Ruby Skye P.I.

With the final Harry Potter instalment in theatres, a lot of us are scratching our heads about what’s next.

Luckily, Potter fans aren’t going to be without our favourite stories for much longer. J.K. Rowling is on board for an entirely new Potter experience: Pottermore.

“It’s the same story, with a few crucial additions. The most important one is you. Just as the experience of reading requires that the imaginations of the author and reader work together to create the story, so Pottermore will be built, in part, by you, the reader.”

Pottermore is an interactive reading experience that will allow readers to participate in and contribute to the wizarding world. Rowling, too, will be divulging Potter stories and secrets kept hidden for years.

In October, Pottermore will be open to everyone.

In the meantime, check out Pottermore to find out how you can be one of the first Pottermore participants.

Hi Ruby Skye P.I. fans!!

I’m Kristan from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen and I’m so excited to be sharing a brownie recipe with you today. I’ve been catching up on the series and have decided that Ruby and I have a ton in common—1) We’re both extremely awesome 2) We both love to bake brownies and 3) We are both detectives.

Okay, so I get that I’m not exactly a detective, but I’m a mom and I can assure you that it’s pretty much the same thing. I’m always trying to solve mysteries like “Who snuck into my gummy worm stash?” or “Who hasn’t done their chores?” or my personal favorite “Who put the drink pitcher back in the fridge EMPTY?!”

So as you can see, I am completely and totally qualified to be here today.

This brownie recipe is one of my favorites and so easy to make. I know Ruby would love it and so will you!!

INGREDIENTS
8×8 pan of brownies, baked and cooled (I used Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Brownie Mix but you can use any homemade or boxed recipe you prefer)
1/4 stick salted butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 Tablespoons milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour
Heaping 1/2 cup mini M&Ms

In the bowl of a mixer, beat butter and peanut butter until combined. Add sugars and mix until light and fluffy. Beat in milk and vanilla. Gradually add flour and mix until fully combined. Fold in M&M’s. Spoon cookie dough over brownies and spread carefully.

If you make a 9×13 pan of brownies, you may want to double the topping or it won’t be as thick.

This is seriously one of the coolest guest posts I’ve ever been asked to do. Thanks so much for letting me visit and share my recipe with you guys!! Now I’m off to do some baking and detectivey stuff.

Ruby would be so proud.

We are thrilled beyond all comprehension to have been awarded an Interactive Rockie for Best Online Program – Children and Youth! The award was presented June 16 at a gala ceremony as part of the Banff World Media Festival.

Producer Kerry Young was on hand to accept the award and to thank the Independent Production Fund, our amazing team including a fantastic cast and wonderful crew and our many sponsors.

The Interactive Rockie is a huge honour.  It is a worldwide competition and our fellow nominees represented absolutely fantastic work.  We were thrilled to be in the same category as them.

The Rockie comes on the heels of another honour.

On June 2nd, we received the Youth Media Alliance Award of Excellence for Best Original Interactive Content.

It’s all unbelievably exciting!

Yesterday,Ruby Skye P.I. was featured on Wired’s Geek Dad.

It’s a fabulous piece written by James Floyd Kelly

Do you know what a hockey stick looks like? That’s what our stats are looking like at this very moment. Talk about a spike in traffic.

Wired! How lucky are we, eh?

Actually, it wasn’t really luck that got us on Wired. There was a little luck involved, but a lot of hard work too. And nothing that revolutionary either.

Want big traffic? Go out and get it. Or rather, sit your ass down in your chair, wire yourself into the web and start asking for it.

I’ve been spending my days reading blogs, looking for places that might write about my web series. When I find a likely candidate, I read some posts. If there are multiple writers, I read their work to try to figure out which of them would be most be interested in my series.

The really hard work is finding email addresses for many bloggers. It takes research and perseverance.

Then I craft an email. I try to be personal, to tailor it to the interests of the blogger I’m reaching out to and to show the blogger what about my content might appeal to their readers. Because I’m writing about kid content, I try to figure out if their kids are the right age to enjoy the series. Any hook I can find, I use.

I fire off the email, record the name, email address and blog URL for my records and then I search for another potential blog.

I do this for hours and days at a time.

The response rate is dismally, depressingly low. But I love Ruby Skye P.I. I know that anyone who takes a look at it will love it too. All I have to do is convince them to take that first look.

Lately, I’ve been successful at getting Ruby Skye P.I. featured on a number of blogs not just Wired.

The amazing Parenting blogger Susan Heim has a post and a give-away going on right now.

And delightful Ottawa area Mommy-blogger, Alyssa at A Motherhood Experience has also done a terrific review of Ruby Skye P.I. You’ve got another chance at winning Ruby swag over there!

And edu-blogger and high school teacher Zoe French wrote a lovely piece about the educational potential of Ruby in the classroom a couple of weeks ago.

Yes, there’s luck involved: connecting to just the right person who takes the story the extra distance. But mostly, it’s a numbers game… one, which if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to!

Wired‘s Geek Dad ran a feature piece on Ruby Skye P.I. yesterday written by James Floyd Kelly.

Ruby Skye, P.I. hooked me well and good.

It’s a fantastic piece and we’re very excited to have Ruby introduced to Geek Dad’s audience.

As I continued to watch the series and be introduced to key characters, I was happy to see that the character of Ruby (and her friends and family) don’t seem to fall into stereotypes. The adults are typically the ones with weird or unusual behaviors, and it’s the kids who really have it together. Yes, there’s rivalry between Ruby and another girl in her class, but it’s not overplayed or allowed to run wild. There’s a hint of romance between Ruby and her best male friend, but it’s never risque and, again, not allowed to run wild. For a nice change, we have a young lady who is not insecure and speaks her mind (Ruby), a tech-savvy sister (Hailey) who isn’t nerdy (but she’s certainly geeky – a good thing!), and a polite-but-shy teenage boy (Griffin) as primary characters.

As part of the article, there’s a long interview with Ruby Skye P.I. creator, Jill Golick.

GD: There are hints at the end of the twelfth episode of a new mystery – will there be another 12-episode story arc? Are there any plans for shorter or longer stories to be told?

JG: We plan to shoot Ruby Skye P.I.: The Haunted Library this summer. At this stage, we are thinking of rolling it out in 12-episodes once again. If anyone has any thoughts on this, we’re listening. We try to make our episodes the length that the story wants them to be. It isn’t TV so we can make things any length and we’re always listening to our audience. We’re here to serve and entertain and are delighted to have input on choices like this.

GD: What’s in store for Ruby? Is there to be a budding romance between Ruby and Griffin? Will we see more tension between Ruby and Diana? (And where did you find the actress to play Ms. Springer? That lip-sneer-smile is hilarious!)

JG: Ruby is in for a lot more mystery. She’ll definitely keep fighting with Hailey, but Hailey will get sucked into the mysteries more and become Ruby’s reluctant go-to-geek. There’s more romance to come – Ruby is getting older! Diana will continue to be a thorn in her side, but we will come to understand her a little better. We will likely see more of the wonderful Nawa Nicole Simon who plays Ms. Springer. We love her!

What’s three times better than chocolate brownies?  Triple chocolate brownies.  These ones feature cocoa, unsweetened chocolate and chocolate chips.  

Fantastic!

1/3 cup butter
3 squares unsweetened chocolate
2/3 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.  Line an 8×8 inch pan with parchment paper or grease it well.

Melt the butter and chocolate together in a bowl over simmering water or in a big glass measuring cup in the microwave on a low power.

While the chocolate is melting, combine the flour, baking powder, cocoa and salt in a small bowl, stirring them altogether well.

In a larger bowl, beat the eggs.  Stir in the sugar and then the melted chocolate mixture along with the vanilla.  Stir in the flour and cocoa mixture and blend it all up well.  Stir in the chocolate chips.

Turn the batter out into the prepared pan and spread it evenly.

Bake for 20 minutes.  Let cool, cut and serve.

Get this: A California landfill is using old trash to fuel their garbage trucks.

The fuel comes from rotting refuse – we’re talking years of rotting kind of rotting. Here’s how it works: bacteria breaks down organic scraps (no plastic!) and, over time, the garbage ferments, and releases methane gasses. From there, the methane gets pushed into tubes and sent to through a system that purifies and transforms it into liquefied natural gas.

Methane is a harmful greenhouse gas, so capturing it from the trash before it reaches the air is extremely beneficial to the environment.

Way to go, California. Wall-e would approve.

The Spam Scam is now closed captioned!

Look at the bottom left on the YouTube video player to see a little CC. Click on it and the captions will appear so you can read the dialogue.

Try it!

We got inspired to add the captions when we were contacted by Caption Action 2, a group that encourages and helps producers to caption their web series.

According to their site:

Ruby Skye P.I. became the first closed captioned children’s web series (for kids aged 8 to 14) added to the master list of captioned web series. This was significant because Ruby Skye P.I., about a teenage girl detective, is an award-winning web series. At the Los Angeles Web Series Festival, Ruby Skye won eight awards.

We’re thrilled to be reaching a whole new audience!

These brownies are fluffier than most because of their secret ingredient: self-rising flour (also known as self-raising flour).

What is self-rising flour?  Just ordinary flour with baking powder and salt pre-mixed into it.  Baking powder makes baked good rise a little — not as much as yeast, but enough to give them a lighter tester.  Many brownie recipes don’t have any baking powder in them, so they come out dense and heavy — which is delicious.  But a fluffier, lighter brownie can by delicious too.  Try these and see.

The recipe is super quick and easy to make.  So why not whip up a batch this weekend?!

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 cup white sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cup self-rising flour (or 1/2 cup flour with 3/4 teaspoon baking powder and pinch of salt mixed in)

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease and flour an 8×8 pan (or line it with parchment paper).

Combine the flour, cocoa and salt in a small bowl and mix well.

Beat the butter and sugar together in a bowl.  Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each one.  Stir in the flour mixture and the vanilla.

Spread into the pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Let cool before cutting into squares.

Are you a friggatriskaidekaphobic?

Are you feeling anxious, afraid, nervous? You might just have friggatriskaidekaphobia – the fear of Friday the 13th.

Seems irrational (to say the least). So were did it start?

Historically, Friday has been an unlucky day – and the number 13 is also considered bad luck. Put ‘em together, and Friday the 13th seems like a disaster waiting to happen.

There are lots of theories about the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition. Here are a few:

- According to Christian belief, the Last Supper was attended by Jesus and his 12 apostles. The 13th member was said to be Judas the Betrayer. Jesus was crucified on a Friday.

- In Norse mythology, the goddess of love and fertility, “Frigga” (named for Friday) was banished to a mountain when the Norse tribes converted to Christianity. She was labeled a witch. It is said that, every Friday, she gathered with 11 other witches and the devil (totaling 13!) to plot ill turns of fate for the week. (theory by Charles Panati)

- On Friday, October 13th, 1307, King Philip IV of France ordered the arrests of Jaques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templars, and sixty of his senior knights and others in the country. He tortured the Templars to make them “confess” to supposed wrongdoings. Most were killed.

Just a few reasons to watch your step!

FUN FACT: Ever heard of HMS Friday? A ship that set sail on Friday the 13th and was never seen again? It was an attempt made by the Royal Navy to dispel the superstition against sailing on Friday.

In actuality, the HMS Friday never existed! But the story is often told as fact.