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UnCon 2004 reviews/discussion

and there was a really nice echo in the shower room too :goof:

a locker room being available in the venue would've been useful. The food in the restarant was nice though
 
That doesn't bear thinking about...
 
I have snaps of EVERYONE. Heheheheheheheheheheheheheheheh..................
 
Bad luck anome, the ones in the pub on sunday night did come out. especially the bloke at our table that looked like Escargots ex without a beard.
 
psssst Pics of Anome here! Love you loooong time!
 
You!

Yes, you lot. Forteans at the back. Stop all this sniggering. If you've got photos to look at you can show them to the whole board.

Come on, cough up the Fortean totty. Male too if you like....

:)

Are you chewing? :sceptic:
 
Ravenstone said:
Anyway, don't forget there's Weird Weekend as well next August. You may get a sneak preview of Richard's Death Worm. Just ask him nicely and buy him a pint. Well, just ask him, actually....

Excuse my ignorance, but what is Weird Weekend please, thank you?

And Escargot. I don't think you got photos of everyone.

Did you?
 
I 'did' the audience, CIA style, several times, so yup, everyone. :D

I could put all my snaps, good & bad, onto ofoto and then everyone can see them in the privacy of their own pooters.

They will be quite small that way as ofoto resizes them so if anyone really dislikes a pic of themselves it will only be tiny, and if they like it they can pm me for the original.

There are of course some humiliating pics of me in there too so I haven't got off entirely lightly. ;)
 
Very rare sighting at pre-Uncon gathering.
A Red faced lovebird talking to a Bluefaced drunken bum
 
Swan, why are you holding a miniature Stormtrooper's head?
 
wonkydog said:
Excuse my ignorance, but what is Weird Weekend please, thank you?

the Weird weakend is an anual 3 day event like uncon held in exeter in the south west of england, aranged by the CFZ. I've not been yet but it's on my definate list for next year.
Here's the link to the last one which was held last august: http://www.cfz.org.uk/conferences/weirdweekend/ww2004/index.htm
 
Okay, I'm lagging badly, being in transit for the past several hours.

I liked the Bird-footed women talk, I liked the Indian Rope Trick and I liked Ken Campbell. Not sure I followed 100% of his talk because I was fascinated by the fact that I could see his aura. That's one of maybe 6 people in my life whose auras I can see, so he appealed, at least to that extent. Mum loved the Jan Bondeson book I got her, I guess I inherited my fondness for Forteana from her.

It was lovely meeting everyone. Some people look like their avatars and some people don't, but everyone is very much like their on line personalities.

Trip home was interesting, to say the least. I sat next to a nice looking but chauvinistic Roumanian who decided to cop a feel when I dozed off after lunch. I complained to the steward who couldn't exactly toss him off the plane... and the plane was nearly full. Final solution was an empty seat between us and me watching eight hours of movies to stay awake.
 
welcome back fallen, you made a great hostess may i say?
 
Fallen Angel said:
Trip home was interesting, to say the least. I sat next to a nice looking but chauvinistic Roumanian who decided to cop a feel when I dozed off after lunch. I complained to the steward who couldn't exactly toss him off the plane... and the plane was nearly full. Final solution was an empty seat between us and me watching eight hours of movies to stay awake.

I am suprised they didn't make more effort to help a single woman travelling on her own - if only to cover their collective asses. I'm sure some guy would have been happy to swap if they'd asked round!!

And throwing people off the plane is always an option ;)

You just open and close the door really quickly to keep as much air in as possible.
 
The Yithian said:
My favourite second-year junior school teacher was called Mr Claw. Top chap and interested in the Knights of St. John/Malta...

That would be too much of a coincidence. And it would make you quite aged by now.

edit: Broadstairs? He was living in Kent... :eek:

I'm, ahem, only just 36. Haven't lived in Kent that long. I may be a Templar and I've been to Maltab but that's it. School was very traumatic for everyone involved when I was there. How old is aged?
 
Yup Emps, being thrown off a moving train is possible too. And painful. :eek:

I was only reading aloud from a chapter of my memoirs! :mad:
 
You weren't wearing that top you had on Sunday, were you, Fallen?

I'm surprised also, given the current fear of public liability, etc that they didn't do more about it.

Well, I'm off to find somewhere to sleep, probably outside London. Anyone have any suggestions?
 
Belatedly, and in the interests of providing feedback to the FT Powers That Be, my recap of UnCon2004:

Location: Living in West London, the Commonwealth Institute was always easy to get to. The Quaker building however is just as easy to get to and much more convenient for those coming from afar. So thumbs up there.

Facilities: the cheap tea and coffee was much appreciated as were the sturdy but cheap meals from downstairs. Although I wish the breakfast or lunch hours were longer, there's plenty of other places nearby. The sales tables were not as interesting as previous years, with the corridors were not amenable to lingering in. A dedicated sales room next time?

Theatre: Not bad, but prone to heating up as the day went on. Combined with the darkness, this made it easy to fall asleep. The sound was a bit variable around the auditorium, with it being easier to hear in some places than others. More volume next time, please? The AV problems were obvious to all. Also, when the OHP was used, the projection was often to small for those of us at the back of the room. It was a pity when there was no time for questions, because that's often the most interesting part.

Schedule: I always liked the old two-stream Uncon setup - lets you skip out of duff talks to see something else. This time instead, I just went to lunch. While I enjoyed UnCon as ever, there was a feeling of the same set of speakers showing up. More variety in the future?

Speakers:

Perhaps I becoming curmudgeonly from too many years in academia, but I'm growing intolerant of poorly presented talks. Guys, we appreciate what you're doing - but we're also paying for it. Decide what you're going to say become you get up there. Practice it. Make some decent visual aids. Powerpoint and Keynote are dead easy to use. Learn how to use Photoshop to bring some contrast to those dark, grimy pictures and resize them so we can see what's going on.

In no particular order:

Gail-Nina Anderson (bird-footed women): A good fun talk. The trick was that she wasn't actually talking about her supposed subject (the Byrnie plaque) but using that as an excuse to talk about other interesting things, which threw me off for a while.

Marina Warner (ectoplasm): it took me some time to warm to this talk, presented in such an academic manner. But by the end I thought she'd made some really good points (if the air is full of invisible but detectable forces, why not assume there are a few more?), and she was a different speaker and different type of speaker so that was good.

Ken Campbell: I've seen him ever time he's appeared at UnCon, giving almost exactly the same (albeit funny) talk. Didn't need to see him again, so I didn't bother.

Ian Simmons (skinwalkers): Soldiering bravely through a nasty cold, Ian gave what for me was the most interesting talk, a classical fortean piece. If this was in FT, I must have missed it.

Paul Deveraux (rant): A tedious haranguing of the audience that obscured a few interesting stories. Despite his repeated claim that he had facts not anecdotes, what he presented was pure anecdote. My sympathies are with the supposedly scientific establishment that is trying to crush him. I would have liked to have heard more about the telepathy machine, the Octopus.

Jan Bondeson (dauphin, kasper hauser): Jan is always intriguing and erudite. This time was no exception. I had missed the DNA testing of Kasper Hausers blood, so that was especially interesting. It's a pity the booktable ran out of copies of that book.

Andy Roberts (50s ufos): I missed the start of this talk which I regret because the last half was great fun. But maybe lose the blurry overheads and do some slides next time, please?

Lloyd Pye (starchild fundraising): A talk of two parts. The starchild material was far more interesting MONEY than I would have expected, although their DONATE research is clearly being thwarted by their approach. As said elsewhere, if they went to forensic anthropologists CASH in the right way, they'd love to examine and analyse this thing. GIVE ME YOUR DOLLARS. As it is, there were a myriad of interesting features they'd discovered but had neither the time or money to pursue.

(And if the skeletons are 900 years old, and were found in a mine, does that mean that they were in a pre-Columbian mine? Or were they supposed to have been moved there?)

His introductory piece on the "hobbits" was regretable. Stating that everyone else is wrong and you know absolutely that your theory is right but don't have the time or inclination to present your evidence ... does not constitute a persuasive argument.

Peter Lamont (Indian rope trick): What's not to like? Great stuff.

CFZ: It looks like I'm in a minority of one, but just for once, I'd like to see a CFZ talk that didn't look like someone's shambolic commentary on their holiday snaps. If I was a donor, and and this was really their annual report, I'd be angry because it doesn't display any systematic or professional approach to their work. (Go somewhere, complain about food, fail to find cryptid, complain about weather, wander off to look for second cryptid, fail to find it, complain about terrain. "But just as we were about to leave we met a guy in a bar who said he'd seen it!")

Alan Alford (singing pyramids): Another talk that was more interesting than I expected. His thesis is highly speculative, but there were lots of interesting facts in there.

Lionel Fanthorpe (templar thingies): Lionel gives a good fun talk - but this time he seemed to start in the middle of things. Although I though I knew a lot about the Templars, I had trouble following it. This was a sin of several speakers - assuming the audience had just finished cramming up on the FT back-catalogue and so knew all the background to their talks. A bit more introduction next time.

Gary Lachman (italian mystics): An interesting talk presented in a somewhat unsympathetic manner. If the slides had been synced to the talk, it would have been much better, although I hope that this wasn't the start of a future trend - simply presenting your FT articles as a talk.

Peter Brookesmith: went for lunch and a breather because his program blurb said nothing about his talk, instead ranting on about guns. Oh yeah, that's going to draw me in ...

Is that all? It seemed like there were so many talks. Looking forward to next year ...
 
anome said:
...

Well, I'm off to find somewhere to sleep, probably outside London. Anyone have any suggestions?
Ivinghoe Youth Hostel Georgian house in picturesque village, ideal for the Ridgeway, Chilterns and Whipsnade

Address
High Street, Ivinghoe,
Buckinghamshire
LU7 9EP

Phone:
Within UK
0870 770 5884
Outside UK
(+44) 1296 668251

Fax:
(+44) 1296 662903

Email:
[email protected]


How do you get to this Youth Hostel:
In village centre, next to church and opposite the village green on B489.

Bus information:
Arriva The Shires 61 Aylesbury - Luton (passes close BR Aylesbury & BR Luton).

Train information:
Cheddington 2 1/2m.

Ferry information:


National Express:
Luton 8 miles

It might be closed, though!

Check out some of the other regional http://www.yha.org.uk/Stay_at_YHA/Regional/South_East_England.html
 
Thanks for that, but I think I've sorted it out, now.

Disorganised? Me?
 
The YHA hostels are usually reasonably priced and have the bonus of usually being situated in really nice locations.

;)
 
There is a YHA hostel in Rotherhithe, it's just around the corner from where I used to live and is in a lovely area next to a nice big pub and close to zone 2 Canada Water station. There are loads of places to stay in Tuffnell Park (again zone 2 and a nice enough area) or have you considered going to Victoria, jumping on a train to Brighton and getting an out-of-season B and B and a bit of bracing sea air? Brighton is a nice place to relax of an evening, grab a fish supper and some Jagermeister and sit with a good book. Plus the Lanes are nice. And it's about an hour out of London.

If you end up in Rotherhithe, go to the Mayflower pub (it's a bit of a trek from the hostel but so worth it) and eat at the nice Vietnamese place in Surrey quays (about 15 mins walk from the hostel but again worth it). Let me know if you need addresses.
 
The Carpenters Arms in Rotherhythe is a nice little boozer ... I lived in the area for a year or three so I know of the important "facilities".

Anome - I'd offer you the use of my sofa for a few days but my cats would be so intrigued they'd use you as a chaise longe. They've not met that many Aussies!

For a wild and wacky break go to the Isle of Wight. I'd recommend the Wheatsheaf Hotel in Newport and as an added bonus, there's a Fortean Society!
 
The romance of the place...

Many a weekend spent playing pool, drinking. My flat mate started going out with the barmaid there, married, kiddie, divorce ... the usual pattern
*sigh*
So romantic, innit?
 
Steer clear of the Ship. Now THAT'S a scary boozer. I'll never forget karaoke night...
 
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