I’ve had a few leads on a replacement power supply; thanks to everyone who’s responded. I’ll be following up extra-soonishly.

Arkansas Valley Electric Co-op is sending someone out to look at the wiring tomorrow; the thought occurred to me that, only a couple of weeks ago, someone from Cox was out here and had to restring our entire cable run from the tap to the pole to the house to my room. It’s just possible that he might have bumped or jarred something along the way (don’t cross the streams, man!). Given that there have been three electrical incidents in the past 9 days (so far…), a wiring check would seem to be called for. Almost everyone looked at the power supply photos in yesterday’s post and said “massive power surge,” but I’m not sure if that theory sticks. The fuse on the surge protector (and yes, for a multi-thousand-buck editing workstation and its multitudes of outboard gear, I have a really robust pair of surge protectors, not just a power strip) was not fried, and nothing else on that surge protector (which also powers about half of the outboard SCSI drives) fried. While I think a wiring check is probably warranted from last week’s frying-of-the-central-heat-and-air-system alone, I have a feeling this may not necessarily be related. I’m no expert in pushing electrons through copper wiring, but that’s what my electrical physics gut-check is telling me: a power surge big enough to do that would’ve done that to more than just one component. Then again, my gut-checks have bounced before due to insufficient funds, worm attacks and whatnot.

Still, I’m hoping to have a fix in place soon – not being able to power my Avid up and edit something, even if it’s just something goofy using someone else’s footage for a laugh, is like having an arm cut off. I’m so used to firing the thing up about once a day and just… doing… something, you know? It may be that it bugs me more now because I don’t have access to an Avid at work. To me, not being able to edit video is like not being able to walk. It’s just something I do.

My electrical wiring will be checked out tomorrow. In a moment, the results of that trial.

The 20 minute mark isn’t where I lost inspiration – it’s where I damn near lost the machine. A big whiff of ozone and a bunch of snap, crackle, pop inside the casing is just bad news. Older Avids are kind of notorious about the order in which you shut down the outboard gear such as the Meridian box, the SCSI drives, etc. etc., but on this occasion I didn’t bother with Correct Shutdown Procedure, because it was officially time for Oh Shit, Save The Machine Because I Can’t Afford To Replace It! Procedure: i.e. yank the power cord out of the back of the machine.

The power cord was awfully hot. I think this had something to do with it:

There doesn’t appear to be any damage beyond the power supply. Obviously, though, until I get a new power supply, there’s no way of knowing for sure.

If anyone in the immediate vicinity has a 500 watt 120V ATX power supply they don’t have a use for, I’ll be happy to trade DVDs, CDs, any just about anything short of sexual favors, or at least an understanding that I may not have cash for a few weeks. (Keep in mind, this caps a 7-day period that’s also seen the death of our central heat/air system in a completely different alarming electrical fire, a mystery leak that’s forcing us to tear up all the carpet in the house with no budget for replacing it with tile or anything like that, and me being sick as a dog.) Antec would be great since it has a big honking fan on the bottom of the unit as well as on the back, but obviously beggars can’t be choosers.

I only like to see that kind of melty on grilled cheese sammiches, you know? It looks like the prong corresponding to the melting on the cord melted its way back into the guts of the power supply. To use two words I never, ever thought I’d use in my blog… “that’s hot.”

A Doctor Who video game always struck 8-year-old me as a no-brainer. Now that I’ve added 30 years to that number, I know now that it’s an incredibly difficult proposition. Let’s take this quote from the article linked above:

The game will be closely monitored by the BBC, which does not want anything too violent. Former Doctor David Tennant said the game had struggled to get off the ground as some developers had wanted the Time Lord to beat up his enemies and blow things up. David said: “The video game was quite actively developed, but it’s difficult to nail as the Doctor doesn’t blow things up. He’s not Batman, who goes around smacking people in the head.”

Now, allowing for a moment that David has apparently witnessed some BatHeadSmackage that I’ve somehow missed, this raises a very good point. Anytime the Doctor has been seen to use a weapon in Doctor Who, it’s been a last-resort, life-or-death thing. More often than not, he’s faced down those with weapons, armed with little more than words, and he’s lamented others taking up arms countless times. How do you make a game out of that?

It hasn’t been easy going. I’ve chronicled several attempts at Doctor Who games before, from the very first one (released on cassette in 1983 for the BBC Micro) to the most recent PC game, which was a Doom clone, and everything in between.

Let’s take the 1997 PC game Destiny Of The Doctors as an example. It’s a first-person shooter – eek! That violates the whole canon of the show right there. But in this game you’re not the Doctor, but rather some strangely amorphous “champion” fighting for the Doctor. Therefore you can get away with the shooting and so on. But any fan of the show will tell you that this is a gigantic cop-out: what any player invested in the show really wants to be is the Doctor himself. The “champion” character – never mentioned in the TV show before or after the game – is a proxy, and a cheap one at that.

But this is where I get excited that this thing’ll be on the Wii. Hello? Wiimote = sonic screwdriver. It can even make the noise any everything. How freakin’ cool is that? What’s scary is that, according to the article, it’s taken years for anyone on the game-development end of things to make that connection:

Firms had been coming up with ideas for the last three years in a bid to tap into the show’s success. The insider added: “BBC Worldwide, which licenses BBC shows, has been trying to find some way of doing it. But you can’t have Doctor Who blowing things to bits with a laser gun. That would massively change the nature of the show.”

Obviously the wrong people have been trying to crack this particular nut. Do they even watch the show? The Doctor outthinks his opponents rather than beating them to a pulp; putting that into game form is difficult. The Wiimote-as-sonic-screwdriver is almost certain to be the key to cracking that particular puzzle, however.

I’ll be the first to admit that the screwdriver is overused in the show itself, but it could be a lot of fun in the game if implemented properly. And sonic or not, there’ll be plenty of opportunities to shoot things up, since:

It will also feature key Doctor Who baddies including the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Silurians.

Can we say: “Doctor-less, all-baddies death match mode”? Thought we could. As long as that mode isn’t the end-all and be-all of the game, I have no problem with it being incorporated as an option.

And finally, I’m so excited that I’m nearly shaking at the article’s implication that this is a Nintendo first-party title, not farmed out to someone else. One need only look at Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort – and the fact that folks like the head of EA have spent so much time bitching about the fact that they can’t seem to get the general game-buying public to adopt any non-first-party sports games for the Wii – to see that Nintendo has the best handle on making unique games for its own system. Naturally they do, but in the case of the Wii, the gulf in fun and playability between first and third party games is, at least in my experince, vast. Nintendo integrates the Wii controller into its game play where it seems that a lot of other developers cash their checks after using it as little more than a glorified mouse pointer or light gun. I’m elated at the thought that Nintendo is doing this, because, again as the article quotes a BBC insider:

“We’re delighted to have finally nailed down a deal. We went with Nintendo as they have huge appeal for families and Doctor Who is very much a family brand. The Wii console is key for us as it’s something families play together.”

…and that, in the end, is what it’s all about. I look forward to boarding the TARDIS with my own little companion.

Don’t forget to release this in North America, guys.

What’s even more awesome than that is this… too bad I can’t afford one, but man, that’s awesome. Just a wee bit more detail than the last one of these that we had…

I’m just waiting for the warning about homicidal thoughts and actions. You should really stop taking that pill too.

…the GEICO caveman?!? I’m expecting a stock photo of Verne Troyer next.

Just for giggles, I’ve posted a couple of rough edit sections for your enjoyment and/or bewilderment. If you watched the original “Doctor Who in 35 Minutes” you know what’s going on here; if you don’t, here’s what’s going on here: it’s a mashup that serves as a rapid-fire intro to the show’s mythology, and includes a clip from every single story. (Heck, I’ve even taken steps to make sure that stories are represented from which no video footage still exists; this approach has also been taken to depict one particular “lost” moment of pivotal importance to the show’s history, the first meeting of the Doctor and then-Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart. (Photos and audio exist, and I took an… interesting… approach to animating it all, an early frame from which is seen here.) As much as I liked the original edit, over time I’ve come to regard it as a bit dry and humorless, and certainly very flawed in the audio/video quality department. I’ve learned heaps of stuff since then. This one’ll be even better, but as with the original (which I’m having to study frame-by-frame to replicate the parts that I do want to keep intact), it’s an incredibly complicated piece of editing, hopefully resulting in an incredibly enjoyable piece of… well… something. Not for me to say, really.

Feel free to look at the rough cut sections below and leave feedback here.

The Time Lords
Post-Regeneration Body Part Boogie

Okay, Facebook. WTF? Are the ads just pulling random images across the board? Or is this the advertiser’s idea of what dad is really going back to college for?

1. It looks like the cats are playing basketball.
2. Get that spoon out of your pants!

Surely I’m not the only father ever to say these things.

Go go GO! The light is green. There is absolutely nothing keeping us all here. Except STUPIDITY. Which you apparently possess IN ABUNDANCE.

Hey, at least I try to be moderately polite and grammatically correct with my withering insults. I wasn’t even shouting… more like saying it in a vaguely Paul-Darrow-esque growl.