Well, the votes are all in - I managed to get home a day earlier than expected.

Drum roll: Congratulations to Ang Rosin!

I want to thank everyone involved for taking part in such a short notice race - it was a great race and I think we managed to raise a bit of a buzz. Most importantly, with your efforts we managed to raise GBP368, and the League of Fan Funds donated another GBP550.

Thanks to all of you GUFF stands at a very healthy GBP2800 or so and we've secured its' future for at least the next two or three races.

THANK YOU.

Pat McMurray

Gakked from DMW

Convergence 2, the 46th Australian National Science Fiction Convention, will be held from June 8 to June 11, 2007.

Conspiracy 2, the 28th National Science Fiction Convention of New Zealand, will be held the weekend before, from June 1 to June 4, 2007.

GUFF 2007 will convey some European fan or fans to Convergence 2, and support other Australasian fannish travel, barring force majeure.

To nominate, arrange to send a bond of GBP10 or EUR15 together with the names of three nominators in Europe and two nominators in Australasia to Pat McMurray or Damien Warman. Please convey your intent to be nominated as soon as possible, but no later than February 9, 2007. If you don't know how to contact Pat or me, comment here or look at my info page.

Voting deadlines will be announced when a complete ballot is available. In the absence of at least two different real persons being nominated for the fund, the race will be held over until 2008.

If you have any queries or would like more information or assistance with nominating, being nominated, or would like to donate to the fund, please do not hesitate to contact either me or Damien.
............................

I'll be at the Ton, my address is Pat McMurray, 9 Corcorans Brentwood Essex CM15 9NR, and if you can't use either of those, email me at pcmcmurray at yahoo dot co dot uk with your details and we'll sort the money later....

Anybody fancy a cuppa?

I gakked this from ruthi, who got it from superflow

crisper wrote:

A few months ago, I had a dream in which LiveJournal and everyone on it went completely nuts for a day. The entire world had turned upside-down and inside-out and nobody was their normal self anymore. And it was such a good read, that I think it should happen for real.

January 27th is the birthday of Lewis Carrol, author of ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. Alice fell down a rabbit hole into a place where everything had changed and none of the rules could be counted on to apply anymore. I say, let's do the same: January 27th, 2005 should be the First Annual LiveJournal Rabbit Hole Day. When you post on that Thursday, instead of the normal daily life and work and news and politics, write about the strange new world you have found yourself in for the day, with its strange new life and work and news and politics. Are your pets talking back at you now? Has your child suddenly grown to full adulthood? Does everyone at work think you're someone else now? Did Bush step down from the White House to become a pro-circuit tap-dancer? Did Zoroastrian missionaries show up on your doorstep with literature in 3-D? Have you been placed under house arrest by bizarre insectoid women wielding clubs made of lunchmeat?

Let's have a day where nobody's life makes sense anymore, where any random LJ you click on will bring you some strange new tale. Let's all fall down the Rabbit Hole for 24 hours and see what's there. It will be beautiful.

I've been putting a few hundred items on Ebay, and there's a few thousand to follow. Mostly books, but also magazines, CDs, DVDs, etc. I've got a lot of stuff in storage where it's doing nobody any good and costing me money, so this seemed a good plan.

Obviously if you know me and see me regularly we can do the cash and personal delivery stuff, thus saving us both costs...

Ebay: pcmcmurray47ji

There's a song from the last decade, something about being in love with a checkout girl. Have very vague memory it might have been a US band, but have no real idea. Any suggestions?

It's starting to drive me bananas, bananas in pyjamas.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Name: McMURRAY
Initials: P
Nationality: United Kingdom
Rank: Private
Regiment: Highland Light Infantry
Unit Text: 5th Bn.
Date of Death: 05/06/1918
Service No: 201416
Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead
Grave/Memorial Reference: Old Ground. 188.
Cemetery: NEWBOLD (ST. JOHN) CHURCHYARD 

Don't know his full name, don't even know his age.

He's buried in what seems a peaceful place though.

When you see this, post some poetry in your journal...

MANAGUA 6:30 PM

In the afternoons the neon lights are sweet
and the mercury lights, pale and beautiful...
and the radio tower's red star
in Managua's sky at dusk
is as pretty as Venus
and an ESSO advertisement is like the moon

the little red lights of the cars are mystical
(the soul is like a girl being kissed behind a car)
TACA BUNGE KLM SINGER
MENNEN HTM GOMEZ NORGE
RPM SAF OPTICA SELECTA
they proclaim the glory of God!
(Kiss me beneath the luminous advertisements O God)
KODAK TROPICAL RADIO F&C REYES
in many colors
they spell your Name.
"They transmit
the news..."
Another meaning
I do not know
I do not defend the cruelties of these lights
and if I were to give testimony about my epoch
it would be this: It was barbaric and primitive
but poetic.

Ernesto Cardenal
--trans. Steven F. White

Current Mood: calm

Ok we start with some elderly Mac software and a piece of hardware.

( System 9 and below. )

OK, this was a good film.

It was fun, lots of shots of keira not wearing very much and looking simultaneously danegerous and sexy...

The history was complete crap, and I think that the film would be much better without the history bollocks...

Further to this posting about the Memory Hole Annex, we've come up with a better plan than lumbering one individual with it.

I had a long discussion at the weekend with timill and we have come up with what appears to be a more workable solution.

Really, the whole thing is too much of a responsibility for one person and I should have been trying to come up with some better organisation long before now! The current thinking is to create a small committee - five or seven people - to take on the responsibility, manage the collection, cataloguing, arrange storage. I'd certainly be a member for at least the first year, and we have three volunteers already in Tim, Farah Mendlesohn and John Holden.

The collection is about 70% catalogues, and is actually quite well packed already.

So I suppose, in the absence of volunteers to take the entire thing, who would like to be on a small committee?

Does anyone know of a restaurant in London that does laksa?

I've never had it, but it's supposed to be some sort of Malaysian or Indonesian spicy soup, and it's supposed to be pretty good. It appears to hold the same role in Australian gastronomy as Chicken Tikka Masala does in English gastronomy.

If you do know anywhere, we should make up a party and go try it!

Current Mood: calm

So the screen on my T2 has stopped responding.

The real problem is that it's password protected, so I can't do a backup unless I can enter the password.

I've done a soft reset, and stuck it in the charger. I have a keyboard which must be in storage, but I needed to go there anyway.

If I have to go all the way to a hard reset, well, that's not so bad. I'd lose some notes and things, but the only thing I'd have trouble with is that I have an interview on Monday, and can remember where but not when...

Anyone got any interesting or useful suggestions?

Current Mood: geeky

So there's this SF book meme doing the rounds again. See for example: Dr Pete's Journal

Let's make this easy. I've read all except one of the books on the list:

83. Upanishads, by Various

Which I had never heard of, but shall now read.

Didn't realise I was so well read :-)

For just over a decade now, I've been building a collection of SF Convention Memorabilia. This is all the stuff that a convention produces - PRs, Program Books, badges, Newsletters, shirts, souvenirs and toys, signs, mugs, artwork - just about anything along those lines. The majority of it is UK convention stuff, stretching back to the 1930s, but there is a serious collection of Worldcon stuff, as well as lots of other stuff from Europe and all over the world.

I've never considered it to be a personal collection, more something held in trust for UK fandom. For various complicated reasons I find that I can no longer take care of it and I'm looking for a successor to take over the collection. It's grown quite large, some three cubic metres, so someplace to keep it is always a challenge.

Feel free to circulate this request to anyone who might be interested.

Conditions:
1. You must be a UK fan.
2. You must take all the collection, within the next few months.
3. You must promise to pass it on to someone appropriate when the time comes.

No other conditions; when it's yours, it's yours. If you want to see it before committing, get in touch. The collection is currently in storage in Croydon.

If no-one is interested the SF Foundation would seem a logical home...

I like it. Ow. I'm sorry.

Ripped verbatim from strangedave:

For those who haven't got it via Neil Gaimans blog or metafilter.

I can tell you what it is. It is Pulps "Common People" being covered by Ben Folds and William Shatner (apparently Joe Jackson is in there too).

I can't tell you why. I'm not sure anyone can adequately explain why.

You can get it in Quicktime or Windows Media

Following up on my earlier comments the website is at http://www.pfe.gov.uk/ and the document can be downloaded from there.

Which Jhonen Vaquez character are you? By EmReznor.