Not one, but two programs, one on each side of the Atlantic! In the UK, at the beginning of the year Blue Peter went looking for script ideas for a new Doctor Who episode, and it got them. So they made the mini episode based on a story put together by grade school children, and The Doctor, Amy, and Rory will be doing it for us this Thursday the 24th as part of the next Blue Peter program. On the US side, BBC America is running the Matt Smith Top Gear episode this Monday evening, as the Doctor drives a Reasonably Priced Car.
This is the man who invented the Florescent Light off the top of his head, and then came up with a system for delivering electrical power to it without using wires, 4 years before Tommy Edison started trying to make his employees figure out how to make an incandescent light bulb. This is the man who invented AC power, the electric motor, and audio speakers, all of which he patented. He invented a bunch of other stuff he patented (Marconie’s “invention” of radio relied on 17 of Tesla’s patents to make it work), but he also invented some stuff the patent office couldn’t figure out how to process, like broadcast energy, wireless charging of batteries, Ball Lightning, Radar, and oh, yeah, that earthquake machine he almost sank Long Island with (he had to move to Colorado and build another lab to avoid going to jail for that one). Yet another great site in a long list of web pages honoring the genius of Nikola Tesla is Oatmeal Comics: Tesla. I recommend you read it and begin to learn what a true geek he was. Another site worth checking into is The Man Who Electrified The World, as is The New Prometheus. Each of those sites has their own perspective on the man and his works, but what I find interesting is the things they are forced to agree on by the historical record. I personally only ever had 5 heroes in my life, and Nikola pretty much tops the list, with Albert Einstein coming in a very close second.
This is Tiny’s from Second Life doing Star Wars, and it is a mighty impressive presentation. If you know anything about Machinima you will no doubt have recognized the incredible effort that went into this, from the costumes, the set building, the weapons and other props, the characters and their associated animations, the camera work, the editing… Just because it wasn’t filmed in the Real World doesn’t mean that it was some silly game. A lot of the same production hurdles are faced and overcome whichever world you are creating your film in.
This example of Furby Modding was put together by Julie Watai, a woman who isn’t afraid to pick up a soldering iron and commit surgery on small innocent cute creatures. Even when reprogramming them means skinning them first, with the possibility of damaging the hide to the point where reskinning might be problematic. This particular version includes English subtitles to make it easier to follow along, and for more fun projects see the Hardware Girls segment of her site. And then, just because it was there, a bit of animation she was involved with.
According to the official Doctor Who Experience web site, Matt Smith proposed to his girlfriend in front of the Tardis, and she accepted. Of course, it was a totally different Matt Smith, not the actor playing the Doctor at all. But how many folks would have read the whole article if I said that bit in the headline? *grinz*
This week it is Battleship on the big screen, and I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, it is based on the Hasbro game Battleship, and games turned into movies are rarely any good. On the other hand, it is based on a Hasbro game, and they have already turned a cheap plastic toy from the 70’s into a movie franchise that was quite enjoyable with Transformers, so I am not willing to count this one out without seeing it first.