Metaphor Island UK Website Extras
Update:
I do not want to repeat the work of other websites here, especially The Lost Experience. That said, you absolutely MUST READ THIS FIRST.
So, here’s my own original insights into the first online section of the “Lost Experience UK” with a dig into the new Hanso Foundation site.
What I did here was to download the main SWF Flash files, and then process them using Flasm. These produce text files containing the contents of the ActionScript.
http://www.thehansofoundation.org/config.xml contains a list of the main components of the site.
Notice that “contact” is commented out. Well if you access http://www.thehansofoundation.org/content_contact.swf you will find a brief frame with boilerplate text including the words “teaser text.” This is probably just a development left over.
A file named joop_2.swf contains the string “The Hanso Foundation, setting world speed records for subverting authority,” in addition to containing a function labelled “afterrachel()”. This particularly juicy file also contains a redirect to http://www.familytrack.net/listing.html . The site no longer exists, but Otsego found a copy in the WaybackMachine. Bob discovered that it relates to The Punisher release, also a Hi-Res ARG creation.
The executive bios page contains an ActionScript string for mittlewerk@hansofoundation.org. According to Ste, “mittle werk” translates as middle/mediate work/deeds/doings from German.
Both home and TV ad pages contain references to http://www.thehansofoundation.org/video/lrncent2004.flv , however this video contains no audio. Searching Google for lrncent2004 turns up a copy of the video about “Coastal America Learning Centres” with sound at the Internet Archive. In this video Bush Senior talks about his son’s efforts to educate the young about coastal America, whilst wearing a badge similar to the Dharma swan on his lapel. John Kerry also makes an appearance. Gregg points me to the official site at http://www.coastalamerica.gov/text/learning.html, which features a logo similar to Dharma’s swan, but not quite. This seems like a legitimate site. That most probably is the real Bush and Kerry in that video, and was probably used for testing.
For those wondering why the RSS feed is erroneous, the developers didn’t properly escape some characters. Here’s the corrected version.
By far the most intriguing aspect is the Bush/Kerry video. Are they planning on making Lost more political? Is this the story of a military contractor that got a little too full of itself? Will the series shake the very foundations of the American military-industrial complex? Probably not. Seems it’s like a red herring now. You can hope though.
Leflyman confirmed my suspicions that the site was made by the fantastic London based design agency hi-res, previously responsible for the Donnie Darko and Requiem for a Dream as well as the Channel 4 Lost site.
I should warn everybody that I don’t even watch Lost, as it kinda bores me, so I’ll quickly plug The Wire and Deadwood on HBO.
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when I entered the password and clicked on ‘joops corner’ and then ’send joop a message here’, and you click on the word here it takes you to some kind of underwater thing. with 2 circles and a flashing light on the left and a hole in the middle. After a few mins you can see the lines of a triagle and some black smoke starts appearing, is this supposed to happen?
Dale Jackson
3 May 06 at 9:51 am
You need to keep double clicking on the circles till it takes you the strange letter above.
oneoffmanmental
3 May 06 at 11:06 am
That non existant URL is on the WaybackMachine, don’t really get the significance of it though. http://web.archive.org/web/20041107044330/http://www.familytrack.net/listing.html
otsego
3 May 06 at 11:21 am
“mittle” is German for middle or to mediate.
“werk” is German for work, deeds or doings.
No idea if this is helpful or not. Thanks for putting all this up.
Ste
3 May 06 at 12:52 pm
Heh, don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but when a flash page is loading, the percentage of how much its loaded will randomly flash with a number from “the sequence”
Gim
3 May 06 at 4:57 pm
found something, after talking to pesephone, go to the hospitals thing at the top, near the top go to where it say world map, there is a hidden hospital just of the coast of florida, click it, then place you mouse over where the description should be and you get hidden number.
bigboy101011
3 May 06 at 5:22 pm
i just checked the numbers, corrisponds to letters, the first set is “missing” the second is “organs”
bigboy101011
3 May 06 at 5:56 pm
Here is the video with hw bush and kerry it has audio http://www.coastalamerica.gov/mpeg/learningcenters.mpg
gregg
3 May 06 at 8:48 pm
how do you talk to persephone?
rachel
3 May 06 at 9:18 pm
check this:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040605223503/www.familytrack.net/posting_072403.html
lucas
3 May 06 at 10:10 pm
Yes, Hi-Res.net is responsible for the site. Going to https://www.thehansofoundation.org/ (secured site) reveals a default “Plesk” page, which has an administrator email of “fschmitt@hi-res.net”
Further, on Hi-Res.net itself references the work they did for Channel 4 as part of their LOST promotion. (Plus, their own site has the same style of ugly Flash animation backgrounds as featured on thehansofoundation site.)
Leflyman
4 May 06 at 2:35 am
What is the “developing african nation”?
The name of said nation, it’s capital, and something else is barely marked.
Mere
4 May 06 at 3:35 am
familytrack website origin (A previous ARG):
http://superherohype.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-77683.html
Bob
4 May 06 at 4:37 am
OK so while looking at Joops webcam you see a shadow of a man appear. If you do some filtering with photoshop you can clairify it a little bit to look like this: see man.jpg
If you goto the Mental Health Appeal section on the Hanso Foundation there is a picture of a man in the top right corner with a stethascope on. If you capture that picture and overlay it on the shadowy figure at 50% opacity you get this: see man1.jpg and at 75% opacity: see man2.jpg. I think that it is fairly obvious that it is the same man.
MacPhisto
5 May 06 at 4:11 am
You only need to click on the webcam of Joop and choose print, but save it instead as a document and the man’s face will appear.
LioniBear
5 May 06 at 5:32 am
‘mittle’ isn’t german for middle. The correct spelling would be ‘mittel’.
Krycek
5 May 06 at 2:53 pm
Hello my name is “Hugh” im going to tell you something that may shock you so please remain calm. Lost is in fact based on a true story, the story is based on the events that occured during the “Phillidelphia experiment” this would include teleportation. The experiment was scrapped due to sailors becoming, to put it frankly, insane caused by the magnetic field required. The experiment took place in the phillidelphia dock yards in the year 1943. The experiments initial idea was not of teleportation, but of a cloking device to make ships and hopefully other vehicles, during ww2, “invisble”. The way this would be done would be to wrap light around a solid object. Success,a uss ship (i will not name) was made invisible, so we thought. In fact the ship was seen off the coast of phillidepelphia for several minutes, and that the ship was back at the dockyards. The sailors experienced nausea and some went insane.
Hugh
9 May 06 at 7:50 pm
14 Eastern European girls died in a ship docked in Philidelphia harbour in season 2 of The Wire. Coincidence?
Duh Nur Nur Nur. Duh Nur Nur Nur.
oneoffmanmental
9 May 06 at 10:15 pm
USS Eldridge was the ship in the philadelphia experiment, later sold to greece and is still in service i believe..
it wasn’t teleported, but was an en experiment using unified field theory which was more to do with phasing the ship out of our dimension ie. move it 180 degrees out of phase and into a different ‘time’.
but i don’t see the resemblence to lost.. other than the electromagnetic project on hansofoundation.org
monty
11 May 06 at 2:32 am
“i.e. 180 degress out of phase”
of what?
It’s all very well invoking scientific lingo, but it’s certainly not ay-oh-kay to invoke the name of science when dealing with conspiracy theories that make little sense just to give it an air of authenticity. Bad, bad science!
oneoffmanmental
11 May 06 at 1:15 pm
wot is the password when you’re talking with persephone?
Arj
11 May 06 at 6:54 pm
“Breaking Strain”
It’s
a
met
a
phor
oneoffmanmental
12 May 06 at 1:43 am
what is it a metaphor for?
(breaking strain)
alex
29 May 06 at 7:30 pm
inside the MFI sections there is a map and it has a hidden link near the numbers 2.32 inside the india-oil, I cant find the way to get out of the window
Dayan
7 Jun 06 at 12:50 am
Still following this ARG? It was a bit tricky at first-as with the actual show. It’s moved forward now and is way more accessible. There’s a hidden blog that gives daily updates on Rachel Blakes quest to uncover and expose the corruption in Hanso with clues and links to search out more information and decipher messages, or you can just follow the video blog as the story unfolds and reveals loads of information about Lost, either go to http://www.rachelblake.com and enter ‘evident agenda’ in the extra info blog or the direct link is http://stophanso.rachelblake.com/
Its really wkd, share your clues if you are playing! or just watch and learn about the mysteries of Lost
Sue
23 Jun 06 at 10:08 am
update your damn blog!
Ayesha
29 Aug 06 at 5:59 pm
This page has a lot of words.
Dr.CurlyQ
29 Jan 07 at 5:11 pm