The Lost Experience Begins!

With a few months to go until the end of LOST, fans are beginning to wonder if ABC will be making another attempt at a LOST arg. After last summer's LOST Experience left a rather bored Rachel Blake with the knowledge that her nemesis Mittlewerk was alive and well and intent on destroying a huge percentage of the population, one would assume more LOST experience goodies await us, no?

Click here to find out one and for all....

File this under, hey I should have known that...

With Season Three barely started,  ABCMarketing is already thinking ahead for next summer.  Not only will there be a sequel (duh) to finish telling the story (hopefully they keep 'Rachel' away from the ludes this time around) but there are also plans to include a faux documentary of what happened with this LOST experience on the LOST Season Three DVD box set.

Now your saying what I said,  that'll be like September... so it won't help to indoctrinate new gamers for the summer,  right? 

Well, there is a slim possibility that the Documentary will first premiere on the LOST Season One HD-DVD set which is expected to be announced any day.  Apparently everything was shot on HD cameras, so the set will include an upgraded print of Rachel's shinaneghans.  (Hey VHS would be better than the cruddy flash video they used for the "final" scene.)

Is adding an extended recap of the Lost Experience in HD going to value or devalue such a set?  You tell me.

Did you ever know that your my hero.......

Here are the people, that remain in the log anyways, who contribute throughout the game to keeping this site updated and relevant, (even though we were in a coma for a couple of weeks).

As the lost experience drew to a close on sunday, one of the summers most exciting and innovative Experiences ended.... And i can truly say, we had a lot of fun theorising with you. We will still probably have updates here.. but not for periods of time.

I enjoyed it.


Namaste from me atleast
Mattyrewls22

Here is Rachel's final video in Divx.

Well, it's all over.  Was it worth it?  Was it a waste of time?  Did you get the answers you wanted?

To commemorate the CLOSE of TheLostExperience we will be assembling a one time podcast comprised of your thoughts on the ARG.  We've set up a skype voice mail, just dial up thetailsection an share your feelings!

Alternatively,  you can record your comments in Wav or Mp3 and email them to tips@thelostexperience.com.

If your too shy, well you can always use the content form!

Rachel sent us another new email this afternoon, it reads as follows:

OKAY, EVERYBODY. THIS IS IT. YOU'VE FOUND OVER 1000 APOLLO BARS. I KNOW NOW THAT THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING...

	GO TO WWW.WHEREISALVAR.COM


Is there more to this then meets the eye? "This is it"? Sounds like something big is going to happen. Stay tuned.

Thanks to Ixalon you can be there, even if you can't BE there... Ixalon will be blogging live from the Manchester glyph hunt!  Be sure to keep an eye on Ixalon's progress at:

Here's an urgent notice for UK Players... Spread the word!

Lost Experience -Track down the codes to the last two fragments in Manchester and London Next Week meet up with other lost experience players and compete to be the first to track down the final two uk codes. This is your last chance to get regognised as a key member of the lost Experience

To take part players need to meet at the following start points (along with a map of the city and mobile phone) at midday. Full instructions of how to track down the codes will then be revealed

MANCHESTER:

WEDNESDAY SEPT 6TH

START 12 NOON

MEET AT THE CHINESE ARCH

FAULKNER STREET

CHINATOWN

MANCHESTER M1

LONDON

THURSDAY 7TH SEPTEMBER

START 12 NOON

MEET THAMES FOOTPATH BETWEEN ISLE OF DOGS AND GREENWICH -ISLE OF DOGS SIDE

If you, like me, are unlucky enough to live too far from a Dharma food drop to get your hands on a yummy Apollo bar,  listen up.  The good folks at http://rbrefugees.blogspot.com/ have a few extras, but they're not just giving them away... your going to have to earn them.  Give them a visit, and good luck.

Several weeks ago I had the opportunity to talk to Entertainment Weekly senior writer, and LOST theorizer extraordinaire, Jeff Jensen!  Jeff not only has some of the most interesting and entertaining theories out there on LOST,  he also has had the privilege of being able to rub elbows with the creative forces behind LOST so I knew he would have some interesting insights to share, and I wasn’t disappointed.  If you don't read Jeff, you need to start.  Some of the best theorizing in the entertainment press with regards to LOST, and a hell of a lot of fun!

Without further adieu….

Attention LOST fans: we're excited to announce that we're now partners with an exciting new company called Bag Borrow or Steal. The basic concept is that they are the Netflix of jewelry and handbags. Please click on the ad and try a trial. This is a great gift for a friend, wife, or girlfriend because they can choose what purse they want for any and every outfit and then return it for another handbag. And it's a great little indulgence or treat for any woman out there. Saves time, saves hassle, and saves money.

Well... the hacking saga comes to an end at last (?) with our adversary, the mysterious Grendel, delivering upon us a new glyph, and a new piece of the Sri Lanka mystery.

To recap: 

It began as a simple defacing.  Our logo was reversed,  our alignment disturbed,  our posts ran blood red.  Something was going on, and it wasn't good.

Vex, and Doc set out to track down an intruder, and instead found an interloper with a philosophy;  the mysterious "Gee" was here to stay until his message was out.  A bit of code in the template source proclaimed "I am not your enemy", while mysterious posts signed by single letters began to filter into the comments.

Soon, the hacker revealed he had finished phase one. The letters added up to seeming nonsense: S I M N O B A U D.  Several were quick to solve this part of the equation using their superior brainpower, and a couple by using scripts (cheaters!) to come up with "subdomain".

Next a mysterious piece of text:  GCWH PIFHGUV QVWP YSH ASDDUK.  Another anagram?  No!  A cryptogram!  Again, while his hacking skills were formidable,  his encoding was no match for the sheer intelligence of the lost experience community.  "THIS MONSTER GRIM WAS CALLED". 

Soon, enterprising players discovered that this line was a direct reference to the name of "Grendel" from the epic "Beowulf". 

Grendel himself taunted us:  We had the key,  but he had the lock.  It turned out to be a lock of time;  we waited anxiously for the mysterious hacker to show up again, and show up he did.  At the time of his choosing, a new domain opened up here at www.thelostexperience.com: http://grendel.thelostexperience.com and revealed... A BLANK PAGE!

Luckily, Grendel had not left us without a clue.  His fondness for the words "light" and "contrast" made since when "thelock.gif" was taken from the page and adjusted for contrast,  revealing the gif above.

Our mysterious hacker friend has said that "Phase 1" is complete!  You mean there's another freakin phase?  C'mon gee... I gotta get some sleep over here!

Here are the letters which are thought to be the first part of the puzzle.  What is the answer?  Is this the hacker's identity revealed?  Post your guesses in this thread, hopefully if somebody solves this part it will motivate the hacker to hurry up and get with phase two:

So far still no clue on the identity of our mysterious hacker "gee" (who is not the non-mysterious "Gee" who is just a cool person.)  So far the following things have surfaced which may or may not be of interest.

1.  The hacker has signed his/her notes with the following letters:

    A S M U I D O B
   
    Could this be a message?  Or is gee just messing with our heads?  It seems incomplete, something to keep our eyes on for sure.

2.  The hacker reversed our logo.  Making a statement?  Reality in contrast to fiction?  Right in contrast to wrong?  The hacker did say he/she wanted to keep the truth secret, but revealed at the same time.  Symbolism?  Or mischief?

3.  The hacker makes some quotes from great works of literature.

The hacker certainly seems to be taking his/her time in spilling his/her intent.  C'mon gee,  just come out with it already!

I want to extend thanks to all the folks posting in the comments and the forums!  Already I can see we are close to solving this mystery!  Also I'd like to say a special thanks to the braintrust at rbrefugees.blogspot.com who are working non stop on the clues! Definitely keep an eye on their progress! If there are other groups/sites working independently on the mystery, feel free to contact us through the tipline and we'll direct our slueths your way as well.

We are no closer to learning the indentity of the mysterious hacker who defaced thelostexperience.com, but some new information has come to light that MAY give us some clue as to what this is all about.

First,  the hacker modified our template and added the following comment:

<!-- I am not your enemy.  More soon.  -->

Then he/she flipped our logo around.  Some indicated that this turned "LOST" into "TSOL" which is the initials of a band called "Sons of Liberty".

In the meantime,  some posts claiming to be the hacker were put in comments.  Three or four people were stepping up to claim responsibility.  Always one to think on his feet, Vexingmodstwo came up with the BRILLIANT plan to hide a message to the hacker within our blog script.  Sure enough, one of the "hackers" turned out to be legit.

So far nothing interesting has been said (but don't take my word for it),  but the hacker has a curious MO:  he/she has been signing their comments "gee"  (not the real user "Gee" by the way), put putting single letters as their name.  So far we have:  a i s u m

Is he telling us to AIM him? Or Them?  What is the hackers intentions?  Post your theories and keep your eyes peeled for more signs!  Don't forget to email us at the tipline if you find something interesting, and of course post it in comments to share with your fellow sleuths.

Well, play with fire and your bound to get burned.  I woke up this morning and decided to check my logs and low-and-behold it looks like somebody had administrative access to the server at around 3:00am my time (EST).  I haven't found any damage to the system yet, (or even as much as a gloating note), but there is a possibility that information is corrupted somewhere.

I want to emphasize again that there is no personal information stored on this server, only this blog.  So all user id's etc are safe.

I've been playing cat and mouse with this intruder for a little while now.  It's evident that the break in was just to make a point because from what I can see nothing was altered.  None-the-less, the experience has left me with a thirst for vengence. So here is the deal:

If you have information that identifies this hacker beyond a shadow of doubt,  I will pay you $100.  That's $100 smackers, through paypal, all you have to do is give up your snickering little buddy.  That's a lot of Cheerios kids.

We now have an RSS feed for Glyphs ONLY!   To subscribe use the links in the side bar or enter this url into the RSS reader of your choice:

http://www.thelostexperience.com/glyphs.xml


Extra special thanks to the incomparable "Matt The Pale" for providing the source material!