| Osvald Hotz De Baar 2008-03-13, 9:26 am |
| On Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:51:24 +0000, Osvald Hotz De Baar
<curtains4U@upthorpe.farm.com> wrote:
>On Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:11:28 +0000, Osvald Hotz De Baar
><curtains4U@upthorpe.farm.com> wrote:
>
>
>PS: I'm trying to contact someone who has been trying to contact me
>can anyone help?
>
>C Bell & Sons
>Church Farm
>Church Street
>North Kelsey
>Market Rasen
>Lincolnshire
>LN7 6EQ
>Tel: 01652-678396
>
>Who also turns out to be our little sock puppet bully DingDong itself
>
>David George Bell
>Church Farm Church Street
>North Kelsey Lincolnshire LN7 6EQ
>Tel: 01652 678396
>
>So BellBoy what was it you were planning to do to me if you had the
>balls?
>
>Speaking of bullies masquerading as someone else. What's this rubbish
>all about?
>
>You may well be even weirder than Moody after all.
>
> **********************
Lots of insight here about just how weird you are
http://tinyurl.com/3cnrbb
David Bell
In smaller doses, better focused on a topic, D West is a lot more
readable. I am not sure that the system he proposes is really
practical, but asking the members of a con is better than some of the
methods I have experienced. Implicit in his scheme is the necessity of
contacting the membership after the con, to tell them what happened.
After three years, all I have heard of the forgotten promises of the
Albacon '88 committee has been through you. I cannot see a cinema seat
in Glasgow as an adequate replacement for what was promised and,
despite the opportunity afforded by Speculation, nothing seems to have
been done to consult the convention membership. Strictly, I suppose,
the money left over from Albacon '88 was not a surplus. It could be
argued that the committee had made a contract with the members, which
they had not yet fulfilled. Legal phrases such as ultra vires come to
mind.
At least the Speculation surplus is being spent to benefit fandom. The
Award is a good thing, a balance to the historical domination of
fandom by fanzine fans. Fans Across The World is something for all
fans, everywhere, rather than an incidental benefit to a few film
freaks in Glasgow. I'm angry, and bitter, and I feel cheated. Fandom
isn't all sweetness and light, but I have never before had cause to
think that fans could be so dishonest.
David Bell
I think you might get comments on fire alarms from convention members
with practical experience. I think it was a Trek con in Leeds, or
maybe Bradford. There is already a song about it. Two things stick in
my mind. The Hotel was cleared in record time, and the insurance
premium was cut as a result. Also, one less obvious problem was that
of parents attending programme items while children were "safely" in
their hotel rooms. Like the deaf, it is something worth checking on.
As far as I have been able to find out, I can build my own computer
without breaking the law. I may, and I haven't been able to get a
definite answer, be breaking the Electricity At Work Regulations if I
change a plug on the farm's electric drill. Past experience, when the
farming press didn't seem able to look up what a Sievert is during the
Chernobyl affair, suggests that Andy Croft could be nearer the reality
than Farmer's Weekly. I hope he is. This may be behind what I have
heard of a media con which is planned for a holiday camp. Apparently
there are strict rules about who does what, especially such things as
PA systems and projection TV. My informant suggested it was an
agreement with the unions, but it could be a consequence of these
regulations. Hopefully, the existing on-site equipment will be
adequate. I would think that hotels are more used to organisations
booking space and bringing such specialised equipment as cine
projectors, but it could become another problem in making a deal.
David Bell
Technical Response to Chuck Conner: The LHArc software he refers to is
now available as version 2.13 and it is pretty good. Except for
compression time, it is better than PKZIP, and it is free. PKZIP is
apparently being upgraded, and a new version should be available by
the time the next Conrunner appears. LHA.EXE went through several
rapid changes, fixing bugs, and it may be wise to let other people
discover the bugs in any new version of PKZIP, especially if it is
being used to back-up files.
DISKCOPY will copy everything on a floppy disk, including any deleted
files, and I think it is the best way of backing-up files which can be
kept on a single floppy disk. COPY does have the advantage he
describes, but on a single-floppy machine, like mine, there is more
potential for making a bad mistake. I don't know what other operating
systems might have, but MS-DOS XCOPY has some useful options.
Incidentally, for the ultimate in fannish data disasters, I know of
one American media group which folded because the committee's home was
destroyed in a forest fire. Whatever form a conventions records are
kept in, not having a copy in a safe place is a big risk.
David Bell
Joseph Nicholas does not appear to know what he is talking about, but
at least he writes in a clear style. I think he tends towards the
common mistake of confusing the terms "fanzine" and "fannish fanzine",
but it is an error found wherever there are fanzines, each enthusiast
defining "fanzine" on the basis of their own enthusiasm.
"Of course not..." he says, "...filkers don't mix with fanzine fans.
Just as gamers don't mix with fanzine fans, and costumers don't mix
with techies, and so on." He is so very definite about this, so much
so that his argument would collapse when faced with a single
counter-example. Whatever his own experience, the most that he can
claim is that some filkers don't mix with some fanzine fans, and so
on.
So here is the counter evidence. I am a filker. So is Pat Silver. Yet
here we are, with letters printed in what Joseph Nicholas himself
calls a fanzine. More than that, to my own certain knowledge, at least
fifteen fanzine issues have been edited, or co-edited, by filkers in
1991. He ignores the evidence of several fanzines which I know he has
received, because he sent me LoCs on them. Note that I am not
including filk-specific fanzines. It is harder to refute his claim
about gamers, but I can provide evidence of fanzines produced by
gamers, and of my own long-term interest in gaming. I have even seen
one well-known techie appearing in a Worldcon Masquerade.
There is still room for debate about how many fans are interested in
this sort of poly-fannish contact, and whether or not there are enough
to support an Eastercon-sized event, but don't let Joseph Nicholas, or
anybody else, tell you that there isn't anyone.
By the way, Elydore has been running for several years; it didn't
appear, as he implies, only last Easter. As I recall, Terry Pratchett
was one GoH, back in '89. I happened to see a report of the 1988
Elydore in a fanzine I found while looking for something else, and it
was described as a successor, with many of the same committee, to
another Easter media-con, Galacticon. That, in turn, was held at
Easter from 1986, after the postponement of the 1985 event from its
customary October date.
My sources run out in around 1982, but it looks as if
Galacticon/Elydore, along with the annual Fanderson convention, beat
everything but Novacon and the Eastercon for longevity. There are
other events, such as the Tolkien Society's Oxonmoots, which have some
of the characteristics of a convention and have been taking place for
as long, or longer. Maybe the expectations of the people involved are
different, but a fanzine devoted to conrunning might look a bit silly
if it ignored that accumulation of experience outside the limits some
people set for fandom.
Even if Joseph Nicholas were right about the lack of interaction
between different sorts of fan, it would be folly to isolate Conrunner
from that wider pool of experience.
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