I’m so excited about the last season of ABC’s hit television series LOST. The past couple of weeks I’ve been busy catching up and I have to say I liked season 5 best so far. And after seeing LA X yesterday and today, I have to say… WOW! I really didn’t see that coming. I do have some questions, though, but I will wait asking them, as the questions itself would spoil it for people who haven’t watched the newest episodes yet. In the mean time I found this youtube clip which compares Flight 815 v. 1.0 with v. 2.0 and it stops just in time to prevent people getting spoiled.
I’m currently catching up on the tv series “LOST”. It’s pretty interesting and I’m completely intrigued by it. Today I saw this picture featured on Slashfilm.com and thought it’s hilarious. And thanks to Glennz you can now have a t-shirt with the picture on it.
Comment from the designer: “Some guy called Desmond told me about a missing plane he once saw on the side of a milk carton. He disappeared, but I recently had a message on my phone telling me it was time to print this concept. Whoever it was didn’t leave their name but it came from 4 8 15 16 23 42.”
I don’t think I reviewed a board game here yet. And I love playing board games. Winter is the perfect time to play them and one of the games I got to play the last few weeks is a game I got for my birthday a year ago, I think. It’s called Carcasonne – The Discovery. Basically what you need to do is draw a tile from the stack, attach it somewhere to the map laid out on the table and choose what you want to do: put one of your pawns on it or not, when you decide to claim it, you have to decide if you’re claiming sea, mountains or plains. The goal is to get your claimed territory as big as you can, but not too big, because you need to finish it.
The rules are really straightforward and because of the tiled board setup, every game is different. You need to use strategy, but also depend on luck. I really like the different variants of Carcasonne because of that and the fact it looks nice. The artwork of the game, the drawings are nicely done and after playing everything fits back in the box without everything getting messed up.
I think of all the versions of Carcasonne I played, I like The Discovery best, because it’s more interesting because of the variation: a lot of different factors have to be weighed in. Do you choose to be a sailor and count on the tiles of the sea and the harbour cities, do you count on the mountains and only get points for the cities in the mountains and on the neighbouring plains or do you choose to play for plains and get points for the tiles of the plain, but not for the cities. A big mountain ridge can score a lot of points, but if you draw tiles without cities on them, your mountain range will be worth nothing. However, if you go for the plain, you know you get at least one point for every tile that makes up your plain. If I had to rate the game on a five point scale, I’d give it 3.5 points out of five. I like the game a lot, but it’s not the best game I ever played or a favourite game.
In a month or so, LOST will be in its final season. I’m horribly behind on things, but I’m getting better. LOST was on my ‘I have to watch this TV series sometimes’ list, but I never got around watching it, partly because I don’t have a TV anymore and got completely out of touch with what’s aired over here and what’s not. The fact I’m depending on welfare doesn’t really help either. I used to have a VPN account to watch hulu and the like, but at one point that just got too expensive and I had to cancel that. Luckily my friend Fr. Roderick allowed me to borrow his DVDs for season 1 and 2 so I could watch it. And so I did last December! Below is my review of season 1 and some theories I have right now. I’m in the process of watching the rest later this month, so other reviews will follow. So please, if you read this and are completely caught up, don’t post any spoilers here!
For those folks who weren’t able to watch this hitseries I strongly recommend doing so. You may not want to read the stuff after the jump, because it will contain spoilers. I just guess that by now everybody who ever wanted to see LOST season 1 has done that by now.
What made the series promising for me is the fact that it is from J.J. Abrahams, which for me stands for good SF. I was somewhat surprised to see that the whole series is set on a tropical island here on earth with no space ships or aliens in sight. I totally love series in space, so this was something I need to grow used to. The series timeline seems to be set in the present too, so I’m still a bit confused as what the whole ScienceFiction part of the series is going to be.
I bet most of you have seen these images somewhere sometime. It seems to be a trend to shoot a “Last Supper” image with the cast of popular films and TV Shows. Typically, they will copy the “original” painting made by Leonardo Da Vinci between 1495 and 1498, which looks like this:
According to Wikipedia, the picture depicts the event narrated in the Gospel of John, chapter 13 verse 21, where Jesus announces that one of the twelve apostles would betray him. I will quote Wikipedia’s entry on the grouping of figures:
Yesterday evening we saw the film “Karol: A Man Who Became Pope” from 2005 in the Parish House. It was a film night organised by the local Student Parish. I didn’t have high expectations of the film, I only sat there because I helped organising the whole thing, not because I think that a film about Karol Wojtyila would be interesting. But I have to say that I had to revise that idea completely after watching. I never thought I would leave the Parish House inspired like I did!
I was so sucked into it that I totally forgot where I was, I felt I was part of the story. The quality of the story telling is that good. The story starts in 1939 wen the Germans occupy Poland, we see how this historical event influenced the then 19 year old Karol. He witnessed all the suffering, horror, and oppression from close by, he saw how people were transported to concentration camps, he even lost some close Jewish friends during the Holocaust. It’s not hard to imagine this must have had a deep impact on the late pope’s personality. And one would hope life would get better after the Germans left in 1944. It didn’t.
I really like having gadgets and I always tell myself I have them because they’re useful in some way. But secretly I just like to have them because I can. One of my favourite sites when it comes to these kinds of things is ThinkGeek. Think about something silly, they have it: USB Coffee Mug warmers, tape drive for music cassettes to transfer the music to mp3, or my favourite: retro handset for your cell phone.
Browsing on the Engadget web site I clicked on a link to another site that sells weird gadgets. But whereas the tagline for ThinkGeek is “stuff for smart masses”, the tagline for this site seems to be “stuff for airheads”, because basically everything they were selling was junk. Maybe it’s the younger target audience that has a craptastic taste, but my eyes were tortured seeing a baby-blue “Bling Bling” mouse, a mouse with plastic gems glued on the surface, also available in “Hello Kitty Pink” if you don’t fancy blue, a USB flash drive shaped like a BIG fake bling bling gem stone to wear as a necklace, a USB hub designed as a turtle (made of cheap plastic with USB ports around and a place to put paperclips and stuff in the centre), magnetic superhero pixels, looking like a cheap magnetic Ministeck rip-off. I don’t know what bothers me most, the fact the junk exists or the fact that there are actually people out there paying money for it.
A minute ago I read some feeds in my new feed reader called Times Feed Reader, which was part of the awesome MacHeist3 Bundle. I really like the application, I used to read my feeds in an online feed reader, but I noticed I would forget to check it and then find 1000+ unread items on return. This one just warns me with a small green blob in the Dock there are unread items.
One of the feeds I’m subscribed to is the one with new gadget reviews. I saw an article reviewing new stuff that came out for the Wii, called Riiflex. They are dumbell Wii-motes. They would work great with My Fitness Coach. I own the PC version, but I’d love to try the Wii version, since I don’t use my PC that much anymore. It would be great to be able to work out using Wii-motes with weights, it’s good for you and super geeky! Too bad the things are so expensive: $34.95 for 2 lbs. weights and $39.95 for 4 lbs.
I finally have been able to see Battlestar Galactica, Daybreak pt. 2 last weekend. Be assured, I won’t give away any spoilers! I really was looking forward on the one hand to watch the season’s finale, but it was bittersweet: it also meant that my favourite TV series would be over forever. After watching the finale, I had some mixed feelings, maybe that had to do with the expectations I had beforehand. I think I will write another review after watching things on DVD.
First of all I want to say that the finale wasn’t bad at all. I even had to cry at the end, which is not typical for me. I don’t know really why that happened but it did. I think it’s the sad realisation that my Saturday mornings won’t be the same again: the first thing I did the past few years was get myself a cup of coffee and breakfast and then watch the episode online that ran the night before. Or I stayed up to watch it live using TVU player.
This show is dear to me for many reasons. In some sort of twisted way it brought me closer to the Catholic Church. Not because of its content but because of Catholic fans I met online. Funny how these things can develop into directions you’d never imagine yourself.
Taquoriaan has decided against going to the birthday party: I haven't had a moment for my self during the last week. I need to refuel for next week. :( [Taquoriaan].
Taquoriaan Getting a shower and thinking over the idea that I am invited for a birthday party tonight. My day was busy already, is this wise? [Taquoriaan].
Taquoriaan Had a great session at the neuropsychologist. I'm a bit bummed though that it caused me to miss the Stations of the Cross this week. :( [Taquoriaan].
Taquoriaan Back inside. Had lunch and an energy boost. Preparing to leave for another appointment and after that Stations of the Cross in the cathedral [Taquoriaan].
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