The webcam has been working fine for a week or two now, but tonight it started acting up again.  Rebooting, reinstalling, updating drivers…  nothing is getting it to work consistently right now.    I’m going to make one more half-hearted attempt at fixing it in the morning when I wake up, but if it continues to give me a hard time the webcam page will be going on hiatus again.

EDIT:  I’ve given up on the friggin’ high resolution capture devices that I’ve got.  My system just fights with them too much, sometimes doesn’t recognize them, sometimes freezes up…   so it’s back to the crappy 320x240 low rez version, instead of the nicer 720x480 “HD” view.  But hey, at least it’s still gonna be color and will actually work all the time.      Meh.