I thought it was pretty good, a couple of episodes back I had the idea that the ‘flash sideways’ were all flash forwards, so I was pleasantly surprised when that came true.I thought that the fact they played off the ‘other universe/limbo/purgatory’ thing was a bit lame, but only because it was a bit of a cop out when they’ve been telling us all along it wasn’t purgatory. I’ve been saying for a while they couldn’t really go anywhere else with it and that they’ve kinda written themselves into a corner.

As far as the story goes, I think it was pretty fitting, and I’m glad they stuck to the original ending that JJ Abrams wrote.

From my understanding of the story, this happened: A bunch of flawed lonely people take a flight from Sydney to LA, They crash on an island that isn’t always there, because of a electromagnetic pulse because a guy fails to push a button.Blah blah blah, they find out they are candidates to replace a messianic leader who protects a “light” which I can only assume to be something of unfathomable power, from everyone. Desmond goes into the cave so he can ‘turn off’ the light, and as a side effect allows the MiB to be killed, and Richard to cease being immortal.Jack dies, the people on the plane escape and live to a long/happy life or whatever, Hugo and Ben remain on the island, and bring new candidates there. The 15 minute epilogue will be about that I’d guess.In the ‘flash sideways/forward/purgatory world’ All of the people live lives which they’ve invented and where they are ‘happy’ until they are all woken from the dream from Desmond, once they are all assembled they ‘move on’ to whatever your beliefs suggest is an afterlife.

I think the scene I most enjoyed from it was Hugo and Ben outside the church. It was pretty sad that Ben didn’t get to go with them, but him staying is a metaphor for him not being atoned for the things he did in life.

Most emotional moment from the finale: Either Vincent coming to lay next to Jack right at the end, or Charlie and Claire remembering each other. I’m a sucker for Emile De Ravin.

I like LOST way to much.

This survey gets crazy, are you ready?
Commence survey.
Are you missing anyone?
I miss a lot of people from college, and sometimes I miss Sarah.
Have you kissed more than 4 people this year?
Uhh, doubt it.
Have you had sex with a black person?
Nope. Are you going to ask if I’ve slept with a white person?
Are you someone who hates to read?
Nope, I’m reading Time Travellers Wife & Brave New World at the moment.

Do you always answer your texts?
I never have any credit, but if there is a question I’ll usually find a way.
How do you feel about gay marriage?
It’s cool with me.
Are you one of those people who are almost always cold?
I radiate heat.
Would you rather sleep with someone else or alone?
With someone, however whorish that sounds.
If you could make your lips bigger, would you?
It’d look really weird, I have a small mouth.
What month were you born in?
September.
What’s bothering you?
Nothing much, costs at uni are sitting in my mind, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.
Is there someone that makes you happy every time you see them?
Yeah.
Who was the last person you fell asleep on or rested on?
Sarah
Do you hate being alone?
I’m alone right now I don’t mind it unless I get bored.
Do you get along with most girls?
I guess, I’m usually really rude to everyone though.
Are you a really understanding person?
I pretend not to be.
Does it bother you when you text somebody and they take forever to respond?
Nah, it’s annoying if they don’t and it’s important though.
If the year consisted of only one season, which would you choose?
Autumn
Do you party too much?
Not at all.
If you took a drug test right now, would you pass?
Probably.
Have you ever dated someone twice?
Yeah, didn’t work out though.
Has anyone ever given you butterflies?
Yeah.
Any celebrity crush right now?
Natalie Portman * & Rachel Mcadams
Pancakes or toaster strudels?
Pancakes
Have you been a happy, angry, or sad person lately?
I’m pretty happy most of the time, I was pissed off friday night with all of my brothers friends though.
Do you think before you speak?
Sometimes.
Have you ever shared a blanket with someone?
All the time
Do you care too much/not at all/just enough?
Sarah would say not at all, I’d say just enough.
Have you ever walked on the beach at night?
Of course.
Are you afraid to tell your true feelings about who you fell for last?
Nah.
The last person you kissed, how many times have you cried in front of them?
Never.
Is your room ever clean?
For like 1 day after I have tidied.
Have you ever had a sleepover with someone you kissed?
hah yeah.
Why’d you last get pissed?
I got a bit drunk on friday, but I was too sketchy to get wasted.
Do you think that you’re good enough for the one you like?
I don’t think anyone will honestly answer this with a yes. I do my best.
Will this next weekend be a good one?
No plans.
Who were your last 3 texts from?
Kirsty, Karl & Chet
Have you ever dated someone who treated you like crap?
No.
Do you want things to change right now?
I’d like to be at uni already, I’m getting bored of being turned down for jobs.
Where is the person you like?
Doing cross country somewhere.
Anything you’re giving up on?
No.
Who is your favorite person to talk to when your down?
Depends why I am down. Sarah or Jess I suppose, maybe goda.
Do you have naughty pictures of anyone on your phone?
Not on my phone ;D
Do you like to cuddle?
Yes ahaha.
Do you ignore people when you’re mad/upset?
Depends who it is.
Do you like the person you are becoming?
I’m still a child really.
Do you think too much or too little?
Can’t I think the right amount?
Can you handle the truth?
Usually.
Have you lost contact with someone you wish you didn’t?
Yes. Too many people.
What’s something you do when you’re mad?
Sleep it off, kill shit.
Are you a patient person?
I have a limit.
Would you rather be mad or sad?
Mad, sadness is such a downer.
Do you think you can last in a relationship for 3 months?
Try 3 years
When was the last time you cried?
A while ago now.
Where is your default picture taken?
In my front room on tony’s macbook
What is your current mood?
I’m bored and hungry, neither are an emotion though.
Do you believe in true love?
True love is a nice concept but people are just too shit for it to work.
Will your next kiss be a mistake?
I doubt it.
Has anyone got on your nerves today?
Not really, my parents probably will when they get in.
Have you ever turned to drinking or smoking to solve a problem?
I’ve turned to drink to solve my sobriety problem, and smoking only stops you cleaning your room.
Do you believe in second chances?
I give second chances depending on how the person lost the original chance.
Do you answer restricted calls?
Yeah, it’s always fun to get pranked.
Has anyone ever said something that brought tears to your eyes?
Probably.
And your full name would be?
Charlie Elwood Tizard
Would you ever consider going to school drunk?
It’d be pointless, and I don’t go to school.
Is there anybody who truly disgusts you?
80% of the world currently disgust me although the numbers are decreasing all the time.
80% of the world is also religious although the numbers are decreasing all the time.
I’ll let you work out that one.
Honestly, what’s on your mind?
Food. I really want some peanut butter.
Have you lost friends in the past 3 years?
Unfortunately I’ve stopped seeing alot of people I hung out with every day while I was at college, I still consider them friends, and if I ever saw them, everything would be the same as last time I had seen them.
What does tomorrow consist of?
Bank Holiday, probably shopping or something, hopefully happy Sarah.
Are promises important to you?
Depends on the promise most of the time.
Do you correct people when they make spelling mistakes on the internet?
All the time, I can’t help it.
Anyone of the opposite sex you tell everything to?
Jess, and Sarah. I speak to Lauren quite alot now too.
Where will you be in 3 hours?
I forsee myself being at my computer.
Do you think anyone has feelings for you?
‘feelings’ is broad, there must be a couple ;D

Anyway, I thought I’d do a quick update on everything that has been happening recently.

PPUK

I recently joined PPUK, and decided to get interested in politics, and I’ve picked Pirate Party UK to invest my time in, as their stance on copyright reform and surveillance is in line with my beliefs.
I’ve been following the party since they registered last year, and only decided to join now they are taking donations.
They’ve got 10 candidates running in the general election on the 6th of May, so if you’re in any of these constituencies, please get involved and support your candidates.
The party is also currently fund-raising and taking donations to support our candidates so if you can spare some money, and feel strongly about the issues involved go here and either donate, or become a member. At the time of writing we’ve raised £4000/£10000
It’s in your best interest to do so!
I guess I better finish off those posters from last year.

University

If you haven’t already guessed I turned down my place at UACB I was offered last year, due to it not being a particularly interesting course and having to pay for it.
I applied at several universities this year for degree courses, and got accepted onto Web Design at UWE and Digital Media at Portsmouth University.
So if all goes well I’ll be heading off to one of those soon.

Music

Uh, I reached 86,000 plays on last.fm recently I guess that’s cool.
Coheed and Cambria‘s new album leaked recently – I got the opportunity to hear it, and it sounds like it’s shaping up to be an awesome record. The levels on this release are not great, the vocals don’t seem as defined as in other albums but I bet it’ll be fixed for when it’s released officially.
Below is track 2 of the album, which I assume is the single. It’s pretty cool.

I might as well plug Chris Watts’ new musical endeavour, a solo acoustic project. Ex-Son of a Fox vocalist has fun with guitars and his brothers.

Obviously by now everyone has heard of The Midnight Beast but their new video is genius. “Lez be friends”

Anyway, with that I’ve run out of interesting stuff to post.
It’s good to be back.

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

Then they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
I did not protest;
I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out for me.
- Martin Niemöller

This rewrite of the original poem by Martin Niemöller is particularly relevant these days.

Oh also, if you’re as pissed as me about the BNP’s seats in the EU, go sign this pointless internet petition.

Here’s my testament to them.

Introduction
Photo manipulation often goes unnoticed today. The ability to create and digitally alter an image has become an invaluable tool to the media, photographers and digital artists around the world. It allows the photographer access to tools that can be used on digital images, as counterparts for techniques in the darkroom.

The darkroom allowed photographers to create compositions of multiple negatives, by cutting them up. Another technique was to use ink or paint to draw in the missing elements, or remove the parts of the photo that was unneeded. One of the earliest recorded photo manipulations was by Matthew Brady. The image created was a composition of Abraham Lincoln’s head, with the body of a lesser politician, John Calhoun’s body in 1860. A few years after another of his images was edited to add a missing officer to a photo of all of General Sherman’s officers.
As time passed and digital photography gradually replaced traditional photography as the main media, new tools had to be developed to allow the same kind of techniques for photographers as those found in the darkroom.

Chapter 1: “The Rise of a Giant”
Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard to manipulating photos, and a magnitude of other jobs. It began life in 1987, as a program for viewing images simply called “Display”. Its creator Thomas Knoll and his brother who worked for George Lucas at Industrial Light & Magic, worked on creating the first version of Photoshop for Adobe Systems which was released for the Apple Macintosh in 1990. When it was first released it gave users the ability to edit images digitally, using basic tools.

Photoshop is such a widely used program because it is very flexible. It’s used by many different people for many different tasks. It can be used as a photo correction tool, a layout design tool, an animation suite. The fact that it can be used for so many different tasks is key to its success as a graphic design forerunner.
To date there have been 11 Versions of Adobe Photoshop, each being the forerunner in the Graphic Design Industry. Each time a new version of Photoshop is relapsed new features are added increasing its uses exponentially. In the most recent version Photoshop CS4, a feature called “Content-Aware Scaling” was added that allowed you to crop images without removing key elements. The program would recognize which areas of the image needed to remain the same size, while cropping out areas of background to reduce the overall width or height of the image. Other revolutionary features that have been added though the previous versions of Photoshop would include the ability to edit the textures of 3D models inside Photoshop, without having to view the applied texture in another software, The Clone Tool and it’s variants (Spot Healing Tool, Healing Brush, Patch Tool and the Pattern Stamp Tool). Each of these allows a user to take a section of an existing image and fill it using another area of the image. These tools are often used for removing blemishes in portraits, lens artefacts in photographs, and other unwanted areas of images for example a person in the background of your photo.

As a user of Adobe Photoshop since Version 6, I have come to appreciate the changes over time, and the addition of new features. My favorite feature to arrive since I have been using Photoshop is “Actions”. It works similarly to a macro in most programs, allowing you to record a list of instructions that can be re-applied to any image. This is useful for processing batches of photos; “Actions” can also be saved and sent to other users of Photoshop, to allow them to use your Action on their images. Having used other programs since starting to use Photoshop, I personally believe it is the most powerful and intuitive program on the market and I find it hard to believe that anyone uses any other program for altering photos.
Adobe has been involved with several lawsuits with other companies over the user interface found in their programs. Macromedia Inc was accused of violating an Adobe patent over tabbed palettes (a interface element that allowed multiple sets of tools and options in the same space). I felt this was relevant to mention as it shows how other companies are eager to copy Photoshop’s intuitive user interface.

Chapter 2: “Thine Eyes Deceive”
Photo manipulation is widely used in the media and nearly every day you will encounter images that have been altered to fit a layout or altered to make the subject look skinnier or blemish free.
Photoshop is widely known to be used to touch up models and make them look more attractive.
Some campaigners in Berlin have actually vandalized posters of Pop stars by posting Panels from Photoshop onto the existing billboard advertisement to generate interest into their cause, and to poke fun at the producers of such adverts. In the photos provided by Gizmondo.com you can see the History Panel, Layers panel and the Tool Box. I love the attention to detail in the panels used, making sure that the History Panel was full of uses of the Clone tool, and naming the layers appropriately makes it much easier for non-professionals to understand.
The “Girlpower” website has gone into detail about how each part of the female figure is enhanced using Photoshop. It shows how the eyes, face, hair, waist and all other parts are enhanced in Photoshop, and the change is very impressive from an artistic point of view; however changing women’s appearances in magazines leads to low self esteem in young and teenage girls.

“Hook me up with a great photographer, a clever stylist and an expert retoucher, and together we create a beautiful illusion.”
- Heidi Klum

I think that this part of photo manipulation has only recently gained exposure in the media, when newspapers caught on to the “Size Zero” scandal and have been neglecting to publish pictures of size zero women. I think that in the future there will be limits on what can be edited for an image to be published in the mainstream media, allowing for a more truthful representation of women in the media. This kind of influence in the press stems from all types of advertising, magazines, newspapers and television.

Chapter 3: “Smiling Politely”

In politics photo manipulation is a touchy area. When it is discovered it can often leave a party candidate or government with a very awkward explanation as to why the image was originally altered. An example of this was in 2008 when the Iranian government released images of a missile site, with a clearly cloned missile. This was later explained by the Iranian government as an attempt to hide the unfired missile and launcher. Another recent example of Political distress caused though photo manipulation would be an image of Sarah Palin, a vice-presidential candidate in America’s 2008 election. A picture of her wielding a hunting rifle in her stars and stripes bikini was discovered as a composition created by an unknown artist, Propaganda like this can attribute to lost votes and embarrassment for the candidate.

Throughout history photos have been altered for political reasons; most notably in countries with a totalitarian government. You can find many examples of altered images from the former USSR and from Nazi Germany from during world war two. Hitler and Stalin were known for having people removed from photographs when they died or were no longer sympathetic to their cause. A famous example would be a photograph of Stalin and Commissar Yezhov stood near the Volga Canal. Yezhov is removed by inking in a wall and repeating a section of the canal by combining two negatives. During this time all media was controlled by the government in these countries and therefore was regulated into propaganda. Today however the media is much more a free tool, and even when some sources are one sided in what they display the other side of the argument is still being heard.

Currently anonymously posting propaganda is rather easy on thanks to the internet. Anyone with a basic knowledge of Photoshop can upload anything to a forum or to youtube.com. This means the lines between journalists and the public are blurring. Things that are reported on the internet as images or videos are not necessarily the truth, and could have been manipulated.

I’ve included a poster campaign by a Russian radio station “Galaxy FM” The artist has used images of Hitler, Stalin and Chairman Mao to create a humorous campaign. I think these are particularly good photo manipulations as they only look edited because of their funny appearance, if you were unaware of the figures in the images they would seem very believable.

Chapter 4: “Painting is Dead”

Photo manipulation could be referred to as an art. There are many digital artists who incorporate altered photos and images in their work. Many who use these techniques exclusively without any traditional art based media. Digital Art, like traditional art comes in many styles, and there are many techniques and programs which are used in sync to create final pieces. Some artists use “Fractals” which are complex computer generated shapes, some artists like to paint, only using a computer and many like me like to use photographs and edit their content to change their meaning. Many artists use photo manipulation to enhance their drawn images and create compositions of mixed media.

RAW is a new format, developed for use with digital cameras. Raw is often referred to as a digital negative, because once taken from the camera it can be edited like in a darkroom. You can change the exposure, brightness and contrast, white balance and other attributes that can be affected by the settings of the camera when the image was taken. This is very useful for artists as light and exposure can play a pivotal role as to whether your manipulation looks realistic or not.
I think that without the introduction of Adobe Photoshop, Digital art would still be a developing art form, and not something anyone could jump into without a degree of training.

Conclusion
First I want to mention a new tool that is being developed for Adobe Photoshop. It is known as the “Clone Detection Tool” and it has the power to tell where areas of an image are recurring, allowing the user to spot if an image has been manipulated. I think that this is a brilliant advancement, as so far there have been very few tools to detect photo manipulation and this should help stop manipulated images appearing in the press.

I think that as an art form, photo manipulation should be unregulated and artists should be free to express themselves as they will, however in published works especially the news there needs to be strict rules over what can be published, as it will save a lot of people time and money.

There is already a code of ethics written by the National Press Photographers Association, which has one rule regarding the altering of photographs taken for the press.
“Editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images’ content and context. Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects.”
I think that this is a good start, but more specific rules need to be created to regulate what makes its way onto the front page.

Myspace
Messily coded, horribly designed and always broken. “Tom” kept adding features to an unstable website, and something was ALWAYS broken.
The only thing that was good about this website was that it wasn’t bebo. The “profile” customisation wasn’t so much customisation, more like “copy paste HTML from 1000′s of websites, and add glitter text.”
This site seemed to be used mainly by older/alternative people, mainly because the music section of the website is used by almost every band in the world to promote their music.

“I preferred bebo because myspace had all the stupid, annoying code things, for like.. layouts and stuff”
Kizzie Hall – Bebo and Facebook user.

Bebo
For code and design this site seemed a bit more organized, all of the site followed a consistent theme, and there was an “easy” way to customize your profile. You were able to pick from thousands of user generated themes, and could create your own by uploading images to replace the original ones. However this site was still full of glitter text and “WHAT MY LITTLE PONY ARE YOU?” quizzes.
As a whole the users of bebo seemed to be the more than 90% “Chavs” and people that were put off by myspace’s complexity.

“I don’t even know why anyone uses bebo any more. I always get emails from it but I just ignore them since they are all from fake people anyway, it’s always spam”
Tom Barnes formally from myspace, now from facebook.

The Solution
In comes G-13, we set up a consistently designed, functional, secure social networking site using OpenID, AJAX and other relativity new web technologies to create something that was fresh, attractive and simple to use.
Originally Codenamed “Olympus” we aimed really high with what we wanted to do – many of the features we had working in an early alpha state have recently been implemented into Facebook and Myspace. Most notably “facebook chat”. Another concept we were using is the 2 bar system, a menu at the top and information and chats on the bottom bar.

Used concepts
I wanted to talk about some of the stuff we wanted out of a social network in 2005, and how it has ended up on the web today. The concepts we had below were all part of our much larger plan for world domination.

• Favourite Contacts

recently added to Windows Live Messenger, Favourite contacts allowed you to group your friends into groups like “Family”, “Friends” “Other” etc, but you could pick contacts out of those groups to appear in a group that is always at the top of your contacts list called “Favourites” so they are easy to contact at all times.

• Favourites

Similar to services like del.icio.us and magnolia, Olympus would allow you to have a “stream” of bookmarks, that friends could see, along with private bookmarks to allow you to transport your bookmarks to any computer you used.

Unused concepts
I’m going to write a little bit about some things myself and Sam designed/planned on doing with Novus.
By this point the codename for our social network had changed to Novus, this was due to the imminent release of PHPbb 3 also named Olympus. Anyway, onto the concepts.

• Site wide music playlist

The idea behind this was to add a playlist to the bottom bar of the website, for example next to facebook chat, with a playlist, and all the other features you’d want from a music player. The idea was to allow you to add tracks to a playlist from bands profiles, like how youtube allows you to create playlists, but it would allow you to continue to use the site without having to stop listening to whatever band you liked. Other sites that follow a similar concept have started up, Last.fm and Pandora, along with Spotify, but not what we had in mind at the time.

• Useful Applications

The creation of external applications was going to have very strict rules on what could, and couldn’t be added to the site. This was to stop all of the spam, and the “WHAT MY LITTLE PONY ARE YOU?” quizzes. There was also going to be applications created by us, as sort of “addons” to the website, thinks like calculators, clocks, etc.

• Homepage

A useful homepage, which allowed to to add your own “widgets” to it. RSS Feeds and the like. The best description of this would be a kind of iGoogle and Facebook home mashup.