A Bit More Detail

(Yes, I know this happened two days ago. Life's been busy.)

Attendance at Sunday's CFTAG meeting was decent and the meeting itself was quite enjoyable. We can attest that the lunch specials at Sushi on Bloor (515 Bloor Street West) are good, for instance, and that 1980s animated series imported from Japan like Robotech and Voltron can stand up surprisingly well. One especially interesting conversation related to the existence of legacy systems in the modern world, of built-in inefficiencies persisting because they are built-in, persisting and even triumphing over better standards because of inertia. Consider how the Minitel in France delayed the expansion of the technologically superior Internet in that country, or how ASCII emerged as a standard because of its direct development from the Baudot code used by telegraphists and despite the contemporary superiority of IBM's ERCDIC. Different pathways of information technology development were possible from the Industrial Revolution on, we agreed, but somehow, we also agreed, they would converge on densely-saturated environments like the ones that we're developing alkl with their own different inefficiencies.

schizmatic's presence anchored a productive three-hour meeting that included, in addition to myself, larkvi, pauldrye and M.

pauldrye brought his complimentary copy of GURPS Traveller- Interstellar Wars for everyone to be rightfully impressed by. It must be fun to add so much interesting stuff to the canon of such a well-established universe. If ever I gamemaster, I'm certain to mine this book for ideas.

Apart from Interstellar Wars, the main theme of the meeting's discussions seemed to focus on how some of the biggest science-fiction franchises (Star Trek, Star Wars, Firefly, Battletech, even Battlestar Galactica to an extent) worked only as set-pieces, that as coherent worlds they tended to fail for a variety of reasons, not least of which is a surfeit of writers.

It went quickly enough, with me and schizmatic and larkvi in attendance, talking mainly about current-day Canadian and American politics, the Olympics, and other topics.

In separate news, there's a movement afoot to shift the location from the Yonge/Wellesley Starbucks to another location, preferably an independent coffee house that also serves food. Do Torontonians have any suggestions on this front?