In the same fashion that I SouthPark’ed yet another favorite band of mine, here are the HIJK. Click for a larger view.

I was just reading that the upcoming two new big TV series for the Fall, Fringe and Dollhouse, will feature fewer commercials, in order to hook audiences.

This just reminded me a few weeks ago when I was browsing Hulu, NBC’s online video site. It interested me, as an hobbyist filmmaker, to see how much the runtime of TV shows eroded over the years. This is what I found, on average:

1960s: 52 minutes of runtime for an 1 hour show.
1970s: 50 minutes.
1980s: 48 minutes.
1990s: 46 minutes.
2000s: 44 minutes.

“Lost” is 43 minutes, sometimes even a bit less than that.

I have offered a number of small theories about certain aspects and sub-plots of “Lost” over the years, theories that were usually completely off base (and that’s the beauty of Lost: it’s completely unpredictable). However, I never offered a “global” theory about the show, e.g. what is the island, or what is the smoke monster. So here is my crazy theory contribution for this crazy show. Of course, my theory is highly influenced/biased by my artificial intelligence work in the past and my computing experience.

So, deep under the island, there is one big ass computer. The “intelligence” of the island, is just artificial intelligence driven by that computer. The computer is able to harness the special properties of the island and affect matter. Hence, the existence of the smoke monster and its various manifestations (which is nothing but the physical representation of the computer in the island through some pseudo-science physics), and the ability to affect the health of people depending on its wishes. The computer can manifest outside of the island too, but its powers are limited far away from it. As for where the island is, it can be somewhere in the Pacific, or in another dimension all together — this will be for the writers to decide.

The four-toe statue is a testament of an older civilization (“original inhabitants”) that ruled the island. Be it alien, or Egyptian or even Atlantian (whatever the writers find to be the least ridiculous option), they were the builders of the computer. Dharma simply came much later and tried to take over all this power for its own needs. Until the original inhabitants, keepers of the computer, revolted against them, with the help of Ben.

There are only two final outcomes you can have for the show if this theory is correct. Either the island blows up so no one can take advantage of it anymore (most likely outcome, as the Losties are sinners and represent fate and random chaos), or a few select Losties stay in it forever to be the new keepers and the island is never found again (unlikely).

UPDATE: My theory posted over at DarkUFO’s “Lost” fan site. You can discuss it there.

* Americans are among the peoples who would kiss in mouth for casual greeting kissing. E.g. a mother kissing her son coming back from school. It puts me off seriously. Cheek kissing is barely acceptable in my opinion, but mouth kissing among family members yucks me. I know that this is just a getting-used to thing, just a peculiarity of a different culture like the ones you find on any culture, but it still yucks me (sorry my American friends, I just can’t stand potential herpes-spread).

* My brother saw the video I shot for the HIJK the other day and he couldn’t believe it. He kept saying “how did you do that?”. I guess I am not the average Greek middle-aged wife with 3 kids and no interests. He could also not believe that the band doesn’t have a contract. He kept saying “but the song is good, like the ones we listen to the radio, how is it possible to not have a contract?”. You see, in Greece, if you are 1/10 as good as any random indie US band, you get a contract. Music is that bad there (sorry my Greek friends, I just can’t stand Greek music).

* One of my favorite rock tracks of all time, Ranting of Eva’s “Bright Side”, is now available for a free download. You will need a myspace account to get it. Trust me, that nostalgic tune is the shit.

* Got a new mp3 player for an upcoming review, a Sandisk e280R 8GB. Looks good so far.

* Birthday tomorrow. I will be 35. I feel old. Think that we go to the same sushi restaurant for lunch every Saturday. This is the epitome of being old: repetition and habits. Love it though. I think I need to start playing Bingo.

A small video I shot with the Kodak HD digicam while JBQ had climbed up to shoot the drummer from above (no way I could climb up there myself). You can clearly hear the song playing back really fast at 125%.

Here it is, my first music video clip. This is the best I could do with the amount of footage I had in my disposal (I shot only 2/3s of a tape as we were there for less than two hours). Comment, view in HD, or download the high quality HD version of the video here. Read all about it, including which tools I used, on my detailing article at OSNews.

A big thanks to the band, and a special thanks to my JBQ for helping us all out.

The HV20/30 is one of the best pieces of personal property one can own. It just does the job so well for the little money it costs that it makes no sense to not own one. Sure it’s still tape, but it’s as close to prosumer quality than you can get today for the price.

Latest example is the excellent work of Blake Monahan for the band “House of Fire“. He shot with the HV20 the music video clip for their (very nice) song “Walking along the sun“.

Note: The following is a minor “Lost” spoiler, that it might even be a foiler.

The “Lost” writers always give a codename to their season finales, and this year’s they said that it’s called “The Donkey Frozen Wheel”.

Additionally, the same person who spoiled last year’s “Lost” season finale to the forums is back with information about this season’s upcoming finale. So, if this person is to be believed, the finale will actually be featuring an actual “frozen wheel” that will “move” the island.

Now, that’s where I have a problem with the whole thing (if this spoiler is true). A “wheel” can’t move shit, let alone an island. No matter how “cool-looking” they might have wanted to make Lost’s finale look, they should not expect us to buy the argument that some sort of actual “wheel” does anything spectacular.

I would not have had any problem if they would show something that resembles a particle accelerator, or anything that’s science-like, to present to us their sci-fi vision. Using pseudo-science to present science fiction works for me because it makes it more realistic, even if the spectacular aspect might not be there. But “frozen wheels”? What are we, 10 year olds?

As I wrote to a forum that I know that the writers do read: “what’s next? The Smurfs will get to the island?”

Four years ago I wrote how much I love the music of the Warcraft II game from 1995. I just found out that Blizzard released the whole soundtrack for a download in 2005 (I believe, legally). Download it here, and if you are using iTunes, you can use this image as your album cover. The mp3s come properly tagged with the composer’s name, Glenn Stafford.

This is the best video game soundtrack ever. If the musician was able to strike a deal with Blizzard, use a real orchestra (instead of just a synthesizer), and release an audio CD, I would buy it in a heartbeat. This music is the strike of a genius, and apparently, after googling about it, many agree with this sentiment. Not only that, but they also agree as to how sterile and flat the WoW music was compared to WarCraft II’s.

Best pieces in the collection is the “Human 2” and “Orc 2”. Give it a try, the download is just 22 MBs.

It’s ridiculous how much CPU speed you need to edit full 1080p AVCHD clips with Vegas. I got my hands on a 1920×1080/60i 14mbps AVCHD clip today and it plays back on the Vegas Pro timeline at ~2 fps on my P4 3Ghz (in “preview/auto” quality). Vegas only supports basic DirectDraw functions, so a faster GPU won’t help either.

Now think that the fastest affordable PC on the market is a Quad-Core Intel at 3Ghz, which is about 5 to 6 times faster than my PC (including bus/RAM speed). Now, multiply that: 6*2fps=12 fps. This means that even the fastest PC on the market today won’t give me full preview speed while editing AVCHD. I would need double that speed. And that’s before adding any plugins or transitions that slow-down preview even more.

Someone might suggest the way Apple does things: all imported footage gets re-encoded to AIC or ProRes codec before editing which are faster to edit/playback. You will have to wait for the transcoding to take place of course, and that will take quite some time for ProRes (it’s faster with AIC, but AIC is not lossless so I can’t recommend it).

So in essense, you have the choice: do you want to wait while importing in the beginning, or wanna wait while editing? In both cases, there’s gonna be stalling. This means only one thing: I will have to wait for a few more years before I decide to get an AVCHD camera and a new PC. For now, the HV20 with its faster-edited M2T format will suffice.

Update: Some people are telling me that AVCHD editing is plenty smooth on newer computers. Good to hear.