That will shortly change, as I’ve started turning on my blinky light earlier and earlier.  Soon, rain will turn to snow, joy will turn to sadness, and you will turn to The Rollercam.

But it’s not all bad!  Last year was a fun year, and this year should be better.  There should be a few giveaways (who doesn’t want used jerseys, right? (kidding, there may actually be things you might want)) and maybe more special events.

I’ll be dusting off the site this week and making sure it’s in full working order.  You should probably dust off your rollers.

Advertising is once again available, so please contact me with any inquiries.

Simply put, BikeReg is the most amazing website (for bike racers) ever. I have heard horrible tales from the old folks about the way races were registered/found out about in the old days.  I am very glad that I live in an era where I can go to a website, find out where I can race, and register with almost no effort.

My second favorite thing about BikeReg (aside from its existence) is that you can add races to your Google Calendar from the registration page.  Genius.

The second sponsor this week is none other than the King of Style himself, Ted King.  Aside from drilling it at the front at the Giro Di Sardegna, Ted enjoys gardening, good food, and things other than bicycles – and he would like to share these tales with you.

Considering New Hampshire is getting hit with more snow, I am going to go stare at The Rollercam for a few hours.

Pedro’s also makes one of the MOST AMAZING THINGS EVER – Oranj Peelz.  Basically, you paint this magical gel on your drivetrain, let it sit for fifteen minutes, and hose all of the gross garbage off your bike.  IT IS MAGICAL.  One of my favorite things ever.

Velocyclist.com was started in late 2010 in Denver by three bike geeks with the goal of creating a cycling specific classifieds site to buy and sell parts locally as well as a place to see the latest deals from our local bike shops.

It’s sort of like a well organized and non-creepy cycling-specific version of Craigslist.  It’s really sweet, and looking for some love from New England.

The raffle grew from a pair of Zipp 101s to other items Tim and Chandler could find in their house (though, not Chandler’s recently removed wisdom tooth).  The winners are:

Geoff Williams: ZIPP 101s!
Adrian Balls: Zipp Winter Hat
James Buddenbaum: Zipp Baseball Cap
Mike Golay: A bottle of West Vlederen 8!
Cato Felan: A case of Red Bull!

The full update can be seen here.

All in all, The Rollercam fared pretty well.  It handled 70+ people in the chat room, but I discovered that 12 is the maximum number of video feeds.

If you’d like to have a special event on The Rollercam (a sponsored 80′s night, perhaps?), email me – therollercam@gmail.com.

As you can see, it was a busy night:

Green Arrow: Lets you toggle fullscreen on or off.
Red Arrow: Lets you control volume of that feed.
Blue Arrow: Lets you turn off the video and audio of that feed (it will be replaced with a black window.

So that’s that!

The brains (and I use that term loosely) behind the project decided that The Rollercam was the best place to do the drawing!

Essentials:
What: Zipp 101 Drawing
When: Tomorrow night (February 8th, 2011) at 8 PM EST.
Who: Everyone who contributed to the project, the brains behind the project, and (maybe?) some special guests.

So, make sure your webcam is ready, I’ll try to make sure the site won’t crash (no promises!) and get questions prepared for the dudes behind Das Pro und The Rookie and we’ll have some fun!

Full info on the event can be seen here.

After going to therollercam.com, the chat window will load after a few seconds and ask you to sign in:

You can sign in with your MySpace (haha), Twitter or Facebook accounts.  Also, if you don’t have one of those accounts or don’t want to sully your good Internet name by partaking in such a silly activity, you can just enter a username and sign in with that.

NOTES:

• If you sign in with Twitter, you will be asked if you want to follow @tinychat (the provider of the chat program) and if you want to update your status.  I don’t recommend following @tinychat, as they’ll DM you with special events.  If you do update your status, it will (probably) be retweeted by @therollercam.  And your friends will know.
• If you sign in with Facebook, you will be asked if you want to invite friends, and if you want to update your status.  I don’t yet have a Facebook-status-bot-thing, but maybe I will?

The advantage of updating your status is that people will come see you, especially that sexy guy/girl who randomly follows you.  Maybe they’ll fall in love with you?

After signing in, you can just watch and text chat in the chatroom.

If you want to broadcast, click the “Start Broadcast” button in the top left.

If this is your first time on the site, Adobe Flash will ask you to grant permission to TinyChat to access your camera and microphone – which is how the whole thing works.

After allowing access, you’ll be asked to select your camera:

After choosing your camera (or microphone only), you’ll be asked to select a microphone and then whether you want to Open Mic (meaning your audio is broadcast all the time) or Push To Talk (meaning you have to push….to talk).

I tend to choose Push To Talk, because the sound of 80′s electropop and rollernoise on my crappy microphone is bad.  If you have a decent mic and not a lot of noise, maybe Open Mic will work.

Keep in mind that not everyone in the room has their speakers on (or the sound turned up for the chat room), so you may not want to even bother with trying to speak.  Instead, focus on being sexy.

After that, you’re all set to broadcast!

There are lots of other things you can do – making windows fullscreen, blocking windows, and others – so poke around.

If there’s anything else in particular you’d like to know, email me (therollercam@gmail.com) or leave a comment.

His team is Wheelhouse Racing, and although I am frequently angered by Jeremy and his teammates attempts to make me suffer, Wheelhouse does do some good stuff.

Sponsorship for the week of February 13 to February 19 is booked, but the future is still available!  You can purchase one or both ad spaces on main page.  Email (therollercam@gmail.com) for more info.

If this is the case, let me know in the comments (or reply to @therollercam on Twitter) and I can try to figure out what’s going on.  If you’re on a Mac and it IS working, also let me know – maybe some people are just unlucky.

For starters, give these things a shot:

1. Make sure Flash is up to date.
2. Try using Firefox
3. See if it works with other video streaming sites.  You can do this by visiting tinychat.com/[any random room name].  After you visit that URL, the room will automatically be created and you can try broadcasting.

Hopefully we can figure this out so we can all hang out, riding bikes on the Internet!