Month: February 2007

Lenni Jabour: Greatest Hits

Seems I need to read my email more closely and/or promptly; Saturday’s post was needlessly cryptic, since Lenni had spilled the beans herself last Tuesday:

In more other news, today was the first day in studio recording the long-awaited Lenni Jabour: Greatest Hits. The record will be finished for early summer release. A sneak-peek piece of info: the marvelous Juno-and-Grammy nominated Jane Bunnett lends her particular Cuban-esque sax-magic on our salsa version of Cruel Summer. The record features the amazing Drew Birston on double bass and Mark Mariash on drums, as well as guests Adrean Farrugia (piano) and Michel Vequevevo (percussion)…quel excité, darlings!

This recording is different from Lenni’s previous releases in almost every way, yet at the same time it remains entirely in character and spirit. And if, like me, you can’t wait for early summer, Lenni and Alex McMaster are playing at Heliconian Hall tonight at 8; there will almost certainly be a Greatest Hit or two interspersed among many of Miss Jabour’s own lovely songs.

Poster advertising February 27 concert, 8pm at Heliconian Hall, Toronto

J marks the spot

For those who haven’t guessed already, the reason for my excursion to Toronto was to see Lenni Jabour. Had so much fun, but I’m not sure what I’m allowed to say publicly about the main event. Instead I’ll err on the side of caution and note the number of interesting people I met while I was there. Curiously, they’re all “J”s:

  • Jameson (aka “J”), a music producer and recording engineer who’s worked with a number of well-known and up-and-coming acts, including several to which I’ve got only one degree of separation. Cool guy, and a whiz (as I suppose one would expect) on both the 48-track board and Logic Pro.
  • Jane, a Juno Award-winning, Grammy-nominated Officer of the Order of Canada. I’ve been a fan of hers since I saw her at the Montreal International Jazz Festival several years ago, so it was cool to chat with her and listen to her play.
  • James, an English musician who’d arrived from London five hours earlier. He’d been flown in to play a concert the next night, based in part on the popularity one of his songs has gained by being featured on Smallville. When someone pointed out that the piano he was tinkling away on had been played by the likes of Oscar Peterson, he pulled back from the keyboard and just stared at his fingers in awe… which would’ve been my reaction too, if I’d had the nerve to touch it in the first place.

Also had a chance to catch up very briefly with Claire J and Jo-Ann, as well as non-“J” folks like Drew, Mark, Adrean, Michel, and Dylan… and, of course, Alex, who’ll also be playing with Lenni at the Heliconian in a few days.

WordPress extendedPing bug?

According to the weblogs.com XMLRPC ping API, the parameters to weblogUpdates.extendedPing are as follows, in order:

  • name of site
  • URL of site or RSS feed
  • the url of the page to be checked for changes
  • the URL of an RSS, RDF, or Atom feed
  • a name (or “tag”) categorizing your site content (optional)

However, WordPress sends only three parameters: site name, site URL, and RSS URL. This can be seen below:

$client->query('weblogUpdates.extendedPing', get_option('blogname'), $home, get_bloginfo('rss2_url') )

In other words, the page to be checked for changes (which most software fills with the new or updated permalink) is instead filled with the feed URL, and the feed URL is not provided at all.

This bit of code seems to be in all recent versions of WordPress; b2 was apparently okay. I’ve only been able to find one page that even suggests it’s a bug. Have all of the ping services out there just accepted this and worked around it? Or does WordPress wind up sending two pings (a failed extendedPing followed by a normal two-parameter ping) for every attempt?

What’s on

You ask, I tell:

  • 4-7 movies, usually automatic suggestions; currently Witness for the Prosecution, Caché, Akeelah and the Bee, 2046, Love in the Afternoon (1957), Stage Door, Bringing Up Baby
  • Season 3 of Slings and Arrows
  • A couple of episodes of Iron Chef and Iron Chef America
  • 15-20 episodes of Good Eats
  • Various clips of shows, e.g. Colin Mochrie’s self-referential appearance on Corner Gas and Stephen Colbert trash-talking the Sarnia Sting (Hey Sarnia: you suck, and so does Sting!)

There’s a reason I don’t have many series on there: although I record a lot of episodes, I tend to watch and delete them within a couple of days. But in the interest of completeness, here’s my list of scheduled programs, in no particular order:

  • The 4400
  • Good Eats
  • Family Guy
  • Smallville
  • Prison Break
  • House
  • Venture
  • Rick Mercer Report
  • Gilmore Girls
  • Corner Gas
  • The Unit
  • Veronica Mars
  • Las Vegas
  • Extras
  • Ed
  • Eureka
  • CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
  • Doctor Who
  • Lost
  • Just for Laughs
  • Ed’s Up
  • 30 Rock
  • Futurama
  • The National
  • The Simpsons
  • Little Mosque on the Prairie
  • Iron Chef America
  • Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
  • The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
  • The Colbert Report
  • Battlestar Galactica
  • MythBusters
  • The Office
  • Heroes
  • Marketplace
  • Scrubs
  • Late Show With David Letterman
  • Intelligence
  • Opening Night
  • Jericho
  • The Jane Show

Twenty questions

A fiery mouse with a wheel of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty ‘Hi-Yo Linux!’ Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear — the Quiz Arranger rides again!

  1. Who is Barbara Millicent Roberts?
  2. Onto what are Australians reputed to throw shrimp?
  3. What not-so-dynamic TV duo was played by Michael McKean and David Lander?
  4. Who recorded a cover of The Guess Who’s American Woman in 1999?
  5. What country claims Ankara as its capital?
  6. What is turducken?
  7. Name the band who had a Cruel Summer in 1983.
  8. Who was Badder than old King Kong / And meaner than a junkyard dog?
  9. What role have Eugene T. Maleska and Wil Shortz both held at the New York Times?
  10. Why did counter-espionage service MI5 investigate the Daily Telegraph newspaper in 1944?
  11. Who preceded Alex Trebek as the host of Jeopardy!?
  12. What Canadian game show used a version of Quincy Jones’s Soul Bossa Nova as its theme music?
  13. Who wrote the play Picasso at the Lapin Agile?
  14. Who played completely mental character Ed Grimley on SCTV?
  15. What English word comes from a Slovak term meaning drudgery or labour?
  16. What is the full English title of Karel Čapek’s 1920 play R.U.R.?
  17. What was the only equation printed in Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time?
  18. What is the common name given to an object that is smaller than its Schwarzschild radius?
  19. Who played Rawhide on CBC Radio?
  20. What comedy team performed The Shakespearean Baseball Game and Rinse the Blood off My Toga?

The questions above are inspired by events and conversations from the last couple of days. That little tidbit will be of absolutely no use to anyone, just thought I’d share.

To sweeten the pot this time around, I’m going to award a billion points to the winner. That’s right, a billion points. Beat that, Regis!