The ucam.chat Home Page
ucam.chat is a Usenet newsgroup local to Cambridge University. Its
purpose (according to the newsgroups file) is
``miscellaneous discussion within Cambridge University''. This roughly
translates to general wibbling, rants, and religious diatribes. I mean
debates. It is roughly the successor of the GROGGS discussion
system on Phoenix, the
University's (now defunct) mainframe.
Firstly, an as-yet incomplete list of
ucam.chatters. Or is that ucam.chatterers?
Colin Bell <crb11@cam.ac.uk> runs the occasional Colonel Blotto
competition. Read all about it. See how well my set of pseudo-random
numbers performed against everyone else's hard-thought strategies!
Hot off the presses, I mean straight from the html-grinders, here is the
ucam.chat
FAQ,
version 0.9, as compiled by Austin Donnelly
<and1000@cam.ac.uk>. Find out the answers to all those questions
you've been wanting to ask but haven't dared...
And those questions that make you wonder why anyone would want to
know the answer. Worth a read, anyway.
Please note that this version of the FAQ still refers to
myrddin.chu.cam.ac.uk in a couple of places; myrddin no longer exists
(for all practical purposes) and the FAQ will be updated soon.
For reference, here are a couple of
old FAQs -- version 0.8,
version 0.6 and
version 0.3. Other versions may have existed,
but only in legend. Or nightmare.
A recurring fad on ucam.chat was the
Keirsey
Personality Test. Some people have kindly allowed me
to publish their scores. In a similar
vein, the Kingdomality
personality test tells you your place in a medieval society. Here are
some ucam chatterers' Kingdomality test
scores.
Some people have posted recipes to the
group, which have duly been archived here for your delectation.
Next we have the official Cambridge
quotes
file, as maintained by
Owen Dunn - not
solely concerned with ucam.chat but there's quite a
lot of stuff there.
And here is the
stereogram. Allegedly this piece of brain-mangling, eye-crossing
splendour was created by Simon Parry <93spp@eng.cam.ac.uk>.
ucam.chatmeets
6th June, 1994
Here's the multiply-signed
napkin from when we had a pizza-meet.
Apparently this was on the 6th
June, 1994. I don't know, I can't remember.
Oh yes, this was scanned by that Austin fellow.
5th November, 1994
Yuck! What's this? It's a
piece of
paper with some signatures on - from the fireworks/pubmeet on 5th
November 1994. Again, that Austin person seems to have had a hand in
this.
19th November 1994
A ucam.chat pubmeet took place at - you
guessed - the Ancient Druids. We have photographic evidence (scanned by
David Allsopp) of vicious
and brutal group hugging being inflicted on an innocent
Cthulhu-worshipper. Oh, the shame of it...
26th November, 1994
Here is yet another
serviette signed by random people. This came from the pubmeet on the
26th November 1994.
4th February, 1995
Look, guys, this thing about signing random objects (oh look,
another two) --
what is it?? This time it was Saturday the 4th of February, 1995, at the
Ancient Druids, strangely enough.
4th November, 1995
Another oddity -- a signed fiver.
Will
the bank accept this one? Looks
like the Ancient Druids didn't... This is from the fireworks meet on
Saturday 4th November 1995.
20th January, 1996
Roll up, roll up for the next big thing in signed paper items. Although
this is a bit mundane -- we couldn't find anything better to sign than
a
piece of A4 paper... from the A.D. pubmeet on Saturday 20th January,
1996. (That was the one where the organising discussion went something
like: "Hmm, the Ancient Druids. How about somewhere more original?" "OK,
how about the Ancient Druids?")
25th May, 1996.
Time for revision? No, time for yet another excuse to
consume unbecoming amounts of alcohol (mine's a Bombardier, please) and
deface more paper. This pubmeet was unusual
partly because of the sheer number of people who turned up -- I counted
34 at one point -- but also because of the wide timespan of chatterers
and groggers in attendance. And Julian was there, too.
7th March, 199?
This piece of paper is all that remains of
the ucam.chat Curry meet on 7th March.
?th ?, 1997/8?
Jacob Nevins found this beermat at the bottom
of his ftp space, but we can't date it any more precisely than "before
February 13th 1998". Can anyone help?
24th October, 1998
David Mansell seems to have been custodian of the beermats for this occasion. I
think we can safely assume this was at the Ancient Druids...
28th November, 1998
Thanks to Matthew Byng-Maddick for this strange signed leaflet , which proves
the existence of a ucam.chat / oxbridge.tat pub meet from late
November 1998.
13th March, 1999
On 13/3/99, once more at the Druids, AOL and Microsoft kindly supplied
us with some beer mats, which were
duly scribbled on.
18th September, 1999
At the Castle this time, and a large number of people crowded into a
small area of pub known as the snug and consumed (among other things)
treacle toffee. Oh, and signed a poster.
16th October, 1999
The Castle was packed out, so the assembled crowd of
chatterers were forced to resort to the great outdoors to find room.
This didn't seem to discourage them from signing Archaeology for All, though.
And, most important of all, the ucam.chat
newsgroup. (This is available only from Cambridge. Rumour has it
that people from the Other Place read ucam.chat too.)
That's all, folks! Any submissions to me, please.
Tue Mar 7 17:14:30 GMT 2000
Owen Dunn <owend@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Will
the bank accept this one? Looks
like the Ancient Druids didn't... This is from the fireworks meet on
Saturday 4th November 1995.
