Here are a two of the ads, and some quick thoughts on them.

Parisian Love:

Chrome Features:

So what does this mean? Here are thoughts:

• Google has got a bunch of disposable income
• Googles move into other businesses than search means they have to advertise
• Specifically Google Chrome is a “must-succeed” product of Google, core to their future strategies
• Google is the new Coca Cola, ubiquitous but in constant need of pointing out their existance so as to not be forgotten
• Marissa Meyer has gotten really in to harp music

Quick Thoughts On Google In Advertisement appeared on Noscope on February 08th, 2010. Tweet This

It seems like just a few weeks ago; I watched the season 5 finale of Lost. It was only after the final LOST logo came on to the screen that the reality of a 9 month wait started to sink in. So, impatient as I was, I decided to speculate my way to a series conclusion. Because Lost is the best thing to happen to television since color. Lost is why cave-men painted shows on walls.

Now I’ve had 9 months to speculate on these mysteries, and for the very same reason, this post will be massively spoilerful (unless I’m completely off the mark and even then). Do not read this post unless you have seen every available episode of Lost first. Otherwise, you’ll be ruining a great experience for yourself.

Still here? Okay, I trust you have, in fact, seen Lost. So read on.

Hello Kitty, Sci-Fi Island Adventure

In the very first episode of Lost, we watch as a plane crashes on an island and how 48 survivors try to deal with the situation. By the end of the episode, to the sound of a monster rustling the leaves in the jungle, it is established that this is not a Robinson Crusoe show, it’s a twilight-zone-esque science fiction mystery show.

In a string of episodes throughout season 1 and most of season 2, it’s established that each major character on the show somehow has events in their past from which they are running — stop running! Who hurt you, who hurt you? As each backstory unfolds, it also becomes clear that these characters share their backstory. One character will show up unexpectedly in the background of another characters past. Little tidbits here and there. One gets the impression that there’s a purpose to the plane-crash (other than “God works in mysterious ways”) and a system as to who was on that plane; that somehow these characters are on this island for a reason. Of course this could just a framework for telling a number of compelling stories. But I’ll bet you it’s not. Only.

The real attraction of the show is the island itself and the mythology that is established. Kate spots a horse from her past life, right in the middle of the jungle; Jack spots his dead father. Are these hallucinations? Or are they real, and if so, what’s up with that? Throw in a plethora of Alice in Wonderland references, and I’ll have to reiterate why this is the greatest show since sliced bread.

So if Season 1 is the This Is A Character-Driven Mindfuck Show season, then Season 2 is the But Wait, There’s More season. Season 3 is the There Are Others! season. Season 4 is the Stop The Island, I Want To Get Off season and finally season 5 is the Wait, I Want To Go Back To The Island, And In Time season. Hell yes. Are the only two words that come to mind.

Mystery Island Deduction, What We (Pretty Much) Know For Sure

Like you could figure out Twilight Zone, sometimes, so can we figure out Lost. If we’re clever. Here are attempted answers. Make a bingo plate for Tuesday, see if you can get 4 across.

A: Why did the plane crash?

The plane crashed due to an “incident”, where Desmond — locked up in the hatch — forgot to push the button and inadvertently released all the electromagnetic energy stored in the islands underground.

B: Why did Desmond push a button?

The button activated a system which periodically released electromagnetic energy from a pocket underneath the island, which (as we learn in season 5) had become unstable due to drilling operations in the 1970ies. But why did he push it? Why wasn’t this automated? Because the pushing of the button was also a “dead-man-switch”.

C: Why didn’t anyone attempt a rescue mission?

This Island Is Special. So Charles Widmore in an attempt at keeping the island hidden, orchestrated a lavish replica of the entire plane and its passengers. So that when the plane was found on the bottom of the ocean, everyone was assumed dead, eliminating the need to look.

D: What’s the Monster?

After its first introduction in episode 1, I thought I’d know what the monster was by episode 2 or possibly 3. As it turns out, we had to wait until the middle of season 2 to find out that the leaf-rustling, tooting monster is a security system consisting of black smoke. On top of that, we had to wait until one of the last episodes of season 5 to find out that the smoke monster is related to the ancient egyptian-looking ruins and hence to the core mythology of the show, which’ll no doubt be the core focus of the final season.

E: What was up with the polar bear and the Dharma shark?

As part of the Dharma initiative, a number of hatches were built on the islands (yes, plural). Some of the hatches dealt with psychological evaluations, some hatches dealt with biological experiments. One hatch experimented with animals, in this case polar bears and sharks. Polar bears, specifically, to investigate the effects of extreme acclimatisation; what happens when a polar bear is introduced in a subtropic environment. Since Dharma — as we learn in some episode — is on the island to change the world (for the better?), it’s not unlikely that the polar bear experiment is an attempt at saving the species from the effects of global warming. The shark research is probably just another experiment, to which we won’t get a specific answer.

F: The statue! It had four toes!

While one of the most delicious mindfucks of the entire show, I would reckon the answer is also one of the most disappointing. There really was no significance to the four toes. As it turns out, what we saw a four-toed foot of, used to be a giant statue of Tawaret, the egyptian goddess of fertility. It had four toes because accuracy wasn’t very important in egyptian art; the rough rendition was all that mattered. Four toes, five toes or six toes — it doesn’t matter, as long as we can see who the statue depicts. Alas, no aliens or mutants were involved.

Now the fact that it was an egyptian statue — that’s of significance.

Speculation (Or What We Don’t Or Can’t Know Yet)

Here’s a list of the less certain stuff, which I expect to get answers to this last season. In fact, if I don’t get some kind of answer to these things, I’ll be writing a very angry letter to the producers. I may even send it!

1: What is the significance of the numbers?

Hurley wins the lottery playing the numbers 4 8 15 16 23 42. Insane people claim the numbers are cursed. Desmond enters the sequence in the computer, releasing the electromagnetic energy.

This is one of the questions I’m worried about; short of bending time and space, there’s no way the writers can explain this one without invoking the classic Highlander 2 It’s A Kind Of Magic phrase. I’m gonna expect them to go with the magic explanation, in some form or other: the numbers don’t mean anything, per se, but the mystery character Jacob picked them and made sure things happened in relation to them. Jacob, unfortunately, has mystical powers, which is also how he brought the slave ship The Black Rock to the island as we see in the end of the last episode of season 5.

2: How do apparitions appear? Kate’s horse, Jacks dad, Ekos brother, dead Charlie?

While mostly used in season 1, I’m gonna go with The Monster on this one. As we’ve seen in a number of episodes (Juliette, Ben and Eko, notably), the monster seems to have the ability to “photograph” peoples memories. So why shouldn’t it be able to project apparitions? Yeah, more magic egypto-mythology.

3: Time Travel? An island that moves? How?

As we all know, matter attacts matter (gravity). Gravity may also be related to magnetism and electro magnetism. Einstein tells us that space can be bent and time can be slowed down in the presence of massive gravitational pulls. So I’m gonna say the time travel, the spinning record and the island moving, those things are both related to the massive amounts of electromagnetic energy present on the island.

4: What are the whispers in the forest?

When you hear the whispers, turn back

… someone said. I’m gonna group this with #2 and claim this to be an early monster warning. Something about photographed memories and apparitions in the form of sound.

5: What’s the deal with the flaming arrows?

Time travel. To the way way past. Roman galley past.

6: How old is Richard Alpert, and what’s up with that?

Really old. As old as Jacob and his nemesis. Which means statue-old. (See also, #5).

7: What’s up with Jacobs list and sudden appearance to the heroes?

So this is core to the end-game, game being the keyword you should take away from this presentation, the one bulletpoint to take note of. I want to say: Backgammon. I want to say black and white. So bringing our heroes who share backstory to the island, well that’s part of Jacobs game. See also the grand unified theory later in this rant.

8: Is Locke special? Is Walt?

Well Jacob certainly is. Richard Alpert certainly is. Is special something you can become, or were you born special?

I’m gonna say, yes, Walt and Locke are special. In the way Jacob is special. Which I’m gonna say is related to that which I’m the most worried about come explanation day. I really hope it won’t be “God did it”, or “It’s Magic”. But I think it’ll be some kind of “those special guys” have always been part of secret human history answer to this one.

9: Is Charlie alive when he appears to Hurley after he dies?

Yes and no. It’s Jacob or his nemesis, posing as Charlie.

10: What’s up with fake Locke?

See #9. It’s Jacob or his nemesis.

11: What’s the grand purpose of the smoke monster?

If Richard Alpert is an adviser, a “make things happen” guy, the monster is the judge with the heart full of neutrality. In Jacobs and his nemesis’ game of life — the game to see whether people can change or whether they always end up killing each other — the monster plays the judging part.

12: What’s up with Dharma?

Well somehow, probably by accident, a group of hippie visionaries found a way to the island and decided it was worth exploiting for the betterment of humanity. Perhaps them coming to the island is an earlier play by Jacob, to see whether man can change.

13: Original island inhabitants?

Brought here by Jacob, some of them because they were “special”. See #12. All part of Jacobs game.

14: How come Richard Alpert and Jacob are totally old?

See #1. Which means: I doubt we’ll get a pleasing answer to this one, other than “he’s special”.

15: What will happen if our heroes prevent the plane from crashing?

In the recent season finale, our heroes — now stuck in the past — tried to prevent the incident from ever happening, thus preventing their arrival on the island altogether. In a cliffhanger / mindfuck of proportions, we are left wondering what’s going to happen next. I predict we’ll see an extremely liberal interpretation of the “many worlds” theory of parallel universes, combined with Terminator time travel rules. Which means, you can change the future. But not really. But yes, really.

16: Jacobs cabin, why is there gunpowder surrounding it?

This is related to Jacobs nemesis’ “loophole”. The guy is clearly intent on killing Jacob (maybe he keeps losing in their backgammon-esque game of life, and he’s tired of it?). In any case, gunpowder either keeps Jacob in, or the nemesis out.

Who’s the bad guy? Charles Widmore, Benjamin Linus, or Someone Else?

Jacobs nemesis. Charles Widmore is just a pawn illustrating that “people always end up killing eachother”.

Grand Unified Theory

Backgammon is the oldest game in the world. Two players. Two sides. One is light, one is dark.

Good and evil, science and faith, guilt and redemption, black and white. Now watch this:

Is your mind blown?

People get to the island for a reason. They are lost (pun so intended) and they are given a second chance. Jacob brings them here, and he’s done so for decades, maybe centuries. Maybe even millenia. All part of a grand game he plays with his nemesis in black. The purpose of the game is to find out whether, if given a second chance, people are willing to change or not. Whether they will accept redemption and forgiveness if it stares them in the face. Jacob believes, Evil-Man-In-Black does not.

Time travel is just a metaphor for “second chance”; if you could change the course of your own history, would you? Or should you accept that you are the sum of your experiences? We’ll find out wednesday; who will undo their past five years, who will embrace them.

Nemesis: They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.

Jacob: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.

The evolution of civilization can be compared to a waltz. Two steps forward, one step back. Jacob believes that with all our flaws, us mortals will eventually do what’s right; improve — move forward, find our way.

So who are these two beings? What are they doing on the island? How long have they been doing it, and why oh why? On one hand, they’re doing it to bring us six seasons of awesome television. On the other hand, we have the key to the show. Which in the grand scheme — the “wrapping things up with a nice bow” sense — is what season 6 will be about. Forget electromagnetism. Forget time travel. Forget polar-bears, sharks and daddy issues. The real question Jacob and Man In Black has been fighting over since we worshipped celestial bodies and cut hieroglyphs in to walls is this: can we improve or not?

I think I’ve met Jacobs nemesis on several occasions. He’s called the pessimist, and he believes the world will end and that things are getting worse, not better. I’m totally with Jacob. Even if he is related to fairies, unicorns and Ramirez from Highlander 2.

Chronicle Of Awesome: Speculation The Grand Theory Of Lost appeared on Noscope on February 01st, 2010. Tweet This

Multi-tasking doesn’t work well enough yet. That is also to say that when it does, Apple will feed a system update which adds this feature; to the pad and phone alike. It’ll be just like when you all got copy and paste.

I’m an Android fellow. I cannot accept the closed platform that is the Apple ecosystem. The fact that I’d have to open iTunes to get stuff on to my phone instead of being completely unrestricted¹, is something I couldn’t ever imagine settling for. Additionally, I am enjoying multi-tasking on my Android phone today; I’m listening to podcasts via Google Listen while browsing Wikipedia, and it’s a bliss I’m sure iPhone OS users will appreciate soon enough.

Even so, the Android implementation of multi-tasking is an example of why Apple hasn’t done it yet. Gruber was boggled by the need for a task killer on the platform, and frankly — so am I. Which is key to this issue. A single-tasking platform closes every app when a new app is invoked. The robo-logistics are simple: “Home” means “Save & Close”. Because this is simple, it works. Transparently, easily, and without the need to peek inside the system to see what’s running and what shouldn’t be.

Both Android and iPhone OS are pioneering new ways to interact with computers (which incidentally is why I now prefer these OSes on principle, over Windows, Linux and OSX). The new trend is to tuck away the filesystem; to whittle down all the nerdy stuff. To make it feel obsolete and unnecessary. You don’t drop your music into a folder, you drop it onto your phone and then sort it using meta information such as artist, year, album and so on. You also no longer window manage. You don’t open an app, you enter Google Listen. You don’t close an app, you press “Home”. If you were playing a podcast, it keeps playing even as you enter the browser to explore Wikipedia. If you weren’t playing a podcast, the system cleans up any stray processes for you, so the system doesn’t spend memory that isn’t needed. It’s all very elegant, and once you get used to it, closing apps feels very 1990.

Except it’s not as elegant as it sounds. Because apps themselves decide when they’re done using your battery and not all apps are good citizens. Sometimes you’ll click “home” with the intent of not going back to your game of Robo Defence. But Robo Defence isn’t sure what you want, so it’s just paused your game. Which means goodbye battery. Which means you need a task killer, whose sole raison d’etre is giving you a neat list of which apps are running in the background and the ability to forcefully close them. 

I’m sure Android will get there. Development is moving at a blinding pace; in fact things may already be better in version 2.1. In the meantime, I’ll be loving my Google Listen background process. Even if it means I need a task killer. Once Android grows up, I’m saying a fond goodbye to my task killer, and I will never look back. But I’m not a normal user. I’m not one to be impressed by Apples “only launch when perfect” ideology, I much prefer Googles “launch early, iterate often” approach. I’m also smart enough to understand why Apple postpones multi-tasking until they get it right. Which is when you’ll get multi-tasking on your iPhones and iPads.

[Update]: Michael points out in the comments, that the iPhone has been able to play podcasts in the background since launch. My bad example. Please appropriate “Google Listen” with “Pandora” and my example will make sense again.

Why The iPad Doesn’t Have Multi-Tasking appeared on Noscope on January 30th, 2010. Tweet This

1. Incidentally, I currently use an Android file explorer app to connect to my NAS and copy things from over the air.

Unimpressive as that may sound, this holds the potential to alleviate pixel shaders to great effect. Think 3D iPad games which run in hi-res, full detail on the pad, but scale down gracefully to the iPhone by simply turning down the amount of 3D detail. You know, for when you want to take Christmas Whack-A-Mole with you to the bus. I can see it happening.

Games On The iPad: Here’s A Thought appeared on Noscope on January 28th, 2010. Tweet This

David Barnard complains about the capacitative buttons below the Nexus One screen. As I have done in my Motorola Milestone review. But it gets both more interesting and, unfortunately, worse, in the story of these buttons.

There are four buttons¹:

• Back
• Context menu
• Home
• Search

While programmable, the back button mostly works as you’d expect. When in the browser, “back” goes back in history as any browser worth its salt should. When you’ve just started an app, “back” goes to your homescreen. If you’re in an app, browsing menus, back goes to the parent menu. If you’re playing “Solitaire”, the back button has been programmed to undo the last move. This is a very useful button, as useful on an Android handset as in a browser where “back” takes up the prime real estate.

The context menu is an intriguing design. It’s most comparable to what happens when you right-click on a PC: same as if you right-click on your desktop, if you context-press on your homescreen, you get to change the wallpaper. If you’re in an app, context-press invokes the options menu. In both cases, when you press the button, a menu pops out with a context menu: “Wallpaper”, “Share Image”, “Options” and so on. I’ll get to the usefulness of this in a second.

The home button works as the iPhone home button does. It takes you to your homescreen. More than that, if you press and hold the home button, an Alt-Tab like menu showing recent apps is invoked, which is useful if not completely necessary for multitasking. Similarly, the search button when single pressed opens a Google search, whereas a long-press invokes “search by voice”².

Useful On A Whiteboard

So, while the first three of these buttons are indeed useful (and I do honest to goodness use them all the time), I would argue that they shouldn’t exist. As compared to David Barnards piece, not for one but for two reasons:

1. They encourage lazy app design
2. Like Barnard says: you’ll sometimes hit these buttons when you don’t want to

To elaborate on #1, this is mostly related to the “back” and “context menu” buttons, which you’ll have to deal with if you’re an Android app writer. Obviously, the iPhone does well without these buttons. The back button on an iPhone app is usually an arrow-elongated pill button in the upper left corner (like a browser), and option menus are also usually available from aptly titled buttons. So essentially there’s no reason why an Android app couldn’t work like this. The whole idea of adding these buttons, however, is to save space. On a tiny screen, I hear the initial Android handset designers argue, you shouldn’t have to make space for back and options buttons. Which in theory may be valid, but in actual practice isn’t a problem at all since these screens scroll. The net result is that at least the back and context menu buttons become mystery meat navigation: you won’t know what happens until you press. Potentially disruptive.

Lastly, the fact that these buttons are usually capacitative buttons (as opposed to tactile, pushable buttons) that are placed in immediate extension of the screen, sharing the same glass, means you’ll accidentally hit it once in a while; whether it be in a browser and you accidentally scroll down on the home button, or as in Barnards example, when you press space on the keyboard. Gruber argues, and this is apt, that if you could compare a touch screen to a computer screen, the capacitative buttons on the Nexus One are right in the prime real estate area: the screen edges. Which means they’re easy to hit, even when you don’t want to.

The worst problem with these buttons is that now they exist, both Android and Android apps rely on them. An Android handset without these buttons would be less than useless. That is, unless Google decides to do what’s right as soon as possible and deprecate these buttons, thereby pushing developers to design UI that works without them.

Android: On Context Buttons appeared on Noscope on January 20th, 2010. Tweet This

1. On some systems, there are only three, the Search button being omitted.
2. Which doesn’t work nearly as well as you want it to, but that’s another story.

Multitouch means you can touch the screen with multiple fingers, and the system will register this as, yes, multiple fingers. Google Android does support this, has supported this for a while, and most Android phones have the hardware that supports it as well. So when you read the sentence, “Android doesn’t have multitouch”, what you should be reading is, “Android doesn’t support pinch-to-zoom in the browser and image viewer on US handsets”. Now that’s settled.

Listening to Windows Weekly #139, Leo mentions he’s “heard” that the reason US phones don’t have pinch-to-zoom is that Apple has a patent on this in the US (not Europe), and that Apple knows this patent won’t hold in a court. So Apple, former good friends of Google, has asked Google kindly to not try this patent and simply put off the pinch-to-zoom for a while.

Which, if true, is a delicious piece of info, worth blogging and opening comments on. Personally, I can see why Google wants to stay friends with Apple for as long as possible, but perhaps it’s time Google showed Apple the brass ones they flashed China the other day?

A Few Notes On Google Android And “Multitouch” appeared on Noscope on January 19th, 2010. Tweet This

I suppose that sentence deserves a little backstory. First of all, a “clearfix” is a solution to an issue inherent in using CSS to layout webpages. If you have a containing div box that contains two floating div boxes, the containing div box will “collapse” to a thin line instead of encompass its contents. The clearfix is a CSS class you apply to the containing box, in order to have the box not collapse.

A CSS Un-Reset is a framework that helps you build websites really quickly. In day to day webdesign, a CSS Reset such as the Yahoo CSS Reset helps you level the playing field between all the different browsers and their default styles. CSS resets are, however, (and by definition), very barebones. So Vanilla helps you rebuild.

Now that the new IE8 friendly CSS clearfix has been added, why not jump in?

Vanilla CSS Un-Reset With New Clearfix appeared on Noscope on January 18th, 2010. Tweet This

<?php
wp_page_menu(array('depth'=>'0', 'sort_column'=>'menu_order')); 
?>

– which outputs a plain menu, <li><a href=" ... ">Menu Item</a></li> and so on.

If you want to use the sliding doors CSS technique, however, you need more markup. So do this:

<?php
echo preg_replace('@\<li([^>]*)>\<a([^>]*)>(.*?)\<\/a>@i', '<li$1><a$2><span>$3</span></a>', wp_page_menu(array('echo'=>false,'depth'=>'0', 'sort_column'=>'menu_order')) );
?>

– which’ll output this a more CSS friendly markup: <li><a href=" ... "><span>Menu Item</span></a></li>.

Sliding Doors In Wordpress appeared on Noscope on January 14th, 2010. Tweet This

<?php // use Arial if on Windows 
if (!preg_match('%Mac OS X%', $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])) {
?>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
/* Dear Microsoft, please fix CSS @font-face rendering on Windows */
body { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; }
-->
</style>
<?php } ?>

A Temporary Way To Deal With Windows’ Awful @font-face Rendering appeared on Noscope on January 14th, 2010. Tweet This

Gordon – An open source Flash runtime written in pure JavaScript with SVG

Gordon is written by @tobeytaylor. Because it’s JavaScript and SVG, it even runs on the iPhone. Support is limited, currently, but development seems to be picking up. Best part: it doesn’t crash.

Gordon: Open Source Flash Player In JavaScript appeared on Noscope on January 13th, 2010. Tweet This