Snatching partial victory from the jaws of defeat... which was snatched from the jaws of victory

Back when I was processing spam and false positives, I quite regularly came across very interesting things.  The one thing I miss the most of the daily grind of spam analysis was that I came across so many cool things that I normally would not have stumbled across.

Perhaps the best Internet video that ever crossed my desktop was created by a guy by the name of Matt Harding, of wherethehellismatt.com.  Matt is someone who has traveled around the world dancing in various locations and has created a video of his travels.  He did it in 2005, and then has made subsequent videos in 2006 and 2008.  Between my brother and I, we sometimes refer to him as "that guy from the video."

If you have never seen it, here is his latest video, and I think it is my favorite of the 3.

I really, really liked his videos.  I liked them so much that I made my own when I traveled to Australia in 2006.

Now yesterday, September 2, 2008, Harding was at a travel bookstore in Seattle.  I went down there because I thought it would be cool to see him.  He gave a presentation about his travels and answered questions.  Afterwards, he let a couple of people come up and take pictures of him as well as dance with him.  I was thoroughly excited by the prospect.

I had brought along my digital camera and asked someone else to take our video dancing.  We did the jig for about 10 seconds.  I then said "Could we get one more picture?  Just in case the video doesn't turn out?"  I was worried that maybe the angle was weird or the lighting was off or something.  We snapped the picture, I took a look at it, thanked Harding for his time and left.  I was really quite happy, I had my picture and video taken with an Internet sensation.

I got home later that night and looked for the video and the picture.  But when I checked the memory card, the video was no where to be seen!  The guy shooting the video had screwed up and hadn't pressed the button!  Argh!  I was crushed!  It felt like someone had punched me in the stomach when I saw that the video was no where on my camera.

But, at least I managed to snag the photo.  So it's a partial victory and not a total defeat.  I suppose I only have myself to blame for not double-checking to verify that the video was actually taken.  You can bet I'll know better for next time and the next person I ask to shoot the video, I will ask them if it worked.