7/29/2005 07:55:00 PM|||James O'Malley|||Today, Heather and I went to the BBC News and Sport on Tour "tent" that has been put up in the middle of Leicester. Why? I'm a big TV Pres nerd. What's that? I erm... like to watch the news and take an interest in the graphics, and the technical side of tv (predominantly news) production.
Getting to Leicester, and to Heather was a problem. I had this conversation when I got to the train station:
Me: Can I have a return to Leicester please?
Ticketmonkey: No.
Slightly taken aback by his apparent rudeness, I stood in silence, mentally urging him to explain his actions. He explained that there had been a security alert at Leicester station, and that it had been evacuated. He recommended that that I take a bus. Oo-er, I thought. I think this somewhat distasteful link explains why I was slightly unnerved by his suggestion. Nevertheless, I pressed on, I had a mission. The mission was to spend the day with Heather doing BBC things.
It worked out better in the end- I caught a bus, Heather got on the same bus at a different stop, and we ended up in Leicester at the same time and place.
Upon arrival at the BBC tent, there was an awful lot going on- there were people having a go at making a news bulletin, making a web page, radio presenting, all mixed in with the "go digital" sales pitch, "we're not only about London" propaganda, and hundreds, and hundreds of over-friendly BBC staff looking to make us love them. Seriously- there was probably one BBC member of staff for every member of the public.
I got talking to a sports journalist, who told me about the CPS ("content production system") the BBC use, hoping to steal some ideas for PKMN.NET's CMS ("content management system"). I think the less motivational-sounding title of my content system reflects my work ethic a bit. From here, I was referred to a BBC technical bloke, who explained in more depth about the technical setup. Apparently, the BBC News online website had originally been made exclusively in dream weaver, before they'd moved on to their own custom system. All dead interesting stuff!
Of course, Heather was probably bored to tears.
I booked myself in to have a go at vision mixing a bit later in the day, and we went to Pizza Hut. Partially because it provided a reasonably nice setting for me to give Heather her birthday presents, and partially because I was hungry. Mainly because I was hungry.
We were both somewhat surprised to find that the Pizza Hut we'd been to at least twice before had an upstairs section- whilst perhaps not the most explosive revelation of the day, it was certainly the first or second most surprising. The first floor struck me as an afterthought- as it was almost like they'd built two Pizza Huts on top of each other, as they had seperate kitchens.
This is the best bit of the day- when Heather recieved her presents. I'd planned it precisely, perhaps out of my own sick desire to see Heather try and cover up absolute shock and dislike with a friendly smile. She rightfully didn't let me film her reaction to the presents, so I could go through frame by frame at a later time, and watch her frown turn into a forced smile.
She started with the pig lighter.
Maybe this was a mistake? I didn't go as far as saying "I saw this and thought of you", but it still felt like a bad idea as she tore apart my absymally wrapped gift.
She was certainly surprised- although perhaps not as much as she could have been. I'd previously asked her if she liked pigs, and if she likes fire, as two seperate questions. Surely combining her two obviously greatest interests into one fantastic gift couldn't fail?
"I like it... it's just a bit weird" (paraphrasing).
Next up, the book. This seemed to go down quite well. I then paused, leading her into believing that it was all I had bought. Then, with no prior warning, I produced the necklace in the world's campest gift bag. (It was pink).
"Oh, thank you", she kept saying. I'm not very good at the social situations, so I've no idea if this is being polite or was genuine delight on her part. Judge for yourself. I'm going to think it was the latter, to justify the price I paid for what is essentially a lump of metal. It wasn't even upgradable! The firmware was fixed! As far as I'm aware, it isn't compatible with any of the leading IEEE technical standards- no bluetooth, no firewire, no USB! I'll be honest, if I recieved a small necklace for my birthday, I'd be pretty dissappointed, and probably visibly so. However, Heather, being female and perhaps thankfully not entirely like me (she passes exams), seemed to like it.
Things were going well- perhaps the only thing that went wrong, aside the whole "Leicester station cordoned off with armed police, police tape and flashing lights and everything", was the fact that I'd bought Heather's birthday card with me, but I'd failed to actually write it. Whoops! I'm hoping the fabulous pig lighter cancels this error on my part out.
In my defence, I'd remembered whilst sitting in bed, reading Blair's Wars, last night that I needed to:
a) Write Heather's Card, using a nice pen, perhaps my Pen Island pen.
b) Transfer some money from my savings account to my current account through Natwest Online Banking
c) Put the Whitmore and Punk-O-Rama CDs I bought yesterday on my MP3 player.
Guess which two of the three tasks I completed. Just to clarify, this isn't a demonstration of what I consider important. At least conciously.
After apologising on this, and reminding Heather of all the good I've done for humanity, and all the nice gifts I've bought her (pig lighter), I managed to move the conversation on to other things.
Later in the day, we returned to the BBC News on Tour thing, where I had a go at vision mixing. Heather nearly had a go at reading the news on radio, but the five year old who booked a go hours earlier turned up and deseated her. She couldn't pronounce Al Quaeda correctly. The five year old I mean, not Heather.
When it got to my turn as a vision mixer, after bothering the BBC staff with yet more technical questions about caption generation, and telling them about my bluescreen exploits, I got to use some sort of control panel with lots of buttons on to cut and mix between four different video sources- TX1 and TX2, both video tapes, the news camera and weather camera. The BBC man seemed somewhat unimpressed when I suggested a star wipe between the titles and the presenter. I think it went well considering that I'm a n00b- I only went wrong once, and that was cutting to something when I should have just put it on standby.
I'm sure Heather enjoyed standing about for ages watching me muck about with BBC equipment.
It turns out we were both in the background for 10-15 seconds during a live report on East Midlands Today's lunchtime bulletin. The presenter walked right past us, so we must have been really quite visible. JD texted me immediately to let us know, and it also turns out that we've been seen by others too. This just adds yet another layer of cement to the brick based structure that is my celebrity career.
Overall, I had a lovely day- I hope Heather did too. I mean, I would if I recieved a pig lighter for my birthday.|||112266678060226210|||BBC News on Tour