Tuesday evening I managed to go to another London Bloggers Meetup. This time the event was sponsored by Fashion Targets Breast Cancer (FTBC), a campaign to raise funds for Breakthrough Breast Cancer. They gave a short, but interesting talk on what FTBC is and how you can help.

FTBC was setup in 1994 by Ralph Lauren as the fashion industry’s response to breast cancer, raising money through high-street items. The new FTBC range features designs from Topshop, River Island, Marks & Spencers, Warehouse, Coast, Laura Ashley and Goodone. From each purchase from the FTBC range, 30% is donated to Breakthrough Breast Cancer to help the charity with its research, campaigning and education work. 

The latest campaign from FTBC is the Million Model Catwalk, an interactive website with a competition. The idea of Million Model Catwalk is that you can upload a photo of yourself, stick it on a model’s body, choose clothes for your model to wear from the FTBC range and see your model walk down the catwalk.

After the talk there was a giveaway of a couple of FTBC T-shirts and I won one of them. Yay! Here’s how it looks like:

I really do like this top and I actually wore it for the remainder of the evening. The rest of the event I spent talking to and catching up with (mostly) familiar faces and some new ones. As always, this London Bloggers meetup was a lot of fun and I’m already looking forward to the next one!

Around the time when I was 14, I was a bit of a weird kid: I was completely into UFOs, conspiracy theories and anything paranormal or other/outer worldy. One of my areas of interest was cryptozoology: the study of legendary, according-to-main-stream-biology-nonexistent animals, like Big Foot and Nessie (my theory on Nessie is that the Loch contains a hole in time, and all observations of Nessie are just glimpses of the past).

Now a sighting of such a creature has been reported a bit closer to home: the Association of Maritime Research (AMR), a small, non-existent organization, is currently conducting research into possible sightings of suspicious sea creatures in the English Channel. The AMR was created in 1901 in order to promote a better understanding of deep-sea life and the curious phenomena that occur in the depth of the oceans. Their approach to research is to gather testimonials and question scientists specialising in marine research in an attempt to find a scientific explanation for the various sightings. The AMR’s intention is to communicate their findings to the general public and enable them to participate interactively in the continuing research.

The sighting that spun off this whole investigation happened on 20th April 2009. On that day Thierry and Sophie were enjoying a walk at the Boulogne Harbour. Thierry reports: “Sophie and I are passionate about boats and sealife and we were filming all the different types of boats sailing out of the harbour. As I was filming, I suddenly became aware of a large shape which appeared on the horizon. I zoomed in on it and to my surprise I saw a huge, dark, rapidly moving object, which disappeared within a matter of seconds. I know a bit about sea and marine life, if I say so myself, and I knew this wasn’t a whale or shark. I knew I just saw something that was yet unseen by man.”

Thierry decided to contact the AMR who are pursuing further investigations. Subsequently the AMR has collected a substantial number of testimonials from different areas. The strong similarities between the descriptions seem to confirm the existence of a ‘gigantic’ and extremely ‘fast-moving’ creature off our shores.

The AMR’s success in identifying this marine phenomenon is dependent upon the participation of the general public. As the first report came from Dover they have put in place a multimedia campaign calling for witnesses to come forward. This will include the distribution of flyers, radio, press and online communications.

This is a call out to anybody who might have witnessed any strange phenomena in the English Channel to contact the AMR immediately via their website TheChannelCreature.com. A reward is being offered for evidence leading directly to proof of this creature’s existence.

I don’t think I’ve ever read Where The Wild Things Are, but I know it’s a much loved children’s book. This trailer though just seems amazing!

[Watch the video on MissGeeky.com]

Where The Wild Things Are – Release Date: 16 October US, 23 October UK

Last Saturday I made my way to Wallace Space St Pancras for the second London SocialMediaCamp. It was a great day with interesting sessions, interesting people and lots of interesting conversations. One of the disappointments though was that there were a fair number of people that didn’t show up. Besides that only half (!!) the session slots were filled. Kat has got a great blog post (with lots of different views in the comments) about whether or not everyone should present. I do agree with her though and there’s one line from her post that sums it all up:

I feel very strongly that there’s something wrong with the social media industry if those who are supposedly building it don’t even bother to make an effort, to step up and to do something new and scary, how can they expect the rest of the world to join in?

Most of the sessions that were held though were pretty great; I’m just disappointed that there were so many more interesting people there who could have contributed their own interesting angle. Anyhow, here are a couple of sessions I went to:

SocialInnovationCamp

SocialInnovationCamp sounds like a great event: developers and designers are brought together with people with a great idea to make a prototype over one weekend. A couple of previous prototypes were presented and showed how that weekend was the start of actual viable websites. The next SICamp will be held in Glasgow on the 19 of June, and  you can submit your ideas for a prototype until the 22nd of May.

PR Agencies Want Your Soul

Vero held a nice discussion session about the do’s and don’ts for marketing agents when contacting bloggers. The attendees of that session were a nice mix of bloggers and marketing people. 

Free Cake

Cake! To be specific: Broken Biscuit Cake. Neil Crosby had a fun session on how he made this cake and let us all sample it. The recipe is also on Neil’s blog and I know I’m going to give it a try some time: the cake was delicious! 

How I Met My Troll

This was a great talk from Joanna Geary about how she met her troll in real life. While working for The Birmingham Post, she came across a regular commenter, “Clifford”, who was very criticizing about The Post. After a while she wanted to meet him in real life and see what type of person leaves those type of comments. Turned out in real life, he was a very polite and nice old man; and he was oblivious to the image he had online. Read more about Clifford on Joanna’s blog.

LARPing

Surprisingly I found this one of the most interesting talks of the day. Max (hawkida on Twitter) gave an introduction to LARPing, how she got involved into it herself and the rules and ideas behind it. It’s much more complex than I had imagined it to be; it’s like a real life Dungeons & Dragons session where you have to memorize every single move and statistic of your character. I don’t think it’s something for me (the whole camping thing is not my style), but I’d love to try it out at least once in my life.

After all the sessions there were some free drinks and some prize draws. I won a weird PC game called Chuzzle. I still had some energy left, so I decided to join the Photo Scavenger Hunt organized by Kat. It was great fun, but more about that in a later post.

Win tickets to Sci-Fi London’s Italian Horror All-Nighter!

As part of Sci-Fi London’s line-up of events, there will be an Italian Horror All-Nighter at midnight on Saturday 2nd May.

The event, which is sponsored by Electronic Arts’ new title Dante’s Inferno, sees four classics being given a rare screening. These are: Mario Bava’s The Mask of Satan (aka Black Sunday); Dario Argento’s Sleepless; Lamberto Bava’s Macabre and Mario Bava and Salvatore Billitteri’s Black Sabbath.

The venue for the event is the Apollo West End Cinema and tickets for the all-nighter include a goody bag, Red Bull and ice-cream. Visit www.sci-fi-london.com for more information.

I’ve got a pair of tickets to this great event up for grabs. Just take a look at the following question:

What’s Your Favourite Horror Movie?

Email your answer to contest@missgeeky.com by the end of 30th April (that’s tomorrow!) and don’t forget to include your name and telephone number.

I will contact the winner of the 2 tickets on Friday 1st May. Please note that travel & accommodation is not included. Entrants must be over 18.

I’m not sure how comfortable these seat belt camera straps are, but they sure look gorgeous:

You can get them at PhotoJojo.com for $20 and they’re available in 4 different colours (Porsche Purple, Mercedes Gold, T-bird Teal, and Dodge Silver).

Via Swiss Miss

Back in January I blogged about T-Mobile’s “flashmob” at Liverpool Street Station. I liked the idea, but was a bit annoyed by the fact that unlike normal flashmobs the main dancers were obviously professional and hired (and most probably payed) to do the dance. I said in that blogpost that I would have loved if they had organized a more typical flashmob so that anyone could have joined in.

Now it seems though T-Mobile might actually be doing that. This Thursday there’s another event, this time at Trafalgar Square. Watch this video for the details:

I’m curious to see what it will be. I’ve got another event at 18:30, but I’m definitely going to try and make it to the beginning of it. Anybody want to join me?

Every year there’s that movie that just creeps up on you, completely unexpected. This year for me it’s 9. I read a lot of movie blogs, keeping up to date with all casting rumours and movie news, but I have no idea how I could have not heard more about this movie earlier. I saw the first trailer back in December and I was amazed by how awesome it looked.

9 is written and directed by Shane Acker, a “visionary” director who first made an animated short version of 9. It was so successful (including an Oscar nomination) it spun off into an actual movie. I hate the term “visionary”, but seeing this trailer I think it’s in this case warranted.

Have a look at the trailer:

9 – Release Date: 9 September 2009 (of course, 09-09-09)

Remember those cool coffee mugs I blogged about a while back? That design studio (Studio Psyho) has again come up with another pretty product: dream pillows! 

Aren’t these pillows the cutest? I especially love the orange ‘cocktail’ one and the dark blue ‘Starry Night’ one. 

Episode 109: “She pours a daydream in a cup, A spoon of sugar sweetens up”

I love the stop motion in this music clip (I love this song too):

[Watch the video on MissGeeky]