I recently cleared off a chair in my room because I never used it for sitting. It has now been taken to the church. I missed the returns of "Monk" and "Psych" yesterday, but I'll get another chance in half an hour and a day, respectively.

Right, you may be wondering about my new userpic. (I plan to change the userpic associated with some of the entries retroactively, so if you've been reading my archives, this is where I first used this one.) It's a design for a five-segment digital display, as compared to the seven-segment displays everybody currently uses. I doubt someone will actually produce it, but one can hope.

Some of you may know that kinkyturtle has created a six-segment display, which he also uses (in two versions) as userpics. One or two of you may even have seen the five-segment display he attempted in the comments to that entry, re-posted below.


The chances that you've seen ceruleanst's design are infinitesimal (partly due to his forced domain name change), so I'll put it here too. The point, of course, is that this idea is not entirely original with me.


Now, the other reason I posted these other designs is so I can compare them against my own. ( Protracted analysis you may or may not want to skip )

Now, to actually finish this entry, I'd like to mention that the userpic? Was created in Flash. Once I'd animated the segments, I exported it to a GIF format using the command under File. (I mention this because some people may find it helpful. Trust me.) The upshot of this is, since I just learned this, you will be seeing more animations here in the near future.

(By the way, since I started this post, I did see "Monk," and it was great. I suspect it was filmed far in advance, or at least I hope so.)

If you're looking for Nucleus, it's in the entry chronologically previous to this, which makes it the one below this nine times out of ten. I asked Ed to change the link on his site, but I guess he hasn't checked his mail yet. For now, I'll talk about TV and puzzles in about that order.

I haven't been keeping up with Heroes and Chuck, partly because I can catch up on those easily. Tonight, I was going to watch one of them on the computer and the other on G4, but my family decided to watch home decorating shows, so I just watched both on the computer. I noticed the pinch of the WGA strike in the way Sylar found Suresh's place. Spoiler: ( it's a little disappointing. )


Now, NUMB3RS I have kept up on. I started playing Chain Factor almost as soon as I saw that, yes, there was indeed an ARG associated with the episode "Primacy." I uncovered a couple of Error Codes (capitalized because of course they're planted), though I was only chasing my tail on the Key Codes. It's winding down now, what with eleven of twelve Shutdown Keys having been discovered. About the episode "Graphic"... ( I wonder )


Well, I'd better wrap up before midnight. Here's the name of a president. Decode it.

13 83 86 67 13 25

EDIT: Corrected a probability and added a hint.

In case you were wondering, NO I did not get my Halloween costume ready in time. And now, it's time for SPOILERS!


Chuck! Revelation!( Revelation! )

I must say, though, part of that Green segment during the commercial break with Morgan and Casey rubbed me the wrong way. Morgan said he had an eco-friendly vehicle, and Casey responded by pointing out that said vehicle was a bike. It was supposed to be a put-down. What? Oh, come on! Bicycles are a standard alternative to normal cars; lots of people chose to ride bikes instead of cars specifically because they didn't use gas, loooong before things like hybrid cars started popping up. I wouldn't be surprised if NBC had received, let's call it a kickback, from the car companies for putting that crack in there. Phoo....


Heroes! Revelation!( Revelation! )


Journeyman! Revelation!( Revelation! )

In an effort to push my previous "Heroes" entry off the front page, I will be making two entries in (preferably) a short amount of time. This one is about TV.

Now, the new season of "Heroes" is plenty engaging, and I have a couple ideas on what's going on.
1. Nathan (seems to have) contracted Jessica Syndrome, so named for obvious reasons.
2. The dystopian fate where Sylar has become President Petrelli could well be right on track, depending on how fixed the date of "Five Years Gone" is.
3. I think the murderer could be one of the dead guys. Why not? It could reveal what their powers actually were.
4. Again with the date retconning! It originally said Hiro had traveled to 1607 (a nice, round 400 years ago), but that was overwritten with 1671. I'd guess the writers didn't want to predate Jamestown or Plymouth Rock.
5. Wikipedia is your friend. It'd be a shame if Monica Dawson (that black girl) could only do things she saw on TV.
6. Finally, we see some powers duplicated! I'm a little bothered that family members were never shown to have similar powers until the twins Maya and Alejandro Herrera came along. (Peter doesn't count.)

I'd like to perform a statistical analysis at the end of the second season, thus: take the number of characters with powers demonstrated in the first season (24), divide by the fraction of such characters that debuted in the second season (6 so far) whose powers have been observed in the first-season characters (2 so far), and the result is an estimate of the number of potential powers in the "Heroes" universe. This estimate is currently 72.

On that note, let's look at "NUMB3RS." The reintroduction of Colby Granger was a little confusing, but not much of a problem. The annoying part is the new cinematic style that accompanies Charlie's explanations. I thought it made a little sense the first time, when Don was distracted, but it got on my nerves when it kept happening. It was nice to see Amita use the old style in the latest episode, "Thirteen." (The change isn't as bad as USA's "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" opening theme remix, though. Ew.)

Now I'd like to turn to the newcomer to my lineup, "Chuck." Produced by Josh Schwartz of "The O.C.," it seems only natural for "Chuck" to run headlong into the tropes of the genre, that genre being spy thriller. (Wikipedia is not your friend. If we called every spy story with questionable technology "science fiction," the genre would nearly have died with "Dr. No.") This enjoyable romp gives "Psych" a run for its money. The only problem I really have (keeping in mind that only four episodes have actually aired) is some overuse of last-second near-misses (and maybe some genre blindness in the episode "Chuck Versus the Helicopter").

Words you'd think spell-check would find acceptable: dystopian, retconning, ew, and Wikipedia.

I watched the premier of Code Monkeys on G4 yesterday. This was probably mostly because I recognized the theme song from this video, as flimsy a reason as any, but whatever. It deserved a shot.
( Review )

All right, it's later. Apparently, I don't have class today. So let's get started.

The most problematic part of the "Heroes" timeline (at least in my mind) is whether "save the cheerleader" was carried out. Future-Suresh certainly remembers that Peter received the prophecy, but future-Peter's scar implies he never met Claire. (Actually, there might be something embedded in his skull, causing a cyst, but I'm trying to prevent a single closed time-loop from arising in this analysis.) Therefore, I claim that Claire would have escaped without Peter's help, and Sylar would have been captured anyway from Isaac's paintings.

But that leaves unanswered why Peter didn't arrive to save Claire. My candidate answer is that Ando is a wildcard, able to alter events as I suggested in my last entry. This is an ill-defined premise, but it may be refined so as to allow Ando's two intervening interactions with Peter to steer him away from Claire.

Whether there is more than one timeline is probably a matter of contention on the forums, but this has a simple answer. In the second episode, Hiro called Ando in Japan from America, but Ando at least has to be in New York around the (proposed) time of the explosion. This cannot reasonably be a single timeline; if it is, it would certainly require a lot of unsatisfactory finagling. (Also, the gunshot in the episode I think is called "Unexpected" both happened and did not happen.)

Now, what about Sylar? Did/will Hiro kill him or not? How did/does he survive future-Hiro's sword without Claire's ability? I have two short answers which rely on information not yet available.
FIRST POSSIBILITY: Linderman revives him. This makes no sense, but he did order that Sylar be kept alive (for a while) for unknown reasons. Perhaps Sylar is going to be a backup bomb, though Sylar will only thank him by slitting his forehead.
SECOND POSSIBILITY: Sylar meets Candice before Hiro tries to kill him again. It's not important to this theory whether she survives this encounter, since her power can fool all six common senses (where I count the sense of balance along with the other five). If she somehow survives, then she might be impersonating Sylar herself when she gets killed, for reasons not yet known.

Other things I've been thinking include that there are now three possible bombs (Peter, Sylar, & Ted), that I should cross-check my day-of-the-week comparison with the "two days after the election" figure, and that my next entry should relate to the Colorado Math Olympiad.

Edit: P.P.S. (because this whole entry is like a P.S.) "Heroes" was originally about "ordinary people with extraordinary abilities." No way are the writers throwing that away for an immutable dystopian future.
Also, I call retcon! I wrote that the date on the newspaper was November 5, whereas Election Day 2006 was November 7... and the date of the election was just shown to be November 7! ...Ha!

This is just something I want to get in before the final episode of "Heroes." Nothing profound (unfortunately).

If they stop the bomb, it's because Ando can change the past (witness: they didn't get shot in that one episode). I'm guessing the blast is replaced with an EMP.


UPDATE, TUESDAY: First of all, my mistake. There are two more episodes for the season, and probably several more seasons. I made a mistake.

Second, this episode was weak, IMHO. The lack of thinking at the end might be explained by a flood of emotions, but that's sort of hand-wavy. Speaking of which, Dr. Suresh's biobabble struck me as very hand-wavy.

Third, I don't think Peter's scar in the episode "Five Years Gone" should come about, since he has Claire's healing factor, but that raises serious questions about the timeline. I'll outline them later.

I haven't seen this week's "Heroes" yet, but I did see most of "Criminal Minds" on Wednesday and "Monk" yesterday. (For completeness's sake, I also saw "Shark," "Psych," and "NUMB3RS," but I'm only really talking about the other two here.)

SPOILERS

( SPOILERS )

Let me discuss, for a moment, some comments I have come across during my Internet rounds. While I won't rule out the possibility of a sideways reference, I promise to not directly talk about my own LiveJournal's lack of comments.

First, while "Heroes" is taking a break, here's an excerpt from Wikipedia about Eden McCain:
"... Eden attempts to use her power of persuasion to have Sylar kill himself. Instead, he telekinetically pulls her through the glass window to his cell and attempts to take her power. Unable to use her gun to kill him, she turns it on herself to prevent him from taking her powers." --Wikipedia, "List of characters in Heroes," accessed Dec. 19, 2006

I must say, this is not how I interpreted that few seconds of the episode. I thought that the gunshot was Sylar trying an easier way of opening Eden's skull; she didn't strike me as the type to sacrifice herself. On the other hand, it's possible I missed a bit of dialogue that made this clear, and it also doesn't quite make sense for Sylar to scatter her brains across the walls. In any case, I'm keeping my interpretation in the back of my mind. (Also, I thought Eden was already in the cell and Sylar pushed her through the glass. (Also, I'm relieved that Sylar isn't the black guy ("the Haitian").))

Next, over at "The Order of the Stick"'s forum (where, by the way, the no-commenting-on-which-page-you-posted-on rule is not being enforced quite so strongly anymore), there have been comments about Elan's flashback and new prestige class level in Dashing Swordsman. This discussion is partly about whether Elan will return to his old self. To wit:
"Sabine has an energy drain attack. So Elan kicks Nale's butt, rescues Haley, but gets tagged by Sabine and loses a level. He has to make a Fort save 24 hours later, and fails miserably. Back to the lovable but useless Elan we all know." --Giant in the Playground Forums, "OOTS #390 - The Discussion Thread," robinmotion, December 16, 3:52 AM (EST)

Now, I'm of the (prevailing) opinion that Elan will, in fact, retain his new prestige class. The above possibility would, perhaps, be a good fake-out, but the Giant has a multi-year story-line planned out, and most of the characters have already evolved quite a bit, so chances are Elan is not turning back any time soon. As Nightmarenny says in the same thread, at 6:25 PM on the same day:
"[I] find it disturbing that a bunch of you want OotS to be a sitcom. Where's the fun in static char[a]cters?"

Finally, Eric Burns at Websnark has been getting on Aaron Sorkin's case for using "Studio 60" to air his dirty laundry. (I doubt you don't already know this, but still, I've got to set the stage.) He's interesting to read and brings up good points as always, but even though he's not focusing on this to the exclusion of all else, I want Eric to write about another TV show. Don't worry yourselves (ahem), though; I'm already composing an e-mail to that effect.

Hmm. If I were to say I had a point here, it would be that one should keep in mind these two nonexclusive, non-exhaustive possibilities: first, that one's ideas might be at odds with the general population, and second, that one's ideas might be wrong.

It was nice to see a skateboard chase scene on "Numb3rs" last Friday, though I don't quite see how Sinclair was able to outrun that kid. On an unrelated note, Sacha Baron Cohen's first name is apparently pronounced "Sasha."

All right, here's a new puzzle. Put the following words and phrases, currently alphabetized, into the proper order: condense, enthusiast, event horizons, height, thrown in, Turkish firs. Hint: I doubt this list can be "complete," for two reasons.

Oh, I almost forgot! Something was just revealed in "The Order of the Stick," but no one on the message boards noticed! Look at the eighth panel here; the audience was left in the dark about Miko's parentage. This inspired a couple of speculatory threads, but there wasn't enough data to draw any conclusion (preliminary or otherwise). Now check out today's comic, first panel. It's buried in the middle, but now we know Miko is the "daughter of Eyko!" That means... OK, not much, but I can reasonably say that "Eyko" hasn't appeared in the comic (barring a surprise twist) and may be female. On the other hand, we now know the previous speculation was to no avail! Eh? Eh? I feel so smart!

(Why does spell-check pick up "href" and "speculatory," but not "Sacha"?)