Time

I'm trying to work out how I used to fit in upwards of seven hours memorising over the course of any weekend I didn't have anything better to do, back in the olden days. I suspect I didn't watch so much football on TV. I'll have to cut down on that...

Be Prepared

It occurred to me tonight that I should be ready, just in case I get the chance to go to Tokyo again and do karaoke, and have a printout of the lyrics to some of the cool anime songs out there. Obviously, the long-term plan is to learn to read Japanese quickly enough to keep up with the writing on the screen, but you never know when I might get shanghaied to Japan unexpectedly, so I'll need to carry those lyrics around with me at all times. Shounen yo shinwa ni nare!

It was twenty years ago today

Well, it was twenty years ago in a week and a half, but it's close enough to get me nostalgic. Twenty years since what, you ask? Sonic the Hedgehog 3!

And in the same way that nobody can really, really, like Transformers unless their first appearance in toyshops coincided with their eighth birthday, nobody can really be a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog unless the original three games were what gave their seventeen-year-old self something to do while they were supposed to be revising for their A Levels, and then all through the summer afterwards.

Sonic 3 is a great game, although it's really obviously incomplete - Sega released what should have been the second half of the game later in 1994 - but it really did feel like an expansion and improvement on the first two (which were both completely awesome too). That was when video games were great! I miss twenty-years-ago.

Tick tock tick tick

I need a clock to hang on my living room wall, and I was wondering whether I should get one of those scary cat ones with the swinging eyes. Or a backwards one that only looks right if you look at it in a mirror. Or a cheap one from Poundstretcher, that's the only kind I can actually afford.

Star Chamber

The STAR (Standards, Technicalities and Rules) sub-Committee of the World Memory Sports Council have conducted the annual review of Millennium Standards resulting in 4 disciplines being revised.

IMPORTANT... PLEASE NOTE and ADJUST YOUR Millennium SCORE SHEETS accordingly
The New Millennium Standards are ...
1. Spoken Numbers ~374 digits (new formula is sqr (score) * 51.71)
2. Abstract Images - 505 images (Quick calculation factor - 1.9802 points per image)
3. 30 Min Cards - 877 cards ~ 17 Decks (Quick calculation factor - 1.1403 points per card)
4. Hour Numbers - 2800 Digits (Quick calculation factor - 0.3571 points per digit)


I've never quite understood why the WMSC needs a sub-committee for every little thing, when there's only four people in it who do anything, and they basically form every sub-committee, but it still sounds cool. Anyway, I can't say anything bad about the latest standards-revision (you know, apart from that rude thing I said in the last sentence), because it moves me down a place in the world rankings, and it'd just look like sour grapes.

Maybe I'll double-check their calculations later...

Let's Get Ready

I mentioned the delights of wrestling a while ago - it's the Royal Rumble this weekend! Now that I've got a working TV in this new flat, maybe I'll watch it. It's always the most fun wrestling match of the year.

On the train

I've done a small amount of memory training these last couple of days, so I'm now going to make the bold pronouncement that I'll be doing a little bit every evening from now on! Until I get bored with it!