Stuff

Can I just point all my blog-followers to the video for "Moped" by someone called Pinkunoizu? Directed by Ewan Jones Morris of that DJ Shadow video we all love, this is just... brilliant.

"Moped" Pinkunoizu from Ewan Jones Morris on Vimeo.

Right!

Memory! I aims to spend the weekend memorisin' things! I really need to get back into some kind of routine of training, just because I know it'll be a lot of fun when I do get into it. So this weekend, let's sit down in my new memory-training location (I think the table in my living room, or possibly the desk in the bedroom) and remember some numbers!

What's in a name?

Yes, we all know I have trouble remembering names, but I really think I shouldn't struggle as much as I do when I meet someone with a really, really memorable kind of name. Valentine Low, for example, the Times journalist who consistently writes by far the best articles about the World Memory Championships - I spent the whole time in Croydon trying to remember what his unusual first name was; I kept thinking he was called Rembrandt, for some reason.

Likewise, Sheldon Lazarus, who's been emailing me lately about a fun-sounding TV show. A perfect name for a zombie-themed supervillain [he's going to read this and be offended now, isn't he?], but I keep thinking his name's Sheldon Moldoff, as in the much-loved superhero comic artist (which is what happens when you read blogs like that Justice Society of America one I mentioned the other day).

I still feel that everybody in the world should be required to wear name-badges. Everyone except me, obviously - everyone knows who I am.

If you can't say anything nice...

Writing a blog entry every night shouldn't be difficult - the lesson I need to learn here is that I need to do something interesting every day, so that I can write about it in the evening! Right, tomorrow I'm going to search for buried treasure. No, actually, it's raining. I'll just go to work.

Arooooooo

Someone came to this blog today by googling "black and purple robo wolf". I'm fairly sure I've never in my life written about a black and purple robo wolf, but I think I'm going to have to now. How would the unusual colour scheme benefit a robo wolf, though? I guess it's not designed to blend in with real wolves, so what is it for, exactly?

Twang

Living as I do now in a big empty house, it occurs to me that I can play musical instruments as much as I like without any fear of people hearing me. This would be a good time to get a drum kit. But failing that, it would be a very good time to get out my ukulele and learn how to play the thing properly.

The strange problem is that I just can't learn things like that. I can't be doing with playing simple 'tunes' that just involve one or two notes, so I always skip those lessons, pick a piece of real music that I like the sound of, try to play that, and give up when I can't get it right.

I don't know why I'm like that with music, when I spent years and years learning memory techniques without having to be the world's best memoriser straight away. Maybe that was more fun because I was inventing my own techniques, but I'd been using the bog-standard major system for more than two years before I started branching out on my own. I need some kind of teacher who'll force me to practice ukulele-ing properly. And also not expect any payment for their efforts.

Poetic Injustice

By virtue of it being on top of the pile of books I unloaded from my boxes, I'm re-reading The Woman In White. You know, Wilkie Collins is someone to be sympathised with - he was quite scathing about Charles Dickens's unfinished final novel, saying people should focus more on the good stuff Dickens wrote when he was younger, and then when Collins realised he wasn't going to live to finish his own final book he hired another writer to finish it for him, giving him full details of what should happen.

And what does he get for this effort? The only books of his that are still in print are the good stuff he wrote when he was younger, and his final work gets grouped into a footnote of his biographies along the lines of 'Collins wrote a lot of other books in later life, but they were rubbish'. Meanwhile, Charles Dickens's complete works, including The Half-Finished Mystery Of Edwin Drood, can still be found in the Classics section of any good bookshop.