The Drink Tank 294 (2011).pdf

Steve Jobs is dead. We knew it was going to happen, when you have pancreatic cancer, you don’t make

a lot of ﬁve year plans. He managed 7. Good for him. The world of MacUsers went nuts, and it’s kinda under-

standable, he was the symbol of Apple and especially of things like the iPod, iPad and iMac. He was amazing at

making himself a part of a technology he didn’t invent. That’s not a knock, though I know it sounds like one.

Jobs was one of the great evangelists of the Computer Age. He didn’t invent much, though he did have a solid

understanding of what he worked with, especially the Macintosh back in the mid-1980s, but he could make you

believe, no, make you KNOW you needed whatever he was introducing. It was an amazing talent, and the single

best other example would have to be Adm. Grace Murray Hopper.

Grace Hopper worked on a number of committees and worked on a couple of very early electrome-

chanical computers. She discovered a moth in a relay and joked that it was the ﬁrst actual example of a com-

puter bug.

But she wasn’t a great inventor. She is often noted as the Mother of COBOL, and she was on the com-

mittee to deﬁne the standard, but she wasn’t the inventor. She did, however, speak about COBOL a lot, made

appearances around the world talking about the nanosecond and the like, and would talk about the use of

computers. She was an amazing evangelist, and many have attached signiﬁcance to her that doesn’t really be-

long, but her role as the one who got computers into the minds of people.

Jobs did that for the PC.

He got the Apple ][ into schools, which led people to kids growing up with the Apple brand as their

preference. He brought out the Macintosh and using brilliant marketing and one of the smartest give-away pro-

grams ever, made it into the choice for designers and artists. He made it cool to own a computer, he attached a

signiﬁcance to the Macintosh that has managed to stick with it even after Windows machines have caught up in

most of the areas that Macs were ﬁrst pushed in. There are many great arts and design programs for windows,

some of them more powerful and easier to use than the ones for Macs, yet still Macs have the hold over those

realms. Go ﬁgure.

And TAFF has started! The race this time is between Jacq Moynahan out of Vegas, Kim Kofmel from

Texas (by way of Canada?) and the guy I nominated - Warren Buff! I would hope that all our gentle readers

would hop on and become members of The Warren Commission and get Buff to Eastercon next year! He’s a

good guy, and a damn ﬁne wit. He’s also just evil enough to be entertaining! TAFF.org.uk has the ballot so that

you, yes YOU!, can go and vote for him!

OK, so what’s this issue of The Drink Tank about? Solaris is the 52 Weeks ﬁlm, we’ve got a piece of John

The Rock Coxon’s TAFF report, and the conclusion of Taral’s article from last issue. And there’s this, of course.

I’m working on issue 300, which is a tough one. I’m about 1⁄2 way through with the layout, but I’ve still

got to write the bios and such, and do the index. Indexes are hard. It takes time. It should be ready right about

the time when issue 299 is complete.

So much to do!!!!!

John Coxon’s TAFF Trip Report Chapter This One

10:00, 17/08/11 ‚ South Lake Tahoe, California

I ﬂew out from Seattle on

the Monday morning at some un-

godly hour (10am counts as ungodly,

right?). Janice Murray, who took me

around the Museum of Flight, had

very kindly offered to give me a lift

to SeaTac airport, and so she picked

me up around 8am, for which I was

very glad. The reason I was very glad

was that we had originally arranged

for 8:30, but I had had a nightmare

that I’d miss the ﬂight, and had awo-

ken early as a result. Her spontane-

ous offer of arriving half an hour

early did a great deal to placate my

sleepy brain, so that was very much

a boon! We drove to the airport

and then she very kindly bought me

a coffee from Starbucks before

I went through security to board my ﬂight, along with my ridiculously heavy rucksack (I put all my books and

fanzines in it, as my suitcase had nearly been over the limit ﬂying Toronto to Seattle).

SeaTac airport is a bit odd (and, according to the Museum of Flight, about as far from downtown Seattle

as Heathrow is from Zone 1 London, although the fact you can catch the Tube to Heathrow from King’s Cross

kinda obscures that). It claims to have free Wi-Fi but I’ve been twice now and I’ve never managed to get any out

of them, despite the multiple unsecured networks that my iPhone told me were present. This is always a bit of a

pain, since airports are not naturally thrilling places and having the Internet would be great. However, on the Mon-

day, it was even more of a pain than usual, since it was my mother’s birthday and I wanted to call her via Skype,

like I had done in the city earlier in the week. Fortunately, the 3G signal from AT&T was fairly strong (remind me

to rant about Americans and their mobile networks‚ sorry, cellphone networks‚ elsewhere in the report...), and

I was just about able to call on it. The lag was about ﬁve seconds, which made protracted conversation almost

impossible and shouting at each other the order of the day, but I was able to communicate my desire to wish her

a happy birthday successfully, which was the main thing.

The ﬂight from Seattle to Sacramento was alright. I wasn’t lucky enough to be sitting next to an empty

seat, like I was on the two ﬂights between Toronto and Seattle, but my seatmates were quiet and the dude next to

the aisle let me go to the john without much complaining, so I had no grumbling to do. I believe I ﬁnished Cryo-

So, I could pretend I’m writing this in South Lake Tahoe, with the sun shining down on me and the serene

tranquility of our motel (Super 8, not to be confused with Motel 6 or Lucky 7 or National 9 or whatever all the

others are‚ seriously, why are there so many motel chains with numbers in the name, and why are all of them dif-

ferent?!). Unfortunately, I’m not. I’m writing this, in fact, almost a full month after the events I’m describing, whilst

sitting in a Starbucks in Peterborough (hey, it’s the closest to the US you can get over here!). I blame this, roundly

speaking, on Worldcon, for reasons which I will attempt to detail in my con report. However, since it’s ofﬁcially

10am on the ﬁrst day of Renovation, and since I am still not at the convention yet, I don’t know anything about

that, and so I shall stop ruining the journalistic (and structural!) integrity of this TAFF report and start writing

about things that I would know about at this point.

burn on that ﬂight, which marked the second Hugo nominee to crumble before my reading skillz. I enjoyed it a

great deal, actually, although if I’d known it was part of an ongoing series I probably would have tried to locate the

ﬁrst book, rather than starting at the end, as it were. But, more on the Hugo nominees elsewhere in the report,

I think.

The best part of arriving in Sacramento airport was seeing the one, the only, Christopher J. Garcia. I know,

I know‚ you’d think baggage claim would be the highlight, but you’d be totally wrong! He got my suitcase wedged

into his car (I have no idea how, since there was no room whatsoever for massive suitcases anywhere in said car)

and we rode into the historic part of Sacramento. They have buildings that are really, really old there. Like, thirty-

six years old, or something! Arrival in Sacramento heralded us walking in a massive circle. Chris swore blind he

knew exactly where we were going and where we were meeting Linda, but the massive circle kind of undermined

his authority on the matter, and so eventually we resorted to the miracle of the mobile telephone, but not before

we got vouchers for saltwater taffy.

So, I should explain something about the old part of Sacramento at this point. The important thing to note

is that 98% of the world’s total number of sweet shops are in the town. Seriously. Chris and I counted them, and

it’s deﬁnitely 98%. Well, even if I am lying, there are many, many sweet shops. After rendezvousing with Linda suc-

cessfully, we went into one, and purchased two bottles of a delightful beverage called Leninade, which is a must for

any thirsty communist. As a Briton, I count as a Communist in the USA (my father works for the NHS, I’m practi-

cally a member of the Communist

Party), and so I enjoyed it greatly.

I even saved the bottle! Out of a

sense of monogamy, we didn’t visit

any of the other sweet shops, not

even the one that we had vouchers

for. We’re that dedicated.

We also visited a costume

shop. Top tip: if you want to have

the most fun you’ve ever had whilst

shopping for clothes, go shopping

with Chris and Linda as they rush

around a costume shop squeeing. It’s

brilliant. Chris found an old arcade

machine (one of the ones that’s a

shooting range with 25 shots) and

exclaimed as to how much he loved

this one before proceeding to suck

at it on two separate occasions,

which was also pretty fun. No idea

what the arcade machine was doing

in the middle of the 1920s gangster

section, but hey, it was just that kind

of place! We also had donuts. For

a sort of pre-lunch snack (this was

necessary, since I had not had break-

fast and had been walking around in

the sun and just generally felt like

putting calories in my belly would

be a good plan before I keeled over

from a mixture of hunger and an

English reaction to the sunshine).

Eventually, it became time for James

Bacon to enter the story, and so he did, smiling and greeting me warmly and, I think, quite glad to hear an accent

that wasn’t American. It’s weird, but speaking as a Briton, whenever I go to the States, just hearing British and Irish

accents makes me smile. It’s like there’s an instant camaraderie between you, caused by some weird side-effect

of the Atlantic Ocean. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the American accent. I have visited the USA on previous

occasions, and I’ve now ﬁnally visited Canada as well, and I’m very fond of both of them. But there’s something

about where you’re from that creates a bond between two people in a foreign land, regardless of how epic a time

you’re having. When it’s an old mate, well, it just throws everything into relief, somewhat.

After having met with James, I met Katrina Templeton for the ﬁrst time, who you may know better as Kat-

ster. She’s a Sacramento-based fan, so it makes sense to meet up with her when in Sacramento! We decided that

we needed food, and so we headed down some stairs next to a building that promised all-you-can-eat pizza for

$7 (or something ridiculous), because we’re classy. The all-you-can-eat pizza came in three varieties: pepperoni,

meat and vegetable. The pasta next to it came in three varieties, too: red, green and yellow. The soda came in

brown, brown, brown, BRIGHT ORANGE or yellow. Gotta love USA food colouring, it is so much more vivid

than the colours that are legal to give to human beings in the UK! The red pasta was particularly yummy, and

the pizza was actually much better than it could’ve been for the price we paid. Over dinner we asked Kat if she

wanted to run for TAFF, talked about board games, asked Kat if she wanted to run for TAFF, talked about comics,

asked Kat if she wanted to run for TAFF, talked about beer, asked Kat if she wanted to run for TAFF, talked about

how stupid it is that Mountain Dew in Canada doesn’t contain caffeine and asked Kat if she wanted to run for

TAFF. Hey, you can’t say I wasn’t plugging the Fund when I was on my trip! I would’ve asked the other people eat-

ing whether they wanted to run for TAFF, but given that James and Chris are previous delegates and Linda joined

Chris on his TAFF trip, that would’ve seemed a little disingenuous.

It became time to leave James and Kat to make their way forward on their own journeys. Linda went back

to her car, Chris and I piled into his, and we had a road trip to South Lake Tahoe, where the majority of this story

is allegedly set (although given we just passed the 1500 word mark I guess I had more to say about SeaTac and

Sacramento than I thought!). The drive down was pleasant, although the nature of TAFF is that you end up a lot

more tired than you thought you would be and, as such, I slept in the car until Chris stopped somewhere that sold

Mountain Dew. Then, unsurprisingly, I was a lot less sleepy, and we chatted animatedly about God knows what

until we reached the motel in South Lake Tahoe, checked in, got the Internet working (priorities are important,

folks) and waited for Linda to arrive.

When she did arrive, we had a blast. I don’t quite remember the order in which the evening happened, but

we deﬁnitely played Guillotine that night, which was immense fun. Whilst I am in Leicester I am a gamer, not an

SF fan, mainly due to the incredibly prone-to-schism university SF society looking less awesome than the incred-

ibly prone-to-going-to-the-pub university gamesoc, aka the Leicester Sabres. As a result, I love playing card games.

However, I had not played Guillotine before, despite it being a fairly popular card game. Although I got thrashed

in the ﬁrst game by an all-conquering Chris, I gained enough knowledge that I managed to claw my way to a win

in the second game via some sneaky underhanded tactics (my hand was so ready for me to be a total dick, it was

awesome).

As well as playing cool card games, we went to the hot tub and the pool. It turned out that the pool was

pretty cold, though, so mostly the hot tub. I was busy reading John Scalzi’s ‘The Last Colony’, which was a very

good book, in between reading Mira Grant’s ‘Feed’ on my iPhone (which I didn’t feel like exposing to a hot tub,

owing to it being expensive, and all).

The ﬁnal thing we did that night was go out for dinner to a place called Fire + Ice, which is a Mongolian

barbecue restaurant in the town. I’ve never done Mongolian barbecue before, because I rarely eat outside of

Peterborough and/or Leicester, and neither of those cities has one, but I am usually raring to try new stuff, so it

was all good. For those that don’t know (I have no idea how many of you there might be, so I’ll forgive you if you

skip to the next paragraph!), Mongolian barbecue consists of ingredients that you put in a bowl. You then get a

smaller bowl and ﬁll it with a sauce, and then you take it to two crazy men with paddles who put it on some ﬁre

‘til it’s ready for you to eat. You get to choose from a variety of meats, and vegetables, and stuff like kidney beans

and noodles and whatnot, and they bring rice and tortillas to your table for you to have with whatever it is you

concocted.

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: