Web work

I’m currently involved, in one form or another, with the development or redevelopment of four websites. Every one of them is stalled in some way.

One, a simple reworking of an existing site, has received an exorbitant quote that’s in danger of being accepted.

One I’ve created myself from scratch, and I’m actually sort of proud of it. It’s completely live except for the home page, which redirects to one of the “social networking” sites, so in effect it doesn’t exist either… and still it’s the very first link for the subject out of the almost 2000 results that Google returns. That one’s been ready to go since Christmas, it’s just proven to be impossible to get the necessary people to review it, let alone approve of its publication; the way things have gone recently I’m wondering if I’ll ever be able to turn it on. Got an answer: nope.

I’ve offered to redevelop another—the live version of which has been dormant for two months—and I’ve even started building it “on spec” so it wouldn’t take as long to ramp up, but it’s been six weeks since I’ve heard anything about it. Movement today.

Worst of all, one is supposedly “live” but has been broken for over a month: links to the new functionality—which were the entire reason for the redevelopment—are pointing to an application that’s completely missing, a big step down from the incomplete version that was present the last time I was able to see it.

If I had more hair, I’d have less of it today.

CZLJ: All Lenni all the time

John asked for more Lenni content, and who am I to say no?

She’s just started a new blog (which takes the place of the old one).

She’s released two singles from her upcoming CD Greatest Hits: I Love Rock N’ Roll and Evil Ways.

She’s got a new MySpace URL, which is easier to tell people than the old one (finally).

She’s got more shows coming up in Paris.

And last, but in no way least, she’s posted this short film that she’s used to introduce her recent performances:

Music, videos

A couple of my favourite musicians have had videos posted to YouTube in the last week or so, and they’re coming to London in the next several weeks, so it seems like a good time to do some promotion.

The first is a solo artist who I met at this year’s OCFF conference, Catherine MacLellan. She just released a cool video for her song Too Easy, a song from her newest CD Wedding Bell Blues. I’ve watched the video closely several times and I think they might actually have done the whole thing practically; I’m not sure they’d have included the last 30 seconds if it wasn’t. Catherine is going to be performing here in town very soon, so maybe I’ll ask her then.

The second—through fifth!—of the artists are the Girls With Glasses, a quartet of southwestern Ontario-based singer-songwriters who have been performing together for four years. Their debut together on YouTube is a series of videos (starting here) from their recent performance at Aeolian Hall. Some of the video and sound quality leaves a bit to be desired, but the songs and performances more than stand up. Worth particular mention are two of Evalyn Parry‘s songs, The Stone and the Bumblebee, performed completely off-mic to take advantage of the hall’s amazing acoustics, and her spoken word piece Bottle This!, which forms the core of her campaign against bottled water. Evalyn’s going to be at the Music Club soon too… good thing I live so close!

(The original title of this post was Video shilled the radio star, but it’s been done… and shill has negative-enough connotations that it’s not worth the wordplay.)

Far miss

Lenni has been in Paris since July, and from all accounts is wowing the locals. Her residency at Les Blancs Manteaux, a charming little corner theatre that could only exist in the City of Lights, started in October, and has already earned a glowing review (en français, bien sûr). Yes, I’ve missed her.

But she’s back, in just two more sleeps, for a single performance before returning to Europe.

Needless to say, I’ll be there. Absence, as the saying goes….

Near miss

About three and a half months ago I met Karla Rexer, a local singer-songwriter. She performed mostly original songs, on guitar and piano, but the few covers she sang were different: if she hadn’t identified them as such, I’d have thought they were her own.

Karla recently started hosting a weekly artist showcase featuring a set by a different local musician each time; Stanley Mark Herr and Tanya MacLean stand out as favourites. She’s also got regular gigs around town, including being one of the Mongolian Grill’s Saturday Night Divas, and she’s preparing a CD for release next year.

Near misses

Like most people, I’ve got stories about meeting famous individuals, and it’ll surprise approximately none of the regulars here that most of those meetings came at music events. (At some point I’ll have to write about the experience of talking to a Canadian astronaut who was a guest performer at a gig.) Equally interesting, to me at least, are the near misses: they’re slightly higher on the scale than sightings, as there was potential for actual conversation.

The first I can remember is walking into Althouse College for a Holly Cole concert—the first I’d ever gone to by myself—and recognizing Steven Page and Tyler Stewart (from Barenaked Ladies) ahead of me in line. This was around the time of the Yellow Tape, and must have been before they’d gained notoriety for being barred from playing in Toronto due to their name, because as far as I could tell no one else there recognized them. Holly’s opening act did, though: they were Moxy Früvous, who were also starting out at the time, and in improvised lyrics for Blow Wind Blow they riffed on the idea that they were often confused for BNL because they both did “funny” songs, and pointed out Ty and Steve in the crowd as they sang the verse.

I had another near-miss with Steve Page just recently. My friend Bob invited me to see “Weird Al” Yankovic at Massey Hall, and as we were walking in one set of the front doors I realized that Steve was just entering through the next ones over. He was with his family, though, and I didn’t want to intrude on their night out, so I didn’t say hello.

The strangest venue for an almost-meeting has to be the Ontario Science Centre. I had taken a couple of days to go to Toronto to see Lenni (natch) and wound up with a free afternoon, so I decided to go to Body Worlds 2, which had recently opened. (If the name sounds familiar but you don’t remember why, let me refresh your memory: it’s a controversial travelling exhibit of actual human bodies that have been preserved using a process called plastination and then posed in configurations that highlight certain parts, such as muscle groups in various states of flex, internal organs, and so on.) I’d gotten about halfway around the main hall when I noticed a slim, dark-haired woman on the other side of the central display. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her. As I continued around the exhibits I caught sight of her a few more times, but it wasn’t until we got near the exit that I realized she was Sarah Harmer. Given the… unique… environment, it certainly didn’t seem like the right place to go up and be Joe Fanboy, so I refrained.

It was on the same trip that I managed to not invite Rachel McAdams to Lenni’s show as I passed her on Queen St. West near the Drake Hotel (where Lenni was performing). As with Sarah Harmer, I wasn’t quite sure who she was until it was too late; all I’d seen her in at that point was Slings and Arrows (in which she was great, by the way).

Walking in to the Centennial Concert Hall, performance space for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and seeing Jeff Goldblum playing the piano in the lobby was unexpected, to say the least. We found out later that he was there visiting his fiancée’s parents, and had somehow used his connections (his fiancée, Catherine Wreford, had trained with the RWB) to score the opportunity to perform and schmooze with the crowd who were there to see The Nutcracker. He wasn’t half-bad on the keys, either.

Perhaps the funniest, unintentionally, was an occurrence with a local celebrity—although that term might be overstating the case slightly. For reasons I can’t remember, I was at Bertoldi’s Trattoria here in London with my friend Jessie and her mother, and we’d gotten to talking about high school. I’ve written before about having played on my school’s Reach for the Top team, and I was opining at some length about how Alex Trebek was good and all on Jeopardy!—and had hosted the national edition of RFTT for several years—but the best quiz-show host I’d come across was Mark Lade, who’d been the quizmaster for the CFPL-TV version of Reach. (Yeah, I know how to impress the ladies; watch out George Clooney.) As we got up to leave the restaurant, out of the corner of my eye I saw something… no, someone… no… it couldn’t be…. Um, Jess… remember what we were talking about earlier? Look over in the corner… the tall guy in the sport jacket? That’s Mark Lade!

To this day I don’t know how long he’d been there, or if he heard me or not. I hope he did. 🙂

RRJ article on CBC and blogging

A couple of weeks ago I received an email out of the blue from Emerald Austerberry, a journalism student at Ryerson University. She was working on a story about blogs and journalism, specifically about the recently-released and much-discussed CBC blogging policy guidelines for Self-publishing and self-expression on the Internet. I told her I’d be willing to be an interview subject, and a few days later (after I cleared it with work—we’ve got understandable but slightly-paranoid rules about talking to the media) we talked for about half an hour about Planet CBC, the CBC Blogging Manifesto, the new policy, and some of the more outstanding supporters and critics of all things CBC. (And for the record, not once did she push me for juicy bits or inside information about TVWorks or anything else. Not all journalists should be tarred with the same brush used for sensationalist American media outlets.)

Emerald’s article was published today, and I think it’s a good summary of the history of and controversy over blogging at the CBC. Plus, I have to admit it’s kind of cool being name-checked alongside CBCers like Joe Mahoney and the mysterious Ouimet.

TVWorks blogging policy

This policy governs the publication by employees of TVWorks Canada Inc. and its related companies (“TVWorks“) of blogs and other on-line commentary on platforms such as Wiki’s and social networking sites such as Facebook (for ease of reference all called “blogs” on this policy).

In all the time I’ve been blogging I’ve been quiet about where exactly I work; it hasn’t been for fear of retribution or anything like that—it’s always been a cool place to work that way, and it’s not like I get all that controversial on even the worst of days—but just because I didn’t have much to say. I’m not sure I’ll have that much more to say now that we’ve got a blogging policy (based on Sun’s) but it’s nice to know that we’ve got an executive team who recognize that there are conversations out here—about OCAP, interactive television, cable and media in general—to start and to contribute to.

Oh yeah, before I forget: everything I post here is my own opinion and doesn’t represent the views of TVWorks or Major League Baseball.