| phil chastney 2007-04-11, 7:56 am |
| jk wrote:
> somebody feels like writing a book on non-APL-issues
> of APL-Conferences? I'd love to read it!
there was an incident at Rochester when Trenchard More was introducing
the world to the insights of array theory, and he turned over his first
page of notes, to discover that he'd left the rest behind -- the look of
horror on his face is something he still gets teased about
and I'm still embarrassed by the recollection of Heidelberg, where I was
rabbitting on about nulls -- there was the usual 5 second pause after
I asked for questions at the end, then one of the Scandinavians said,
"yes, I have a null question" . . . and I stood there like a lemon
waiting for him to continue
it worked well in the end, because I walked into the Red Ox that
evening, and couldn't see a face I recognised, but a group of
Scandinavians shoved up closer, and made space for me, because at least
they recognised me as the aforesaid lemon
Heidelberg was also the place where Trenchard More displayed that
amazing set of slides, illustrating the ideas of nested arrays
we discussed this in the Red Ox, and I said I couldn't decide whether it
was deep or vacuous, and that seemed a pretty common reaction
at the IPSA-financed conference in Toronto, we (well, actually, the rest
of them -- not me) drank the bar dry -- Roseanne briefed the hotel to
get more stuff in, and they said "oh, we always get more in for a
conference" and they were told to get more more in, but it still wasn't
enough
incidentally, Copenhagen was 1973, and the proceedings were published by
(?)North-Holland, not by the ACM . . . /phil
P.S: Pisa (1975) was a nightmare regarding accommodation -- they were
still trying to book delegates into rooms on the morning of the first
day -- I stayed at three different locations -- as the conference
progressed, people were organising their own accommodation, and moving
closer in, so those of us on the periphery took up their rooms for a
night, before finding something closer for the following night
I remember a bar in Pisa with dozens of different brandies on the wall,
so we started at the beginning, intending to go on to the end, and then
stop -- pretty soon it was clear this wasn't going to be possible, so we
asked the barman just to give us the best he'd got -- it was a brand I'd
never heard of, and came out of a bottle with a cheap and gaudy label,
and it tasted _Wonderful_ -- but then, I was probably so far gone I
would have said the same about a cup of weak tea
on the Saturday, after the conference was over, a lot of people went to
Florence -- four hours each way on the train! how much will they be able
to take in in that short stay?
P.P.S: now you know how the wedding guest feels in "The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner" . . . /p
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