Drat!

Cityroomz was fully booked, after all my talk of tradition last night. I'm having to stay in a nicer, more expensive place instead. Tradition is ruined! Now I'll never achieve my usual mediocre results in the othello! I'll probably win it, or something useless and non-traditional like that.

Still, I'm cheered up by the news that David Taylor is entering the World Snooker Championship qualifying tomorrow, for the first time in millions of years. I always thought he was cool when I was very young, although I can't think why.

Z

It's that time of the year when I book a room in the Cityroomz hotel in Cambridge at the last minute, for the Cambridge International this weekend. And gah, it's £47.50 a night now! It's an awesome hotel, but it used to be a super-cheap one (in those days it was called "Sleeperz", which was a much more groovy name) as well, and now it's just a cheaper-than-average one. Still, it's traditional that I stay there, and I'm not going to break with tradition, even if I find a cheaper-but-still-nice place. Heck, maybe I'll even book a room for the MSO weekend, too, because I always leave it too late for that and find that the place is fully booked. May day weekend is somehow a more popular time to visit Cambridge than the last weekend in February, even though the othello tournament that weekend is smaller and less important.

Japan loves Zoomy

So, a Japanese TV company wants to fly me out to Japan and interview me and have me do some kind of interesting memory stunt in a studio and maybe scan my brain on an MRI machine or something unique like that.

Seriously. Fuji TV, "The Best House 123", mid-March or mid-April. Now, let's think about this. On the one hand, I have quite literally been there and done that, I only get 25 days of holiday a year and ideally I'd like to save quite a lot of them for China in August (if it doesn't get cancelled/rescheduled/moved to London) so I can go there a good few days early and beat the jetlag, and how many times can I fly to Tokyo and back before someone thinks I'm some kind of international millionaire playboy and kidnaps me to demand a hefty ransom that my impoverished family would be both unable and unwilling (because they don't like me all that much) to pay?

On the other hand, the more exposure I get on Japanese TV, the closer it brings me to fulfilling my secret lifelong ambition to play an evil scientist in a Godzilla movie. I'll seem to be a good guy at first, but then turn out to be secretly plotting to use the giant monsters to crush Tokyo and bring the world's economy under my control. It'll be great.

So I'll sleep on it and see what I think. I'll probably end up saying yes, if they really do want me to do it. I'd be great in a Godzilla movie. I could learn the lines in Japanese, no problem, on account of I'm a memory man.

I'd talk in a sort of deep, gruff, scientist voice and everything.

This is what I do when I'm bored

Seriously, I spend all day playing around with Excel spreadsheets at work, and sometimes I just want to come home and play with Excel spreadsheets in the comfort of my own living room. I'm a terrible sad case.

But I wanted to mess with unnecessarily complicated formulas to predict the Premier League table at the end of the season, based on who still has to play whom. The aim is to get to a point where my calculations are so weird and complex, yet still roughly justifiable by logic, that the end result is a pleasant surprise to me when I see it. Or an unpleasant surprise as it turns out. I really don't like Chelsea and I was hoping to come up with scientific proof that they weren't going to win it. But still, yay, it turns out that Aston Villa are going to get fourth place!

I won't bore everyone by explaining the calculations used (because I wouldn't know how to explain them comprehensibly, for a start), but I thought I'd put my predictions here for posterity and compare them with how the table looks after everything's done and dusted. I'll bet you a coke it's accurate, because it's generated by Science.

1 Chelsea 85
2 Man Utd 81
3 Arsenal 81
4 Aston Villa 72
5 Liverpool 69
6 Tottenham 68
7 Man City 68
8 Everton 53
9 Birmingham 52
10 Fulham 49
11 Stoke 46
12 Blackburn 43
13 West Ham 39
14 Wigan 39
15 Sunderland 38
16 Wolverhampton 38
17 Bolton 37
18 Burnley 37
19 Hull 37
20 Portsmouth [probably non-existent]

Right, that's enough time-wasting. Time to start doing something productive again.

Osero

Perhaps that thing I could do instead of memory is learn to play othello properly? I've been at the same unimpressive kind of level for many years now, and maybe it's high time I devoted some time and effort to improving? But then again, what if I did try to become a great othello player and ended up still being rubbish? I have a feeling that might well happen, so it's probably best to play it safe and never try to achieve anything, ever.

Comic Library Extra!

Okay, we get an extra bonus blog post tonight, because I've just noticed something weird about that Comic Library I bought today. It's something that will only be of interest to roughly three other comic fans in the world, none of whom read my blog and all of whom probably know about it already, but I thought I should share it with all of you anyway. I'm generous like that.

For the benefit of the 99% of my readers who don't know what a Comic Library is and wonder what the flip I'm talking about, they were mini-comics produced by D.C. Thomson and featuring characters from the Dandy and Beano (for the benefit of the 50% of my readers who don't know what the Dandy and Beano are, they're popular weekly British comics, featuring about a dozen regular comic strips, each of them one or two pages in length every week). Two Beano and two Dandy Comic Libraries were published every month, starting around 1981 or thereabouts, and they contained a 64-page adventure for just one of their regular characters. Some were brilliant, some were frankly rubbish, but they cost 20p and were a highlight of my month every time.

The inside front cover of each Comic Library would normally contain a full-page advertisement for the weekly Beano, the inside back cover had an advertisement for the two Beano Comic Libraries that would be out next month, and the outside back cover had an advertisement for the other one that was out this month. This was the days before the Beano ran ads from outside companies. It's sad, really, that not enough kids buy the things nowadays.

However, Comic Library no. 36, Baby-Face Finlayson in "Gold Robber" (which for some reason I never had in 1983, although I did have the hugely inferior "Count Whackula", starring Dennis the Menace, which came out in the same month), has this on the inside front cover:

And this on the inside back:


This is weird. No 'See Baby-Face Finlayson every week in the Beano!' and two 'next month' ads, promising different stories next month! The inside front cover is the correct one, except that the Bananaman story was actually called "It's A Knockabout" (and it was BRILLIANT, by the way, one of the best Comic Libraries ever, up there with the Baby-Faces), while "Castle Capers" didn't see print until the following year, in Comic Library no. 50 (it wasn't all that good, either). And the picture of Minnie the Minx on the inside back cover ad is by the artist who normally drew the Minnie Comic Libraries (I think it's lifted from "Min's Best Friend", but I haven't checked), while the picture on the inside front cover is by the different artist (I wish I knew their names, but the Beano never credited its creative talent in those days) who drew "Min's Pest Show".

Apparently they created the original ad, then rescheduled "Castle Capers" and drew up a replacement ad, but accidentally printed it on the inside front cover instead of the back, meaning that two contradictory ads went into the finished publication! I like finding things like this in my comics. I do wonder why the Lord Snooty story was held back for a whole year, too.

Anyway, since I had the scanner up and running again, let me show you why Ron Spencer's Baby-Face Finlayson Comic Libraries were the absolute high point of 1980s comics throughout the universe with just a couple of examples from "Gold Robber":

Baby-Face and friends have just stolen a shipment of butter, mistaking it for gold, but decide to make the best of it by having a feast. Ron Spencer loved his feast scenes.

Note the whole roast chicken in the background. Every Baby-Face story featured at least half a dozen whole roast chickens - it was Spencer's signature, in lieu of actually being allowed to write his name on his works.


It's the little things I love - Mayor Orless naturally has a framed picture of himself hanging on his wall.



And the complete non-sequitur of one of "Marsh" Mallow's horses thinking "Funny! I keep thinking it's Wednesday!" totally cracks me up.

Bloggin'

The charity shops around here seem to be full of great stuff all of a sudden. Just today, I found the Dennis the Menace book from 1960, a Beano Comic Library from 1983 starring Baby-Face Finlayson (full of quite brilliantly insane art by Ron Spencer, who I admire greatly but whose name for some reason I always have to look up before I mention him, because I always think he was called either Victor or Sid - I have no idea why), the second volume of Bang Bang It's Reeves And Mortimer on video, and a complete VHS collection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And also a new pair of work trousers to replace my ones with the broken zip. Oh, and a Golden Picture Classics abridged edition of Treasure Island from 1956, to provide a belated illustration of the mystery pirate from my essay the other week. And all without any really significant cost to me, while still benefitting various more or less good causes! I don't know why anyone bothers to go into normal shops, I really don't.


It's probably the one in the green shirt.

Teddy Boy

I'm sorry my blogging has been a bit sporadic just lately, but very little of interest has been happening around here. I did some really clever Visual Basic programming at work the other day, but I imagine my blog readers would be even less interested in that than my co-workers, so I won't go into detail.

I've been playing the classic Master System game "Teddy Boy" tonight, a fun platform game with a cute central character who shoots downright adorable monsters and collects beer and cigarettes, among other bonus items. It's a strange game, but very addictive.

Look, the blog will get more interesting than this soon. It's the first othello tournament of the season next weekend, that'll be something worth writing about!

I'll tell you what I'm tired of

Winter, that's what. When's it going to stop being all cold and nasty? If you're thinking that I haven't blogged enough just lately, it's because of the weather. If you want me to write more than this, get out there and stop it being winter.

Here come Johnny

There's an advert on telly, for tellies or something, with a sort of winter-olympics theme. I've never really paid much attention to it, because the first three notes of the jingle are the first three notes of "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits, and so every time that advert comes on, I think 'Hey, I should find "Walk of Life" on YouTube and listen to it.'

I've listened to that song so much in the last couple of weeks, I'm in danger of starting to dislike it. Not serious danger, though. It's an awesome song.

There's no denying it

I'm just not in the mood to memorise. I feel like I need some kind of new challenge. Basically, I feel exactly like I did five years ago - I'm world champion, I've been in the same job for a year and a half after a lengthy period as a drifter, I'm not really on board with the idea of putting in the effort to do the exact same things over again - with the added advantage now of feeling like my life is going around in five-year circles.

I don't know, maybe this would be a good time to drop the whole memory-competition scene (as a competitor, anyway - I couldn't stop going to competitions and hanging out with the people there) and find a new way to impress people with my cleverness. I just need to work out what that would be...

Oh, simple thing, where have you gone?

I'm thirty-three-and-a-third years old, either today or tomorrow, depending on how you look at it. Tomorrow if you pretend that the year is made up of twelve months of equal length, today if you consider that it's 122 days since my 33rd birthday today. Anyway, it's official - I'm a long-playing record. I'm the somewhat disappointing second sequel to "The Naked Gun". I'm a third of the way through my life, assuming I fulfil my lifetime ambition of dropping dead on my hundredth birthday, just before the arrival of the telegram from the Queen, prompting all my friends to write back by return of telegram condemning her rudeness in sending a telegram to the deceased and upsetting everyone like that, and in turn causing Her Majesty to be so grief-stricken and mortified that she realises the error of her ways, abdicates, abolishes the monarchy and the government and institutes a perfect socialist utopia.

I'm going to celebrate it tomorrow, anyway. And by 'celebrate', I mean that I'm going to spend the whole day wailing, lamenting and screaming curses at the gods for allowing me to get so old. It'll be fun!

Winterlympics?

Hey, is it the Winter Olympics? I hadn't really seen any build-up to it on TV or anywhere. Perhaps I should keep in touch with things more. But it's not like it's the real olympics, anyway. Those happen in London, in August.

The robots are mounting an attack on us! Our hero pulled the trigger on the gun.

My blog has recently been repeatedly attacked by evil robots posting lots of links to what I assume to be naughty websites (they're mostly made up of Chinese characters, with occasional words like "sex" and "18" thrown into the mix - and also, fascinatingly, "85cc", which makes me think that the websites might also involve a little motorbike like the one I used to ride. I'm almost tempted to click on it and find out).

This has happened four times now, and for some reason it posts these links to the same fifteen blog entries every time - most of them from March, April and May last year, two from November, one from January 2008 and one from November 2006. I'm not sure how it chooses which ones to target, and I'd be fascinated to find out. Still, it's boring to delete them all repeatedly, so now I've switched on the setting of comment moderation for all posts over 14 days old. So do feel free to comment on my old posts, unless you're a Chinese motorbike sex machine, but if you do, I'll have to approve the comment before it appears on the internet for the world to see.

Training

No, not the memory kind, a different kind. I was out on a Microsoft Access training course today - I'm great with Excel, but I've never really done anything with Access, and it's a bit like being the world memory champion in that if you're good with Excel, everyone assumes you know everything about every vaguely-related computer software. Still, now I know enough about Access to bluff my way through a conversation, so my reputation is assured.

Listing history

At the weekend, I bought for 20p from a market stall "Hunter Davies's Bigger Book Of British Lists", published in 1982. It's a book full of lists of trivia, most of it up-to-the-minute details of what was happening in British life in 1981, and there are some fascinating facts to be found.

Did you know that there were 27,870,000 telephones in Britain in 1981 (and a population of 54,129,000)? Or that there were 615.7 million calls to recorded information services in 1980-81 - 401.1 million of those being to the speaking clock? Second on the list was dial-a-disc, with 102.5 million calls, then cricket, with 30.5. I remember those - you dialled 16, and you got the latest cricket news if it was the cricket season, or a pop song (randomly selected) if it wasn't. No YouTube in those days, people had to entertain themselves somehow. Calls cost 10p, as I recall, although my recollection is based on a few years later, so it might have been 5p back in 1981. Still, to be amongst the top 10% of male wage earners in 1980, you had to earn at least £179 a week.

The top five television programmes for 1981 were Coronation Street, The Benny Hill Show, This Is Your Life, To The Manor Born, and Magnum. And even though there were only three channels to choose from in those days, the average individual watched 3.37 hours of TV a day.

Finally, and most interestingly, the top-selling toys of 1981 were...

1 - Rubik's Cube
2 - Star Wars figures
3 - Sindy Doll and accessories
4 - Lego
5 - Astro Wars
6 - Action Man
7 - Rubik Snake Puzzle
8 - Connect 4
9 - Britains Farm & Space figures
10 - Kensington

Kensington? Astro Wars? I don't recall what I got for Christmas that year (probably a kick up the bum and consider-yourself-lucky, but possibly some Star Wars toys too), but I've never heard of those two lines. Ah, poor people of 1981, still three years away from the glorious revolution that was Transformers, He-Man, Thundercats, MASK, Action Force, all those classic toys of the greatest toy-and-cartoon era of history.

Who wants to be a millionaire

I did the lottery last night, for the first time in a while (I buy a ticket every time I'm sitting at my computer on a Saturday and an advert for the lottery comes on telly - I'm easily swayed by advertising) and won £10. Of course, since it's on the computer, it doesn't really count as money - I really should buy a ticket from a shop some time, and get a real £10 note to put in my pocket, that would be a lot more satisfying. Still, it seemed rather miserly to transfer £10 back into my bank account, so I decided to spend it on the instant win games on the National Lottery website.

And I can tell you, it's easy to see why people develop gambling problems. I had no idea those virtual scratchcards were such fun! I was playing the monopoly-themed game (remember that strange obsession with monopoly I had recently?), and it's really extremely cleverly made. It really does feel like you're playing an exciting game, even though you're actually just essentially watching a video and then being told whether or not you've won. It could be very addictive, and I might just have to delete my account, just in case I get tempted to try it again. I hope the person who designed it got paid well, anyway.

You know, it's been much too long since I went to Las Vegas. I'll have to see if I can fit another holiday into my busy schedule...

The Evil Genius

If by 'evil', we're talking in terms of the sin of sloth, and by 'genius' we mean the kind of person who can remember things, then yes. I've spent the whole day reading "The Evil Genius", by Wilkie Collins, rather than doing anything I was intending to do.

In BATE, TO Runnymede, John with Charter goes

Remember this blog post last month, when I couldn't think of a plausible way to fill the missing line in that poem? The above line came to me out of the blue today, so I thought I should record it, just to give a sense of closure to the whole thing. 'Bate' as in 'bad temper'.

Also, it gives me an interesting title for today's blog entry. I like to have a title that is in some way clever and funny, and I don't always achieve it. Often I have a subject I want to write about, but can't think of a title, and equally often I think of a fun title and have to come up with something to write that would fit with it. And sometimes I think of a phrase that would make a perfect title, but know I'm never going to get a chance to use it.

For example, I would love to write a blog with the title "The Spiders Immediately Become Timid", and start it with this wonderful picture of a timid giant spider monster:

(I've recently been introduced to the awesome works of Fletcher Hanks)

But the only circumstances in which I could use this title and picture would be in a blog chronicling my attempts to rid my flat of spiders or insects - and I really quite like spiders, and I'm probably never going to get any kind of bug infestation problem. I never have any luck like that. So that blog title was just going to sit in my head, unused, if I hadn't brought it out tonight.

Right.

Weekend - memory. Lots of it. Until I've memorised so much that I can't remember anything ever again, up to and including my own name. I've got it written down somewhere, it really wouldn't be a problem. And no watching all those cheap cartoon DVDs I bought last weekend until I'm back in World Memory Champion form.

Also, research some way to get around jetlag, because if we do end up going to China for the WMC, that time difference is really going to kill me. Ideally, I'd like to go out there a week early to get properly synchronised, but I don't think I'm going to have the holiday time or the money to do that.