The link seems to be dead, but no worries. We all have our frustrations getting used to Blender.
Seems the bottom of the coffee cup [tube] is extruded down twice, and slightly scaled inward = to create the rounding at the bottom. If you have all the vertices selected in an unclosed circle and push Shift F (key) in Edit mode, the faces will be create between the vertices.
try the lizard tutorial in my sig ( the link to ‘modelling thread’. ) just remember, loop select is now alt right click, and it’s behavior depends on what mode you are in as far as face/edge/vertex mode. ( there are buttons for it on the main header. ) It might be a bit complicated to follow all the way through, but you might enjoy more success with it, as it is illustrated step by step.
Tutorials are a buildup of knowledge, if a person writes a tut on caustics, the author will rightfully assume you have built up enough knowledge and experience that you know how to render a scene for example, and his tutorial should not waste time covering the basics.
If you miss details along the way it gets confusing when attempting a tutorial that is talking about techniques you are not familiar with, the loop selection that modron is talking about for example, I missed it when going through the basics and oddly enough was just going back through the manual learning about that exact thing 15 mins ago and wish I was familiar with it months ago, it would have saved me a lot of work.
First and foremost, as already pointed out, must writers assume/expect that people will have a certain level of experience before attempting a tutorial. Secondly, most of the information out there is old and some is very old in Blender terms.
Where possible, try and restrict your learning to recent tutorials (admittedly they are few and far between - and some old tutorials are still very valid).
It’s a PDF and it covers a wide range of topics, in logical order, from introduction to advanced principles. Once you’ve worked half way through the exercises, a lot of the basic-intermediate tutorials out there will make a lot more sense.
