Fun with computers

I've been planning this film on and off for a couple of weeks. It's only going to be thirty seconds long but there's a lot going on in it and it needed a bit of pre-production work. I only really have this weekend to do the bulk of the filming, so I'm on a pretty tight schedule.

During the week just gone, I built some sets, made a video storyboard and worked out what sequence I was going to shoot everything in. This morning, I got up at 7 and was at the computer ready to begin work by 8. First things first: I grabbed some of the set elements I'd built and laid them out in the "studio area". With that in place, I set up the tripod, attached the camera to it and switched on.

"USB device not recognised"

I switched the camera off again and started up Firefox to see if I could find any information on the web. Typed "google" in the address bar but nothing happened. The keyboard was dead.

I did what every good pc user does in these situations - I rebooted. When the computer came back up, the mouse was dead too. No way to actually get in to Windows at all. Switched off, disconnected all the USB devices, plugged the mouse and keyboard direct into the main USB ports, switched back on again - nothing.

So now I'm starting to worry. A couple more reboots for luck don't do any good, so I break out my girlfriend's laptop and look around on the web for answers. USB problems, it turns out, are pretty common and extremely varied in their causes and solutions. In the end, I opted for about the only answer I could find that didn't involve a working keyboard - took the back off and systematically disconnected and reconnected every cable in the box.

And what do you know? It worked.

So that cost me a couple of hours and a few grey hairs. Once I got the camera working, I then realised that I hadn't planned nearly as much as I needed to and I've spent the rest of the morning blocking one ten second shot. Just stopped for lunch, and then the filming starts, five hours later than planned. Might be a late night.