I love muffins. I simply do. In times of trouble there’s nothing I’d rather do then hunker down with a good book, a gallon or so of coffee and a basket of muffins then draw the blinds and disappear for a weekend.

I am to muffins as Tom Waits is to cookies and I am in one of the deadliest muffin cities in the world.

The Contenders

With its coffee culture it’s not too surprising that Vancouver is a place with some excellent muffin selections, each different in their splendour and variety.

Grounds for Coffee is famous for their gooey cinammon buns and, don’t get me wrong, they are incredible but they also make muffins. I recommend the oatmeal muffins which, at last sighting were the size of a small dog.

mangez mangez vancouver also has some amazing berry and banana muffins but they sell out by 11AM so get there early.

Lately though, my muffin of choice and obsession has been the JJ Bean “Very Berry”. There’s a pumpkin-apple one that I like too and the cranberry-oat one is quite superb but so far very-berry is my favourite. It’s vegan friendly too but don’t let it fool you into thinking it’s good for you. More on that in a bit.

I’m not alone:

• An open letter to JJ bean regarding their vegan chocolate zucchini muffin
• Greedy Guts: JJ Bean Muffins
• I want to bury my face in a JJ Bean Muffin.

Morning ritual

The JJ Bean outside CBC studios opens at 7:30AM sharp which, on a good day, is exactly when I’m passing through on my way to work. As the shutters open a glorious, muffinous breeze wafts out and surrounds anyone directly in what I will refer to as the “muffin kill zone”. Because of the way the mirrored windows in the library building face I sit and bask in the glorious double-sunrise while I sip my rather excellent coffee and slowly devour my giant baked good.

I’ve come to realize that the ritual of this is as important as the food itself. Taking a moment to enjoy something beautiful at the start of every day is something I’m not sure anyone would find exception to except for.

The Downside

I looked high and low but couldn’t find any nutritional information about JJ Bean muffins specifically. A little research though showed that muffins of such splendour and girth can clock in at 630 calories. That’s more than a big mac (540)!

I don’t know why but there’s always this feeling that fresh-baked goods have to be healthier than fast food. Actually if you compare the toxins and carcinogens that’s probably still true. Maybe muffins are just a really healthy way to get fat.

Seeing how I can’t really do this weight-loss experiment AND consume a 630 calorie breakfast this is going to have to stop now.

Farewell muffins. It’s not you. You’re perfect. It’s me.

Note: I’m writing this in a JJ Bean. Thank god all the muffins are sold out.

Now apparently I’m even talking in markup tags

I don’t even see the code anymore. All I see is bold, italic, redhead… So what I’m trying to say is “maintaining another site was an idea of a crazy-person“.

The purpose of mapwonk.com was to show off newly created maps. Maps are a recent joy in my life. Using data that is freely accessible you are no longer relegated to the boring old google maps view of the world.

Thanks to Mapbox and Tilemill

Mapbox (by the folks at DevSeed) is a webservice that you can use to serve maps you made using Tilemill (also by DevSeed).  I won’t get into them today. Click the links and go find out for yourself. If you’re like me and a bit of a data geek your jaw will likely hit the floor.

But don’t take MY word for it. Here’s a map I made:

I’m starting a new category here to show off maps I made and perhaps speak a bit about how I made them.

A: look for this file: 

wp-content/plugins/helo/helo.php

B: Check if you have two “Hello Dolly” plugins

If either of these are true you’ve probably been hacked. The extra helo.php file contains a malicious exploit which rewrites your php.ini file and allows root access.

We’re working with our ISP to figure out what’s been compromised.

You WILL need to change your database password and likely all your wordpress passwords.

UPDATE: We finally tracked down the problem and it wasn’t at all what we thought. On a neglected site in a forgotten part of the VPS was a WooTheme with an old copy of the TimThumb image resizing library which contained a well-known (we caught it on all our other sites) vulnerability.

Through that TimThumb vulnerability the evil robot was able to put the exploited “Hello dolly” plugin on several of our sites, rewriting our php.ini files and planting their nefarious code.

It could have been a lot worse.  Read the whole saga here.

We joke about how loud concerts are and the morning-after ringing in our ears is synonymous with having had a good time somewhere the night before.

Except it isn’t funny. Every time you’re at a loud concert and you have ringing afterwards that’s damage to your hearing that you can never fix. Ever. No seriously, it’s permanent!

I’m not sure what took so long for me to get on board but lately I’ve been spending a lot of time on stages playing amplified with the band.  More than once I’ve felt uncomfortable with the volume level on stage and felt kind of bad. If this is what it’s like behind the speakers what must it be like in front of them.

I have a friend Rachel who works at Expert Hearing Solutions in Vancouver and on her recommendation I went in to have custom earplugs fitted. I intend to use them at concerts where I am on stage but also when I go to music events. I really don’t like loud music at clubs. They do it to overcome people talking. Except that people start shouting then and the sound needs to go up to painful levels. Having these earplugs with me will hopefully allow me to start going to live, non-classical and non-folky music shows again.

The Alternative: Foam/Silicon

Foam is fine but it doesn’t really let through enough frequencies to use it with any reliability when you’re playing music. I still want all the sounds just at about half the volume.

I’ve heard of violinists with hearing problems in their left ears just from playing unamplified over years.

Rachel said that foam is still better than nothing.

The Process

Getting the moulds made is a relatively simple process. First a little cotton is placed into the ear cannal to protect the drum from the moulding putty. Then a syringe of the stuff is emptied into each ear. The process was a little disconcerting but never uncomfortable. It took about 4-5 minutes to set and then they just popped out. I was completely fascinated to see a perfect shape of my ears expressed in clay. Ear canals are a lot more curly than I thought they were.

The Cost

These things are not cheap. The custom moulds and the time of the professional to make them adds up. Still, I feel like I am saving the following costs.

• Buying a hearing aid/implant when I’m old and grey. X-thousand dollars
• Extra speakers for my TV and radio to hear things. better. X-hundred dollars
• Hearing the hovercar that would’ve taken my life and leaping to safety: Priceless

All told the total was just under $290 CAD.

The Result

A week or two later I got the call that my earplugs had arrived. Here they are:

I was surprised by how far they protrude. Rachel explained to me that this was because of the choice of model where the filters are replaceable. If I find I’m not getting enough attenuation I can get tougher filters which is great since I really don’t know what I’m going to need.

I haven’t had the chance to test these puppies out at a proper event yet but I will update this post when I do. I have tried putting on my headphones and turning up the volume with the earplugs in place. The results are really nice. The sound seems pretty equally attenuated across all frequencies (and if it’s not then I can’t tell). It’s the sound I hear without the plugs, just less of it.

One weird thing I noticed was that while walking home my footsteps on the pavement were really loud like bass drum beats. My theory is that the plugs are providing some conduction through the bones in my head and providing a crude head-related transfer function (HRTF). We’ll have to see if this becomes a problem when I’m stomping out fiddle tunes on stage.

I can’t wait!

There’s S.L.R, the Sad Little Robot who was to become a graphic novel. There’s my home automation project in pieces, strewn about my tiny apartment. An adventure game I started making from scratch in which I foolishly/heroically tried to model pre-war Berlin down to the last brick.

There was solar-powered model Zeppelin, a solar-powered iPhone charger. There’s a half-finished wooden clock I designed myself and a violin case made from sheets of bent cherry plywood that I modeled in Sketchup.

There’s one half-finished quartet score to the great Jazz standard “Jealousy” and two half-translated French-Canadian songs and fiddle tunes mocked up in garage band…… the list goes on.

And we haven’t even talked about writing yet.  As we speak (ok, I’m doing all the speaking) I’m sitting on over 40 half-written draft WordPress posts. 40! I wonder if admitting this puts my sanity into question.

And down the rabbit hole we go. In the past two weeks I’ve added two major web projects onto my poor, overloaded shelf marked “Someday when I have time”. I feel that I must be reaching some kind of limit. The only time I seem to get anything done is when somebody with a hot poker in one hand threatens to cut off my coffee supply if I don’t just fricken’ finish something.

Prepare prepare prepare reprare rerprareerearar….

Here’s how I play chess, starcraft and life. Take notes because I’m going to tell you how to beat me.

• Phase 1: Make the wall. I ignore you completely and spend all my starting resources (pawns, zerglings, etc) making a wall. This wall will keep you out unless you rush it while I’m still building it.
• Phase 2: Reinforce the wall. Make it impenetrable. Build, reinforce, patch. I’m still ignoring you.
• Phase 3:  A long boring stalemate where I play 100% defence. This will last until I’m sure of ten-to-one odds of defeating you.
• Phase 4: I Win the game.  I emerge from behind my wall with my giant army horde and ……..hey, you’re leaving already? But it’s only midnight and I was about to…..

It occurs to me the now that why am I playing a game at all if I’m not willing to risk a little offence or acknowledge the human player sitting across the table.

Projects are no different. The wall is everything I need to get started. I convince myself that if only I had a golden pencil, a leather-lined Moleskine notebook filled with paper made on the Amalfi coast, Scrivener for Mac, a barrel of bard-bandying monkey typists, free time. When I have a week off and india ink flows in fine black rivulets from my golden pen onto a cotton writing pad; then will I write the masterpiece that will do justice to my glimmering glittering ideas. Except…..

Truth

Why does truth hurt? I think it only hurts when it’s a vastly different temperature from what’s in your head. Truth is an ice-cream headache for your soul.

So what is today’s truth?

• I don’t need fancy (or any) shoes to run.
• I don’t need a silk canvas to paint on
• I don’t need a week of uninterrupted free time to develop an idea
• The tools needed to write amazing prose are somewhat simpler than I want to believe:

Oh, and the big one: My ideas aren’t that great, that brilliant or that deserving of golden pens. They won’t make me rich, famous or taller. All these ideas are doing is inflating inside my brain and threatening to rot and turn toxic when they inevitably ferment into…

Brain Crack

Brain crack is the infatuation with an idea more than the thing the idea will become.  You spend more time writing your oscar speech than your screenplay. You’re defending your avant-guard masterpiece to imaginary critics before you’ve even bought the marble slab. Alone, in your head without predators, critics or nay-sayers, untested and impossible stands your idea; inflating like a giant hot-air parade float until the size of the thing makes it unrecognizable from whatever neuron fart spawned it in the first place.

Witness is a prerequisite to beauty and nothing in your head can be beautiful until others can see it and give it the chance to first be hideous. You need to let it out, imperfect and vulnerable into the world. You need to stand back as it gets bashed around by the reality and gravity and CBC comment trolls.

I could (and others have) made/make/maken this blog solely by re-quoting Ze Frank, who I have  been aware of but now has become my own personal hero.

The ideas need to come out. They will probably be terrible but I’m ok with that. If they’re proven to be  terrible then they’ll be out of my head for good.

There’s not enough room on my dusty shelf for bad ideas and brain crack.

Using this as a guide you should be able to cobble together your own pitch to a network for your very own crappy cop drama/comedy/horror show.

Writing the premise:

Step 1: Your idea

Getting an idea is hard. It’s much better if you can steal a popular idea that’s already been done in any other country. American audiences won’t (can’t?) read subtitles so that means you can let british writers do all the heavy lifting and simply steal their idea. Then americanize it by plunking someone iconic and all-american like Harvey Keitel in the middle of it (Life on Mars).

Step 2: Where’s your gimmick?

So you decided to come up with your own original idea? Well, it’s your funeral I guess. Still you might have a chance if you get a good gimmick. Every good cop show needs a gimmick. That is, the advantage your hero has in solving crimes that will make the show interesting different and provide the needed plot devices.

Here are some common ones:

• Solving crimes by reading lies in your face (Lie to Me)
• Solving crimes with science-y montages (CSI)
• Solving crimes by knowing about bones (Bones)
• Solving crimes by having OCD (Monk)
• Solving crimes by being a vampire (Angel)
• Solving crimes by being from the future and stuck in the 1970′s (Life on Mars)
• Solving crimes by being MI-5 agents who always wear their seat belts (Spooks)
• Solving crimes (sort of) by being a serial killer (Dexter)
• Solving old crimes with new technology (Waking the Dead)
• Solving crimes by seeing inside the mind of the killer (Millenium)
• Solving crimes by becoming an enlightened buddhist cop after having served time wrongly-convicted for murder (Life)  Note: This is my favourite one

It should be noted that at no point in this blog will I mention the Wire. The Wire is to television as the mongols are to all of history. 

Writing Episodes

Most shows are broken into a 3-act structure. I’m assuming you know this already and I’m going to introduce the following steps that you can redistribute into your own three acts. Where you put each of these parts will give your show the flavour that will make or break it so choose wisely. For example, you could do each show Momento style and just reverse the parts each week. That might be a little too complicated for most audiences though.

Part 1: The Hook

The hook is the part of your story where the victim gets murdered. This is where you hire unkown actors at bargain basement prices to do things like scream and play corpses. Ending the hook with a scream and showing the bloody corpse is appropriate for a more serious show whereas a lighter show might have the main character come in and say something glib, and vaguely witty like “Looks like Mr. Reynold’s piano brought the house down…. on him”. Have them wink at the camera (or put on a pair of sunglasses dramatically, don’t get too original here folks).

Part 2: Showing the crimescene

Your goo and makeup team can have a little fun here showing the corpse in weird and improbable positions, skewered by picket fences and mashed by trash compactors. You may have to do some research here. Given the number of cop dramas every week trying to outdo each other you might think that Americans have a 50% chance of dying in bizarre and horrible ways before their 30th birthday.

Part 3: Interviewing Struggling Actors

Part three is where you round up the usual suspects, played by struggling actors who are mostly so glad to have been promoted from the actors in part two that they will do whatever you ask of them. Most of that is sitting in interrogation rooms and crying while trying to convincingly deliver lines like “I swear, I didn’t even know he was practicing his piano that night.”

As far as writing it goes, always start with shedding light on a secret affair perpetrated either by the victim or their spouse. It is widely known that everyone suspected of murder is also an adulterer who can cry on command.

Part 4: The twist

Every episode needs a twist.  This is where the underpaid actors you played to be the original suspects have alibis that check out. The hunt is then on for the medium-salaried guest actors who play the real murderers.

By now the audience knows it’s coming. They saw the opening credits that said “Guest Starring John M Famousson” so they know that he’s the killer.  Also you’re going to do a twist every single week in the second act.

It’s tired and expected but you MUST do it because otherwise you’re going to have to hire real writers to fill the last 20 minutes of the show with something non-formulaic. Non-formula is not our friend here. It’s risky and expensive and won’t give the audience that feeling of wearing your episode like their father’s tired, comfortable-but-threadbare cardigan from 1975.

Part 5: The big finish

Never mind that the solved murder rate in the US is dropping to near 60% in recent years.  Not catching the bad guy will bum out your viewers. DON’T DO THAT.

There are only two scenarios in which your murderer is not caught so pay attention:

1. A 2-parter: When your writers are so proud of the psychopath you’ve created that he deserves a two part episode with a cliffhanger “TO BE CONTINUED” in which he WILL be caught at the end of the second episode.
2. Long Plot: When the killer was the one responsible for the murder of your hero’s mother. In this case him getting away will actually add tension and convince your viewers to keep watching.

Part 6: The resolution

Part 6 1/2: Next Time on….

Season Structure

Pilot

Season Story Arc

Ok. So now let’s practice what we’ve learned.

Let me tell you about a show.  A show about a bunch of hardened cop friends that, after a gruesome crimscene involving the russian mob and a bus full of orphans, quit the force together to form a Beatles tribute band (ringo is played by a woman cop with an even more troubled past). On tour someone in their entourage gets murdered and they use their knowledge of beatles trivia and obscure, unplayable guitar chords to solve it. This leads to media attention and they return to the force to solve only rock’n'roll related murders.

That’s it. Now give me money.

Imagine this: You’re working on an important site or design for a client. It’s Sunday morning and you’re camped out in the back of a Starbucks, not because the coffee is good (it isn’t), but because it has the most reliable internet and freakishly large sizes which let you deliver the maximum caffeine possible and stay the longest time.

Your design is done and the client IM’s you. “Can I see it?” he says. Now you have a problem. You could spend 5 minutes setting up an SSH tunnel or trying to bypass the firewall of the Starbucks. You could upload it to some public server you own but that will take time and the client needs to see it now! Like a manic chicken you hit screen capture on every page and send the client links to the Dropbox.

There has to be a better way…

The Solution: LocalTunnel

LocalTunnel is a Ruby script that instantly exposes a single port on your local PC to a public URL temporarily. It’s nothing new or groundbreaking but it’s a great example of doing something quickly to save you time and your clients a headache.

Here’s how it works. You run the command and give it a port number (a common one is 80 or 8888 for default MAMP) and then based on that it spits you back a URL like http://8bv2.localtunnel.com. The 8bv2 subdomain part is your unique identifier and it is different every single time you run localtunnel. Once you have this address anyone can.

Installation

For instructions on how to install and troubleshoot check out the LocalTunnel main page. Installation can be a one-command deal but it’s not always. It was on my work iMac anyway. At home, on Lion for whatever reason it wouldn’t work so I needed to dive into Ruby a little.

What worked in the end was to install Homebrew (http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/) which lets you have really specific control over Ruby install versions etc.

Maintaining Control with Symlinks

I use MAMP to develop locally which has apache (M(Apache)MP) so getting up and running was as easy as tweaking the httpd.conf file a bit. I’m a little paranoid about exposed ports and sites so I like to set it up so that I have direct control over what people see.

It’s pretty simple actually. All you need to do is make the folder that MAMP serves an empty folder with symlinks to where it lives. Then when you don’t want to share that site anymore just sever the symlink. The following illustrates what I mean. I’m assuming you know how to set up your web server using httpd.conf or whatever equivalent.



/Sites/LIVE   # The folder you serve to the world at http://127.0.0.1
/Sites/SiteA  # The folder you'd like to serve

$ cd /Sites/LIVE
$ ln -s ../SiteA  #Cool. Now we're serving SiteA at 127.0.0.1/SiteA

# When I'm ready to cut the cord:

$ unlink /Sites/LIVE/SiteA

Taking it a little further and making it pretty

If all you did was put sites into subfolders when you point clients to the root localtunnel address they’ll get a blank screen or worse, a directory listing. Both of these are considered bad form and the latter is also a security problem.

I use a combination of PHP and the bootstrap framework to make  a nice autodetecting menu selector that looks like this:

There’s nothing fancy here. I use a PHP command to automatically find all subdirectories and list them in a nice way. What this lets me do is to show entire sites as options to client. Choose door A, B, C etc.

<?php 
  //Scan the directoru and print out the ones we find. 
  // (nothing special going on here)
  $dirtoscan = getcwd();
  $directorylistings = scandir($dirtoscan);
  $dirs = "";
  foreach ($directorylistings as $directory) {
    $dirinfo = pathinfo($directory);
    $stats = lstat($directory);
    if (is_dir("$directory") && $dirinfo['filename'] && $dirinfo['filename'] != '.' && $directory != "cgi-bin" && $directory != "di") {
      //Using bootstrap's nifty "thumbnail feature" with a dummy image generator
      $dirs .= '<li class="span3"><div class="thumbnail">';
      $dirs .= "<a class=\"thumbnail\" href='$directory'><img src=\"/di/200x100/eee/000.png&text=$directory\"></a>";
      $dirs .= '<div class="caption"><h5>Modified on:</h5><p>'. date('F j Y h:i a' , $stats['mtime']) .'</p>';
      $dirs .= '</div></div></li>';
      
    }
  }
?>

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>Matt's Sites:</title>
    <meta name="description" content="">
    <meta name="author" content="">

    <!-- Le HTML5 shim, for IE6-8 support of HTML elements -->
    <!--[if lt IE 9]>
      <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"></script>
    <![endif]-->

    <!-- Le styles -->
    <link href="bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet">
    <style type="text/css">
      body {
        padding-top: 60px;
        padding-bottom: 40px;
      }
    </style>
  </head>

  <body>
  
    <div class="container">
      <!-- Main hero unit for a primary marketing message or call to action -->
      <div class="hero-unit">
        <h1>Matt's Sites</h1>
        <p>Choose a button below to get started</p>
      </div>

      <!-- Example row of columns -->

        <div class="row">
        
          <div class="span10 offset1">
            <ul class="thumbnails">
                <?php print $dirs;?>        
             </ul>
          </div>
        </div>
      <hr>

    </div> <!-- /container -->

    <!-- Le javascript
    ================================================== -->
    <!-- Placed at the end of the document so the pages load faster -->
  <script src="bootstrap.min.js"></script>


  </body>
</html>

Some Security Considerations

There’s the usual concerns about sharing a public key but overall I trust the folks at twilio so that’s probably not an issue.

You’re only exposing a single port and only ever temporarily. The second you quit localtunnel the link is severed. That being said the usual applies.

• Don’t use easy passwords for your MySQL databases or root accounts. If someone finds a way to execute PHP code on your system they could get root access.
• Make sure your versions of PHPMyAdmin and other services are patched and up to date.
• Use the symlink method above to expose only what you want people to see.

LocalTunnel by twilio

This is the first in a series of posts about workflow and a number of new tools I’ve found that are speeding up the way I work. Sorry to those who might not find this interesting.

Tiled display in OSX?!?

I am a Mac user. Most people know this about me. I wasn’t always one though. I was a strong Windows advocate until I walked by a mac store on that fateful fall day and somehow walked out with a Macbook Pro. There’s lots to like and we could argue for hours about pros and cons. One thing that I simply cannot believe is how poorly OS X does window management. All I want is a full screen window. Why is that so hard?!? Why can’t Lion maximize a window on more than one monitor. I could go on.

To get over this incredible oversight I use third party Apps but I found a new one thanks to a talk I saw in Vancouver last week.

The app is Divvy and it will change the way you do window managent on a Mac, especially if you have a little laptop screen.

Interface is Key

I’ve used Zooom2 before and while I like it a lot I find it lacking, especially in OSX Lion. Sometimes windows you’re trying to resize will just shrink inexplicably to nothing and you have to drag them back.

What sets Divvy apart is that it works a lot more consistently except, of course with Adobe Photoshop, but that doesn’t even play nice with OSX’s window management so who’s expecting it to work on a third-party app?!? Nobody. That’s who.

I think there is a common misconception that YouTube is refuse bin of video vomit; a dumping ground for every crappy phone camera of every single taser victim in the world. In other words: A colossal waste of time. With that in mind anyone who spends a portion of his/her day on Youtube must really not have anything better to do. It’s like how people immediate label you as childish or violent if you try to make a case for video games being an equally intellectual and valid medium as books and movies. I can see you rolling your eyes. Knock it off.

Just because your only experience of YouTube involves annoying videos people inflict upon you at parties with glowing endorsements like: “oh man, you have to see this……[INSERT HILARIOUS/CUTE/NAUSEATING]” it doesn’t mean that the medium doesn’t have merit. Likewise you may associate video games with childish/violient things (which is another post, I promise).

It would be like using pornographic films or crappy drugstore paperbacks to judge films and literature. Sure it may be the majority of published content, sure it may be terrible. It may even be what everyone is buying and watching but that doesn’t mean it’s the best that medium has to offer.

Ok, rant done. All this would just be talk without some evidence to back it up. The following are entire channels (not just videos, which would imply sporadic-um-ness and coincidence)  that I subscribe to and regularly am amazed by.

1. The VlogBrothers

Hands-down my favourite two youtubers. There’s too much to say here so I’ll keep it short: Two brothers started a youtube channel to keep in touch. One’s a science nerd and the other is a literature nerd. Both are hugely successful in their respective fields. The result is history a massive Kiva.org group and a movement called NerdFighteria which defies all explanation.

These guys are so successful that they have two spinoff channels that educate and inspire:

• Scishow – Hank Green tells us about SCIENCE!!!
• Crash Course – John Green walks us through all of human history

2. Smarter Every Day

Destin, with the frequent help of his two adorable children explain how things work. He covers everything subject under the sun like how children go from breathing amniotic fluid to air, helicopter physics and slow motion video of  raptors striking at prey. This is one channel I am consistently and constantly amazed by.

3. ViHart

Victoria (Vi) Hart describes herself as “full-time mathemusician at Khan Academy” and if that’s not the coolest job title ever I don’t know what is. Her videos show us why math is fun and math teachers the world over are “doing it wrong” in treating math like a bunch of numbers.  The video I’ve chosen explores math in leaf arrangements on plants and it will blow your mind.

4. lullation13

It’s not all science. Laurena from Montreal films herself performing original songs. I love this part of youtube. People who are creative just getting out there and being creative with no middlemen or restrictions. This is why the internet is great.

5. Rhett and Link

These two guys have now gone pro and make commercials and humorous/thought-provoking/intelligent videos. Their videos all have high production value.

Ok, that’s a good start and definitely the more mainstream of the amazing content. Did I miss a channel? Let me know in the comments.

SUPER EXCITING UPDATE:: May 4, 2012:

6. Ze Frank

Ok, this is exciting. Ze Frank, arguably the progenitor of modern Youtube vlogging is back. Once upon a time a dude named Ze danced in front of a camera and became one of the first recorded incidents of a viral video. His show on Youtube challenged, delighted and amazed fans, always breaking conventions in half and challenging users to engage.

Now he’s back and his show is better than ever.

If you asked me what my second-most prized posession is I would tell you it’s my passport. This little document has been my only completely reliable and constant companion on all my travels and adventures. It gets me into countries and out again safely. A Canadian passport is an amazing thing and worth a hell-uv-a lot. Internationally it’s one of the most respected documents out there and even though I didn’t do anything more than inherit the rights to own one and fill in a bit of paperwork I definitely don’t take this for granted.

This is on my mind recently because:

1. My passport is up for renewal and more importantly….
2. I lost it.

I lose just about everything: glasses, keys, files, passwords, socks etc. but one thing I don’t think I’ve ever misplaced is my passport. When I’m travelling it almost never leaves my fingers and when I’m at home I’ve got it stashed in that safe place where it waits for my next adventure. Until yesterday I thought I was more likely to misplace my right arm.

But this time I really lost it. I can’t say I’m too surprised, having moved houses 4-5 times in the last year AFTER returning from another continent but that’s no excuse.

“So what do I do now?” I thought, as the waves of panic spread outward from my stomach in nauseating undulation.  Before I could think rationally about it my imagination immediately went to work. Clearly this was the doing of an evil moustachio’d villain named “Hornwit Foulsprocket” who had snuck into my home and stolen it (but nothing else apparently) so he could illegally export otter meat to Denmark using my name.  DAMN YOU HORNWIT!

Considering how many hoops and delays I had to jump through in order to just get one the first time I was NOT looking forward to explaining to a Canadian passport official why I needed to replace the single-most valuable piece of paper a person with my relatively low clearance could posess….. and by the way could they then renew it for me as well?

Sweep mode!

I decided to do a baryon sweep of the house  (Why isn’t TNG on netflix btw?) from east to west . It started out fairly calmly, carefully displacing then replacing boxes, books and bags from my two storage closets. Nothing. Oh well, on to the living room. Nothing.

By the time I got to my kitchen I was seriously concerned. I couldn’t think of any reason it should be in the kitchen but I couldn’t leave knowing it might be there.

When I started on the bedroom I was getting frantic, ripping clothes from their hangers to search pockets and pitching already-searched items into a “searched” pile.

Nothing

One room left: the bathroom. I was captain Picard, pushed up against the bulkhead of Ten Forward with nowhere left to go as my baryon sweep ran its course. There was nothing in the bathroom but toothpaste and towels. All is lost.

It was only the hopeless completionist in me that forced me to search the towel rack. I knew it wasn’t there. I was just going through the motions.

Then, sure enough, behind the last towel I noticed a first-aid kit that I’d had in Tanzania.

Could it be?!? YES!!! Turns out I had hidden it so well that even I couldn’t find it. Typical.

My house is in complete shambles now but my passport is safe and I will be sleeping well tonight with it nestled under my pillow.

Time to get this sucker renewed and then it never leaves my side again.