After all the recent season and series finales, what are you watching on TV these days?

The 4400 comes back on Sunday!  I don't even remember what's going on... i hope they show last year's season finale before the first episode.  I wonder how the show is going to do with Heroes being such a big success... there's plenty of similarities just on a smaller network.

I've also been digging the new season of Dr. Who, unfortunately it's only on in the UK right now so i've been having to bittorrent this whole season.  They're already on episode 10 in the UK and no talk of it even starting here in the states from what i've seen... Maybe they'll start it in the fall?

clipped from heroesarg.blogspot.com A new comic, String Theory has been uploaded at nbc.com/heroes/novels. *** WARNING: This issue has two extremely big spoilers! Everything about the show will change after you read this issue. *** Soon after discovering his unusual abilities, Peter Petrelli encountered Hiro Nakamura. Solemn and grim, Hiro claimed that he was from the future, here to give Peter a brief but puzzling warning: save the cheerleader, save the world. Later, Peter would meet Hiro once again--for the first time. This Hiro, from the present day, was warm and optimistic, the complete opposite of his future self. What events could trigger such a massive change in the young office worker? And why seek out Peter Petrelli?

Just in case you haven't been playing along during the off season of Heroes, Let me recap what the Heroes: Alternate Reality Game has taught us.

1.  
2.  
3.  
4.  

Yep, that's a big nothing.  We learned that Linderman's is rigging the voting machines in favor of Petrelli.  We learned that DL has something to do with Hiro.  We learned that even though Hannah (wireless) has the ability to transmit/interecpt anything electronic and wireless, she still keeps a blog.

I'm really looking forward to the show coming back tomorrow.  Set your Tivos appropriately!  Let the NEW information begin!

Are you guys playing/following the HeroesARG?  Hana (wireless) is the main contact in the game but Hiro has recently been sending messages to Hana (which we are receiving too).

The latest puzzle was a string of Binary that Hiro sent Hana as a 'game'.  I didn't mess with it but I was following the comments with people trying to figure it out.  At first I thought they were reading too deep into the puzzle and it probably had a simpler solution.  I was pretty wrong.

Here are the steps, taken from commenter avidday on Hiro's blog.

1. Convert the binary bytes (baito) to individual hexadecimal, similar to how 3000 is the hex value for the stardate of 12288.
2. Add 3000 in hexadecimal to each 2-digit hex byte. Conveniently, since they are all two-digits, they add easily, so the first byte 44, becomes 3044.
3. Convert these now 4-digit hex values into the Unicode text equivalent, which just happens to get you a whole bunch of Japanese Hiragana. This can be done easily by typing the 4-digit number in wordpad, highlighting it, then pressing Alt+X. You will probably need the some sort of Japanese language pack to get it to display correctly, I installed it before I tried it so I don't know.
4. Go to a Japanese keyboard and write down the corresponding english letters and numbers corresponding to the Japanese characters you found.
5. Play a game of chess. Looking at a chess board from the white side, the Columns are labeled A-H and the Rows 1-8, with 1 being closest to the white side. This can be done manually or with a free chess program like Chessbase Lite.
6. The moves will put the pieces in a shape to spell out D L.

I haven't really read through the comments too heavily but that is days worth of work for these people.  For what?  To figure out that on a chess board the binary spells out "DL"?!  I'm glad I didn't put any time into trying to figure it out.  Seriously, if you're going to give a REALLY hard puzzle, give us SOMETHING.

Am I missing something here?  DL has something to do with the greater picture and Hiro is trying to find him but we know all the heroes are connected, so that's no surprise.  I know they're not going to give away any huge secrets in the off season but they could give us some back story or side plot.

Dear Heroes:

This would be a GREAT shirt for Jess-Nikki-ca... you couldn't get more perfect!

***SPOILERS***

Three days later I'm still marking spoilers?  You're welcome E*C!

I went back (thanks to the miracles of Tivo) to Isaac's painting.  At first assumptions I thought that Isaac's painting was of Mohinder dead by Sylar.  Upon closer inspection it's of himself and it make sense too.  When Sylar is looking over Mohinder's shoulder the name he sees and volunteers to call is Isaac.  Did you realize that's who was in the painting?

So of course Peter makes it out of Mohinder's place alive but shows up at Isaac's either to see him die or already dead.  I opt for the latter.

Someone suggested Mohinder isn't going to die and I think that's right.  Mohinder is the narrator for the whole show... Peter may live to see next season but i think Mohinder is going to be the "Jack Bauer" that the creators keep eluding to when comparing the show with 24.

Oh... and Laura (my wife) wants to make sure everyone knows that she TOTALLY called HRG's wife in the last scene being the shapeshifter WAY before ANYBODY... cause she's is SUPER SUPER SMART!!

She has the power to regenerate but still needs to worry about cleaning her pores?  What's it all mean?!  There is obviously hidden messages in this commercial!

I actually happened to see it on real TV, i was watching subterranean from last night and as i was skipping through i saw Claire... umm... selling face wash?  apparently others have felt the same way for it to end up on youtube twice

I always wondered if it was going to come out the HRG was good, or at least doing what he really thought was for the greater good and best for his family.  I guess that was confirmed tonight although that could still change at any time.  I thought the flashbacks tonight were very 'LOST' but in a good way.  It was SO cool to see how much everything was connected when Hiro's dad was on the same rooftop with HRG that Peter realizes his powers and where Claude was keeping his birds.  Who could have seen the connection of Claude and HRG working together?  wow!

I wonder where Claire and the Haitian are going to be headed and how they will meet up with other heroes.  I imagine they will either be headed to Las Vegas or NYC.  I guess we're supposed to think Ted is dead but I don't see any way for that to be possible... Peter needs to meet Ted to absorb his powers.  And ultimately, where does niki & DL fit into everything?  we know the linderman connections but is there more to the backstory connecting them with more people?

Theory alert:
I bet that at some point before the explosion Peter asks the Haitian to make him forget his explosion powers... or something like that... maybe to forget the explosion all together.  Then in true oedipal fashion fate can not be changed.  I hope we'll be seeing more of Claude before the explosion... I like his character and he knows SO much more than he wants people to know.

one more thing:
Nothing says heroes fan more than your very own:

Heroes NBC TV Series- Single Light Switch Cover

There is a bit of funny homemade fan-wares on ebay