That means whenever the phone reboots you have to plug it in to a computer in order to get it to startup. That’s really not for me. I’d rather put up without jailbreaking than chance my phone crashing and not being able to use it until I can get to a computer.

So, I’m back to being a standard iPhone user — pretty immediately, there are a few simple little things that are bugging me. Most of these things are so minor that it’s stupid there isn’t an option to change them…. Then again, I suppose it is Apple I’m talking about.

Safari popping up the bookmarks screen when there aren’t any tabs open. I DON’T WANT THAT! — No Bookmarks fixed it.

The App Store closing itself whenever you download / update anything — “StayOpened”

Last.fm live scrobbling! — MobileScrobbler

There’s no quick way to change screen brightness. iOS4′s multitasking bar would be a great place for a brightness slider! The iPad gets one; what does the iPhone get? A fucking Volume slider. Volume. Yeah. Because those two buttons on the side of the phone are just there for show. — Oh SBSettings, I miss you the most.

Being able to turn the light on without opening an app — Spring Flash. That was really useful.

For some reason I like having 5 icons in my dock… you get the picture by now.

On a more geeky note, I need to find myself a SSH client app. Unbelievably there aren’t any good, free one’s in the app store. MobileTerminal did just fine whilst jailbroken. Hmph.

I so hope the dev team come up with an untethered jailbreak that doesn’t require a 4.1 SHSH

/

This year there isn’t a list of shiny Bungie-stuff you’ll be getting. No theme, no DLC, it doesn’t even seem as though there’s gonna be a Bungie Day playlist in Halo 3.

Though, there was a mention of Bungie day in last week’s update:

Stop by yourself next week for some colorful Bungie Day love. We’ll keep our pants on. I promise.*

See you soon.

*Pants not guaranteed.

Makes me slightly worried about the sort of Love they’ll be dealing out…
Even if we don’t even get a podcast, who are we to complain, they’re finishing Reach! It comes out in 69 days (September 14th).

Edit: Check out this page where you can download the video below in HD.
New stuff…. CONFIRMED!

I shall be spending tomorrow playing Halo 3 (hopefully copious amounts). You should do the same.

THAT IS ALL.

Unless something interesting happens

/

I really enjoyed the end. I think it resolved stuff pretty well. Sure, it didn’t give answers to many of the, uh, many questions people have, but ultimately that isn’t what Lost was about.
It was, of course, about the characters. Those characters that we’ve come to know and love over the last 6 years (ok, and perhaps hate… ) I think it was a pretty good resolution for all of them.

Jack died, and the show ended on a scene very similar to the very first one. But, everyone died… after however long. They didn’t die as a result of the plane crash or the bomb, but of individual reasons, some of which we witnessed; and once they did, they met up in the sideways world, with the realization of their lives. That’s my take at least. Though I’m not sure whether the sideways world actually happened of if it was part of the ‘afterwords’ bit.
As for why Ben didn’t want to go into the church? He was aware, but not ready? Perhaps he’s gonna spend some more time with Alex.
I think ultimately Ben ended up being a good guy. Hurley was grateful for his help as number 2, and he didn’t go on as big a killing spree as the last episode suggested he might.

Something about the fight between Locke and Jack reminded me of the fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan in episode 3. It was a pretty epic fight & Kate getting to finish the job was rather appropriate somehow. It also explained the mark on Jack’s neck; I thought that would come up since it came up in last weeks episode again.

There were lots of bits in this episode that made me laugh. Hurley, as usual, was behind a couple, but the conversation between Mocke & Jack was pretty funny.

“That’s kinda true dude, he’s worse than Yoda” – Hurley

“What was that?” – Sayid… “That was Charlie” – Hurley

“I don’t believe in a lotta things but I do believe in duck tape” – Miles

So, Richard is no longer immortal, Lapedus is alive, Hurley’s the newest Jacob and ol’ Smokey is gone. Not forgetting Ben who seemed rather pleased with being asked for help with the island.

Well, I’ll leave it at that for now. Here’s hoping something lives up to Lost someday. Until then, there’s Fringe, which is pretty damn good if you ask me. Oh, and you should watch this video and perhaps this one too. Just incase you haven’t yet realised what it’s gonna be like without Lost.

I kid… kinda

/

So that mark on alterna-Jack’s neck is back and rather more prominent this time. Surely it has some connection to the other universe and perhaps in the next [and last ] episode he’ll get a mark like that?

Desmond’s plan seems to be going pretty well in the alternate dimension; he’s made Ben remember stuff by punching him, just like he punched him before. He also seems to have some recollection of Alex; or perhaps he was simply touched by the thought of being a father-figure.
Hurley is clearly completely aware of the island timeline since he recognized Ana Lucia, and Des has freed Kate, Sayid & himself. I assume he’s getting them to do something before everyone meets up at that concert thingy?

Oh, and Jack’s ex-wife is so gonna be Juliet.

Richard’s probably still alive; he only got thrown a little distance (for tv stunts, anyway) and he’s most likely still immortal.

I appreciated the answer as to why Kate had been crossed off; I had been wondering about that, and why they were there full stop. Jack’s the new Jacob, God complex and all and Desmond is a failsafe (I thought of the failsafe key, myself)… which Lock is gonna use to destroy the island; unless Jack gets in the way somehow…

Something that’s been bugging me though: I can’t help but wonder about the “Rules” between Widmore & Ben. Back in season 4, in the episode where Alex gets shot, Ben visits Widmore’s place and when replying to “Have you come here to kill me Benjamin?”, Ben replies “We both know I can’t do that” and then goes on to say that he’s gonna kill his daughter — Penny; well, he didn’t get around to doing that, and for Desmond’s sake that was a good thing….
But, in this episode, he just kills Widmore? Okay, what he said after made it slightly more acceptable — “He doesn’t get to save his daughter”. Did he just break the “rules” because Widmore already did?

Well, next up is “The End” – on Sunday; 2.5 hours of well, hopefully… awesomeness. And then it’ll all be over.

/

1. Y button to open friends list whilst searching for a game. I mean, come on! Bungie’s conditioned us to do that for 3 games now! In the beta it brings up that pointless menu to switch the Active Roster to showing your friends & party or just your party; and whilst searching it doesn’t do anything!
2. Active Roster / Player list in pre-game lobby to show players callsigns.
3. Active Roster – include section at bottom for friends not playing Reach?
4. Less annoyance from the commentator-voice when some jerk is jumping & throwing the flag [/other stuff it mentions]. Already fixed
5. Something else as awesome as Headhunter; I know there’s already team Headhunter that just didn’t make it to the beta, but it’s easily the best new gametype and it’s brilliant fun.
6. A noise to prompt you that voting has begun. You’re not always just looking at the screen… there’s the guide, start menu etc.
7. Bungie Favorites?

It can be done, but there’s a little hassle involved:

If you just try running it from your Applications folder, you’ll most likely see this, which fortunately isn’t as big a problem as it is with Photoshop

Ok, so, since I don’t have any case-insensitive Volumes, I’m gonna create a disk image using Disk Utility; if you do have a case-insensitive volume, you may be able to substitute that for the image.

Open Disk Utility – It’s in the Utilities folder inside Applications (/Applications/Utilities) Click the new image button.

Choose where to save the disk image, give it a lowercase name (and note what it is for later), set the image format to “sparse bundle disk image” and Partitions to “No partition map”.
As for the size — I set it to 30GB; Portal is 5GB, so I don’t think it’s too large. Importantly though, even though I set it to 3oGB, it only takes up the amount of space as the files inside it. The size is the maximum it could hold. (After creating it, with no files in, it was only 130MB.)

Ensure that the image you created earlier is mounted (the name will be shown on the left of a Finder window).
Copy the Steam app into the image you created.
Open up Terminal (it too is in the Utilities folder /Applications/Utilities/Terminal)
Remember that name you set earlier? Replace the bold bits below with the name you chose.
Issue these commands, pressing return after each one. You should be able to copy and paste each line.

mkdir /Volumes/steam/steam\ library /Volumes/steam/steam\ content
ln -s /Volumes/steam/steam\ library ~/Library/Application\ Support/Steam
sudo ln -s /Volumes/ /volumes

The last one will require you to enter your password. Incidentally, I know this is a horrible solution… but until they adapt it’ll have to do.

You can create a shortcut in your Applications folder by selecting the Steam app in your disk image, pressing ⌘+L (command+L which creates an alias) and then dragging that alias to your Applications folder. Clicking on the Steam icon in Applications will automatically mount the disk image and open Steam for you

If all went well, you should be able to run the Steam app from your disk image now. So far, I’ve tried Portal and it seems to work fine. Crucially, it runs fine and you can load/save

/

Oh, and you can drag the volume off of the Finder’s sidebar so you don’t have to see it there if you don’t want.

I didn’t think that was great…. Sure, it confirmed that the kid Mocke (and some others, Sawyer, for instance) have seen in the jungle is a young Jacob, and we finally found out who “Adam and Eve” were — well, not exactly their names…. Jacob’s brother doesn’t seem to have a name and the woman was, well, that crazy woman who raised Jacob & his bro.

But…. did we find out anything else? Not really. The smoke monster came out of the weird light-cave after the MiB got thrown in and then I assume it took on the form of the man in black since his body was available?

Did the mother actually speak Latin, Spanish and English or was something weird going on there?

Who were these boat people? How did they (with the help of MiB) create the system that is attached to the frozen donkey wheel that moves the island in time…. Who completed that system between then and the 1900′s?

The crazy foster-mother made it so Jacob and his brother couldn’t hurt each other… Right. Erm. Didn’t Jacob knock out the MiB and throw him into the river resulting in him dying? And didn’t Jacob lay a few punches on his brother earlier in the episode? WTF.

So…. It doesn’t explain why the smoke monster had to take the form of Locke and make Ben kill Jacob — where did those rules come from?

Why couldn’t the MiB find the stream with the light? Yet Jacob could take him there..?

Gah. Too many questions came out of this episode; and very few answers. Here’s hoping next week’s episode, the penultimate “What They Died For” is better. Then it’s the 2.5 hour long finale on Sunday.

/

Well, it seems as though Mocke has finally shown his true intentions — to kill all the candidates; perhaps everyone who is on the island. Whether that’s what he has to do in order to get off the island, or just because he wants to, it seems clear he has evil intentions – right in line with our initial opinion of him.

In this episode he managed to kill off 3 main characters (perhaps 4, we don’t know about Lapedus, though I think it’s likely he’s gone too). Sayid redeemed himself by running off with the bomb in order to save others. Unfortunately, Sun got trapped, Jin maintained his promise to never leave her and they both drowned!

Kate’s been shot — though seemed perfectly fine on the beach miraculously. I’m still curious as to why she isn’t a candidate… she isn’t the only one who’s killed — Sawyer has and he is a candidate.

Before Sayid runs off to sacrifice himself he tells Jack that he’s gonna need Desmond and when Jack asks why he’s telling him that, he responds with “because it’s going to be you.” — Somewhat cryptic, but I assume Desmond told him that Jack is going to be the Candidate and he’ll be able to help somehow. Plus he was the only one who knew about Des and we need to see him again!

Ben, Richard and Miles — Where’d they go? Was it them who put the C4 on the plane or Widmore?

Alterna-Jack said “I think you’re a candidate” to Locke. Heh. Locke was dreaming about pushing the button & said “I wish you had believed me” — what he wrote to Jack in his suicide note. Later, when trying to convince Locke that he can help, Jack says “I wish you believed me”; it almost seems as though Locke remembers something then. Interesting parallels, that’s all.

Well…. there are 2 episodes left then the 2.5 hour finale! It was originally planned to be just 2 hours, but I guess they crammed so much in it got extended. Awesome. But sad.
Next week’s episode is called “Across the Sea”.

/

All you’ll see is the message below; which should be worded entirely differently since you can’t choose a “different drive location”. Basically, it’s saying if you want to use it, reformat your Mac. Also, as far as I can see, there isn’t a workaround. Fucking Adobe. Oh, and Viva la HTML5.

/

…it really seemed to advance the story quite a bit.

First off, this episode was entitled “The Last Recruit” — having watched it, I’m not exactly clear on who that’s about…. Jack joining team Mocke, perhaps Desmond getting Claire on board in the alternate world? I don’t know.

Anyway, Sun an Jin finally met up, that was rather nicely done. She’s fine and the baby too, in the alternate world. They are of course taken to the same hospital everyone has been to this season — including Locke. When Sun’s being wheeled into the hospital she starts freaking out when she sees Locke next to her… I assume she had some realization of the island timeline and was afraid of him since he’s the smoke monster…?

Of course, it had to be Jack who gets called in to do the surgery on Locke; upon seeing his face Jack says “I think I know this guy”. It’s probable that he’s just remembering him from the airport, but I suppose there’s a chance he’s remembering Locke from the island.

Both of the zombies, Sayid & Claire (okay, I’ll admit, Claire isn’t really a zombie but, I digress) seemed to show some inkling of a personality in this episode — Sayid clearly didn’t kill Desmond like Mocke asked him to and Claire had a brief moment of relative sanity with her bro, Jack. Perhaps Sayid does indeed have feelings still.

So, according to Claire once Mocke has spoken to you you’re on his side; hmmmm. That would make, erm, everyone on his side. Surely it can’t be that way.

There were some surprising character contrasts — Jack having complete faith in the island; to the extent that when he left it, he felt as though part of himself was missing… causing him to jump off the boat and swim back. Also, Kate saying we have to go back to the island! Admittedly, I’m guessing she’s just saying that because of Jack, but still.

Mocke speaking of how pathetic Locke was felt rather cruel, though it was quite funny that he was saying it to Jack who, it seems, is on the island for that reason alone — he has faith.

I assume Desmond knew that Jack’s lawyer was looking for Claire and that’s why he took her there? If so, I’m wondering how he knew that!? Either way, it was all very coincidental.

Oh yeah, there isn’t an episode on next week, in 2 weeks time there’s “The Candidate”.

/

“Sayid ain’t invited, he’s gone over to the dark side”
“Yeah, but you can always bring people back from the dark side… I mean Anakin”

Ilana blew herself up!
Desmond ran Locke over!
Michael showed up!
Desmond got pushed down a well!
Hurley blew the Black Rock up!

Sooo…

Quite a lot happened in this episode, and finally, most people are together (although not Sun & Jin).

Desmond’s now down a well…. I wonder if there’s anyone down it too? When Locke went down the well he saw Christian Shephard. Still though, I wonder who’ll be coming to his rescue — Widmore and his people?

I wonder whether island-Desmond can see the future like he could last time he was exposed to electromagnetism — perhaps explaining why he’s so willing to go along with everything? He already knows what it results in…?

Alterna-Desmond is making people aware of their other existences, and perhaps that explains why he ran Locke down at the end. Him being on the ground like that was very reminiscent of the first season or when we saw him on the ground after being pushed out of the window, I don’t remember which in particular.

That weird kid was back from a few episodes ago; looking slightly different, but clearly still bothering Mocke. Desmond & Sawyer can see him, but not Richard…. I wonder who he is!?

The whispers were confirmed as dead people who can’t move on, including Michael who claimed it was because of what he did.

Next weeks is called “The Last Recruit”. Perhaps referring to the fact that Locke only needs Jin to ensure he has all of the candidates? Until then, then.

/

Charlie! Faraday! Desmond! Penny!

So, Desmond is special; something we’ve known for a while, but we don’t know why or in what respect really. From this episode it seems as though being special in Lost is having the ability to survive huge amounts of electromagnetism (which he’s done in the past) and that would fry a normal person (literally, as we saw).
Somehow then, when exposed to large amounts of electromagnetism, his consciousness is affected (yet again, we’ve seen this before), but this time his consciousness is sent to the alternate world; a world where he’s Widmore’s best aide but doesn’t have Penny and is instead assigned with babysitting alterna-Charlie.

Whilst there he meets George, the limo driver, who was of course Minkowski; the communications dude from the freighter, Daniel Faraday Widmore; who is a musician in this dimension and yet woke up and wrote some quantum mechanics that gave him the idea that this isn’t their real lives and that he might have already set off a nuclear bomb, and Penny; after Charlie or the MRI machine allowed him to see his love from the other timeline just as Charlie did.

Sooooo…. I wonder what Desmond wants the 815 manifest for? And who he needs to show it to? He said “I just need to show them something.” Hmmmm. *See end*

Also, when Desmond regained consciousness (after only a few seconds, apparently), he seemed to know exactly what Widmore’s plan was and wanted to go along with it, but then why did he go with Sayid so willingly?
I assume Widmore’s plan, other than to get rid of the smoke monster, is also to sort out the fact that there are two different realities, and that one shouldn’t exist??

Elouise still somehow knows what the fuck is going on in the other timeline and says Desmond can’t go looking for Penny because he’s not ready yet…. WHA? Also, “Someone has clearly affected the way you see things” she says to Desmond…. and then “This is a serious problem. It is, in fact, a violation.” WTF? A violation of what?

Widmore had a painting of a balance scale with white stones on one side and black on the other, LOL; he’s always had interesting stuff in his office before, but this one was definitely shoved in our collective faces.

/

Oh yeah, next weeks episode is called “Everybody Loves Hugo”… there was an ep in season 2 called “Everybody Hates Hugo”, FYI.
*Additional thought* It’s just occurred to me that Desmond is probably referring to the passengers of 815 as “them” and that he’s likely going to show them what Charlie did him — a glimpse into the other dimension? Thoughts?

Initial thoughts: DESMOND!!!!! Yay.

Sooooo, Mocke needs all the candidates with him in order to leave the island!? Iiiinteresting. Don’t see it happening at the moment though.

When I heard Mikhail’s name I immediately thought “I wonder if he has both eyes?”… Well, he did. But not for long lololol.

Sun getting shot… I’m assuming she’s not going to die since there seems to be a balance or something between the two realities. So far most who’ve died on island have died in the other reality too.

And since I’m unable to think of anything else for this episode when there definitely is more to talk about I’ll leave you with my first thought again. DESMOND’s finally back!
Up next is “Happily Ever After”.

/

…Which gave us Richards back-story and, inevitably the back story of the Black Rock since he came on it.

So, if Richard doesn’t stop the man in black, they all go to hell…. I wonder if that means he’ll release his darkness upon the world or just the people on the island will go to hell? The bottle analogy would suggest it’s the former.
Speaking of that bottle analogy…. WTF!? The island is a cork for evil/darkness in the world? Colour me confused.

Yet again, if you want to kill either Jacob or the man in black it seems you can’t allow him to talk to you first…? Weirdly though, when the man in black found and used his loophole in Ben, Jacob talked to him before he had a dagger plunged into his chest… Hmm.

The man in black wasn’t even in his own body before he took Locke’s form…. WHA!? Jacob took his body apparently.

I wonder how Illana has been preparing for the need to protect the remaining 6 candidates??

Jacob’s been trying to prove the man in black wrong by bringing people to the island and hoping they do good things. Conversely, the man in black has been sitting back and observing how he was right, since the people he brought to the island didn’t do good things. Perhaps that has something to do with the loophole? He brought Ben to the island and he killed Jacob..? I don’t know!

Lots of questions were posed by this episode, but I suppose we got answers to a few. For instance, how the Black Rock ended up in the middle of the island — Apparently it was a fuck-off tidal wave which propelled the ship through the statue and left it in the middle of the island…. Who knew!?

Well, next week’s episode is called “The Package” and I am, as always looking forward to it.

/

So, in alterna-world, Sawyer’s a cop. That makes it all the more strange that he let Kate go in the premiere episode of this season; and his reaction to seeing her in this one…. Must be that weird non-memory they seem to have of island events? Or at least that Jack seems to be having.

Widmore…. He’s… There to stop Mocke!? Hmmm

So, Locke admitted to Sawyer that he’s the “Smoke-thing” and he didn’t seem bothered at all. He just carried on treading his own path, leaving it unclear to us as to which side he’s actually on, if any, at the moment.

And Sawyer’s not after the plane, but the submarine. Because that’s clearly a piece of cake to pilot.

Locke has mother issues; I suppose that will be touched on a bit more, he made out that it was important to shaping how he is.

Claire attacking Kate… that was sorta expected, but just apologizing and seemingly reverting back to the normal Claire after Mocke spoke with her was very strange.

Well, next week’s episode is called “Ab Aeterno” which apparently means “Since the beginning of time”

/

“Very insightful…. For a dead man”

“Well nobody’s perfect.”

Yay, I don’t have to eat a metaphorical-hat — this episode was Ben related

So… Ben and his father went to the island with the DI and came back again! I wonder why?

Alterna-Ben was clearly a complete opposite to the Ben we know. He put Alex before himself! [or Jacob/The Island, whatever he justified it off to].

Locke wants Ben to take over as leader of the island then… I assume that would infact be him taking over the Man in Black position as opposition to Jacob?

Either way, he’s not having it and is happy to be accepted back with Ilana, who I never expected to forgive him. Michael Emerson performed awesomely in that confession scene. He’s very enjoyable to watch.

WIDMORE! Next week should be interesting.

Jack is suddenly the man of faith. I suppose Jacob succeeded in his mission to let him know how important he is then.

/

“You a Cyborg?

Vampire?” I note that all the quotes I’ve remembered recently have been from Hurley.

Despite being called “Sundown”, this episode was a Sayid-centric episode and the episode name was of course referring to the fact that the everyone at the temple had to make a decision by sundown. A lot of them chose to stay and got fucked up by the smoke monster.

It was quite difficult in the beginning of the episode to place which side Sayid was on; clearly though, he’s on the dark side with Mocke, and apparently, Kate too. It was quite weird that he tried to kill Locke though, had the darkness not grown enough by that point?

There wasn’t a great deal of questions brought up in this episode, its purpose seemed to be simply for us to see the temple get attacked, something they’ve been telling us would happen for a while now. Still, I’m not sure that everyone will be happy with the sides they’ve chosen (or forced into). It’s likely that those with Mocke will not be rewarded by getting off the island or getting whatever they want most.

Keamy was back for a little while in the alternate timeline and he has Jin in a freezer for some reason… Hmm.

I suppose island-Jin is still in Claire’s shack or limping around somewhere, but I wonder where Sawyer is? Last time we saw him he was in the cave with the names and it seemed he had also joined the ‘dark’ side.

Meanwhile, Ben, Lapidus, Ilana and Sun come to the temple to rescue people like Jack & Hurley; neither of whom are there so they settle for Miles and go hide in some hidden section of the temple.

Next weeks episode is called “Dr. Linus”… and if that isn’t a Ben-centric episode I’ll find one of those metaphorical hats and eat it.

/

Ben looked genuinely afraid when he backed away from Sayid

Initially, Dollhouse starts out fairly slow, it took a few lot of episodes for me to become genuinely interested in the show; in fact, I only recall enjoying episodes towards the end of the first season. I can’t say what made me choose to persevere with Dollhouse, however, I’m glad I did.

Season 2 was amazing! I just watched the show-finale a few minutes ago and it was brilliant.

Throughout the majority of the second season, the “actives” have more permanent characters and Topher becomes more awesome than before.
These factors allowed me to finally become attached to the show as a whole and, as I’ve tweeted before, it made me realise how much potential the show could have had if it hadn’t spent a great deal of the first season dawdling around.

Never the less though, Dollhouse did get cancelled, but fortunately its fate was known far enough in advance for them to write a conclusion to almost everything and wow, was it a good conclusion.

To sum up then, Dollhouse is…. well, frankly, rather difficult to sum up… I already realise that being a fan of other Joss Whedon shows would probably influence your opinion of the show, but I am yet to see any of his other shows.

So, if someone were to ask me whether I would recommend they watch Dollhouse now, I think I would definitely tell them to go for it; as long as they persevere through the slow beginning to the all-important first season, they would be rewarded with a pretty good overall-plot throughout the second season.

/

So, Jack has a kid and surprise surprise, their relationship isn’t that great. He seems not to remember his appendectomy occurring (which happened when he was 7 or 8, in the side-flashes, and not-so-long ago in the standard timeline); which is rather strange since he also was looking at that weird cut on his neck in the first episode and didn’t seem to know anything about it.

Here’s something a little odd: Jack’s mum (or mom, if you must) says that David (Jack’s son) was upset at the funeral….. Whose funeral though?? They don’t have Christian’s body yet, surely they wouldn’t have gone ahead with the funeral? I suppose there’s a chance it was a mistake, but, I suppose we’ll find out eventually. If we don’t, I’ll just assume they were talking about Christian.

Meanwhile, Claire has  definitely lost it. She’s replaced her baby with a creepy skull,  she’s now friends with Mocke/Smokey/… and is convinced (having been told by Mocke) that the temple-folk stole her baby. Also, when Jin tells her the truth that Aaron was taken off the island by Kate, she doesn’t believe him and says if that’s true she’d have to kill Kate… Infections these days, eh?

Shouty Jack, the Shoutiest Doctor in the West™

Mocke and Claire are off to the temple, it would seem and Jacob made sure Hurley and Jack weren’t there; instead, they’re at his weird lighthouse which contains a mirror that, when pointed to certain degrees seemingly shows images of people’s lives. Also, each degree is mapped to a ‘candidate’. Very strange indeed. Having seen his childhood home, Jack gets angry and smashes the magical mirrors and buggers off outside to stare at the ocean. Apparently though, that was Jacob’s plan all along — to make Jack realize how important he is.

What Dogen said in Japanese, in response to Hurley saying he can do whatever he wants was apparently “You’re lucky that I have to protect you. Otherwise I’d have cut your head off.”
Nice, huh? I wonder if he has to protect Hurley because he already knows he’s a candidate or if it’s just because he was on one of Jacob’s lists?

Well, next week’s episode is called “Sundown” and if it follows the same pattern, (same character-centric episodes as season 1), it’ll be a Sun / Jin centric episode.

/

“He turns up whenever he wants. He’s like Obi-Wan Kenobi”

I definitely could have taken screenshots of better things in this episode, but the fun you can have looking through Jack scenes in slow-mo is almost never ending

I was left rather speechless after seeing this episode. It’s awesome…. but it’s difficult to say exactly why. Nice mythology-style episode.

So, Jacob has a list of the Losties who are apparent ‘candidates’ and each of them has a number next to them
Locke was 4, now crossed out, Hurley was 8, Sawyer was 15, Sayid was 16, Jack was 23 and Kwon (Jin or Sun, I guess) are 42.

There were some people we recognize crossed out on there: Claire, Faraday, “Goodspeed” – Ethan, perhaps? & Charlie, to name a few.
Interestingly, there seems to be no mention of Kate on the mysterious rock — Perhaps it’s because she didn’t do what Jacob advised her to do as a child? i.e. Be good and stop stealing.

It seems rather logical to assume that Jacob isn’t wasn’t there to protect the island, but rather to prevent Smokey / Mocke / … from leaving the island. I wonder when he was a man, and what happened in order for him to become ‘trapped’?

Presently, it seems as though Sawyer is on his side, which currently seems to be the Dark side…

Ben was awesome in both dimensions, especially his speech at the funeral

I wonder who that kid is… and whose message he’s giving. Also, why couldn’t Richard see him and Sawyer could? If you notice, when he appears first, he has blood all over both arms, whereas later, he doesn’t. Who knows what that means!

Mocke throwing the white stone out to sea and responding with “inside joke” when Sawyer asks what that was all about… ’twas quite funny. It’s clearly about the metaphor of light vs dark, as the original Locke pointed out by holding up two stones in the first season.

I wonder how any of the candidates are supposed to know what to do once Jacob’s dead? Perhaps Richard is supposed to tell them, but hasn’t had the chance yet? I’m hoping we’ll discover more about this.

In the alternate dimension Locke wasn’t having the best of times, but to be honest, it was really enjoyable to watch. Quite funny at times too.

There’s lots more to write about this episode, but I can’t think straight right now so this is it. Until next week, with the episode “Lighthouse”

/

“DON’T TELL ME WHAT I CAN’T DO!”

Well… that was pretty uneventful. Turns out Kate doesn’t do a great deal

So, Sayid’s been claimed by, erm, “darkness” & island-Claire too. Well, that’s that dude’s theory anyway. It seems as though the infection is somehow associated with the Temple; assuming this is the same thing…. Doesn’t really make sense though there are certainly more pressing questions that will hopefully be answered.

It’s rather weird that people seem bound to do similar things in the alternate dimension-thing… Claire has to raise her baby, Ethan is the one injecting her with drugs, Claire somehow knowing what to call her son…

Claire was stupidly trusting of Kate considering she just had a gun held at her and the taxi driver [who valiantly ran off ]. I suppose it’s related to the fact that they still seem connected somehow.

Sawyer was understandably down in this episode and it had him resenting ‘Sayid’ or who/whatever that is…. Unsure about what exactly Kate was crying about on the dock though. There’s multiple possibilities.

Attempting to poison ‘Sayid’ — why not just come out and kill him? They can’t possibly pass off giving him the tablet and claiming it was a mistake he died. Seems pretty stupid. Either way they’d lose whatever small amount of trust the Losties have for these randomers, who are yet to explain themselves in the slightest.

I wonder why it’s so important that Sawyer returns to the temple..?

Something strange about this episode: the date on Claire’s ultrasound was 10-22-2004; The Oceanic 815 we’re most familiar with crashed on 09-22-2004…. Hmm. I wonder how that happened?

Here’s hoping next week’s “The Substitute” is a little more action-packed… or WTF-packed….. [Can I hope for answer-packed?]

/

“You’re not a zombie, right?”

So, Juliet said “It worked” — did it? Barring Juliet herself [:(], they’re all alive on the island. Yet they’re also all alive on the alternate-Oceanic 815; as are some people who died on-island i.e. Boone & Charlie…. Hmm

Like last season’s premiere, it’s certainly an episode that needs others to explain what’s happening.

There were quite a few differences on the alternate/plane side of things; Hurley being lucky for one, that’s the exact opposite of the Hurley we know. It seems as though Jack knows something’s a little wrong, just based on how he looked closely at himself in the mirror. Dunno what that’s about at this point, but none of them seem to have conscious knowledge of their alternate life.

One of the strangest things about the alternative-dimension (whatever it is…) was that the island is deep underwater….. (But there’s still a Dharma shark swimming around). Very odd indeed.

Ruh Roh, Hurley's wearing red :S

Hurley was quite awesome in the beginning part of the episode. Providing a laugh too with his inability to use the gun.

Is that Sayid or is it Jacob in his body?? Either way, ending the episode with him saying “What happened?” must’ve had a lot of people thinking ‘Good question’.

So…. They’ve got a lot of explaining to do with just the stuff they introduced in this episode. Let alone the stuff from other seasons. Next weeks episode is called “What Kate Does”

Hmph. Well, I’m eagerly awaiting next weeks episode; and I’ll certainly be thinking some more about this episode… Hopefully next weeks episode will clarify the situation a little. Until then, then.

/

Before I get started, I should mention that AppleCare is just Apple’s name for the 3 year guarantee extension (giving you a total of 3 years protection) offered for Mac computers.

From my mac experience, getting AppleCare was definitely worth it; and that would still apply if I had to pay the full price of (£273) here’s why:

I’ve had 2 replacement batteries – they would have cost nearly £200; and just recently I had the logic board of my MacBook Pro replaced due to the video card being defective and something else that was wrong with the EFI firmware. That last repair would have cost me a whopping £870.70! I could buy a new mac for that much!!

As I pointed out on twitter, after this last repair my mac came back looking a whole lot better than when I took it in. I had replaced the hard drive myself (which with my model isn’t a user-servicable part) and not really put the case back together properly. In fact, I had broken a section of the case above the DVD drive and it bulged out.
Rather nicely, that’s been fixed, and the screw I lost during the process has been replaced. Also, one of the feet that keep the laptop off of a table had come off at some point.
That hadn’t been replaced when I picked up my computer, so I mentioned it before leaving. The guy popped out to the back of the store and my computer came back with all 4 feet. Awesome.

So yeah. To sum up…. it’s definitely worth getting AppleCare. And by the way, you can get it at anytime during your mac’s first year of standard coverage; you don’t have to get it at the same time.

/

So, here it is; straight from Carlton Cuse’s twitter. (click it to go there)

Yep, that’s a Tuesday. And that’ll be it’s slot for the season, as confirmed by this: clicky

A short but sweet post. But hey, it’s only 74 days until I’ll be whittering on about each and every episode of Lost, right here, after the episodes show.

1. Download Vista SP1/2008/Windows 7 x64 ISO from MSDN (Microsoft), or grab your CD
2. Create 3 folders c:\efi-iso c:\efi-exe c:\efi-dvd
3. Download oscdimg.exe from here and extract into c:\efi-exe
4. Extract iso using 7-Zip or WinRAR (Or copy the contents of the DVD) into c:\efi-dvd
5. Start up a command prompt (Start -> Run -> cmd)
6. Type: cd c:\efi-exe
7. Type: oscdimg -n -m -bc:\efi-dvd\boot\etfsboot.com c:\efi-dvd c:\efi-iso\windows7.iso

This Bungie day is much more dull for us gamers though; last year we got a free map – Cold Storage, a ViDOC, podcast and, in what we thought was going to be tradition… a Bungie Day theme and Gamer Picture pack. We’ve been given a theme and gamer picture pack every year since 2007.

Way to break that streak.

So, I hear you ask — What are we getting this year?

• The “Bungie vs. The World” playlist. It’s a playlist consisting entirely of community made forge-maps on Foundry and [mainly] Sandbox which makes the Mythic Map pack a must.
  The reason for the name of the playlist is that Bungie employees will be playing for the majority of the day tomorrow and if you beat one of their teams-of-four in a game you earn Recon armor.
• Screenshots of the 3 other Mythic maps including Heretic — confirmed as a near perfect port of Midship from Halo 2.
• A Bungie Day podcast.

The last two items on that list I didn’t think we’d be getting when I first wrote this, so it’s looking a bit better now.

I wasn’t expecting another free map, I knew that was one-off, but I was looking forward to a Bungie Day NXE theme — the previous one’s look rubbish with the new dash. Sadface.

Oh well, only 77 days till Halo 3: ODST is released.

/

* They haven’t said there won’t be a theme or gamer picture pack, its just that this time last year we knew there would be one.

This was far from a big thing at today’s Microsoft E3 event, but it’s certainly a good thing to have.

I foresee a future where there won’t be any optical media needed to watch movies, listen to music and play games; well, the first two are already becoming true at a rapid rate, and with things like the 360′s forthcoming new ability to stream 1080p movies, the second can’t be that far off (provided we all get better internet connections!).

As for games, well, sure there are services like Steam on the PC and you can download classic titles on the 360 already, but the ability to download full 360 titles (which you’ll be able to do in August) will be appreciated.

Something I definitely want to see is the ability to pre-order games from the marketplace and have them download before the launch of the game and become playable at 00:00 on the day of release.

Just imagine pre-ordering Halo 3: ODST on the Xbox Live marketplace, having it downloaded progressively before its release, and on the first second of the 22nd of September, having it unlock and be instantly playable.
It’s a lovely thought.

Sure, I like my physical mediums mostly because there’s some nice feeling about actually having something you can see – especially when they have cool boxes like the Halo Wars limited edition or the Halo 3 Limited edition SPARTAN Head!
But, there’s no denying that the convenience of the digital download method is a great one. I really hope that something like what I described will be implemented.

I look forward to the day.

So far it’s just the ability to download 360 games on the marketplace that’s been mentioned. No more details than that really but unfortunately it sounded as though they were planning it to be the same as the classic Xbox game marketplace where a title-a week or so is released after they’re already out physically.

/

As for the other Microsoft stuff at E3, it was impressive. I very much look forward to playing Halo 3: ODST in September, the beta for Halo: Reach in 2010 and the game itself later next year.

The motion camera looked amazing; I was impressed by what they’ve got it doing — it looks amazingly responsive and well, it surprised me – I expected something gimmicky; not that I’m saying some of the stuff won’t be, it’s almost certain that there will be silly stuff, but some of it looks cool.
Twitter & last.fm being integrated with the dashboard is cool, especially considering the amount I use them both.

Certainly an episode that I need to watch again in order to have lots more stuff to say…. but… HOLY SHIT.

The bomb went off!!! Probably, I mean, that’s what the ending implied, and I suspect that is what happened there. Very VERY difficult to see what’s gonna happen in the last and final season of Lost which will grace us with its presence in 2010 It’s a pretty long wait.

So, Juliet’s dead…. and well, everyone else in the 70′s too??? I really have no idea.

My reaction to finding out what was in the box – Locke – was “Fuuuuuuck”. What does that mean!! How is that dude from the beginning in Locke’s body!?

Speaking of that dude, who was that!? Why does he want to kill Jacob?

Following on from that. Jacob! He’s seen a lot of the Oceanic folk…. though I wonder why Juliet’s flashback was shown and there wasn’t any Jacob there… it’s a little weird.

There was a couple reminders of Charlie in that episode — the Drive Shaft ring and his guitar which Jacob somehow had. Nice that he’s still remembered.

There’s already a teaser trailer for the next season, but it definitely lives up to the title of teaser. It’s just a reminder of how long you have to wait until the next episode at the moment.

A finale without Desmond… It feels kinda weird, to be honest, but I had been thinking that it didn’t seem as though there would be any reason to have him in it and, well, I guess that’s what the writers thought too. Sadface.

An episode with far, far more questions than answers… But that, in a way is what makes Lost. Even with around 16 episodes left they’re still throwing questions at us. Clearly some will be left unanswered but oh well.

Rose & Bernard. Nice to see them, but it also felt a little unnecessary. And I hope it wasn’t just me who thought on sight of Bernard “He’s gone Cast-Away”. [a la Tom Hanks].

That phrase that Richard responded to “What lies in the shadow of the statue?” has been translated to this: “He who will protect/save us all.” Good to know.

There’s a fairly good chance that after I’ve watched this episode again I’ll edit this with anything else I think of or make another post.

Other than that though, these posts will surely resume at that unannounced date, early next year. Farewell, Lost.

/

“Dude, What happened to your face!?”

I liked the bit where Miles pointed out that they may end up being the cause of the incident. It’s amusing that none of them considered that.

As I expected, this episode definitely had that penultimate / finale lead up kinda mood going on. The finale music score even showed up towards the end.

It looks as though…. Well, I’m not entirely sure how to end that sentence. I don’t read spoilers; it’s much better when you don’t, and therefore I have no idea what is going to happen in next week’s (yes, next week’s [lostpedia was wrong! yay]) finale – “The Incident”.
It’s your standard 2 hour season finale and presumably Jack, Elouise, Richard and Sayid are gonna try and detonate the H-Bomb…
And Locke, for reasons I cannot comprehend at this moment, is off to see Jacob. So he can kill him.

Pretty odd, really. As for Juliet & Sawyer; well, it wouldn’t be Lost if there wasn’t some kind of love-triangle/quadrangle/shape going on. So, Kate gets thrown on the sub too.

Of course, those two hours next week will not be long enough…. And we’ll be left hanging; over a cliff, if you must, for many months until the last and final season of Lost comes on next year. Hmph.

So. Will the H-bomb be set off? And the whole storyline be reset to 2004 with them all still on the plane? Will they all die? I don’t think that’s too likely, even though Richard said he watched them all die…. Very difficult to say.

Anywho…. A mere few days until the finale, so until then I’ll leave you to your own predictions. I’ll certainly be writing a post about next week’s episode, that’s for sure.

/

Faraday’s back…. but unfortunately it seems not for long!!!

That was….. interesting.
For the first time this whole season I didn’t expect the end of the episode to be so soon… Of course, it was a natural ending….. Sawyer & Juliet caught out, Faraday DEAD and well…. crazy times..

I really hope that they don’t end up erasing their past which will be in the future… cos that could end with them on 815 landing in LA. That’d be a horrible outcome. Hopefully, since this has been discussed on screen, its unlikely to happen…. So far I don’t see anything to suggest that Daniel’s ‘Whatever Happened, Happened’ doesn’t still apply.

I wonder why Elouise / Ms Hawking for the first time ever, doesn’t know what’s going to happen? That poses the question… How did she know what was going to happen before?

Shot. By my own mother! You bitch.

Also, that scene from back in Season 4, when Daniel was introduced — we still don’t have an explanation for why he seems emotionally connected to Oceanic 815. Something like his him having jumped in time at some point but not being aware of it??

How is it that in the minds of Sawyer, Juliet, Miles and Hurley, the plan to simply start again at the old beach would result in them not being bothered by the Dharma folk…? An unrealistic plan, I thought. Good job they got caught already.

Desmond going to the hospital…. It’s not clear to me what the point in showing that was. He seemed perfectly fine when he got up and beat the sh*t out of Ben.

Anywho… Only 3 episodes left, 2 of which make up the finale so I suppose you could consider the next one (“Follow the Leader” — sounds as though we’ll be seeing Ben, don’t ya think?) as the penultimate episode of this season. Unfortunately, Lost-Pedia suggests that after that one there will be ANOTHER recap episode. I hope that isn’t true….. But they’re frequently right.

/

Faraday

Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it…

So….. I’m gonna start off with something from the end of the episode – DANIEL!

FARADAY!

Yes, I probably do go on about him a little too much, but as he said “Long time no see”. I’d say it’s fairly likely that next week’s episode [it's in two weeks time recap week.] the next episode “The Variable” will be a Daniel episode. Episodes in which he features largely have been rather awesome, especially “The Constant”. Thus, I expect good things.

Anywho… So, it was a Miles flashback episode…. That’s his first full episode as he’s only had a brief flashback before with Charlotte and Dan. I thought it was a pretty good episode. Sure, not a great deal happened, but there was at least one answer revealed for us viewers — Miles IS the kid of Pierre Chang / Marvin Candle.

That “Do you know what lies in the shadow of the statue” thing from the last episode…. it seems to play a larger part than I expected it to. And, in the fairly regular Lost way, Miles was kidnapped by that dude from last weeks episode [another previous 'coincidental' connection] who crashed on the island with Ajira flight 316.

One has to wonder what made Ghostbuster-dude’s parents move away from the island taking Miles with them… Presumably it was the very same thing that meant Charlotte ended up off the island too. Saying that though, I’m assuming Candle/Chang dies on the island or something… and that’s why he didn’t get to raise Miles.

Long time no see indeed.

Yet again, rather amazingly, it seemed Jack was able to control the volume of his voice…. What, have they been teaching him some acting skillz!? Seriously though, at the moment he’s being rather boring and keeping quiet; appreciatively, that fits in with him not wanting to get his or, their cover(s) blown…. but I’m amazed to say that I miss laughing at his shouty outbursts. I also don’t think there were any Jears in that episode!!

I definitely want to find out about Miles’ power; perhaps his dad has the same ability, and that’s why he wants the corpses taken to the Orchid? Or was that just so he could be buried under a building? It seems as though they’re not aware of the magnetic anomaly that the island has… or that they’re not careful enough about it, as that random guy got killed by his own filling as a result of it.

I’ve gone through this whole post without a mention of Star Wars…. I feel I should at least type those two words…. it did play a fairly large part in this episode and it was another awesome moment for Hurley, in my opinion. Not as good as the Back to the Future bits though.

Two weeks till our next fix of Lost then….

/

Oh yeah… the numbers being stamped on the hatch…. surely they knew it was more than a “serial number”??

Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it.

That episode certainly had a lot more of things I have been wanting from Lost as of recently namely Locke, Desmond and a dose of awesomeness.

Well, I’m gonna start out with a mention of the episode title: Dead is Dead – As Ben said in this episode; it’s normally true with Lost, and real life for that matter :p….. so why is Locke different? Well, apart from his extraordinary relationship with the island, we don’t know. Personally, I don’t think it matters… Consider how much of a mind fuck it would be if he wasn’t actually alive though! On that note, is Christian Shephard alive??

Moving on…

So, it seems even Ben doesn’t know a great deal about smokey. Just how to summon it, and not really what it is or where it comes from…. Pretty strange, that.

I always assumed that Widmore left as a result of turning the time wheel, for some reason; but him just being sent away actually makes more sense.

As predicted, it was Desmond who beat up Ben by the harbour; though it certainly wasn’t predicted that he was shot right before. Miraculously, since the island wasn’t finished with him, he survived and saved the day. I hope we get to see more of him in the future. Perhaps with Faraday.

One has to wonder as to whether Ben will actually follow the wish of the smoke monster and listen to Locke in future. It would be rather weird if he did, but, it seems if he wants to carry on living, he’ll have to. It should hopefully lead to some interesting scenes in the future.

What lies in the shadow of the statue? – What was that all about? I wasn’t really expecting them to play a big part, that Caesar guy seemed more likely, but he got blown away in a rather awesome manner by Ben. So, what are those guys up to? What’s in the crate? Most importantly: will LaPedus be ok? I hope so.

Next week’s episode is called “Some Like it Hoth”… I have no idea what that could mean, but I’m looking forward to finding out. After that, I believe there is a week break where a recap show is on….

Anywhoo….. That was a gooood episode….. Till next week….

/

Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it yet

Well, at least we have finally had a resolution to the Aaron storyline.

Like the person that commented on my post about last weeks episode, I too enjoyed the discussion about time travel between Hurley and Miles. I’m sure it confused some, helped others and just made some most people laugh.

The woman in the grocery store (I had to resist writing supermarket straight away) who looked as though she was taking Aaron away with her…. She was a little suspicious, me thinks. Perhaps there was nothing to it and it was just as she said…. But it seemed weird.

So, Ben didn’t die as a kid and time works as we expected. Yay(?)

The question Hurley asked Miles about Ben seemingly not remembering being shot by Sayid was resolved by Richard saying that Ben wouldn’t ever be the same and that he would forget this incident so Miles’s explanation about time holds true…
One has to wonder what is inside the temple that fixed Ben and also ‘took his innocence’ at the same time.

It seems as though the writers are trying to pass off Ben’s entire personality in the future as a result of what happened to him in the temple; fair enough, I suppose, but it wasn’t something I wanted explaining.

Locke at the end – I seriously hope that we see more of him in the next episode (entitled “Dead is Dead”).

Well…. ummmmm. This episode was highly Kate oriented and yet I have nothing to say about her. Hmmm.

One thing I did notice about this episode though: Jack was able to control the volume of his voice!! Congratulations, Matthew, perhaps you’re finally learning how to speak lololol.

With that, I leave you until next week…. Which, by reading one sentence written by ack-attack, I expect to be good.

/

Oh yeah: Why no Faraday in that episode which was titled with something he said not too long ago!? Need MOAR FARADAY and DESMOND and LOCKE!

Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it.
DID NOT SEE THAT COMING!

One has to wonder whether Sayid just seriously fucked something up there or if nothing they do matters.

After all, he did just SHOOT BEN!

Other than that, it was a fairly uneventful episode.

The title for the next episode - ”Whatever Happened, Happened”  hopefully means we’ll get some answers. If you recall, that’s what Faraday said a few episodes ago now. Firstly, hopefully we’ll find out what happened to Faraday…. and also whether Sayid just broke time.

It’s still quite difficult to see where the rest of this season is heading… Though, at least it seems to have settled back into the flashback interluded Lost that we’re all used to. I wonder what Sayid’s gonna be up to, too.

That woman who got Sayid onto 316 — she genuinely doesn’t seem to be working for Ben…. Who is she working for??

Not much else to say, I feel. Till next week with Whatever Happened, Happened then.

/

Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it

Something about this episode made it feel… Transitional. That’s not a bad thing. It’s important to set the scene and get people in place properly. It was a pretty good episode overall.

As I predicted, Locke, Sun, Ben, LaPedus and the 316 survivors are in a different time, well, decade to the Oceanic 5 (srsly, where’s Aaron!?) and Sawyer etc.,

I wonder where Daniel went? They brushed over it but hopefully it’s one of the questions that will be answered. And I’m still hoping to find out what he was doing at the Orchid station as seen at the beginning of the season.

They did a really good job of casting the young Ben. Sure, we’ve seen him before but he seems to have developed some of his more sinister characteristics already. His eyes. It really does look like him.

What would the hostiles have done if they found out where the Swan was being built? Surely they would have found out when building started anyway??

Christian Shepherd saying “You’ve got a long journey ahead of you” to Sun was interesting. As was that whole scene. Was there something to the smoke in the background?
I wonder whether it’ll be Sun (and hopefully Locke & Ben) who go back in time somehow or Jack, Kate… Going back to ‘their’ time zone.

I’m also curious as to who boarded up Dharmaville? It wasn’t like that when Ben left.

Juliet, Sawyer AND Kate; that’d be awesome. At least in my head; minus the Sawyer, but it makes more sense as a sentence to have him there.

Looks as though Sawyer will have a hard time trying to get Sayid integrated with the Dharma initiative…. I wonder what’ll happen with him.

This episode needs moar Locke! I hope he’s gonna be seen in the next episode (which is entitled “He’s our you”).

I’m sure I had more things to say after I watched this rather good episode, but it’s been a few hours since I watched this and the majority of it was written on my iPhone whilst I was in the car. Also, I have a headache, so this is all you’re getting for now. Crazy sentences about Sawyer included.

/

Supposedly it improves the speed for people with large libraries (I have around 2500 songs, I think.)

Anywho…. onto the new feature with this version – Party Shuffle has been renamed to iTunes DJ and it seems more useful. Especially if you know people with iPhones or iPod touches.

Here’s why:

The already brilliant Remote application for the iPod / iPhone has been upgraded so that guests and regular (enrolled users) can request songs and therefore change the playlist that is currently playing.

Think of it as a jukebox — people with iPhones or touches can request a song, or simply touch the heart symbol next to a song already on the playlist, indicating that they are voting for that song…

A song with 3 votes will be played before 2, for example. And songs are automatically selected if none are voted for (from a playlist you select or your whole library).

Enrolled users i.e. your iPhone / iPod can edit and rearrange the playlist completely — just as with any other playlist or if you were at your computer doing it, but guests can only suggest songs and vote, they can’t change which speakers it’s playing out (with Airport Express(es) / Apple TV) or change the volume.

Genius recommended songs based on a DJ song.

As a guest there is one feature that seems unavailable to the enrolled users – You can touch the ‘i’ arrow in the top right and be shown songs that are similar based on iTunes Genius which you can then vote for, if you should so wish. Click the picture on the left to see.

It’s pretty cool. Especially when your music is playing out through multiple speakers using Airport Expresses.

I can’t say I’ve noticed anything else that is different, though genius now works for movies and tv shows, apparently.

/

Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it yet

This was a much slower, character building, back-story filling episode. Appreciatively, this is not a bad thing, but it means I have to put more thought into writing this post rather than just writing questions that have occurred to me whilst watching [how inconvenient ]…

Oh and before I get started I should mention that there isn’t an episode on next week — see the counter on the right for how many days till your next Lost fix —->

The way this episode started was cool. It was a very efficient way of switching between the previously and the actual episode that made it immediately clear where the episode was going to start.

Was the statue that they saw during their brief time flash the 4 toed statue from Season 2? It was certainly careful to not reveal anything about the ancient history of the island — though I really do hope we get to find out something more about it in the future (or rather the past…).

After that, there’s another time flash — this time caused by Locke putting the wheel back on its axis and stopping the time flashes for the foreseeable future.

Turns out, we’re in 1974.

Oh and Hai, Michelle from 24. Watch out for people also out to kill David Palmer in the future [p.s. Charles Logan's behind it all!]

Anywho…. back on topic.

To be honest there isn’t a great deal more to say — Richard walking into their camp Locke style was pretty cool.

And the end of the episode suggests that the love quadrangle isn’t as sorted as this episode may have implied — not that I thought it would be.

Which island / time zone are Sun and Sayid on / in? and for that matter, Lock & Ben…?

Overall, it was a nice episode in which not a great deal happened. I’m hoping for a more exciting episode in two weeks time.

/

Anywho…..

Halo Wars – Truthfully I’m surprised by how much I’m enjoying the part of the game I have played so far. Sure, I played the demo and thought something along the lines of “it’s better than I expected”; but I fully expected it to become repetitive and boring.

I’ve heard that opinion from others, but it is certainly not mine yet. I’m up to mission 5 and it’s quite challenging and enjoyable. My niggles from the demo are, as expected, still there — I don’t like the fact that you can’t look further afield i.e. that you can’t move the camera to face forward enough for my liking… I think there was something else that annoyed me, but, as I can’t now remember it, it can’t be that big of a deal.

Graphically the cut-scenes are fantastic; clearly a lot of time and money has been spent on them. As for the actual gameplay graphics…. They’re ok, if not inconsistent.

Moving swiftly onto the Mythic maps for Halo 3….. Well, any downloadable content for a game which I spend so much time playing is always appreciated and this is no exception.

My original thoughts about Sandbox were that it would be another Foundry; designed mostly for Forging and therefore not really any good for actual games (all my opinion, of course). However I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was when matchmaking — I like it.

Assembly – Whatever was said about this map not being a remake of Halo 2′s Midship was true… However it cannot truly be said that it is not like Midship…. lots about it seems familiar and….. well, at the moment I’m not loving it. Easily the worst out of the three.

Orbital [as I said on twitter] is way bigger than I expected. So far it seems okay… Though as both Clarkson and I agreed, it should have had the option of deploying warthogs on it. As I have probably already said in person, in a rather English way, it’s an awful long way to capture a flag on this map and I think it will actually suit 6v6 games better for this. Also… that level above where the mongooses are – why isn’t the flag up there!? [Perhaps because it's already a long way away]

I could *probably* have found a more reprasentative picture of the Mythic Maps, but oh well.

And finally, a whinge about the bastards that are employing Denial of Service attacks on players of Halo:

What the hell is the point? It just makes for more laggy, shitty games resulting in more anger and frustration from not being able to kill the enemy when you should have or simply not being able to hear the person that you are gaming with clearly.

Since there is no viable solution to these kinds of attacks, unfortunately it looks as though they will continue for the foreseeable future. Though I do advise people to get anti-virus and anti-spyware software updated and use it on a regular basis to ensure that your computer, or those of anyone you know is not unwillingly being used as part of a botnet to spam others with malformed and erroneous packets of doom…

/

Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it…

Well, based on the name of this episode (The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham), I presumed that this episode would be all flashbacks based on Locke off the island up until the point when he died.

You might say that I was partially right; As expected, Locke is alive in the present and on the island  - YAY.

Interesting that it seems he and Ben aren’t in the same time zone as the Oceanic 5 and Juliet, Sawyer, Daniel et al. They seem to be in the time zone of the 316 crash. And my presumption is that the Oceanic 5 et al are in the time of Dharma’s prime.

Anywho… back to what happened in this episode. The person I didn’t expect to see again in this episode was Matthew Abaddon; sure, I expected to see him again but I didn’t think he would play such a relatively large part before being fucking gunned down by Ben!

This episode added further confusion to the Widmore / Ben thing…. Widmore made a good point – Locke could not say that Widmore had tried to have him killed, but he can certainly say that for Ben…. and later in the episode he kills Locke who remains dead for a few hours!

His [Ben's]  justification: Widmore was just using you to get back to the island and then he would have killed you.

Hmmmm…… well, there’s no point in me even trying to say which one should be trusted because Lost doesn’t make it easy for you to call it.

The beginning scene was quite well disguised — I thought it was a flashback or something.

It seems as though we know who was shooting at Charlotte, Daniel, Juliet, Sawyer, Miles & Locke a few episodes ago…. the 316 survivors…. Who evidently crashed on the other little island that was a large part in season 3.

Locke’s attempt to kill himself was a really emotional scene… it was done really well.

It’s surprising that Ben seemed to know about Elouise [Ms] Hawking and yet he needed Locke to tell him before it clicked in his head that this was the way he would be able to get back…. Once Locke had revealed that information, in Ben’s eyes he was no longer needed and it seemed that Ben genuinely thought he wouldn’t see Locke again. I await his reaction when he realizes he is still alive (and when they realize what time zone they are in etc.)

More to say, of course. But time constraints and a lack of organised thoughts leave me, and this post here. Next weeks ep is called “LaFleur” and after that there’s gonna be a one week break.

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For reasons I’m not entirely sure how to describe, I thought this episode was epically awesome.

The Oceanic 65 are back on the island!…. or at least, 3 that we know of made it there.

On that note…. what the hell did Kate do with Aaron!? Yeah, the kid is probably a bit of a production headache, and Claire told Kate to not take him back to the island…. But I hope we get an explanation of what happened to him…. Him and Sun’s baby who she doesn’t seem to care about right now.

Clearly that bloke who was at the airport and spoke to Jack and was then on the plane is going to play a larger part in the future story…. he just seemed so conveniently placed.

Another thing I’d like explained – How did Hurley know to go there? Somebody dead from the island talk to him again?

I really hope we get to see more of Locke in the time when he’s off the island. And, though I haven’t watched the trailer for the next episode, the name for it perhaps implies what it will be  about.

Ben had a good line in this episode: Jack: “How can you read?”. Ben: “My mother taught me”

I also liked Jack talking to Locke.

Anywho… Sayid. Did he attack Ben and get arrested for it? If that’s the case then why does that allow him to be on the flight?

Jin and the rest of the people on the island — stuck in Dharma-time since Locke replaced the wheel?

Didn’t expect to see Lapidus again. His reaction to seeing the Oceanic 5 was cool — “We’re not going to Guam, are we?”

Anywho…. ’twas a very good episode and it left me with little to say, which is quite strange really.

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Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it

I can’t think of a great deal to say about this episode….. and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. It was an ok episode…. but it definitely had the feeling that it’s leading on to bigger things.

Charlotte’s dead! I’m sure lots of people don’t care. But I had warmed to her character, especially with Daniel’s feelings for her…. it’s a little sad. And she confirmed that she was born on the island.

Still… there’s every chance that she’ll be seen again since it’s Lost.

As for Ben…. he’s one step forward, but two back. He’s got Sun on his side but now he’s lost [pun not intended] Kate & Sayid… and he is yet to go after Hurley.

Ben’s little rant in the van was good; Michael’s an amazing actor in my opinion; and you’re never sure of his intentions as a character.

Desmond had a small role in this episode…. but he’s now found Faraday’s mother…. and found out that it’s that old woman who told him about ‘course-correction’ waaay back in season 3!

Now that Locke has moved the wheel (or put it back on its axis)…. do you suppose they are stuck in whatever time period they were in last? That could be interesting….. perhaps explaining Faraday in the first episode being in the same time as Dr Candle when Dharma was in full swing?

Anyway… since I can’t think of anything else though I know there is more, I’ll leave you with this:

“Say hello to my son.”

“Who’s your son?”/

Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it…

I’m glad I hadn’t noticed that Daniel Dae Kim’s [Jin's] name had appeared at the beginning of the show because I really didn’t see that coming unlike last season when Michael turned up. My reaction was something along the lines of “Holy Fuck” when I saw Jin.

It’s good that he’s still in the show. He’s a nice character. And he’s returned 16 years in the past!

As for what else went down in this episode…..

I think they pretty much confirmed that Charlotte was born on the island. But they also hinted that Ghost-buster dude Miles had at very least been on the island before.

My suspicions from the premiere was that we would know who Dr Marvin Candle’s baby was in the future…. Chances are high that it’s Miles. Don’t ya think?

Charlotte just waking up was weird. Not what I expected at all. Perhaps there’s more to come… And that it’ll now happen to Miles and Juliet.

Who was shooting at Locke, Juliet, Daniel etc.,? Based on the water bottle found on the beach, this is after the Oceanic 6 had returned to the island (google Ajira Airways if you want to know why).

The name on the van that Ben was driving was CANTON-RAINIER….. This is an anagram for Reincarnation — Referring to Locke?

What’s Ben up to? At first I thought he had hired the lawyer to go after Kate in order to get her to have a reason to want to run away [what better place than the island? :p ], but the fact that he told her that he was responsible negated that possibility. So I don’t really see why he was doing it.

Sun killing Ben? Likely? Me thinks not. But it should be interesting — if she did, would she be able to get back to the island? Not that she want’s to at the moment, but we know that Jin’s there!

At the moment it looks as though the Oceanic 6 will be able to get back to the island pretty soon — they’re all together other than Hurley, and it seems as though Ben will have that sorted; he does always have a plan, after all

Till next week then…

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Oh yeah…. What exactly was the episode title “The Little Prince” referring to? It wasn’t particularly clear.

Frankly, this episode was niiice. I thought it was good to be away from the ‘main’ plot of Jack, Kate, Sayid….. getting back to the island for an episode.

Though, I guess I may be in the minority in thinking that. A lot of people, I’m sure would rather have resumed that storyline from last time.

But, this episode offered some interesting revelations:

Widmore. He was on the island! I always suspected this due to his extreme interest in the island, but it’s nice to know more about his past. We still can’t tell why exactly he was on the island — he doesn’t appear to be part of the US military / army who were there to test the H-bomb; especially as it seems that Richard’s people have killed them all off. And it should be more interesting to find out how he ends up off the island with no idea how to go back and a life long desire to do so.

I don’t think Charlotte will suffer the same fate that Minkowski did, and that Desmond nearly did. At least, I hope that she doesn’t. Initially I was unsure about her character, but it seems that she has some interesting stories to tell. Especially with that hint that she may have been born on the island. Also; she seems enough of a major character now to not be killed off so close to her introduction.

Will Desmond meet anyone we know in Los Angeles (Jack? Kate? Ben? — that might spell trouble for Penny). It’s weird, because both Penny and Desmond seem to be under the impression that Widmore is out to get them. Yet I don’t see any reason for him to do so & we know that Ben has more of a reason. Am I missing something?

According to what I’ve read, the ‘enhanced’ version of the Lie (episode 2) which gets shown after the normal showing in the US revealed that Ms Hawking’s [the old woman who knows about time who talked to Desmond and more recently, Ben] first name is Elouise. Sound familiar? That mouse that Faraday had was named Elouise. And, the girl that was holding a gun pointed at Faraday for a large point of this episode was called Ellie!

Could that be Faraday’s mother? After all, Desmond was told that she was in Los Angeles — where Ben is, with Ms Hawking [the old woman :p]. At this point, it’s looking fairly likely!

Thought it was nice that Penny & Des’s boy was named Charlie.

Anywho…. that’ll do for now, I’m sure that I’ll think of something more to put here later.

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Spoilers follow! [if you haven't seen it]

Wow.

Mind Fuck!

This is one of those episodes which clearly needs more episodes to allow us to fully understand what’s going on…

What’s Ben’s real agenda?

Why won’t we Jack & Ben find out what happened to those left on the island if they are going back?

It looks as though Desmond will have a big part; woo!

Who is that baby from the very beginning? – the kid of Dr. Marvin Candle — someone we know?

So….. If Ben doesn’t get Hurley back to the island, it seems as though something verrry bad will happen to everyone — at least according to the old woman from Desmond flashbacks who seems to be involved with Ben and time.

Looks like Charlotte is gonna need to sort out a constant; or the island needs to stop moving them or itself in time!

Locke turning up and saving Sawyer & Juliet was awesome; very enjoyable.

So Locke has to get off the island, convince people to come back with him, die and then be taken back to the island in order to save everyone else! Will he come back to life when he gets back to the island!?

This brings me onto Christian Shephard (Jack’s Dad) — is he actually alive and not just a vision? [like Ana Lucia, who I totally never expected to see ever again!] Could he have come alive when in the past and moved forward in time?

Faraday. At the beginning with Dr. Candle! He actually moved through time, surely! Oh yeah, and did he know that it was gonna be Desmond in the hatch or not? I think he looked in his journal before so perhaps he did. Though, unless he changed the past, he knows a lot about what he has to do!

Very confusing. Lots and lots of questions! But a VERY good start to a new season.

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Afterthought: As expected, Claire is nowhere to be seen

You can’t just burn the x64 image to a disk and expect it to work. My MBP didn’t boot from the disc presenting me with the same stuff as it did with Vista (choose option 1 or 2, but the keyboard doesn’t work!).

There are even some new issues introduced by Snow Leopard which I deal with at the end.

However, I’ve had further time to research better methods of getting around this issue since I wrote the Vista x64 article.

Note: I wrote this guide using my MacBook Pro which I got in Summer 2007. (Apple identifies it as “MacBookPro3,1″; It’s the Santa Rosa 2.4Ghz model). Some steps may not be required for your Mac. By deduction, I have already determined that some people are able to boot straight from the DVD. I wasn’t able to.

Ok, here we go:

Follow the instructions here to build a compatible iso file.

Burn that iso image to a DVD (I’ve tried with a USB flash drive but it wouldn’t boot )

Put it in your MacBook / MacBook Pro / iMac…. and install like normal!

Driver support in Windows 7 is okay for my MacBook Pro; certainly a lot better than it was with Vista x64, but you’ll still want to install some stuff especially if you’re on a laptop (to get the brightness adjustment, bluetooth, touchpad etc., working). So:

Put your Snow Leopard disk in, if you have one. And follow the instructions below if you see that message.

Otherwise:

If you don’t have Snow Leopard,  try your Leopard DVD and run the setup from there (Mine doesn’t have the 64 bit drivers on, yours may. Who knows….)

Or finally,  you can download the individual driver files from the above package which should save some time waiting for Rapid Share. They’re here. You won’t see any application run, maybe just a UAC prompt,  but they do work.

Now you should have a completeish install; but, be sure to check Windows Update (there’s a better video driver) and apply security updates / install antivirus….

Oh, and to get sound working you can just run the RealTekSetup.exe from any of the above packages in Vista compatibilty mode and it’ll work.

Whichever method you choose: you should update to the latest version (3.1 at time of edit) which can be downloaded here. You have to install a previous version before that though.

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EDIT: to improve your hard drive’s windows experience rating, look at the solution I posted in the comments below.

Snow Leopard edit: Now that Snow Leopard is out, all the disks have x64 drivers on them. So, if you can, use that. However, if you have an oldish Mac like mine, you may see the following message (Boot Camp x64 is unsupported on this computer model)

After installing the drivers from the disk, you should update to Boot Camp version 3.1 from here.

If you do see that, it’s no big deal. Just open up command prompt as an administrator (in the start menu type cmd, right click on it and select Run as Administrator, click yes on the UAC prompt).

In the command prompt window, change to the DVD’s directory by running

cd /d D:

(assuming your Snow Leopard disk is in the D drive).

Now type

cd Boot Camp\Drivers\Apple

And then finally, type

BootCamp64.msi

This circumvents the installers check of your computer model and installs all the relevent drivers properly.

Many reports I’ve seen suggest that people aren’t having any luck with the unlock. This was part of my reason for testing it; the other part is that when I go abroad, I would like my iPhone to be as useful as it is at home. Doing that with my O2 SIM would cost a literal fortune.

So, I tested yellowsn0w with a Vodafone & a Virgin Mobile SIM. I installed it with Installer, not Cydia if that makes any difference.
Initially it didn’t look promising with the phone just saying “No service”. Rebooting it one more time fixed the problem and everything worked fine.

With my testing done and there being no need for me to have it whilst at home, I uninstalled it. Hopefully it will work out as well when I go away and all I’ll have to get is a pay as you go SIM from whatever country.

Thanks, dev-team.

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It looks pretty cool!

There’s some backward speech in the beginning part; it’s Locke saying “When am I?” – Clicky

Why won’t they know what happened to the people on the island if they’re planning on going back there?

Not a particularly great preview IMO… but it doesn’t matter because there’s only 35 days until it’s on!

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My initial thought when seeing this was “Why?”

Of course, for such a high-calibre game like Gears 2, DLC was inevatible; but should it have come this soon?

Gears 2 has been less of a success than I’m sure they could have hoped for, not with sales, but with multiplayer and Xbox Live popularity – it only remained the most played game on Xbox Live for three weeks; far less than the original Gears.

Primarily, I think this is due to the fact that there have been hideous problems with actually getting into a game. I’ve only been able to get into two, one which was okay and the other which was extremely laggy and ended premeturely. Other than that, I have just spent large amounts of time waiting to be matched into a game only to be rewarded with nothing until I eventually give up.

I’m not alone. Epic has already released a title update which was supposed to help with this issue (I can’t say that it achieved it’s objective though )

So, for me new maps for Gears really isn’t enticing, I’ve not even seen all the one’s that it came with! And personally I don’t see these new maps bringing people back to Gears 2 multiplayer; perhaps fixing the matchmaking?

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It has to be said, it looks like it’s gonna be an EPIC season of Lost.

I’m glad Desmond features heavily in it; I was wondering how much we would see of him (even if the bits in the trailer seem to be old footage).

I’ve seen a theory that events on the island in that trailer (Juliet uncovering a window in the ground & Daniel being confronted by a guy in a yellow suit with a gun) could be that the island has ‘reset’ to a time in the past and therefore that the window is the hatch (from season 2), and the guy is Kelvin.

It’s possible for Lost, I suppose. But I don’t know how likely it is…. especially as Lost is often far from predictable.

52 days

Your thoughts on the trailer? (including The Fray)…

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