In high school, I was obsessed with converting media to one form or other. Yes, there was the occasional mix tape for the girlfriend, but more often than not, it was just me wanting to memorialize something I really liked. Keep in mind this was back when VCRs were pretty new, never minds DVDs, so audiocassettes were the thing. I would tape songs off the radio (multiple times), I would tape records onto tape, I would even prop up the boom box in front of the TV so I could record the audio from comedy and concert specials on HBO…Bill Cosby, Phil Collins and (don’t tell mom and dad) George Carlin.

Well, now that same obsession has reached the digital age. Gone are the days when I actually need a microphone and a tape. Of course, mp3 players and online download services fill my audio need, but what about video?

In that regard, my latest obsession is the great free software Handbrake, which converts DVDs into digital movie files for the format of your choosing (in my case my new iPod touch). Now I can literally watch a movie anywhere…lying in bed, in church, waiting for a meeting, etc. Of course, I have a TV that works perfectly fine. I have a projector setup that works perfectly fine, and yet I’m strangely drawn to watching them on the iPod. It’s like rediscovering them all over again.

But I don’t care….there’s something about being able to carry your favorite stories with you for ready access whenever you need a little inspiration or wising up. For me it goes all the way back to 3rd grade, when my parents bought me the record (yes record) of Star Wars for Christmas. Not the soundtrack…the whole movie…on record. I listened to that thing over and over again, to the point where I can now pretty much recite any scene from the movie, much to my wife’s chagrin.

So if you like movies, and you like carrying them with you, and you like quoting movie lines to your wife, check out Handbrake.

Last week marked the day my wife and I had been anticipating for almost 6 months. Birthday? No. Anniversary? Nope. This last Thursday LOST made its return to ABC.

My wife and are LOST addicts. We came late to the game, jumping in midway through last season, the show’s third, primarily on the emotional weight of one really well-delivered line…”Kate, dammit, run!!” (sorry mom).

And while we love the show for all the usual reasons…compelling storyline, interesting characters, good acting, etc…what I really love is how much the show’s creators know that people are obsessing over every detail and make every effort to engage their audience in deep and ridiculously creative ways.

If you’ve never seen the show, the basic premise is this: a plane crashes on a remote island, but several dozen people survive, only to realize that something very strange is happening on the island, including the presence of some locals of questionable intent, an abandoned network of scientific research facilities, polar bears and a smoke monster. Yeah…you have to watch it from the beginning.

How creative do the show’s creators get?

Example 1: There were several times over the first two seasons where characters would find themselves alone in the jungle and would hear creepy whispering from every direction. The whispers were largely unintelligible, until someone discovered that if you isolate the left, center, and right audio channels, then play them in reverse, what you hear is a conversation between 2-3 people about the character and circumstances in question. The show’s creators knew that someone would figure this out and decided to give those people the benefit of discovering something relevant to the show’s overall “what’s going on here?” vibe.

Example 2: Numbers play a huge role in connecting events through the first three seasons, and this season’s premiere was no exception. The plane that crashed was Oceanic Flight 815. H and O are the 8th and 15th letters of the alphabet. In one scene, two characters play the basketball game HORSE, but only get as far as HO. In another scene a tinker-toy like sculpture of the letters HO is visible in the background. In yet another, one character accuses another of spooking him out in a convenience story while standing next to…you guessed it (or probably didn’t)…the HO HOs.

For thousands more examples like this, check out www.lostpedia.com.

It’s this kind of attention to detail, this beautiful dance with the audience, this recognition that some people are going to be wildly obsessed…and fueling that obsession…that elevates LOST to the level of creative mastery.

And just in case you’re interested in being equally hooked:

If your finished screenplay contains every scene you’ve ever written, if you’ve never thrown an idea away, if your rewriting is little more than tinkering with dialogue, your work will almost certainly fail. No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best. If, however, research inspires a pace of ten to one, even twenty to one, and if you then make brilliant choices to find that 10 percent of excellence and burn the rest, every scene will fascinate and the world will sit in awe of your genius.

- “Story” by Robert McKee

More and more, the best websites are those that incorporate photography. And not just little stuff…I’m talking big images that splash across the page, infusing the site with style, mood and personality. In the digital camera age, taking pictures and getting them up online has never been easier. However, the ease of the technology is both a blessing and curse. Sure, it’s easier to get a picture up online, but if it’s a bad picture, you end up infusing your site with mediocre style, a bad mood and a boring personality.

So this is the first in a series of posts for those of us who can’t afford a professional photographer, but want to be able to take some world class pictures. Many of these tips apply to video as well. I encourage you to start working them into the pictures you take…and I’ll bet you’ll see a noticeable improvement.

Tip 1: The Rule of Thirds. This one’s real easy. Instead of placing the subject of your picture dead center, like every family photo you’ve ever seen, follow the rule of thirds. Imagine a tic-tac-toe board across your viewfinder, dividing the frame evenly in thirds horizontally and vertically. Now place your subject on one of points where the lines intersect. Even the slightest shift makes the picture much more dynamic and draws the viewer to the point of focus.

Tip 2: Selective Focus. The above picture uses another trick called selective focus. The trick is simply to make sure that your subject is in focus, but nothing else is. This takes advantage of the camera’s “depth of field” which is the distance at which the lens is in focus. Even the simplest of digital cameras will have settings, such as portrait, that can help you isolate your subject in focus. Using selective focus draws attention to your subject, and can turn what once was a busy background into a creative backdrop for your shot.

Those are the first two tips, but there’s more to come!

More often than not, inspiration is the first idea picked off the top of your head, and sitting on the top of your head is every film you’ve ever seen, every novel you’ve ever read, offering cliches to pluck. This is why we fall in love with an idea on Monday, sleep on it, then reread it with disgust on Tuesday as we realize we’ve seen this cliche in a dozen other works. True inspiration comes from a deeper source, so let loose your imagination and experiment.

- “Story” by Robert McKee

Working with Bright Hope International, we rely on a lot of photos taken by staff around the world, none of who are professional photographers. And for most projects we pore over dozens (sometimes hundreds) of pictures looking for just the right one…and preferably one we haven’t used before. So it was an incredible surprise when the photo above showed up for a calendar project that just rolled off the presses. The picture was taken in the Mathare Valley in Kenya, a slum of over 500,000 people outside Nairobi. I love the picture because it says so much about the conditions, and the emotions associated with the circumstances are evident on the little girl’s face. And given all that’s happened in the last few weeks in Kenya, you can’t help but wonder where this girl is right now.

So kudos to Bright Hope International for my Photo of the Year.

I don’t say this often, but run, don’t walk, to get yourself an account at istockphoto.com. If you need a photo or illustration for a website, brochure, or anything else, you can get it at istock…for cheap. Gone are the days when a stock photo would cost you $300 minimum. We’re talking good quality photos of everything you could possibly imagine for as little as $1.50. Even the biggest possible file sizes are less than $20. Like I said…run, don’t walk.

Istock has done a great thing by bringing stock photography to the masses. If you can take a picture of decent quality, you can apply to be an istockphoto supplier. Then you just load up your pictures and hope people buy them. Sure you only get pennies a piece (20% of the price of each download, last I checked) but the good pictures can have hundreds if not thousands of downloads. That cha-ching adds up.

I will not tell you again….go now.

I’m a sucker for free stuff. I’m also self aware enough to know that my tastes in music are woefully limited. So it was with great anticipation that I entered October and the prospect of a cross-promotion between two of my favorite brands, Starbucks and Apple. The promotion was pretty simple…every day you come in and you get a card for a free iTunes download. You don’t know who the artist is or what the song will be. And while the point is that you keep coming in to get more free songs, my local Starbucks was kind enough to leave previous days’ cards sitting out, so I only had to venture by every fourth day or so to grab a handful.

End result? 20 new songs in my collection. Many are crap that I’ll never listen to again. Some I really like. Personal favorite: “I Got It (What You Need)” by Galactic & Lyric Born. Trust me when I say this one will be showing up in commercials within the next three months.

So what made the promotion great? I got to experience two brands I love. I met a recognized need. And I had to do little if anything to participate.