Hi Rick,                                                                        
                                                                                
Yes I have edited the files after rsync completed, The files are a python project with a mercurial repository sitting in the project directory. I assumed U1 will only upload the latest version based on timestamp from any of my machines so yes I have been editing the files with VIM as U1 was uploading the files. The u1conflict files are definitely generated by U1 rather than VIM.   I had to resolve the conflicts and clean my repo manually before I could commit.
                                                                                   
U1 only keeps the last five archived logs on my machine so I no longer have the syncdaemon-exceptions of syncdaemon from the 21st of May. 

meitham@london:~/.cache/ubuntuone/log$ ls -go
total 2236
-rw-rw-r-- 1  16364 May 24 11:08 controlpanel.log
-rw-rw-r-- 1   2343 Jun  2 12:45 credentials.log
-rw-rw-r-- 1   3128 May 23 17:41 credentials.log.2012-05-22_11-01-34
-rw-rw-r-- 1  23985 May 22 16:17 credentials.log.2012-05-22_16-17-38
-rw-rw-r-- 1  20734 May 24 16:15 credentials.log.2012-05-24_16-15-30
-rw-rw-r-- 1   2343 May 26 08:47 credentials.log.2012-05-26_08-47-32
-rw-rw-r-- 1   9372 May 30 08:39 credentials.log.2012-05-30_08-39-34
-rw-rw-r-- 1   3550 Jun  2 12:51 status.log
-rw-rw-r-- 1 700176 May 26 23:15 status.log.2012-05-26_08-47-22
-rw-rw-r-- 1    304 May 27 09:21 status.log.2012-05-27_09-11-35
-rw-rw-r-- 1  30338 May 30 21:42 status.log.2012-05-30_08-35-09
-rw-rw-r-- 1  42637 Jun  1 09:38 status.log.2012-05-31_09-39-13
-rw-rw-r-- 1  13371 Jun  2 08:13 status.log.2012-06-01_10-20-29
-rw-rw-r-- 1    591 May 21 20:09 syncdaemon-broken-nodes.log
-rw-rw-r-- 1      0 Jun  2 12:45 syncdaemon-exceptions.log
-rw-rw-r-- 1      0 May 29 15:48 syncdaemon-exceptions.log.2012-05-29_15-48-47
-rw-rw-r-- 1   3227 May 30 08:35 syncdaemon-exceptions.log.2012-05-30_08-35-09
-rw-rw-r-- 1      0 May 30 08:39 syncdaemon-exceptions.log.2012-05-30_08-39-17
-rw-rw-r-- 1  22814 May 31 16:13 syncdaemon-exceptions.log.2012-05-31_14-22-17
-rw-rw-r-- 1  10747 Jun  1 17:26 syncdaemon-exceptions.log.2012-06-01_17-26-51
-rw-rw-r-- 1  24642 Jun  2 12:51 syncdaemon.log
-rw-rw-r-- 1  96080 May 30 08:37 syncdaemon.log.2012-05-30_08-37-31
-rw-rw-r-- 1 139536 May 30 22:02 syncdaemon.log.2012-05-30_08-39-17
-rw-rw-r-- 1 515687 Jun  1 09:38 syncdaemon.log.2012-05-31_09-39-13
-rw-rw-r-- 1 293027 Jun  2 08:33 syncdaemon.log.2012-06-01_09-39-22
-rw-rw-r-- 1  30188 Jun  2 12:42 syncdaemon.log.2012-06-02_12-42-40

If there is anyway to retrieve the old logs from my machine I am happy to help. However, my syncdaemon-broken-nodes.log shows the three lines below:

2012-05-21 19:59:16,147 - ubuntuone.SyncDaemon.BrokenNodes - INFO - Broken node: volume_id='4a9f8581-559d-4746-8553-96dde21b6481' node_id='ddc0b4f3-82c9-4305-b03f-899ac0521bfd' mdid=None path=None
2012-05-21 19:59:16,147 - ubuntuone.SyncDaemon.BrokenNodes - INFO - Broken node: volume_id='4a9f8581-559d-4746-8553-96dde21b6481' node_id='18800d59-03d1-43bb-abe1-db89a957eed9' mdid=None path=None
2012-05-21 19:59:16,148 - ubuntuone.SyncDaemon.BrokenNodes - INFO - Broken node: volume_id='4a9f8581-559d-4746-8553-96dde21b6481' node_id='7fca5271-f753-4a28-9c8c-284d5dba1fa9' mdid=None path=None

Cheers
M