I'm definitely going to need some kind of cushion

Cycled about 15 miles today, making sure I knew how to get to the starting point of tomorrow's bike ride and getting horribly lost along the way (don't worry, I know how to get there now) and I'm already sore. I should have invested in a pair of padded shorts like people have been recommending. I'm sure I can improvise something with things I've got around the house...

Anyway, rider number 2741 (you get real, official numbers like in a proper bike race!) is all ready to go. It's going to be a definite change from my usual Sunday of sitting at a desk and memorising cards and numbers.

The Calliope crashed to the ground

I like reading my old blog entries in idle moments. Although it always makes me feel like I was much more eloquent and entertaining in the old days, compared to the hastily-written drivel I always seem to be reduced to lately. But looking back through my writings of years ago leads me to notice that this epic poem of mine, which I still think is rather clever and funny, didn't ever get so much as a single comment! Really, my readers are so ungrateful. Who else in the blogosphere comes up with that kind of thing? I bet the new poet laureate, whoever he/she is (I've forgotten), doesn't even have a blog with such melodious verse in it!

Actually, I was reading old blog posts mainly to see whether I'd previously made light of the early-nineties articles about the Mind Sports Olympiad in old Synapsia magazines - I have, so I won't do it again. I will point out an impressive world record reported in the same magazine, though: "Creighton Carvello memorised one pack of cards at speed with only one error in 2 minutes 59 seconds" on Record Breakers in 1987. This, much more than that old chestnut about scientists' predictions of spoken number memory capacity, is the best example of how the World Memory Championships have stretched people's brains. Right now, 22 years later, I'm seriously worried that any one of two or three top memorisers is going to beat me to being the first to memorise a pack in under 25 seconds in a competition very soon. And 'only one error' is not going to get you a round of applause these days.

Il faut que tu fasses du vélo

For some reason, that's a phrase that has stuck in my head ever since French lessons at school got as far as teaching the subjunctive. French grammar is a very silly thing. Anyway, it's just a couple of days until I go on a longer bike ride than any sensible person would want to do, and I'm a bit worried about the weather. We seem to be getting baking hot sunshine followed seconds later by torrential downpours just lately, and I'd hate to get struck by lightning and then slowly fried like an egg on the tarmac. That'd really knock down my average speed.

It's not too late to sponsor me, by the way. And many, many thanks to everyone who already has!

And even bigger thanks to Jabba, who sent me a really cool book just because she knew I'd like it! That's the kind of charity there should be more of - Entertain A Zoomy.

A conversation with Microsoft Excel 2007

Excel: This spreadsheet contains macros. Macros can contain viruses. I'm going to disable, delete and destroy them, okay?

Me: No, it's not okay. Open up the file, macros and all, please.

Excel: Macros can contain potentially harmful viruses. You shouldn't open files with macros in unless you're completely sure that they are safe and virus-free.

Me: They are. Shut up about macros and just open the file.

Excel: So, have you run a virus-scan and got some professional to double-check that there are no viruses lurking in these macros of yours?

Me: No, of course I haven't. Nobody does that. Just open the file.

Excel: You mean open it with the macros disabled, right?

Me: Look, I wrote these macros myself, the file has never been anywhere other than my laptop, there's no way anyone could have ever infiltrated my visual basic workbook with viruses. The file doesn't work without the macros, so why in the name of flip would I want to disable them?

Excel: I'm really not sure this is a good idea. Let's just forget about this workbook, and play with something else, shall we?


I mean, seriously. I've been writing and using macros for many, many years, at home and at work (mainly just for the sake of it because very few people can do them, and everyone thinks you're some kind of magician if you know how, but sometimes because they're really useful things) and I've never had a single problem with viruses, nor met or heard of anybody who has. And yet every new version of Excel forces you to select ever more 'non-recommended' macro security options, special file types, hidden toolbars and so on, just to use a tiny little harmless macro! Stupid Microsoft.

Did I fall asleep?

I'd heard pretty uniformly bad things about Dollhouse, so I'd been meaning to check it out ever since it started. I've seen the last two episodes, and it's actually really quite good. Certainly worth watching, although tonight's episode could have been done rather better towards the end - lots of different and less predictable ways the ending could have worked out. I don't expect the really formulaic stuff from Joss Whedon.

But even so, it's something new to add to my things-to-watch list, and that's a very sparse list right now. TV isn't the opium-of-the-masses it used to be...

Yay!

I've just discovered that TMF, the second-rate music channel, shows cartoons before nine o'clock (when the teenage audience are presumably still in bed). I've got another cartoon channel that I didn't know about! I can watch the first half of Maggie and the Ferocious Beast before I leave for work in the mornings!

Beer good

A Saturday getting horribly drunk with my brother, followed by a Sunday recovering from it, is a great way to spend a weekend every once in a while. And hopefully I'll have stopped feeling quite so dreadfully unwell by tomorrow morning when I need to go to work...

The train of thought is late again

I just thought to myself something along the lines of "Right, finished my hastily-knocked-together costume for my brother's party tomorrow, now for the more important task of..." and there was some word or phrase after that. But now I've got no idea what it was that I was going to do. I'm pretty sure it was something very significant that probably won't wait until tomorrow morning. But never mind.

Anyway, what I was going to blog about tonight was the idea of technologising the memory competition world. Check out the latest interview on memory-sports.com, the extremely cool website that I might have mentioned before. On the one hand, it's a good idea to save the arbiters the hassle of marking (and avoid the mistakes that causes), and the idea of spectators being able to see live updates is fun (although I think people would prefer to see updating numbers rather than animations of people running).

On the other hand, there are definite health and safety issues with requiring competitors to stare at a computer screen for an hour. I think it'd still be better to have the memorisation done on paper, and the recall on computer. But then, that would probably lead to more possibility of technical problems, and that's the wider issue - the cost of setting up computers for everyone is something the organisers could maybe deal with, if they get a bit more money from somewhere, but there would inevitably be something go wrong with it. Probably a power cut in the middle of a competition that causes all the numbers the competitors have spent the previous two hours typing in to be lost. I remain sceptical.

The Flaming Sword Of Fire

If you like Maid Marian and her Merry Men, you should probably watch Kröd Mändoon. It's the same thing, only with adult jokes and Americans. Although I'm not sure whether Sean Maguire is American nowadays, or if he's still English. Anyway, he's extremely funny, and so is the whole show.

Okay then

I'm going to do the Great Nottinghamshire Bike Ride and see if I can cope with a 50-mile cycling tour of the scenic countryside between Nottingham and Newark, if any. Consquently, I want people to give money to charities, by clicking here. I know I said I was thinking of doing it for the Alzheimer's Society, but I'm doing another thing for them in September, so I decided to just go with the GNBR's official charities list. Come to think of it, I know more people with cerebral palsy than people with Alzheimer's, anway.

I should probably point out that if the weather's awful or if I feel too lazy to get out of bed, I might still not bother with it, and just cycle the 50 yards down the road to the Co-op for a big bag of sweets, then come home and lay in bed all day eating them. If that happens, you won't be required to give any money. Although you probably should donate anyway. I'm sure none of my readers is the kind of person who makes promises of money to the needy but makes it conditional on the cycling performance of a fat, lazy oaf. Just sign up for your donation and stop moaning!

If I do stay in bed all day eating sweets, in fact, I'll triple my own donation. Can't say fairer than that.

Oily fish? Pah!

Another story in the news today about the wonders of oily fish. Apparently it fixes macular degeneration now, too. But if you eat it more than four times a week, you die, or something. I personally don't believe in omega-3. I think somebody made it up, for nefarious reasons. Probably a cat. Cats don't like fish and want them to be eaten.

The glorious fourteenth

It's my brother's 31st birthday on Sunday, which is good in that I get to go to a party on Saturday to celebrate it. But it does also lead me to realise that that means it's four months until I turn 33, which is really not a good age to be.

But then that leads me to realise that in another four months after that, I'll turn 33-and-a-third, which is actually a rather groovy age to be! And this will happen on February 14th, 2010 - I'm going to have to have a Valentine's-Day-cum-third-of-a-century party! How often do you get an opportunity to go to one of those? Practically never!

Unless you're longtime friends with Cliff Richard or Roger Moore or one of the other lucky people who was born on October 14th, of course. Come to think of it, Cliff, like me, was unmarried at the time of his Valentine's Day 33-and-a-third birthday. Roger Moore, according to Wikipedia, was in the process of splitting up with his second wife at the time. E.E.Cummings was single, after being dumped by his second wife and before meeting his third. The Battle of Hastings celebrated its 33-and-a-third anniversary during the reign of the unmarried King William II. There's something decidedly unromantic about this occasion...

Shiny things

A magpie keeps flying right up to the top of my kitchen window. I thought there might be a nest up there, or maybe on the roof, but I can't see one by leaning out of the living room window and craning my neck. Anyway, it creeps me out. I'm superstitious about magpies, and seeing one at a time on a regular basis is disturbing. I need to lure more of them to my windows somehow, five or six at once.

Dammit, Radio Times!

They provided a pretty extensive preview of Robert Webb's appearance on "My Life In Verse" last night, but didn't mention that they were going to go back to his (and my) old school and interview Mr and Mrs Slater, the English teachers! I would have watched it if I'd known that, instead of deciding not to bother! Now I'll have to find out whether it's possible to see it on the internet. Or did anyone happen to video it? I prefer to do things the old-fashioned way, it's more fun.

Actually, one of the three pictures in RT shows Rob (I think his friends call him Rob - let's be honest, I was three years below him and never spoke to him, although everyone in school knew him and loved his comedy routines, so I probably shouldn't give people the impression that we were friends) sitting in a classroom, and I'm trying to work out whether it's a room at QEGS. I'm fairly sure it's not rooms 8, 9 or 10, which is where English lessons were held in my day. Possibly room 10, if it's got fewer windows than I remember. Or it might be the new geography room (or was it the new history room? The closest one to the changing rooms, anyway - the one where the old chemistry lab used to be). It's the kind of thing a TV crew would do, deciding that the English classrooms are the wrong size or shape for a photo, so let's use the geography room instead.

In other news, if I did the Great Nottinghamshire Bike Ride, would anybody want to sponsor me? I was thinking about it, apparently the 50-mile one only has one really nasty hill on it, and I have just had my bike serviced so the brakes work and the handlebars don't fall off. Money would go to the Alzheimer's Society, say. C'mon, who'd give money to see me get sunstroke and/or soaked by downpours while giving myself a heart attack from unnecessary exertion?

Also, I'm watching the first couple of episodes of "Lie To Me" on Sky. Tim Roth is good, like he always is, but it's typical mainstream American detective drama stuff that thinks it's a lot cleverer than it is. And some of the actors trying to convey the subtle facial gestures the script calls for are downright embarrassing! And also, it'll lead to even more people becoming NLP fanatics, which the world could do without. NLP people get on my nerves something chronic, and I'm not sure exactly why.

With the possible exception of this guy, if he is in fact an adherent of NLP. He kind of looks like he might be, but his extremely well-designed website doesn't say so, so maybe he isn't. He does look like he might be a lot of fun as a speaker. And more importantly, he mentions me in a very groovy way in his blog.

Incidentally, I swear I don't google my own name every day. Once a month, tops. But it seems like every time I do, I find a fun reference to me that was made just the day before!

Closure

Well, following on from last night's post, I'm sorry to report that Pat Lally (like every other Labour councillor in Broxtowe) lost his seat. And the new Conservative councillor is called Eric Kelly, which is much harder to make a comedy name out of (there are plenty of half-rhymes with Eric, but no real ones except 'cleric').

Still, following on from last weekend's (or thereabouts's) post, I can confirm that The Pickwick Papers really is worth reading! That Dickens bloke does have something going for him, after all. I think he'll go far.

I don't blog about politics

And I also don't devote a blog to making fun of someone I've never met and know nothing about. So it's really been difficult, these past few weeks, to refrain from mentioning that the Labour candidate for the county council is called Pat Lally. And, although I'm sure he's perfectly slender and sensible, whenever I see his name, I always want to give him the subtitle "the fat wally".

Luckily, the election's all over now (or will be tomorrow, when the results come out), so I'll be able to avoid blogging about something else. It'll be a relief!

Here comes the summer sun

Well, today's been cold and cloudy, but the previous few days were baking hot and sunny, which has led me to the conclusion that this new flat of mine is backwards. The front room and kitchen get the sun through the big windows in the mornings, while the bedrooms get it in the afternoons, which means that when I go to bed I come from a relatively cool room into a baking hot one. I think it would work better if it was the other way round.

Maybe I can borrow a giant crane and spin the flat around 180 degrees? That would solve all my problems, and be quite good fun, too!

Remembrance

I'm watching Remembrance of the Daleks on video. Haven't seen it since it was first shown, on the weeks surrounding my twelfth birthday, and I recall having no idea what was going on at the time. Actually, the plot still doesn't entirely make sense to me now, but it's a lot of fun to watch anyway.

And talking of memory, have you heard that Simon did a pack of cards in 27.36 seconds at the South German championships? I really can't wait for the German championship now, there's going to be such a huge volume of really, really great memorisers there, and I have no idea who's going to win.

Long day

The good thing about spending seven hours on trains in a day is that it really makes you appreciate the days when you get to work at an office ten minutes' cycling away. Still, it's fun to visit an exotic place like Cardiff, even if the Doctor wasn't hanging around there today. Anyway, I'm going to bed. Humans weren't designed to get up in time to catch 6:00 trains.

Yesterday ... and Today

I forgot to mention a couple of groovy things that happened yesterday. In W H Smith's, I was served by a woman who asked me "Were you on that Superhuman thing?" Which is always nice. And I weighed myself on that machine in Boots and it told me that my Body Mass Index is down to 27.9, and thus I'm no longer in a position to benefit from that scary weight-loss drug we sell! I've lost five pounds since I weighed myself about a month ago, and I attribute that to the last couple of weeks of not cramming sweets into my gob all day long.

Also, I did 1224 in 30-minute numbers practice today, which I think is a personal best. And I've come up with a scheme for creating an abstract images training program, although it'll take a fair bit of work to put it together.