Archive for February, 2008
Ottawa Budget 2008
Previous years budgets:
This year? More of the same, but a couple of twists.
Miscommunication: ” Cc everyone on this list with these 12 Word files. What? You mean you cc’d everyone on the list with those Word files?”
Confusion: ”The absorption system will accept doc, rtf and body text files, but I’m sorry the absorption system will not accept doc files.”
However, I swaggered around and shot some picsh of the same kinds of stuff again as in previous years: Journalists interviewing journalists. Journalists concentrating incredibly hard. That sort of thing. I was really paying attention to the video and sound guys this time, with those poor sound guys looking like little hang-dog puppies tethered to their mummies holding the betacams. I shot a lot of those guys:
But there is always other cool stuff going on. This year the biz was held in the old train station in Ottawa, which had these great columns on sides of the main room that were basically for display, and unintentionally useful for coiling cables:
Trouble was, the columns turned out to be HOLLOW. Figures….
And here is a Ken Danby homage:
This was, I thought, a particularly egregious use of public funds and hugely misleading in an emergency, until I noticed it referred to the 40 foot long painting above my head and not the fire alarm. I especially liked that the piece was called “Escalation” and had a fire alarm beneath it.
I thought this guy in the Global TV room had the right idea by reading Stephen King. The whole event’s a bit of a horror show anyway:
The Globe and Mail always has a scrum for its people, about 2 hours into the budget to see where the ground lies and who is going to focus on what story:
This guy told me I couldn’t take pictures in this area. But this was after I watched him sit like this for five minutes and had the sound of my shutter wake him up. I suggested he sic the RCMP on me if he felt like it:
And just what the heck does this thing do?
Your CBC tax dollars hard at work in the CBC video control room. Note token arty type in the rear, complete with major grump on. The vets were cheerful anyway:
And here is a pano of the main room full of journalistic fervour and Canadian earnest…itude:
Enroute to Ottawa by train… Well, don’t you wonder what happens if that lever gets pulled?
Chillin’, literally. The space between the train cars was more comfortable than the too-warm first class car.
Finn-binn
As Carrie was out today taking Owen to a birthday party of a friend of his, Finn and I were going to do our usual ice cream together and take some pictures (she has a Barbie camera she got for her birthday). Â However, not only could I not find my wallet and so we stayed home. Â I have been less than keen anyway to buy film again and am now on the hunt for an inexpensive digital camera for her. Â She and I have had fun taking pictures together. Â She’s shot two rolls so far. But sadly, the back was opened during the second roll, but someone who may very well have been her brother, ahem.
Nevertheless, we sallied forth into the snow anyway (I found my wallet later, this evening) and had some fun despite snow managing to get into her boots somehow. Â It cheered us both up to be outside and ruddy-cheeked in the sun. Â It sure feels like we haven’t seen the sun for quite some time. Â Amazing the difference it makes to feel it on your skin – even if the wind does its best to smother the warmth with chill.
Â
Forthwith, then:
Federal Budget media lockup – 2007
In the interests of continuity and showing colleagues themselves on the web, I present here some nearly year-old images taken while sequestered in the media lockup in Ottawa during the budget hand-down in the House of Commons. I posted some images from the 2006 hand-down here, and was asked about last year’s images by a colleague and present them, rather hastily, forthwith.
I didn’t take nearly as many as the year before, 2006.
I go up to the 2008 hand-down this coming Monday, taking the train. The paper sends us first class on the train, which works out to be cheaper than cattle class on the plane, and the train terminal is closer to Ottawa’s downtown than the airport anyway.
This is what the government in Canada thinks of you: You have to aspire to the greatness of yourself, instead of respecting who you are right now.
The lockup is a big room for 200-plus journalists. once you go in, you can’t come out until the embargo is lifted because you are presented with the full text and graphics of the government’s budget plan hours in advance of its tabling in the House of Commons to allow journalists to write their stories and make graphics about the data. This allows a even keel for all journalists to file their stories and graphics at a single, common moment – 4pm.
I could enlarge that type for you, if you like…
Bad idea to interrupt your boss when he’s reading the house organ.
IT tech Kathy working out the byzantine network model for PCs.
IT tech Susan waiting out the 6 hours of jaw-dropping boredom, but mentally tense for the 10 minutes of panic right at the end as the information embargo is lifted.
Never, ever, interrupt a Flash artist at work on budget stuff while in the throes. He might bite.
Crib notes from a journalist to a graphics editor.
The RCMP using binoculars to keep an eye on all us journalists – the great unwashed. Fuckers.
Parliament buildings, as seen from the window of the Globe and Mail’s Ottawa bureau.
On Bones…
Recently, Carrie and I decided to have our family visit a chiropractor and have a look at our collective bone alignments and such. Traditionally, I have been quite chiropractor-averse; assuming them to be charlatans solely interested in hooking up a vacuum cleaner to your pocket and sucking out the monetary contents. I am still in favour of this belief. See news reports on chiropractic methods here, and here, that tend to throw the practice in a dim light.
However, that being said, we will follow through with a visit or two to see how this plays out. Both Carrie and I and the kids have now been for an initial consultation followed by xrays for both Carrie and I. The people in the office seem especially earnest, perhaps even slightly maniacally so. But this may have been from Carrie tipping my hand when she and the kids visited first by suggesting that when I visited I might be somewhat skeptical. Perhaps they are just true believers in the practice and unbelievers in conventional medicine.
The most interesting part so far has been comparing Carrie’s and my xrays, which revealed to our uneducated eyes interesting differences in male and female bone structure – particularly in the hips, the most obvious area to discern differences. But note below the differences in the Neck side view; Carries spine seems to be compressed, but perhaps it is supposed to be that way through her genetic makeup? And so for your delectation:
