gather a set of training examples where the user is asked to fixate on a a set of points on the screen. A model is then fitted to this data to allow gaze towards arbitrary points on the screen to be accurately determined.

Figure 1 - The set up

Figure 2 - the vectors

Figure 1 shows the main elements we consider in the tracking. We label these elements as shown in figure 2 – which are:

• is the origin of the system, which is centred on the fixed camera below the screen.
• is the origin of the screen relative to the camera origin .
• the vectors and are the basis vectors for the screen, they correspond to the width and height of a single pixel in the real world.
• is the location of the target on the screen that the user is looking at.
• is centre of the head target. The head target is a plane with four LEDs on it which are tracked by the fixed camera.
• is the centre of the eye which is being tracked.
• the vector is a unit vector pointing in the direction that the eye is looking.
• is the vector from the eye to the target

It is useful to think of the system in two frames of reference. There is the frame of reference of the fixed camera and the frame of reference of the head.

Fixed camera frame of reference

In the fixed camera’s frame of reference we have three fixed but unknown vectors: and . Once these are know we can express the target vector as follows

where are the screen pixel coordinates of the target for training example i.

The relationship between the head and the fixed camera frame of reference is described by the following equation

Where is a point relative in the head frame of reference and is the same point relative to the fixed-camera. is a rotation matrix and the translation vector . To go back the other way you just need to use:

Where is the transpose of and hence the inverse rotation.

The head frame of reference

We assume that the eye and the eye-camera are fixed in the head frame of reference. The position of the eye relative to the head target is fixed in the head coordinate space – we’ll call this translation . Thus

We assume that there exists a mapping from the image of the pupil from the eye-camera to the vector (more on this in a future post).

• is the location of the centre of the pupil in the eye camera image for the training example.
• is the mapping from the pupil position in the eye image to the unit vector relative to the head which is parameterised by the vector
• to get in the fixed camera coordinates we need to  transform it as follows:

The intercept of the gaze and the target

Consider a user is looking at a target on a screen. We can consider their gaze as the line defined by the position of their eye  and the direction in which they are looking . We consider the screen as a plane defined by it origin and two points on the plane and .

Thus the line of gaze can be expressed parametrically as:

The plane can be defined by

where p is a point on the plane and is the normal to the plane. Providing the line of gaze is not parallel to the plane of the screen we can plug P(s) into the definition of the plane.

Finally we have that

The unknowns

In order to fit this model we need some training data. These data are obtained by haivng  user look at a series of targets on the screen and storing the following for each presentation i:

• : the pupil position
• : the translation of the head from the camera
• : the rotation of the head relative to the camera
• : the screen pixel coordinate of the ith target

The remain unknown constants are:

• : the translation of the eye relative to the head
• : the origin of the screen relative to the camera
• : the unit screen basis vectors
• : the parameter vector for mapping pupil position to the unit eye vector.

I will talk about obtaining these unknowns in a future post.

Prediction

Once the unknowns have been determined you are able to predict the screen target postion given the pupil position and the head’s position and orientation. We can calculate and independently as follows:

Google Voice is pretty good at transcribing voicemail but can come unstuck on more unusual messages. Perhaps it is able to read more into it than I can. Here are two messages I got today (flash player required).

“Come on”

and the simpler interpretation “On”

Come on Google Voice: wouldn’t “beep” be a better choice of words?

Update: Check out HelloLinko.com for more or to share your own.

Image by Tim Malabuyo

In this post I’ll be describing how I made a head mounted IR camera for tracking where a person is looking. I’ve been working on getting low-cost home brew eye tracking running on my Mac. I want the computer to know where I’m looking on the screen and to be able to interact with my gaze. My first attempt uses a head mounted IR camera to determine the pupil position and a second remote camera to detect the head position relative to the screen.

Picture Rachel Chapman.

I was inspired by the OpenEyes project which provides open-source software and hardware for constructing low cost real-time eye tracking. Their hardware designs are focused on mobile eye tracking – that is eye tracking whilst a person is freely moving around. They use two head mounted cameras: a scene camera and an eye camera. I’m only interested in where someone is looking on a fixed screen so I only use one head mounted camera focused on the pupil.

The eye camera

I converted a cheap webcam to be used as the head mounted eye camera. The webcam was modified in two major ways: firstly it was converted into an IR web cam by swapping the infrared filter for an visual light filter; secondly I swapped the standard lens for a telephoto lens. As ever the usual disclaimer applies.

I’m using “dark pupil” tracking which requires an image of the eye under IR light. Under these conditions the pupil is dark and strongly contrasts with the surrounding iris. I experimented with an old Apple iSight web cam. I had several problems with it  though. Firstly it was big and heavy so it obscured the user’s view of the screen and was difficult to fix to the head. The iSight has a nice autofocus glass lens, which gives you lovely crisp images. However, the autofocus mechanism would sometimes get confused and would get into cycles of focusing on the eye then trying to focus further away. Since the camera is going to be fixed relative to the eye a manual focus camera seems more approprate. Note that the focus of the iSight can be set by software using either comercial products like iGlasses or programmatically though IIDC (see iSight Programming Guide).

I bought a manual focus Logitech QuickCam Deluxe. Here’s how I removed the casing and got to the lens:

Logitech QuickCam Deluxe

You just need a Phillips #00 Screwdriver to remove all the screws.

1) Undo the three screws on the back.

2) Gently pull the back away - note you need to disconnect the usb wire from the circuit board by pulling the white plug towards the top of the webcam.

3) Unscrew the two silver screws at the edges that hold the board onto the front of the case. The two black screws hold the lens mount onto the board - leave them for now.

The exposed web cam board. The microphone funnel in the middle just pulls straight off.

Undo the black screws on the back of the board to release the lens mount - the CCD chip is now very exposed: make sure you don't touch it or let it get dusty. The lens just unscrews from the mount. Tomake the camera only sensitive to IR light I cut out a piece of unexposed developed print film to act as a visual light filter. This film was placed in the lens mount (between the mount and lens - not between the mount and board).Â

The IR filter is on the back of the lens so you just need to rub it with a finger nail to scrape off the filter - this took a while. You needn't remove the lens elements if you are not going to use the telephoto lens. If you are going to use another lens you can just pick off the glued in plastic ring at the back and push the front of the lens to remove all the elements.

The element of the len after the filter was scratched off.

Changing the lens

To get the image of the eye to fill the frame using the regular lens required the camera to be only a few cm from my eye. The close placement obscured part of my view of the screen and made lighting the eye with the IR LED very challenging. By swapping the webcam lens for a telephoto lens I could position the camera further from the eye solving these two problems – and it only cost $3.25!

The telephoto lens on the left and the old lens casing on the right.

I bought a lens with a 12mm focal length for just $3 on eBay. The telephoto lens mount as M12 x 0.5 – this means that the diameter of the barrel of the lens in 12mm – unfortunately the webcam lens had more like an 8mm diameter. The proper lens would have been more expensive so I just spend 25c on some plastic hose with about a 10mm internal diameter. I used a 1cm long piece as a collar to attach the old lens housing (with the elements removed) to the telephoto lens.

The 25 cent hose I used to connect the new and the old lens cases.

Wrapping up

With the case off the webcam the CCD detected light that was coming through the circuit board. To block this light I wrapped it in a layer of plastic wrap, a layer of foil and then another layer of plastic wrap. I then attached two IR LEDs to it and it was ready to be attached to my head mount. I also tried to power the IR LEDs from the webcams “working” LED. I removed the blue surface-mount LED and connected an IR LED. The connections were very fiddly and fragile and LED only shone dimly. I’d not bother if I were to do it again. Instead I’m powering the LEDs from a separate USB port.

The completed eye camera in its clamp

Read on to make the most of your tablet in a multi-monitor set up.

Photo by Jens-Michael Cramer

This post applies to Wacom tablets running on Mac systems. It has been tested on Mac OS X 10.6.3 with a Wacom Bamboo tablet under driver version 5.2.1-3. It will probably work with other Wacom tablets on the Mac – let me know whether or not it worked on your set up by posting a comment.

The default setting for the Wacom Bamboo tablet is for the tablet to be mapped to your entire screen.  If you have two screens, it splits the tablet between them and so you loose half of your precision. I wanted to be able to use the hardware “ExpressKey” buttons on the tablet to switch between using the full tablet on each screen in a multi-monitor setup.

How to do it

I’ve written three scripts to which switch the mapping of the tablet to either monitor 1, monitor 2 or both. To use them do the following:

1. Download the latest Wacom tablet driver here and install it.
2. Download my tablet screen switching applications here: Wacom_Switch.zip.
3. Unzip them and place the three app files in your Applications folder.
4. Go to System Preferences -> Pen Tablet
5. Select the tablet tab
6. Set the ExpressKeys to Open/Run… to each application.

Alternatively you could set up keyboard short cuts to run the switcher applications.

Then just hit the buttons you’ve programmed to switch from screen to screen – easy.

How its done

You can set the tablet to map to just one of your monitors in the preference pane. Obviously this switching method is too slow. I found one hack which used Applescript to move copies of Wacom preference files around. I could not get it to work well on my machine but it inspired me to come up with this solution.

It turns out that you can set the mapping between the monitor and the tablet directly with Applescript. The Wacom Applescript documentation was relatively cryptic but was enough to figure out how to access the map display property. I wrote an Applescript which set the map display property on the first transducer of the first tablet on the system. Each app contains the same code except for the value set to map display. A value of 0 map the tablet to all displays and a value greater than zero maps it to just the display corresponding to that number.

Here’s the code to set the mapping to screen 1:

tell application "TabletDriver"
  set tabletNumber to 1
  set transducerNumber to 1
  set screenNumber to 1
  set map display of transducer transducerNumber ¬
     of tablet tabletNumber to screenNumber
end tell

You can open the apps in Applescript Editor to check them out (you can also make sure that they only do what they say they do too!) If you had more than two displays you can just re-save one of the apps as WacomScreen_3.app and change the value set to screenNumber to 3.

- Joe

Loc-line segmented adjustable hose

In this post I describe a simple way to join sections of loc-line hose with just a bit of wire. Loc-line make an amazing product. It is a hose composed of short sections connecting with ball and socket joints. The hose can be bent into the shape you need and it will stay there. It is great for making your own gorillapod for example. Connecting the sections with your bare hands is very hard so Loc-line sell a special tool for joining the sections. But you don’t need to buy that – read on and use my easy wire method instead.

I bought a couple of sections of 1/4 inch loc-line for my eye tracking project. Google suggested that I could get away with just using brute force to connect the sections. Firstly I tried just pushing one section into another. It was impossible. Next I broke out two pairs of needle nose pliers. After about 10 minutes of trying I was able to get the sections to join. It took a lot of effort and the pliers cut into the plastic sections making the join really stiff (and maybe risking leaks if I were using the tube for a fluid).  In my earlier attempts I had managed to split one of my two sections in half – exactly the opposite of what I was trying to do – so I had to make another join. By now I had worn myself out so I tried to come up with an easier way. After a several attempts I hit on using wire.

The damage from metal pliers can be avoided by using wire

you will need…

• loc-line
• 20cm strong metal wire (I used 1mm thick copper wire I had hanging around).
• safety gear – goggle, gloves, etc (the wire could snap and take your eye out!)

(I had no trouble using this method, but there is the risk of injury with any sort of d.i.y. Be careful and don’t sue me).

Step 1

Fold the middle of the wire around the neck of the socket piece of loc-line. Twist the ends together to tightly hold the neck. Keep twisting the wires round until the twisted part reaches the mouth of the socket.

Step 1: Wire attached to the neck of the socket piece of loc-line.

Step 2

Spread the wires apart and wrap them around the neck of the piece of loc-line you want to attach to the socket. Twist the remaining wire together to tightly hold the second piece. Make sure that there is only just enough wire between the two pieces for the ‘ball’ end to touch the rim of the socket.

Step 2: The second piece of loc-line attached to the wire

Step 3

Hold the free ends of the two sections of loc-line and separate them, folding them away from the wire and moving the ball into the socket.

Step 3: The ball in position over the socket.

Step 4

Keep folding the sections away from the wire join. Use the free loc-line as two levers pushing the ball into the socket. You will hear a satisfying pop as the pieces connect. Then you just need to remove the wire and you are done.

Step 4: The connected joint.

It is very easy to do. An IR camera is also useful for for night visions application or even to see through clothing (some proud husband shows off his wife’s breasts on youtube). In this post I’ll describe how I converted the iSight. I was inspired by HoagiesHouse.com but it seems that there are lots of sites covering this topic (I found this one after I’d finished mine).

It turns out that a regular CCD is sensitive to IR light and so most webcams and digital cameras place a filter in front of the CCD which blocks incoming IR light. It does a pretty good job, although you can still see your TV remote flashing if you point it at the camera usually. To convert a camera you just need to remove the IR filter and put in a visual spectrum filter to block other light.

What you need:

• An iSight camera
• A phillips cross head screw driver size 00
• fine tweezers
• A small piece of unexposed, processed print film (for the visible light filter)

Step 1: Open the iSight

1) remove the two screws on the bottom and unclip the white plastic surround.

2) Slide off the outer metal casing by pulling it away from he lens end.

3) Peel off the fabric and use your tweezers to unclip the black plastic lock so you can release the "J2" wire

4) Unscrew the three screws holding the plastic case to the lens assembly (two on top one below)

5) Undo the 6 plastic clips holding the two pieces of the plastic case together. Then use tweezers to undo the lock holding the wide ribbon cable to the main circuit board and lift off the CCD and lens assembly.

6) Release the ribbon cable from the CCD board and undo the three screws holding it to the lens assembly.

You should now have access to the IR filter. It is a small piece of glass with a red tint to it. The red tint is what filters out the IR light. If you just removed the glass the camera becomes short sighted, instead you need to remove the film from the glass. I managed this by scraping it with my thumb nail for a while with some hot water and dish soap. Nothing seemed to happen for a while, but then it came off in little bits. You should be able to completely remove the red tint from the glass. It is probably best not to use anything hard which could scratch the glass. One person suggested that you use a bath of sulfuric acid but I think that is overkill -  just use a bit of vinegar if you have any trouble.

7) The IR filter before and after cleaning, and the print film negative cut to the same size.

Cut out two pieces of the photographic film to the same dimensions of the glass which the IR filter was on. Note that you want processed print film negative which is completely black. It will stop visible light but let IR light through. Mine was pretty much black (it had a brown tint to it). I decided to use two layers a I could still see some light through just one and adding the second layer did not seem to reduce the amount of IR getting through.

8) Remove the IR filter, clean off the IR filtering film, insert the print film and place the cleaned IR filter back on top. You may find that the glass sticks up a bit, don't worry the foam around the CCD will push it down.

Now you just have to reassemble the camera and you are done.

I bought a couple of IR LEDs to use as a light source below are a couple of examples from the irSight camera. Leave a comment if you have a go at this conversion or have any questions.

My eye as seen by the iSight before conversion. Note the screen reflection.

My eye using the iSight after conversion lit by one IR LED. Note how sharp the edge of the pupil is.

A security feature on a $20 bill. Under normal light the white stripe is not visible.

Finding and checking the names of the name servers

Getting the name of the name server right is important. If you choose the wrong name servers no-one will be able to see your site. Changing name servers takes some time to process, during which time your site may be inaccessible.  If you are transferring a live site you probably want to minimise down time and can’t afford to make a mistake or find the right name servers by trial and error.

You may find that your hosting provider does not clearly indicate the name servers that you should use. GoDaddy for example provides a cryptic date based list (more on that later).

If you have a list of several possible name servers, the easiest way I found to make sure that I chose the right one was just to ask each where it thought my site was. The default name servers will be the ones which get it right. You can do this testing using the linux “dig” command called. There is a web interface for dig which makes it very easy. Here is what you need to do:

1. Get the list of possible name servers used by your host. (I’ve listed the GoDaddy ones at the end of this post).
2. Go to http://www.digwebinterface.com/
3. Enter the domain name that you have just set up in the “Hostnames or IP addresses:” box.
4. In the Type: drop down list choose “NS” (for name server)
5. In the Nameservers: section choose Specify myself: and in the box below paste the list of your hosting provider’s potential name servers.
6. Click the “dig” button (not the “reset form” button which is annoyingly just below the box you jut pasted into!)

You should then see a growing list of the name servers that are being queried. For each name server you get a line something like this:

yournewdomain.com@n74.somenameserver.com:

If there is no information about domain on this server you’ll see a couple of blank line and then the next name server information. If your authoritative name servers are in the list of possible name servers they will have information after them, looking like:

yournewdomain.com@ns20.somenameserver.com:

yournewdomain.com.	3600	IN	NS	ns20.somenameserver.com.
yournewdomain.com.	3600	IN	NS	ns21.somenameserver.com.

And these are your name servers (eg ns20.somenameserver.com and ns21.somenameserver.com).

GoDaddy details

GoDaddy’s documentation for finding the name of your name server was not as clear as it could be. After a bit of searching on the support section I found the “Getting Started with Linux Shared Hosting” pdf (version 2.4 (12.03.07) ).

The document has a section on name servers and states:

The default nameservers for your hosting account depend on the date you set up your
hosting. Use this list to determine your default nameservers:

There then follows a list of date ranges and corresponding name servers. The above statement suggested to me that the relevant date was the one that I “set up your hosting” – i.e. the date I first got the hosting account and put my first website on it. However, I think that they actually mean the date that you set up the name server for the domain.

DNS list for GoDaddy as of October 2009:

ns25.domaincontrol.com
ns26.domaincontrol.com
ns51.domaincontrol.com
ns52.domaincontrol.com
ns43.domaincontrol.com
ns44.domaincontrol.com
ns5.secureserver.net
ns6.secureserver.net
ns3.secureserver.net
ns4.secureserver.net
ns1.secureserver.net
ns2.secureserver.net
wsc1.jomax.net
wsc2.jomax.net

Setting the name servers with your domain registrar

Now we have set up the name servers and know their names we can change them at your domain registrar’s end. In my case I was changing the name server for a domain registered with UK Reg. You basically go to the web site of the domain registrar that you registered with, then go to the control panel and find the DNS management.

Before you change the name servers make a note of the old ones (in case something goes a bit wrong). You should also be aware that the name servers will be handling everything related to the domain you are planning to change. If you have email being handled by you domain registrar you’ll need to set up emails with your hosting DNS.

Enter the name servers that you found out when you set up the hosting side and save your changes.

As we mentioned before, name servers use caching. This caching means that when you change your authoritative name sever addresses in your domain registrar control panel it will take a while for name servers all over the world to update their caches.

You can track the progress of your change around the world by entering your domain into  http://www.whatsmydns.net/. It will query a random sample of  name servers around the world so you can see the change getting picked up around the world.

A short note on email

If you had email set up with your registrar you may need to change something called the MX records for your new DNS servers (you’d make these changes through your hosting control panel under DNS settings). Alternatively your hosting package may include some email facilities which you could use instead.

Good luck!

In this post I introduce the domain name server (DNS) and what you need to set up. In the next part I’ll describe how to check that you know the address for the right DNS before you make the switch.

The easiest method to link the website and domain may be to use frame forwarding. Frame forwarding is where your domain registrar hosts a page containing a single frame at your domain name (eg http://mysite.com). This frame then loads content from a different web address (e.g. http://mybroadbandprovider.com/~user123/web). I don’t like frame forwarding as the address bar in the browser will always show http://mysite.com, no matter where they go within the framed site until a link is  opened in a new window or tab. Then the long ugly address gets displayed in the address bar. External sites trying to link to specific pages have to use the long ugly address rather than the nice short domain name you’ve paid for and registered. Some search engine take a dim view of frame forwarding and so it can affect where you get listed.

Transferring the domain to the company you host at will cost you money, but can help keep everything simple in the medium term.

Changing the DNS setting is the “propper” way to link the hosting and the domain name. It can seem like a black art at first but it is actually quite straight forward. All you have to do is tell the people with whom you registered to use the “domain name server” (DNS) of the company that you host with. I’ve recently changed the DNS setting for a site hosted on GoDaddy with a domain registered with a different company (UKReg / FastHosts). Here I’m posting a couple of tip that I found helpful. This post introduces DNS and the next one covers tools for making sure the transition goes smoothly.

What is a domain name server?

It helps to have an idea of what an authoritative name server is and what it does. The authoritative name server for a domain name will tell your computer the address of the server hosting the site corresponding to that name – its like a phone book for the internet. For example taking the domain name www.yahoo.com and giving back the IP address 69.147.114.224 of the server. Theoretically domain name servers (DNS) work together in a hierarchy, decoding a domain name from right to left, where the dots in a domain name separate each level. The DNS for a level will direct you to the DNS to ask about the next level until you reach the authoritative name server.

For example when looking up “blog.jjhale.com”, the computer asks the “com” DNS for the address. This name server tells the computer to ask the name server which knows about to”jjhale”, which in turn will tell the computer the address corresponding to “blog” in “blog.jjhale.com”. This final domain name server, the one which actually knows the address corresponding to the domain, is called the authoritative name server.

In practice name servers use caching to reduce the load on the top level name servers (.com, .org, .net, etc). When some DNS has been told the address corresponding to a domain name by an authoritative name server it can store it for some period. If asked about same domain name again it can just use the cached address without needing to find and ask the authoritative name server again.

To get a domain name to point to a website hosted on your server (or GoDaddy’s or whoever’s) the authoritative name server has to point to your server. This condition has two parts:

1. You need a name server pointing to your hosting server and;
2. you need your registered domain name to call that name server its authoritative name server.

When you buy your hosting from the same company that you register you domain from this link up is usually all done automatically for you. If you have a domain registered at one place and hosting somewhere else you need to link these up yourself by changing settings in the two different places.

Setting up the name server

The setting up of the name server needs to be done on the hosting side. In my case the website was hosted on GoDaddy space. I went into the hosting control panel (Hosting -> My Hosting Account, then Manage Account) and clicked on “Domain Management” in the “Settings” section.

Next click “add domain”. Here you enter the domain name (eg jjhale.com) and browse to the folder in your hosting account that you want to be the root of for that domain (i.e. the folder containing the corresponding website). You can also create a new folder to put the site into.

Hit OK and you’ll see the new domain name listed in the table of domains associated with your hosting account. In the status column it will probably say “pending”. In my case it only took a few minutes for the status to change to “Setup”.

The name server is now set up and ready to go. Next you need to make sure that you know the addresses of your DNS. This topic is covered in part two.

Note: When you switch name servers for the domain you’ll have to update setting for any email addresses associated with the domain too (cf. MX records). This is not covered here, but you should be aware of it.

Titilayo is requesting a loan to purchase drinks to sell, so as to be able to meet the demands of her customers.

Instead of setting up a regular gift registry we asked that people gave us gift certificates for an organisation called Kiva.

Kiva facilitates person to person micro-lending. Entrepreneurs in developing countries are able to solicit funding for their business through the kiva.org site. Potential lenders search through these listings and provide some of the cash required. As the money is repaid it can be reinvested or withdrawn by the lender.

We support Kiva’s mission of facilitating economic growth in the developing world. Also we’ve since discovered that their headquarters is a block away from our house after their wireless signal showed up on our laptops.

Liz and I chose to focus our lending in Africa because we have personal connections there. We have made 19 loans so far which you can track on our Kiva lender page.

Having Kiva gift certificates as wedding gifts worked out pretty well. The process of giving a gift certificates could be made easier though. People had to create their own Kiva account before being able to give the certificate – which provided a barrier for some people.  Wedding guest who were not so internet savvy, who were wary of using their credit cards on-line or not sure about paying in US dollars just gave us cheques to buy the Kiva credit ourselves.

This kind of micro-lending is fairly new and so some people were not 100% clear about what we were asking for. I think a few mistook it for just giving money to charity in our name. Since there is the option of cashing out however it is also a very useful gift to a couple starting out.

Liz and I would like to thank everyone who contributed to our Kiva lending. We’ll be posting updates of our lending experiences here.