My wife very kindly got me a present of a Pi a few weeks ago. Not being a coder, and having had no real experience of Linux, I decided to start off 'easy' by just getting the iso for RaspBMC and getting that up and running. I had a bit of a hiccup but finally worked out that this was due to a slightly dodgy SD card, apparently the Pi is quite fussy. So, I got RaspBMC up and running and ho hummed a bit. I've got the ability to play videos using my Blu Ray, and/or AppleTV, so it doesn't offer me much new - but it served my purpose in that it gave me some confidence. Next, onto creating a streaming webcam. Did this on Saturday, took maybe an hour all told, and works OK. For some reason Safari on the iPad doesn't want to stream, it will just load a picture, that I can then manually refresh. Streaming to Chrome on the upstairs PC worked great though. Next task, to configure it to take either regular, or motion-detected snapshots and store them in a cloud drive of some sort. Then, enable the wireless (which I suppose could be done first, and I might do). Small problem there in that the wireless config utility appears as an icon on the desktop, so I'll need both mouse and keyboard to access it and whoops! That's both USB ports used, so I need another one for the wireless adaptor. Then, set it up to monitor the birdbox where we think we're about to get a couple of blue tits nesting. Anyway, I got an extra present at the weekend - no idea how or why, but a second box came through the post! Definitely not been charged for it on the credit card, so either some sort of mistake, or a random 'gift'. Now I've got to think of a second use for a Pi...

tried Chrome on iPad? Though it being based on the same rendering engine for iOS thanks to Apple being dicks means it may make no difference. I assume it's a javascript thing or similar. 

Fuck, I just pressed backspace and it went back a page and I lost my post :@

I'll try again.

For WiFi there's loads of guides and you can pre-enter all the details you need into the relevant config files meaning you could have all the config done, unplug the keyboard and plug in the WiFi adapter. Or use a USB hub (preferably powered).

If you want to get comfortable with Linux I'd recommend installing Ubuntu on something (dual-boot or maybe on an old PC/Laptop), since it's debian based you'll be able to get familiar with things.

Get comfortable with doing things on the command line and over SSH/Putty, makes it so much easier to do things when you're using a laptop or PC rather than messing with something plugged into the TV.

All of my Pis are currently headless.

Didn't bother with chrome, as you say it's the same rendering engine so assumed it would be subject to the same issue.
Thanks for the wifi pointer, I'll give that a go, although the guides I've read so far haven't mentioned that.

Create a Pi farm to process an answer to the ultimate question.

I think that'll take more than 2 of them!

What PB has on his pizza?

I got wireless working! So now I'm headless, using the ipad to ssh in. I'm also wireless, to the point that the only things connected are the power and the webcam.
Changing the port from 8081 to 80 doesn't seem to work, no idea why yet.
And using chrome on the ipad is worse than safari, all I get is a long string of text, some of which I've pasted below:
--BoundaryString Content-type: image/jpeg Content-Length: 13460 ÿØÿàJFIFÿÛC %# , #&')*)-0-(0%()(ÿÛC (((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((ÿÀð@"ÿÄ ÿĵ}!1AQa"q2‘¡#B±ÁRÑð$3br‚ %&'()*456789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyzƒ„…†‡ˆ‰Š’“”•–—˜™š¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª²³´µ¶·¸¹ºÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚáâãäåæçèéêñòóôõö÷øùúÿÄ ÿĵw!1AQaq"2B‘¡±Á #3RðbrÑ $4á%ñ&'()*56789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyz‚ƒ„…†‡ˆ‰Š’“”•–—˜™š¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª²³´µ¶·¸¹ºÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚâãäåæçèéêòóôõö÷øùúÿÚ?ÆH!Ú§É;@ÁAÅq¾#Š/íI±ÀÀQƒÅvËò¢ƒýÑÖ¸ÏøšÍØñÐcµ|¥v£RÑ“³§s!aL«ŒûÇÒ˜b#+28Ø=êp0½@>ôƲg®x®Ø

Mime types? Something like that.

Reading around, seems ie needs a plugin, so I'm probably lucky I can do as much as I can on the ipad.
Also found out that you have to be root to assign ports lower than 1024, and motion runs as its own user, not root.
Got port forwarding sorted though, so can view the stream from anywhere now.

Hmmm - my SSH sessions are no longer working.
My stream is fine - currently doing a self-portrait at http://radionotme.no-ip.org:8081/
But trying to SSH in using my ipad (which I was using all last night) fails, and trying a new connection with WinSCP or Putty from my desktop also fails.
What have I screwed up, and how?

Oh, and pinging 192....71 gives me that the destination host at 192.....73 is unavailable - why has it changed 71 to 73?

Tried rebooting it?

73 will probably be the IP of what you're pinging from.

Eg... there is no ".2" on my network..

Didn't really want to do a dirty shutdown if I could avoid it, but yeah, done now.
Yep, the IP is indeed my Win8 IP.

And the reboot worked - turn it off and on again, oldest solution in the book...

The Pi does have some USB/Networking issues (the networking runs on the USB bus). I know one of mine sealed up in a box outside occasionally loses its network for some reason. I have that Pi set to reboot every 2 hours as a work around but recently I also made a script to check if the network is down, if it is it reboots the Pi.

In my case there was no network traffic in either direction but yours seems to be able to transfer out.