I believe that there will be two distinct narrative timelines, one in the island with the remainder of people, and one off island with the Oceanic 6, Ben and possibly Desmond/Penny. There will be very few flashbacks, possibly no more than 4-5 for the whole season.

The off-island story will stop being out of order, but it will pick up from the S4 finale’s flash forward (which will take place after the S3 finale with Jack trying to suicide). From that point on, the story off island will be as narrative and in-order as the story so far in the island has been. So it won’t be a flash-forward anymore, but what viewers will perceive as “current”. The on-island story will continue to also be narrative and current, but with a catch.

Remember that on the latest episode Locke said that they need to “move the island”. I believe that the “movement” won’t be in space, but in time. As you might know, at least 3 years have passed by the time the Oceanic Six were rescued and Jack tried to suicide. Even when taking the island’s time displacement into account, you can’t hurry up the storyline by 3 years in a single season on-island in order to match the off-island storyline. That won’t fly with the viewers because the on-island story is the default story.

You see, at the end of S5, we will see the two stories/groups merge again, as the off-islanders will have made it back to the island for the final act in S6. This leaves no alternative to the writers but to have two in-order narratives that their timeframes will match at the end of S5. And this can only mean one thing: time travel for the whole island in order to match the off-island timeline.

As for S6, I don’t expect many flashbacks either, except maybe a few Dharma-based ones. Flashforwards won’t be relevant anymore and flashbacks won’t fly either as the story is not about a few survivors as it used to be in S1, but a whole lot more.

Last night I was reading on wikipedia about Madonna’s “Hard Candy” and I noticed that minus one song, all the songs I didn’t like on the album were all co-written by Pharrell. All the rest of the songs, which I did like, were all co-written by Timbaland. I found this interesting, and I thought to myself “ok, now I know who ruined that album”.

An hour later I went to bed, and had this uneasy dream about losing my mom in the crowd and not having my iPhone with me to reach her. Eventually, while walking around I end up in an open arena where Madonna was giving a concert. I didn’t have a ticket, but I found a cousin of mine (Panos) and we sat down to listen from afar (somehow I forgot about my mom, heh). Lo and behold, Pharrell approaches us, friendly and all:

Pharrell: Lots of problems tonight with this concert, I was told. The computer started playing the background music out of order.
Eugenia: Gawd, I hate software.
Pharrell: How do you like “Hard Candy”?
Eugenia: Except “Give it to me”, I dislike all your songs in it. I found them lifeless and they ruined the album.
Pharrell: I see…
Panos: Eugenia reviews stuff all the time…
Pharrell: Oh, I see. So you are a music critic now?
Eugenia: No, I am a technologist. I wrote my opinion on the album on my personal blog, not any official medium.
Pharrell: Then what makes you think that you can criticize my work?
Eugenia: Well, everyone has an opinion about music. Is this a difficult concept?
Pharrell: No, but I am pretty sure you are a third rate journalist. Bye.
Eugenia: Wait…

At that point I wake up, and I felt terrible. I had hurt his feelings and the dream felt so real that for an hour after waking up I felt really bad. I guess my brain accomplished its target by sending me such a dream: “learn to shut up once in a while”.

Someone could argue that the war is so far away that the average American who has no children serving, doesn’t “feel” that his/her country is in the midst of a war. However, even if the “we are at war feeling” is not that strong, it’s possibly stronger than a ghost or paranormal TV series. I mean, come on. What’s more likely to happen? Hear that someone saw a ghost, or that someone you know just flew over to Iraq or Afghanistan to serve? In US, it’s the latter.

So why are there no TV series about the US military in times of war? An action/drama TV series that could depict, for a change, a bunch of females, following their story from training all the way to ground zero in Iraq and Afghanistan. Real stuff, not made up little incoherent stories as in CBS’ “The Unit” action/drama.

Money ain’t the problem to recreate such an environment. Fear could be though. Are studios afraid how controversial matters are going to be taken wrongly by some people (e.g. the rape of a woman during service, or the over-zealotry of both sides)? If that’s so, it’s stupid to halt such a production for that reason, because the more controversy there is, the more advertising comes for free.

The conspiracy theorist in me could go as far as saying that the US military itself would not like such a TV series (or even extensive war coverage by the media) and so the studios keep mum (even the legendary “M*A*S*H” TV series aired years after the Korean war was over).

Personally, if I was a TV exec, that’s the kind of TV series I would pitch to the networks right now. And if the networks don’t like it because they are chickens, there is always cable TV, where the rules are much more relaxed. I strongly believe that the clever thing to do right now in terms of TV business is to have the guts to create a controversial war action/drama around females.

It’s gonna get you hated by some weirdos around USA’s bible belt, but also is gonna get you rich. It has nothing to do with “exploitation of the war and our children who serve there” (so spare me the preaching). It has to do with business, and art. Art, and topics of interest in general, should never be halted because some people “might feel hurt”. Get over it people! It’s interesting, it’s current, it’s art, and that should be enough to be a done deal.

Update: Mike emailed me about the “Over there” war drama that lasted 13 episodes in 2005 in the cable FX channel. Apparently, it never picked up an audience, but reading about the plot, this is not the kind of drama I envisioned. This had a too traditional format.

If you look hard enough you will see the extender behind the telephoto lens.

Remember the five ducklings I saw a few weeks ago with their mother? Apparently their mother has disappeared and only two ducklings are left. At least they are looking healthy:

In the box we found the camera, a software CD, a Li-ion battery, a Quick Guide, a carrying pouch, a power adapter (100 - 240V 50/60 Hz), a USB cable, earbuds, an A/V cable and an HDMI cable. The camera is pretty small, weighs less than most digicams, and fits well in the hand. Unfortunately, the construction is pretty bad: the battery door is ready to give up and the LCD turning mechanism feels very flimsy. The “macro” slider too.

The HDV-188 has a 5MP sensor, 64 MB flash storage, SDHC support, NTSC/PAL and HDMI-out, and a rotating 3″ TFT screen. It also features digital image stabilization and a voice recording and mp3 playback mode. It has no optical zoom, only 8x digital.

The camera has a flash light and lens similar to the ones we see on some cellphones. There is no protective cap in front of the lens but a glass surface. It has an on/off button on the top but I don’t see anyone using that as the camera turns on/off automatically when you open the LCD. There’s a macro/normal focusing setting for the lens, a tripod hole on the bottom, astonishingly an HDMI port on the front, and a photo shutter button and a video record button on the back. Also on the back side you will find a rocker button that works both as a zoom in/out and a menu selector, along with a few more action buttons and the USB/AV ports.

It doesn’t take long to get used to the interface. There are QVGA, VGA, 720×480 and 1280×720p recording modes. There are also music and picture viewing modes. When you enter the main menu you can modify the exposure, flash light on/off, sharpness, white balance, stabilization on/off, motion detect (the camera will start recording automatically when detects motion) and night mode. The camera mode allows for multi-snap of pictures, self-timer and photo frame. All modes support a normal color mode, or B&W, sepia and negative. The main settings allow for camera sounds on/off (although there is a bug and the camera forgets that setting the next you restart it), format SDHC card, time setup, selection between NTSC/PAL, and support for 11 languages.

The camera records in h.264 AVI at 5 mbps when in 720p mode (1 hour of video in a 2 GB SD card, sample). Unfortunately, instead of using the much more common h.264 setup of MP4 and AAC, it uses AVI and the “MS ADPCM 22050Hz mono 88Kbps” audio codec that Windows Media Player and most of the freeware players didn’t support well (WMP and VLC had no audio even with ffdshow installed). Sony Vegas was the only application that I tried that was able to read both the video and audio correctly though! The video is recorded at 30.00 fps, but if you enable the image stabilizer the frame rate falls to 24.00.

In terms of visual quality in 720p mode, it’s horrendous. There is a lot of pixelation throughout, and if you start panning, there is even tearing in the video. I don’t see the point of including an expensive HDMI input on a camera like this. Now, the interesting thing is that if you record in 720×480p mode instead (2.5 mbps, can hold 2 hours of video in a 2 GB card, sample), the quality is much better than in 720p mode! Which leads me to believe that their 720p mode might be a marketing ploy, that is, being interpolated. Having said that, the audio quality out of the mic is good though. Better than on most digicams.

So the question remains, is this Jazz camera a better deal than an Aiptek or a Kodak HD camera at a similar price? In terms of visual quality, I would for an Aiptek instead. If I wanted both a pretty good digicam and an HD video camera in one, I would go for this Kodak instead (which also offers image stabilization while the Aipteks don’t). I would get this Jazz camera only if HDMI, image stabilization when in 480p mode were important to me. But its 720p mode is nearly useless.

Rating: 5/10

So, I put together my own ratings for her major studio albums (rating all the songs one by one per album), and here’s what I came up with. Apparently I like her early album work and her 2000-era better than her middle “erotica” career and her latest one. Special thanks to JBQ who helped me put that chart together at Google Docs, as I am a complete buffoon when it comes to spreadsheets.

Oh well, there’s always the weekend!

* WSJ has an article about the food prices and that the bio-fuels are to blame. All I can say is this: if Bush had handed down that $300 billions to fusion research instead of the war, I can tell you that we would all be benefiting from cheaper energy by now — even if fusion would still be years away. But I guess, if he was to do that, his buddies oil owners would be out of jobs.

* “Microsoft May Build a Copyright Cop Into Every Zune”, says NYTimes. Well, short of having artificial intelligence, how the hell are they going to know if my XViD file comes from an illegal download or my own shooting/export from within my video editor? This is no different than the stupid law Greece had of banning all computer video games just because the lawmakers could not distinguish between PC games and gambling.

* JBQ sent me a URL with a very indicative picture to show the difference between “shallow DOF” and “background blur” — two notions that people are getting mixed up. Background blur, is well, all the background blur you see. Shallow DOF though is how much of the subject’s surroundings is sharp (meaning that, between the lens and the subject everything is blurry, and behind the subject is also blurry).

* Our lights are arriving today! We bought the Smith Victor KT900 for both mine and my husband’s photography needs.

That’s the story with Rihanna’s “Good girl gone bad” album. I don’t like hip-hop (we are mostly into alt.rock in our home), but damn, that’s a good dance and R&B album, plus she can sing. It’s much better than Fergie’s album, and also better than Nelly Furtado’s. Definitely a better album than Madonna’s “Hard Candy” which used the same producers too. It seems that Madonna got just the left overs from the producer’s creativity.

Best songs on the album: Umbrella, Push up on me, Don’t stop the music, Shut up and drive, Rehab, and Good Girl Gone Bad. Except 1-2 songs that are not super but still acceptable, the rest are very good too.

1. Umbrella 9/10
2. Push up on Me 9/10
3. Don’t Stop the Music 9.5/10
4. Breakin’ Dishes 7.5/10
5. Shut up and Drive 10/10
6. Hate That I Love You 7.5/10
7. Say It 6/10
8. Sell Me Candy 7/10
9. Lemme Get That 6/10
10. Rehab 9/10
11. Question Existing 6/10
12. Good Girl Gone Bad 8.5/10

Overall rating: 7.9/10

Best hip-hop/RnB album I ever listened to.