Welcome to the WoodwardCam. That's Woodward Avenue down there, live, or anyway as of two minutes ago, from the third floor of an old brick office building in Royal Oak, Michigan. I'm Edward Smith. I'm a claims adjuster at an independent insurance agency, and my desk happens to be next to the best window in the building. Since last November I've had a camera sitting on the sill.

The date and time in the bar along the bottom of the picture tell you when it was taken. If that's more than a few minutes ago, see below.

[ What you're looking at | Black or stuck? | How it works | Greatest Hits | The Michigan Left | Dream Cruise '99 ]

WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING AT

The camera looks northwest up Woodward. The lanes closest to you are northbound, headed for Birmingham and Pontiac. Then comes the grass median with the big maples, and the paved crossover where people make their Michigan lefts (more on that at the bottom of the page). Beyond that are the southbound lanes, headed back down toward Ferndale and Detroit, and on the far side a row of little one-story stores and a used car lot.

The slats across the top are our venetian blind, and the gray strip down the left side is the window frame. People have asked. I can't move either one without the whole office noticing.

IF IT'S BLACK, OR STUCK

The camera runs 24 hours a day, weekends too, with a new picture every two minutes. At night you'll mostly see streetlights and headlights, which is about what you'd expect. But:

• Black in the middle of the day means somebody kicked the power strip under my desk. It happens more than you'd think.
• An old date and time in the bar means the picture is stuck. Either the ISDN line is down or the old computer locked up. It'll stay that way until I get in and restart it, which on a weekend can mean Monday morning.
• Blurry or streaky means it's raining and the rain is on the outside of the glass. Nothing I can do about that either.

HOW IT WORKS

The camera is a Connectix QuickCam VC, the little color one, sitting on the windowsill behind the glass. It plugs into a Packard Bell 486 the agency retired when the rest of us got Pentiums. That runs a shareware program called Webcam32, which grabs a picture every two minutes, prints the time on it, and sends it up to my GeoCities space by FTP over the office's ISDN line. The WoodwardCam went live on Monday, November 16, 1998, and it's been running ever since, give or take the power strip.

My boss said fine, as long as it never shows the agency's parking lot. It doesn't. I checked.

GREATEST HITS

Every so often I save a frame before the next one writes over it. These are the keepers.

Saturday, January 2, 1999, 4:12 p.m. The big one. It snowed all day and didn't want to stop, and people sat on planes out at Metro for hours waiting to get to a gate. I was home in Ferndale shoveling the same driveway for the third time. The camera stayed at work and caught this plow working the northbound side with its light going. Everything else is white. The median is in there somewhere.

Saturday, August 21, 1999, 2:50 p.m. Dream Cruise day. A turquoise fifties car, an orange muscle car and a lime green one right under the window, a red fifties car at the bottom, both sides bumper to bumper as far as the camera can see, and lawn chairs and umbrellas all over the median. My best day ever for hits. There's more on my Dream Cruise page.

Friday, September 10, 1999, 5:31 p.m. Rush hour in the rain, northbound stopped for the light, every taillight doubled on the wet road, headlights coming the other way. I left ten minutes after this and was part of the problem. People ask if a claims adjuster likes a rainy Friday. No. It just means Monday is going to be busy.

THE MICHIGAN LEFT, FOR OUT-OF-STATERS

I get e-mail from people in other states asking why nobody on the camera ever turns left. At most crossings on Woodward you can't. Here's how it's done:

1. Drive straight through the intersection where you wanted to turn.
2. Get in the left lane and pull into the next crossover in the median (like the paved one on the right side of the picture).
3. Wait for the signal, make a U-turn, and head back the way you came.
4. Turn right onto the street you wanted in the first place.

It sounds backwards the first time, but it keeps a road this wide moving, and speaking professionally, it cuts down on the kind of left-turn crash that keeps me in business. Every summer somebody with out-of-state plates tries to turn left from the through lanes anyway. Please don't.

ABOUT ME

I'm 38 and live in Ferndale with my wife Hilda and our girls, Megan, who's 10, and Virginia, who's 7. Since 1991 I've been restoring a maroon 1970 Chevelle SS in the garage, one weekend at a time. Hilda says it'll be done when it's done. The girls think it's a very large shelf. If you're into Chevelles, write me. If you want to know whether your policy covers something, call your agent, not me.