Talk: Ben's diary

Read page 1

Can anybody get an HD capture of the page and contrast-enhance it for page 1 rather than page 2? Robert K S 12:13, 3 July 2007 (PDT)

I've tried to contrast enhance page 1 several times with poor results. Basic contrast enhancement doesn't work very well because of the lighting on page one (its too bright already and at a bad angle). With a whole lot of work, its still an unreadable blur. the HD DVD transfers may be better than the secondhand stuff I'm working with and they are probably the best chance for getting something readable. Dharmatel4 15:33, 9 September 2007 (PDT)

What kind of army?

It's certainly not "gypsy army" as one early suggestion held. "Primitive army" just doesn't hold up to inspection of the glyphs. There's no way 9 characters could fit in the space allotted for the word being suggested as "primitive". "Antique army", however, appears to hold weight. The letters don't take any squinting to make them resemble A-N-T-I-Q-U-E. Robert K S 08:31, 6 September 2007 (PDT)

I dont think there is enough evidence to definitively say that its antique. It doesn't look as clear to me as it does to you. I changed it to unreadable with a comment later on where theories including antique can be listed. Dharmatel4 17:00, 9 September 2007 (PDT)

Okay. I'll try to work through this methodically, from a fresh perspective. Let's look at it once more, letter by letter. [1] The word begins with an A--I think we can all agree on that. The next letter is either an R, an N, or a U. The third letter is obviously a T. After that, the bunching-together of the letters makes things tricky. But there are clearly between three and five letters, making the word no fewer than 6 letters long and no longer than 8 letters. (Primitive, which is 9 letters long, is thus discounted, even if we accept that the first letter is a P, and it doesn't look like one at all.) Granted the above, our exhaustive list of possibilities is:

ART***

ART****

ART*****

ANT***

ANT****

ANT*****

AUT***

AUT****

AUT*****

And plugging these possibilities into a crossword solver, we compile the following list of words:

artery, artful, arthur, artier, artily, artist, artemis, article, artiest, artisan, artiste, artists, artless, artwork, artefact, arterial, arteries, artfully, articled, articles, artifact, artifice, artiness, artisans, artistes, artistic, artistry, artworks, anteed, anthem, anther, antics, anting, antler, antony, antral, antrum, antacid, antefix, anteing, antenna, anthems, anthers, anthill, anthony, anthrax, anthrop, anticly, antigen, antings, antique, antiwar, antlers, antlike, antlion, antonio, antonym, antwerp, antacids, anteater, antecede, antedate, antelope, antennae, antennal, antennas, antepast, anterior, anteroom, anthemed, antheral, anthills, antiacid, antibody, anticked, antidote, antigene, antigens, antihero, antilles, antilogs, antimony, antiphon, antipode, antipole, antipope, antiqued, antiquer, antiques, antirust, antiskid, antitank, antlered, antlions, antonyms, antonymy, author, autism, autoed, autumn, autarky, authors, autisms, autobus, autoing, automat, autopsy, autumns, autarchy, authored, autistic, autobahn, autocade, autocrat, autodial, autogiro, autogyro, autolyze, automata, automate, automats, autonomy, autopsic, autumnal.

This is a long list, and some of these make more sense than others. (What's an "anticly army"? Is "anticly" even a fitting part of speech?) But we can refine our list if we assume the last letter is an E, which, comparing the glyph, dim though it is and cramped with the letter preceding it, to the other E's in the text, seems reasonable. We are left with:

article, artiste, artifice, antique, antlike, antecede, antedate, antelope, antennae, antidote, antigene, antipode, antipole, antipope, autocade, autolyze, automate.

Limiting ourselves to the adjectives and the nouns that could be used as noun modifiers, we get:

antique, antlike, antelope, antigene, antipope.

From the words on this list, I can't convince myself that the word is any other than "antique". Can you? Robert K S 10:10, 10 September 2007 (PDT)

Thats not a methodology. You are making a set of assumptions that simply produce the result you were proposing in the first place. I do not agree with your assumptions and in the absence of a clear interpretation the article should not be making definitive claims. Dharmatel4 17:03, 17 September 2007 (PDT)

That a methology confirms a hypothesis doesn't invalidate the methodology; moreover, I wasn't the one to propose the result. The assumptions were as listed above; which of them do you challenge? None of the words' interpretations are "definitive"--they're all interpretations, our best guesses. I have outlined why all the other guesses proposed are invalid; this one is simply the least bad among them in a word that is not clearly legible. Robert K S 17:26, 17 September 2007 (PDT)

Images added to illustrate above. The first image compares "ANTIQUE ARMY" (or whatever kind of army) with an instance of the letter "A" and the word "NOT" found elsewhere on the page in for comparisons of the A, N, and T glyphs. The second, an animation, attempts to count the letters. I think there are 7, but in any case I can't see a way to count more than 8 or fewer than 6 total. The third tries to show how the letters could be interpreted as ANTIQUE. Robert K S 19:16, 17 September 2007 (PDT)

Capture of the left diary page

I've added the best shot I could get of the left diary page from the Blu ray DVD. I was able to pull out some words and I think alot more can eventually be mined out of the image. Dharmatel4 22:43, 11 December 2007 (PST)

better picture of the other page

I do have a better image of the second or right page but it didn't seem to add any new knowledge. If there is interest, I can upload it and link it into the discussion. Dharmatel4 06:38, 14 December 2007 (PST)

I am interested. Many thanks. BTW, what do hardware/software you use to get Blu-Ray image captures onto your computer? Robert K S 15:24, 14 December 2007 (PST)

HD version of the right diary page from the blu rays.

I've left the image untouched (aside from cropping) even though its easy to improve it through contrast changes. I'll leave the issue of putting it in the article to you.

I went through the sequence almost frame-by-frame and this seemed to be the one that showed the most text.

And looking at it now, I'm convinced on the "antique" thing. Dharmatel4 17:41, 14 December 2007 (PST)

Yeah, that bottom branch on the E is more visible on your Blu-Ray capture. Robert K S 22:18, 14 December 2007 (PST)

Can you believe it? I went to edit in the "antique" interpretation and I put in "primitive" by mistake at first. Ha! After all the above. Robert K S 05:02, 15 December 2007 (PST)

Left page, 4th line from the bottom

I'm believing the first two words in "* * * them?" are "nerve of." Any counter-proposals?

I'm also thinking the word before "give it much thought" about halfway down is "does." Bastion 12:39, 20 December 2007 (PST)

I concur with 'does' --Hunter61 05:13, 21 December 2007 (PST) (maybe the word before that is na-ture?)

I'm on board with that. I'll do it and let someone roll it back if they disagree. Bastion 06:18, 21 December 2007 (PST)

Are we done with the right page?

The last uninterpreted word looks to me like it starts with a 'w' - the same rough shape as other clearer w's in the page - and the word "warrant" would make sense there. Opinions?Bastion 06:18, 21 December 2007 (PST)

I was thinking the same thing. There might be other interpretations we haven't thought of, though. Robert K S 08:23, 21 December 2007 (PST)

J's agenda

On the right hand page, the interpretation says "hurried and difficult," but I am not seeing "hurried" at all. I see "narrow." Thoughts?

I think the "J" would most likely be Juliet, who at the time was supposed to be placing the white rocks on the tents of the women who she suspects as pregnant. However Ben may have not known that she had her own agenda (Meaning that she really wanted to go with the Losties and blow up the tents.) Desmond constant 14:51, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Ben's Journal from the Auction

FYI, The person who bought Ben's bag and journal at the Lost Auction was kind enough to scan in the pages that Michael Emerson had written. You can see all 6 pages, clearly legible at this link:
http://karenslostnotebook.blogspot.com/2010/09/pages-from-bens-journal.html
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_0h6dn4WxIhc/TJC5UIKYSmI/AAAAAAAAExI/aGnzXZj-bBY/s1600/Ben+Diary+1of3_2.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_0h6dn4WxIhc/TJC5vtfZaII/AAAAAAAAExQ/8j7tFE5wjyw/s1600/Ben+Diary+2of3_2.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_0h6dn4WxIhc/TJC6L7OH7XI/AAAAAAAAExY/GR3ohibnMgE/s1600/Ben+Diary+3of3.jpeg

Here is a note from Jooky22 (copied and pasted from the above link):
"There are screencaps of the two visible pages on Lostpedia but they're not quite correct. More importantly, there are four "other" pages that Michael Emerson wrote, and they are far more interesting. Death notes, supply discussions and an ominous reference and drawing of something called a "Deep Dark Sink". On the commentary for the episode you can hear them talking about the journal and Michael talks about writing stuff in there that had to be vetted by the producers to make sure it fit the narrative. Awesome stuff!"--Snake78 14:35, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

• This is cool stuff, but we need to remember that it's been well-established on Lostpedia that props or parts of them which are not seen on camera (such as the unseen pages of Ben's diary) are not considered canon. A lot of the printed information on props (such as the names on the freighter manifest) are in fact wrong. And please sign your talk posts. --Celebok 09:17, October 6, 2010 (UTC)

• No prob. I wasn't sure about the rules for this kind of stuff, so I put them here on the talk page instead of the main page for it. But at least I figured it'd be helpful to those trying to decipher what could be seen in the episode of Ben's writing. --Snake78 12:26, October 6, 2010 (UTC)