fruit tree music

The Lighthouse

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:01:46 -0600

sorry for my delay and brevity on this one. Busy week. Here goes:

The mirror symbolism in last week’s episode was wonderfully done, as the two Jacks each resolved and began to transcend their issues (on either side of this universe mirror we’re seeing). If you look through any recap you’ll see a dozen or more photos of a reflection, and so far this season, every flash-sideways character has at one point or another stared deeply into a mirror. It’s pretty fascinating to think about.
This whole plot development is obviously another reference to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, two stories that exist simultaneously yet are almost mirror images themselves. Jack’s son David has the book and it’s just another glaring hint at what’s going on… amazing. The recaps below point out the significance of David’s name - as a Shephard - and the reference again to Psalm 23, both an episode title and Jack’s number.
Several of the blogs pointed out the incredible significance of Kate’s number, 51, and how it’s a mirror image of Sawyer’s (15). Since we saw nothing but mirrors and reflections the whole episode of The Lighthouse, it’s got to be more than coincidence.
Killer insight on this at http://www.thesanatorium.com/ and a hilarious but brilliant recap at http://www.theackattack.net/.

Happy belated birthday, Putay.

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:29:35 -0600

Happy belated birthday, Putay.

How I Stay Organized

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:29:00 -0600

I’m terrible at remembering things. Seriously. Give me sixty seconds and I’ll forget what I was supposed to do.

Fortunately, the web is teeming with systems, applications, and advice. Unfortunately, a lot of it is misguided and often just silly. Recently I’ve come to the follow most of the guidance of one Mr. Merlin Mann pretty regularly. He runs the website 43 Folders, amongst a zillion other things, and focuses on using your time and attention effectively to get your work done.

I’ll say this: most other sites tend to focus on the latest, newest technique or system, constantly supplying new ways to get organized and “hack” your life. While that’s awesome and cool, eventually it becomes too much to handle and not a good spend of time. Merlin tends to throw the traditional productivity blog mindset aside in favor of things that will actually allow you to work and get stuff done. How about that.

He’s written/blogged a lot lately in the area of iPhone apps and organization and it’s really helped me a lot lately. Here’s some of the incredible things he’s shown me lately:

Notational Velocity + Simplenote

For a long while I was using TextEdit and my iPhone Notes app to create little notes and reminders for myself, in addition to all my other notes. This combo, which Merlin explains in the above link, turns taking and reviewing notes into cake. Easy syncing, instant updating, a search template, AND I can save it as a plaintext file? Beautiful.

Siri

Siri is magic. Plain and simple. Voice recognition to the next level, with the Game Genie turned on. It’s insane. Tell this app anything - anything - and it’ll do it. Merlin demo’d this on the Macbreak Weekly show and blew my mind. Examples:

“Hey Siri, book me a taxi cab.” - Siri uses TaxiMagic to book you a cab.

“Siri, remind me to mail our taxes in.” - Siri emails you at your default email address with the reminder.

“Siri, who is Merlin Mann?” - Siri pulls up his Wikipedia entry.

It’s mindblowing, and free dollars.

1Password

This is slick. Complex password generator, Mac-based password storage, credit card (“wallet”) holder, secure notes, secure identities, and it all syncs over WiFi to your iPhone. Neat. This is a great way to stay secure on the web and still be able to access your sites on the iPhone without a text note full of long strings of gibberish passwords.

Dropbox

If you use multiple computers, you have to have Dropbox installed. This app syncs 2GB of data across any computer or device you hook up to it. I’ve got a Mac, PC and iPhone (plus their web interface) syncing nearly all my crucial documents and notes (generated from Notational Velocity). It’s lightning fast and secure, plus it means all my important files have another redundant backup source. Neat.

Pastebot

Here’s another magic app. Pastebot takes anything on my iPhone clipboard and, upon opening this app, dumps it into a user interface that allows me to easily edit or move my clipboard contents (to email, search as Google, etc). It’s cool, sure. But where’s the magic?

The magic is in the Mac syncing. This app is complemented by a Mac utility that syncs via Wifi. When you have the computer and the iPhone synced, any time you hit Command-C on your Mac it dumps that data into the iPhone app. Boom. Like so:

Conversely, if I hit Send to Mac inside the Pastebot app, whatever’s on my iPhone clipboard gets shoved into my Mac’s clipboard.

…like, say, this image above. I took the screenshot and then copied it. I opened Pastebot and sent it to the Mac, then pasted it to my Mac desktop. There, magic. Nothing up my sleeves.

Things

Last, but not least, is Things. Things is my organizational central nervous system, so to speak. It’s a to-do list manager, sure, but it’s so much more than that. Reoccurring to-dos, a “someday” storage file, powerful search, tagging and more. This app is how I stay on top of everything I do in life. It’s not cheap - $10 for the iPhone app and $50 for the Mac app, but well worth it (or you can wait around for a MacHeist bundle or something).

This app syncs, like the others, over WiFi with my phone, and gives me a quick and easy Inbox section to dump my ideas and random to-dos. It’s based loosely around the David Allen Getting Things Done mantra, which Merlin Mann has based some of his work off of (I guess). Basically this app does a lot of the thinking and remembering for me, so I just have to do the things I want to do. Not as easy as it sounds, but hey. Better than forgetting.

Outside the field of productivity, Merlin has also turned me on to other amazing apps, like Instapaper, a “read later” tool for reading articles and blogs. Genius, and simple. The Firefox bookmarklet for the app (and web interface) has made me read more - seriously.

So that’s about it. I’ve got six pages of apps - that’s 100 apps, all in - but those are the ones that help keep me organized. What am I missing?

Update - A KILLER Recap...

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:00:00 -0600

This recap is blowing my mind. I just have to share it with you and a few choice items contained therein…

like this ceiling chart! TV Overmind somehow geeked out enough to read the entire ceiling and find each individual’s name and number. It’s kind of staggering how much detail is here: the entire French expedition, the Freighter crew, most of the Losties, and more. There are several Spanish names that are as yet unknown to us, but hopefully characters on the Island (Alpert?) can help answer that.

But please. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR and read this. The amount of screencaps, explanations and quotes here make this a really full-fledged recap. They even explain Plato’s Cave - how nerdy! I love it!

The Substitute

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:55:00 -0600

I want to explain a quick concept that the sublime Long Live Locke blog has touched on in reference to the show. It’s basic, but so important to keep in mind while theorizing. Long Live Locke mentioned the idea, but I have to put my nerdy spin on it and reference a 12th century logician. Ready?

There are less than twenty-four hours left in this series. There’s less than eighteen, in fact. If you take commercials out of the equation, there’s less than ten. With that in mind, I present to you Occam’s Razor.

Occam’s Razor is a genius principle that states, basically, that “plurality should not be posited without necessity”. Or, in 21st century speak, if you have several opposing theories or ideas about a topic, the simplest and most logical idea is usually the correct one. This is a concept used often in issues of logic, religion, science, and business; try it out for LOST too!

It’s why, for example, I think the ship Jacob and the Nemesis argue over is the Black Rock. Why would we see a massive sailing ship careening towards the Island that wasn’t the Black Rock? It just doesn’t make logical sense given the time constraints involved to wrap up the script of this series. You can apply this concept to the Smoke Monster/Nemesis debate, and so on and so forth. Make sense?

Now, about the episode. This was a particularly religious episode, steeped with Christian and Catholic imagery and themes.

Most importantly the Nemesis spoke to Richard and Sawyer in a tone similar to the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. Manipulating, pushing, suggesting that he’d never act like Jacob. That Jacob was wrong, that nothing would happen if Jacob’s power was gone. It felt so much like the first few chapters of the book of Genesis.

…so much so that the episode basically ended with Sawyer agreeing to bite the apple. Oh, and Sawyer listened to Iggy Pop in New Otherton; Doc Arzt has a little piece on how significant that choice was.

After the staggering cave reveal I’m betting we’ll see Sawyer continue to make his move over to the Dark Side, so to speak.

Speaking of the cave and biblical imagery, Sawyer had to climb Jacob’s Ladder to get inside. Huh.

Oh, and this is neat. From the apocrypha:

“And all the Israelite men, women and children who lived in Jerusalem prostrated themselves in front of the temple building, with ashes strewn on their heads, displaying their sackcloth covering before the Lord” (Judith 4:11)

Temple. Ashes. Wow. [via the sanitorium]

With all this imagery, it’s hard not to notice the significance of Ash Wednesday coinciding with the airing date of this episode and the ash collection that occurred on the show. As you remember, Ilana scooped up the remains of Jacob, perhaps to arm herself with more protective ashes (which will certainly come in handy soon).

Back on the subject of the cave…

Let’s do a quick rundown, shall we?

4 - Locke
8 - Reyes
15 - Ford
16 - Jarrah
23 - Shephard
42 - Kwon (I’m voting for Sun)

To confirm: No Kate. I don’t think Kate’s name was up there and we just didn’t see it. I think we didn’t see it because it wasn’t up there anymore (Occam’s Razor, slicing things up!).

I’m voting Sun because we watched Jin and Kate run after Sawyer and receive little to no pushback from the Temple folk. Sawyer, on the other hand, had to endure a rifle-wielding standoff before escaping into the jungle. I think it’s clear that he made the list and they didn’t — why, I have no idea.

The screenshot of the cave above clearly shows other individuals names and numbers — specifically, names we haven’t seen before. I’m betting that Jacob kept a huge numbered list of names and has just been crossing them off as time went on. And surprise, surprise, The Numbers are the shortlist. Of course.

Other items…

the “inside joke” line was kind of lame
Lapidus’ line about the funeral was not lame at all
the episode title is a bit of a red herring, but in a completely amazing way
It’s amazing because Ben Linus is a European History teacher and that rules, a lot

Next week’s episode is called “Lighthouse”, which reminds me of the Dharma station The Lamppost and will probably have nothing to do with that whatsoever.

Great recaps, as usual:

Long Live Locke
Lostpedia
EW’s Totally Lost

Holy Crap, That Square Credit Card Scanner Thingy Is Only One Dollar

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:00:00 -0600

Holy Crap, That Square Credit Card Scanner Thingy Is Only One Dollar:

…for the app AND the scanner. Amazing.

I’m amazed at how easy they make this look. Totally...

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:00:00 -0600

I’m amazed at how easy they make this look. Totally seamless.

Donald “Duck” Dunn. Legendary bass player. Pipe...

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:07:36 -0600

Donald “Duck” Dunn. Legendary bass player. Pipe smoker.

SIMULTANEOUSLY.

Incredible.

What Kate Does

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:15:00 -0600

As usual, I have to point to other sites and outlets as the source of the knowledge below. Since 06.03 was a Kate-centric (read: just ok) episode, I don’t have a ton to ruminate on this time around. That said, there were still some surprising and fascinating things going on (the drama between Dogen and Sayid, in particular).

Basically, I don’t want to recap the entire episode as I felt most of it was exposition and not much about theory. The biggest things to talk about are:

• Claire appearing and acting like a brand new Rousseau

• The fact that fate brought Kate to Claire’s side, and Ethan to her hospital bed, in both timelines

• Dogen’s comment about Sayid being “claimed”

Claire, I give a wait-and-see. I’d almost bet that whatever is inhabiting her is taking parts (or all) of Rousseau’s spirit and melding it to Claire. Maybe Rousseau’s spirit was captured by the Nemesis and that’s what we’re seeing here.

So, who’s Sayid gonna be?

The line about fate above… frankly, it’s just fate. Like Eloise Hawking said, you can’t change it. I bet Jack will heal Locke instead of the Island, but I bet he will still be healed. This alternate timeline is just showing us that some things can’t and won’t be changed.

Lastly, and I feel most importantly, the discussion about Sayid losing to this force inside him. Wow. The word “CLAIMED” is so significant in that context, no? It’s almost as if the Nemesis is choosing pieces in a game being played out on the Island. I find it so important that Jacob’s list emphatically demanded that Sayid live, and now the Nemesis has chosen him.

Both realize he’s a valuable asset for their respective causes; unfortunately it looks like Sayid’s now batting for the other team. I could see a twisted turn of events take place wherein other Losties on Jacob’s List switch sides (like Sawyer, Jin and Kate, who are no longer in the Temple?). Crazy. Can’t wait to find out.

This of course reminds us of the larger question - War? What war? And what is it good for? Something like that.

Other random things…
The biggest mindblowing thing I read last week has to do with the tapestries in the statue’s foot. This info comes from The Sanitorium and is just, well, insane.

According to this blog, the text on the rug is from Homer’s Iliad and reads: “Now you must embrace this evil war” “the ground ran with blood” “then death’s black cloud enveloped” Wow. Then the blog references that Jacob’s white tapestry contains lines from Homer’s Odyssey, which opens up some cool ideas.

The Iliad was all about war and The Odyssey more about peace and returning home. The Sanitorium does a killer job of explaining this and the significance, so be sure you read the post in full.

Here’s a cool theory. So far all the episodes have been focusing on the same character that as in Season One. So…

S1E1&2 - everyone, Jack/Kate - yes

S1E3 - Kate - yes

S1E4 - Locke - hmm.

Thinking we’ll see a lot of stuff between Sawyer and Locke based upon the promo, and given what we’re seeing here this might be on track. That said I can’t imagine there being a CHARLIE centric episode in a few weeks, but you never know… Full list of Season One episodes and their central character can be found at the nerd-tastic Lostpedia

Moving on.

Right after this episode finished, we typed the name Dogen into Wikipedia and were pretty blown away. Dogen was “a Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher born in Kyōto, and the founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan after travelling to China and training under the Chinese Caodong lineage there.”

Here’s Dogen’s most famous pieces of text:

“To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe. To be enlightened by all things of the universe is to cast off the body and mind of the self as well as those of others. Even the traces of enlightenment are wiped out, and life with traceless enlightenment goes on forever and ever.”

Shortly before his death, he had written a death poem:

Fifty-four years lighting up the sky.
A quivering leap smashes a billion worlds.

Hah!

Entire body looks for nothing.

Living, I plunge into Yellow Springs.

Oh, and Dogen wrote a little book called The Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma. Huh. How about that. More on Dogen at Wikipedia.

Can’t wait for next week’s episode! It’s entitled “The Substitute”. See you then!

As I mentioned, I decided not to recap the entire episode in more detail because other sites just do it so well. Here’s some of my favorite recaps. Do yourself a favor and check them out:

[Long Live Locke]

[Doc Jensen’s Totally Lost]

Doc Arzt does a good job of aggregating a lot of killer info and recaps, but the site might have VERY minor spoilers every now and again.

Wow. Adam Lisagor continues to be a part of things that...

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:22:19 -0600

Wow. Adam Lisagor continues to be a part of things that fascinate, educate, or entertain me.

Got a small business? Square Up.

putay: giorgio. ping pong table + green screen + tan suit +...

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:00:00 -0600

putay:

giorgio.

ping pong table + green screen + tan suit + synth madness = this picture

Bonnaroo 2010 Lineup...

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:27:07 -0600

Not bad. I’m looking for this list to get a bit longer, but it’s shaping up pretty well…

Can’t say I love seeing Dave Matthews on the list though.

My “If I Was Going, I’d See…” List:

Kings of Leon
Stevie Wonder
Jay-Z
Tenacious D
Weezer
The Flaming Lips with Stardeath and White Dwarfs perform “Dark Side of the Moon”
The Dead Weather
Phoenix
Norah Jones
Regina Spektor
LCD Soundsystem
The Avett Brothers
The National
The Black Keys
Steve Martin & the Steep Canyon Rangers
She & Him
Daryl Hall & Chromeo
The xx
GWAR
Dan Deacon Ensemble
Dr. Dog
They Might Be Giants
Blitzen Trapper
Calexico
Dave Rawlings Machine
Japandroids
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros
The Dodos
Manchester Orchestra
Here We Go Magic
Neon Indian

Fingers crossed for those McCartney rumors. Not that I’m going anyway…!

Notational Velocity + Simplenote

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:36:38 -0600

Notational Velocity + Simplenote:

Unicorn magic. Merlin Mann blows my geeky, text based world wide open.

LA X

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:18:00 -0600

OK, so what an episode.

Let’s start with the name. “LA X”. Not “LAX”, but “LA X”. That extra space adds so much mystery, no?

Think about it. Planet X, the X Factor, the year 200X, and most importantly, “x” as a variable in mathematics. The X implies something different, unknown, or unique. What we’re seeing is not the normal LA, but the “X” version of LA. Does that make sense?

Oh, and of course — it could be referring to my favorite “X” of all — the X-Files. After all…

The truth is out there…

Our lives are a series of choices. Each choice we make sets up a new series of choices to be made, and the path is forged by each choice along the way. The smallest decision can impact and influence a life in an entirely different direction.

Each universe, then, is one display in an infinite array; an infinite array of our choices laid out in front of us. Each universe has a different outcome than the other, and we’re watching two of those universes in this episode.

World one (the one we’ve watched unfold for five years) is the Worst Possible Scenario world. Things fall apart. People die. Bad news bears.

World Two is the Best Possible Scenario world. Shannon and Boone don’t hook up. Charlie lives (despite saying he was “supposed to die”). Hurley is lucky. Jack will fix Locke’s legs, and most importantly, the Island is completely submerged in the ocean.

A big one, in my mind: In World One, Sawyer loses Juliet to the Island. In World Two, Juliet and Sawyer have coffee, go dutch. Huh?

We’re watching Juliet space out before her death, just like Charlotte did when her mind flashed through time before she died. She’s uttering phrases that her mind is pulling from a different reality altogether.

What we witnessed was Juliet’s mind speaking through her body FROM ANOTHER UNIVERSE.

Whoa.

This concept certainly gives some significance to Jack and Locke’s discussion in the World Two airport, concerning the loss of Christian Shepard’s body, not Christian himself.

I imagine we’ll see Sawyer and Juliet meet in this second world, wherein Juliet will utter those same words (again, much like Charlotte and Faraday in the ’70s).

Also, this is why Juliet told Sawyer (via Miles) that the bomb worked - she made it to the other side, just fine. What’s significant though, is the kind of travel Juliet just accomplished. Instead of the time travel analogy of a record skipping over a few beats of a song, here we have a record with a needle jumping several songs over. Crazy.

A few other items of note from the premiere… The temple is amazing, and riddled with spiritual significance (most distinct, the biblical healing pool and Sayid’s supposed resurrection). We meet a Japanese mystic and a John Lennon-esque interpreter, who’s literally billed as “Lennon” in the credits. The biggest questions here are: who are these people?, and what happened to Sayid?

I call these a wait-and-see. If I had to bet, I’d say Sayid is still Sayid, and the rules of the Island have begun to change after Jacob’s death. Also, I’d wager the Temple Others are simply a collection of “good people” Jacob has assembled over the years (from Alpert’s Black Rock onward). Next week’s episode will certainly clear these items up quickly.

Hey, let’s talk about Egyptian mythology for a while. Ready? Wikipedia is your friend. In fact, most of the below is lifted basically verbatim from the relevant articles on Wikipedia. I think this brings some new thoughts to light concerning Jacob and Locke.

Osiris. The Lord of the Dead. A merciful judge of the dead in the afterlife, in addition to being a giver of life (most vegetation and the fertility of the Nile river were attributed to Osiris). His other names are “The Lord of Love”, “He Who is Permanently Benign and Youthful” and “The Lord of Silence”. The Kings of Egypt were associated with Osiris in death — as Osiris rose from the dead they would, in union with him, inherit eternal life through a process of imitative magic. By the New Kingdom all people, not just pharaohs, were believed to be associated with Osiris at death if they incurred the costs of the assimilation rituals.

—sound familiar?

Set. The god of the desert, storms, darkness and chaos. In Egyptian mythology, the evil snake god Apep became Set (through cultural appropriations). Apep’s snakelike form guarded the underworld and fought the sun god, Ra.

Now, Isis and her brother, Osiris, were recognized as husband and wife. Isis loved Osiris, but their brother Set (or Seth) was jealous of Osiris, and planned to kill him. Set tricked Osiris and murdered him, and Isis was highly distraught. She sought shelter on a small island and as a further safeguard against Seth, Isis loosed the island from its foundations, and let it float so that no one could tell where to find it.

She found Osiris’ body within a great tree, which was used by the Pharoah in his palace. She brought Osiris back to life, and the two of them concieved Horus.

Mind blown? Yeah, me too.

So, onto Locke. Fake Locke. The Man in Black.

He’s very disappointed with you, in case you couldn’t tell by that photo.

Also, he wants to go home.

Where is this home, exactly? At first I thought, great. The Man in Black has access to a pilot and plane, with knowledge of the coordinates needed to leave the Island. He’s going to go to the mainland and start tearing it up. But that’s just altogether too normal for this show, don’t you think?

Instead, what if World Two is the “home” the man in black is talking about going back to? We’ll have an evil smoke monster entity trying to crawl back into a different universe and wreak havoc on a basically good world (with the intent to balance it out a little bit more).

Every time a sci-fi show discusses to universes converging like that (I’m looking at you, Doctor Who), you run the risk of destroying both universes in the process. So what we’re potentially looking at is an all-out, good versus evil, dark versus light, epic war to save the universe on a mystical time-jumping Island.

…on PRIME TIME TELEVISION. America isn’t ready.

My thanks to friends, coworkers, and my lovely wife for many of the great ideas expressed here. A lot of this rambling was captured from the conversations we’ve shared over the past two days.

Some great recaps to read:
[Doc Jensen]
[Long Live Locke]
[Dark UFO]

This LOST invite is just beautiful. [via mattson]

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:00:00 -0600

This LOST invite is just beautiful.

[via mattson]

Look at that freakin thing! iPhone guitar with built-in...

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:25:59 -0600

Look at that freakin thing!

iPhone guitar with built-in speaker!

Also, the world’s largest hands-free unit!

[via unpluggd]

beaucolburn: abiggerpieceofglass: Illustration by Dale...

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:44:56 -0600

beaucolburn:

abiggerpieceofglass:

Illustration by Dale Stephanos.

Can’t WAIT to see what happens tomorrow.

iSlate iTab iPad iCanvas MyPad… what’s this thing going to be called??

it’s hard not to feel insignificant while watching this.

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 13:00:00 -0600

it’s hard not to feel insignificant while watching this.

well, how about that. I’ve been doing this all wrong.

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 10:00:00 -0600

well, how about that. I’ve been doing this all wrong.

beaucolburn: The U.S. map Kerouac drew for On The Road. (via...

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:00:00 -0600

beaucolburn:

The U.S. map Kerouac drew for On The Road.

(via Steve Silberman)

incredible.