Bless me

I have got a terrible cold. But despite that, I'm feeling more or less pleased with myself, because I've done a full day's memory practice even though I really had to force myself at metaphorical gunpoint to sit down and do it. Got 960 in 5-minute binary, which is a personal best, but fairly unexceptional scores in everything else. I'm faced with a dilemma about ten-minute cards - I can do six packs comfortably in that time, it's exactly the length of time I need to run through each pack three times, with a few seconds left over at the end to check anything I'm not sure on, so I get them all correct nine times out of ten. So the last couple of times in practice, I've just done that - six packs is a very good score in that discipline. But I have a feeling that I should be stretching myself a bit more in training, if not in competitions - should I go for nine packs and just look at each one twice? That leads to much more difficulty recalling them, and it seems unnecessary to try so many when I can get a good score safely. But I think I'll try it next time, anyway. So there.

Over on James Kemp's blog, he's inventing new systems, which makes me all nostalgic. I've been using the same memory techniques for a good three years now without any more than the most infinitesimal modifications. It's not that I feel I've attained perfection, but I can't really think of anything I could do to improve the systems I'm using - I can certainly win the world championship again with them if I get my act together. But it would be nice to have a moment of inspiration and discover something new and exciting I could to to suddenly improve my results. That might get me more in the mood that I was in back in 2003 and 2004.

You can ignore this last little bit if you want. To the extent that this blog of mine is about anything, it's not about finding something funny on YouTube every single day and linking to it, and I seem to have been doing that kind of thing quite a lot lately. I'll give it a rest after today, I promise. But I stumbled across this one tonight somehow, and it's filled me with a whole new level of respect for the things you can find on the internet. I don't even like Backyardigans, it's uninspired, generic-children's-cartoon stuff that just screams out with unrealised potential. But that someone would go through all the episodes and compile a montage of Pablo's crises like that is awesome. This is the kind of thing that just wasn't done before the 21st century. It's great to be at the forefront of a revolution like this.