The trivia night starts at 5pm in the Drawing Room (which is upstairs in the Roundhouse) on this Friday the 30th. Doors will be open from 4pm. Entry is $5 each, and everyone is welcome – members and non-members, UNSW staff/students and… other people alike. We’ll also be getting pizza for dinner – $5 per half pizza of choice. We’re finishing at 9pm, cause that’s when they’ll come to boot us out of the room, but we’ve got a jam-packed night of trivia all planned.

Screenings will resume next week with Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal and new episodes of Futurama.

In the year 2075, mankind has reached a point where journeying between Earth, the Moon and the space stations is part of daily life. However, the progression of technology in space has also resulted in the problem of space debris – dropped equipment, cast-off fuel tanks, obsolete satellites, etcetera – which can cause excessive and even catastrophic damage to spacecraft and equipment. This is the story of Technora’s Debris Collecting section, its EVA worker, Hachirota “Hachimaki” Hoshino, and the newcomer to the group, Ai Tanabe.

The series consists of twenty-six half-hour episodes, so we’ll easily be able to fit the whole lot into one marathon, unlike our normal sci-fi series – no ending on cliff-hangers. So come along and unwind before the exams start, and show the Anime Society what great people we are. =D It’s a great series, and they put special effort into getting the science right.

It’s on Saturday the 5th of June in Quad G026, starting from as close to 9am as we can manage – not too much later or we won’t finish in time. It’ll run until 11pm
is basically directly West of Rex Vowels – I’ll hang the orange SpockSoc banner outside so you can see it. It’s a flat-floor room, so bring any sort of chair or cushion or pillow you want to sit or lie on, and we’ll shove the tables out of the way and sprawl. Meals will be decided on the day, so bring money for them just to be sure.

As part of the fancy SpockSoc membership perks, I’ll reimburse $2 to anyone who presents their membership card – for those who might not recognise me, I’ll have the orange vinyl SpockSoc banner on me. If people are interested, we’ll go out to dinner as a group afterwards. I can’t manage before, because I’ve got class until 6.

As usual for marathons, I’ve specifically booked a room with movable furniture, so we can shove everything out of the way and lie on the floor or whatever. So bring a cushion, beanbag, mattress, couch, armchair… portable ball pit? Anything you want to lie, sit or otherwise make yourself comfortable on. We’ll sort out meals on the day – we’re pondering having one person get takeaway Chinese or similar for everyone, to streamline the process a bit.

Apologies for those who can’t make it – we took things into consideration, and decided that it was either this weekend, or we’d have to leave it until much later in the session, or even early next session. It’s something of a can’t-please-everyone situation.

The room we’ll be in has movable furniture – means we can shove all the tables to one side if you want to bring a beanbag or pillow or air mattress or folding bed or comfy chair or even a couch. So bring something to sit/lie on (or use the plastic chairs that are there if you like), bring some snacks if you so desire, and prepare for a whole day of Babylon 5! Fun!

The marathon passes over both lunchtime and dinnertime. Usually I’ll get pizza (at $5 per half) for one meal, and let everyone do their own thing for the other, but specifics will be arranged on the day. There’s access to a microwave if people want to bring their own food, but it’s not exactly close by.

UPDATE:

Due to availability issues, the location for the Saturday marathon is changing. (Pharmacology seems to have booked out the whole Quad for the whole weekend – poor sods.) We’re now in Goldstein G04. Prior members will know where that is, but for new members, the Goldstein building is directly opposite the Quad from our normal Friday room. Simply follow the brick path across the lawn and through the archway in the wall on the far side – Goldstein is the building on the right immediately after you pass the archway. I’ll hang a banner outside. (If you navigate better with a map, check out the campus map – Goldstein is building D16, and the door’s on the Western side. If you try to enter through the wrong door, you’ll wind up in the college part of the building, which is not where we are.) Everything else about the marathon is still the same.

If you haven’t been to the Ritz before, here’s a map:

http://www.whereis.com/nsw/randwick/45-st-pauls-st?id=3DD8DB2CCA7EF1

If the map didn’t work properly, it
ple of blocks directly East of the uni (East is uphill when you’re on campus). If you’re at uni already, your best bet is to walk up High Street until you hit Avoca, then angle right onto Belmore Road, and at the next intersection, angle further right onto Perouse Road. St Paul’s is left at the roundabout. You could also start from the other corner of the uni (behind the AGSM) and cut through the hospital – it’s a bit more direct, but it also involves cutting through the hospital.

If you’re catching the bus from elsewhere, the 372, 373, 376, 314 and 315 routes all stop just around the corner. The 370 stops a little further away, but it doesn’t run after about 7pm or so. Parking is… limited, unless you know the sneaky tricks, or park about three or four blocks away.

In any case, we’re going to meet up inside the lobby, in front of the doors to Cinema 1 (left of the ticket booths) starting from 6:30. Considering the slightly short notice, I won’t be collecting numbers beforehand – simply buy your own tickets, and SpockSoc will refund you $2 if you show me your membership card. I won’t wait much past the posted starting time of the movie, so don’t be late. =Þ

Incidentally, I won’t need to give out directions for future movie outings, so they won’t need to be quite so wordy. We’ll sometimes arrange to meet up for dinner, but the starting time for this particular movie makes it a little tricky – we might head out for food afterwards if people are interested.) =)

In any case, we’ll be running a stall all through O-Week on the Quad lawn, so feel free to drop in for a visit and to reapply – otherwise you can come to any of our screenings. Expect a tentative screening schedule to be posted on the website sometime this week, with screening location to be posted next week.

SpockSoc won’t be having an O-Week Friday night screening, but instead we’ll be showing not one but two movies as part of the O-Week festivities. On Wednesday the 24th we’ll be showing Labyrinth, starring David Bowie, and on Friday the 26th we’ll be showing the new Star Trek, with Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto. Both movies start at Noon in the Red Centre theatre – there should be signs up around the place – and entry is free for anyone.

We’d really love to have lots of people both at the movies and signing up to the club, so if you’ve got any friends in first year (or not, it doesn’t matter) who you think might be interested, then feel free to drop in and drag them along, even if it’s just to a movie screening.

Membership for SpockSoc is still $5 for the whole year – Arc membership (which is not required to be a SpockSoc member) is $69 for the year. We’d like people to also be Arc members, as we get more funding the more Arc members we have, but it’s by no means required.

Hope to see you there,
-Joel
el presidente

Hey all!

SpockSoc is going to see District 9 tomorrow night at the Randwick Ritz. The movie starts at 9:20pm, so we’ll meet up outside at 8:50 and head in together if people so desire. Yeah, I know that’s late, but the prior screening is 4pm, which is too early. We won’t pre-buy tickets,  but SpockSoc will reimburse $2 to any member that asks. Remember, Ritz Tuesday tickets are now $8 each.

An extraterrestrial race forced to live in slum-like conditions on Earth suddenly find a kindred spirit in a government agent that is exposed to their biotechnology. It’s produced by Peter Jackson (who did Lord of the Rings) and directed by some poor schmuck (Neill Blomkamp) who has been completely overshadowed the producer.

Hope to see you there.

You can also see the short film that became the basis for District 9:

Bring your brains, bring your friends, for a fun night of Sci-Fi and Fantasy trivia! Can you tell a self-sealing stem bolt from a flux capacitor? Can you idenfity the differences between a werewolf and an animagus? Do you know what you get when you multiply seven by nine? Come to the SpockSoc trivia night! Hundreds of dollars’ worth of prizes.

I’ll send out the location later in the week. Apologies to anyone who can’t do Mondays, but it’s really the only option for me.