Unprepared

Flying to Gothenburg tomorrow (must make some effort to call it Göteborg while I'm there), haven't packed bags, worked out where exactly I'm going or done any training. So can't blog at length. See you Tuesday, unless you're going to be there this weekend.

Ultimate Grand Master!

You become a 'Grand Master of Memory' by memorising 1000 digits in an hour, 10 packs of cards in an hour, and a single pack of cards in two minutes. It's comparatively easy, and lots of people have done it.

What nobody has ever done, yet, is become a Double Grand Master (a title which I have just this moment made up), by successfully memorising 2000 digits, 20 packs of cards and a 1-minute pack. That should be my ambition, really. I'm constantly frustrated by my inability to get 2000 in hour numbers, and it really gets annoying after a few years. So perhaps I'll devote my every waking hour to achieving that. Or maybe I'll just spend all my time lying around doing nothing, as usual. We'll see.

Possibly I'll change the definition of "Double Grand Master" by making it 1000 digits in 30 minutes, and 10 packs in 30 minutes, because if I do that, I'm one already. I'll put the initials after my name.

(Having written that, I had to go and look up who else is a DGM. It's me, Gunther, Hannes and Cornelia. Simon, the Deutsche Gedächtnis Meister, only has a best of 985 in 30-minute numbers)

In other news, I need new trousers. The pair of trousers that I think of as 'my only decently wearable pair' are actually decidedly indecent in the rear, thanks to a big ripped hole where I caught them on something sharp protruding from my bike. I ought to get some more before I go to Sweden. I don't like buying clothes, I tend to just hope that people will buy them for me...

But you're such a charming, handsome man

A reader has complained that it's a long time since I blogged about being handsome. I actually don't think I've ever blogged about that, but if that's what my loyal readership want, who am I to complain? I am, after all, quite devastatingly handsome. And an article in the Washington Post agrees! Well, the (mostly) flattering article doesn't technically call me handsome, but it does say I'm "smartly clad in a fedora and a faded cartoon T-shirt", which shows a degree of sartorial appreciation unusual in anyone, let alone American newspapers!

Anyway, if I haven't mentioned it before, I'm taking my handsomeness and cartoon T-shirts to Gothenburg on Friday, there to test my faded memory techniques against some people who are really quite good at it and will doubtless kick my ass, metaphorically speaking. It promises to be a great weekend!

Groundhog Day

It's a really wonderful film. One of those ones you can watch over and over again, appropriately enough.

Actually, life is just like that when you're voluntarily unemployed. I was just thinking that I've been a productive member of society for much too long now - I'm starting to come across as a normal person. Perhaps I ought to abandon all worldly posessions and go and live in a cave for a while. A nice warm cave with central heating and an internet connection, obviously.

On the other hand, someone mistook me for a student today - I was out cycling this morning and noticed huge swarms of people crowding into the university campus, so I rode through there and someone with a microphone asked me if I was a fresher just moving in. Which was quite flattering. Must have been the Blue Peter badge.

Speaking of which, I suspect my new nice badge fell off the back of a lorry - the person who sold it to me on eBay is obviously selling lots of them under multiple alisases, it's some kind of master criminal organisation, I can tell. But still, I don't care, I've got a badge again!

Couldn't resist it

I've bought a new Blue Peter badge on eBay. Actually, I've ended up buying two, because I was outbid on the really nice new one and so bought an older and nastier one but then the winning bidder on the nice one dropped out and so I ended up with two. So now I can wear my nice badge with pride all day every day, and keep the nasty one in a safe place in case I lose the nice one again. Now everybody will envy me forever!

I've also been buying old comics on eBay, heedless of the fact that I'm going to Sweden next weekend and they've just changed the pay date at Boots from the 20th to the 28th of the month. But never mind, I'll just beg for krone on the streets of Gothenburg before the competition.

My unshakeable philosophies of life

I have two fundamental principles that I follow in every aspect of life, which flatly contradict each other but which I still nevertheless tell people to follow, whether they ask me or not.

First philosophy - read the instructions, dimwits. I've developed a reputation for being an expert at computery stuff at work, just because whenever someone turns to the office in general and yells "I don't know how to make this thing on the screen change colours!", I click the 'help' button and find out how to do it, and then pass the message along. Moral - anyone can be a genius, if you just make the effort to find out how to do something yourself rather than asking the nearest genius how to do it.

Second philosophy - don't read the instructions, dolts. I became the World Memory Champion precisely by not reading the various books and websites available on the subject, but by looking at the things you have to memorise in the World Memory Championship and inventing a new way of doing it that nobody had thought of before. So don't come to me asking for every tiny detail of my system, work out your own version.

And there you go - do what I tell you, follow both those simple philosophies and ignore everything I've told you tonight, and you too can be as clever and awesome* as me.


*Awesomeness currently scheduled to last until December, when someone beats me in the World Memory Championship by being much more awesome than me.

Bloggery

Sorry I haven't blogged anything for the last few days, but I just seem to have got out of the habit of finding a bit of time in the evening to ramble incoherently about whatever's on my mind. I'm sure everyone missed it terribly. But I'm forced to wonder what my loyal band of bloglings want to read on this thing, anyway - someone found this blog by searching for "funny chickens drawings" the other day, which made me feel terribly bad about their inevitable disappointment.

I should do some funny chickens drawings to compensate them, but I can't think of any particularly good punchlines. I'm sure my googler eventually found the Far Side or Perry Bible Fellowship or at least a photo of an unusually ugly chicken.

The Last Night of the Proms!

Lord, grant that Marshal Wade/ may by Thy mighty aid,/ victory bring! We really need to re-insert that verse into the national anthem. It's not quite as cool as the obscure verse of the French national anthem that denounces Bouillé and his complices, but it's still a lot of fun. Frustrate their knavish tricks! Crush the Scots! Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles!

(There was some brandy left over from putting in the fruit cake I baked earlier, and I foolishly drank it tonight. Much stronger stuff than I thought it was.)

As fast as you can

I said I'd make a cake for some kind of work-related charity cake stall, so that's been my excuse for not doing anything memory-related today. It's cooking now, and filling the whole flat with a pleasant cakeish aroma. I'd make a good baker - it's a profession that requires the wearing of silly hats and the eating of lots of tasty foodstuffs. Why have I wasted so many years being an accountant-slash-memory-champion?

Crabbit auld girn

Just to complain a little bit more about the new Broons/Oor Wullie collection, because I can't read an extremely entertaining and enjoyable compilation of long-out-of-print comics without whining that I want more from it... This latest volume is larger than the fourteen previous ones, in the sense that the pages are physically bigger. I have no idea why - the reprinted comics are the same size as ever, there's just more white space around the edges. But the number of pages is sharply reduced again - the first one, back in 1996, had 126 reprinted Dudley-Watkins-drawn strips, then they settled into a pattern of roughly 120 every year until 2006, when it shrank down to around 100 per compilation. This year's has 83. Yes, I counted them.

I mean, are they trying to test just how little work they can put into these books and still get people to buy them? If so, I'm worried, because I'll continue to buy them however small they get, and I'm sure everyone else who buys the things will do the same. It's not like they're running short of comics to reprint, because Watkins drew a LOT of them - by my count there are about 1800 still to appear in these annual collections. Aren't they satisfied with another fifteen-to-eighteen years of income before they have to test the waters with a Watkins-themed Beano or Dandy compilation? Heck, by that time I'll be crying out for a Ken H Harrison tribute book...

Well, there'd better be more than a hundred in next year's book, or I'll have no alternative but to whine in my blog again. And I don't think anyone wants that!

Did you know...?

That in pole vaulting, there's no rule specifying how long your pole has to be? I would have thought there would be.

Svenska

I've got a 'teach yourself Swedish' course, but I haven't got round to trying it out yet. I'm pessimistic about my chances of being able to make myself understood in Gothenburg at the end of the month - from what little I know of the language, I'm pretty sure I won't be able to get my tongue around the vowel sounds or tones. Maybe I'll just speak Japanese to everyone there. I've got quite good at Japanese.

One last stat attack

People persistently find this blog searching for cartoon-related topics on Google. I need to write more blogs about old cartoons, and especially the ones released on cheap knockoff videos, fast! I haven't toon-blogged for years, actually. Right, from now on, this blog is nothing but cartoons!

Return of the ukulele

I went into Nottingham today for no particular reason, and was walking through the Victoria Centre when I heard the sounds of ukulele music. It turned out that the music shop were having some kind of ukulele event, including free lessons/singalongs with the guy who wrote my teach-yourself-ukulele book. He even recognised me, too, although he seemed doubtful when I suggested he might have seen me memorising things on the telly and asked whether I do cabaret or anything like that.

Still, I know an omen when I see one, and clearly this means I should stop wasting time practicing memorising things, and start practicing the ukulele. I might even join the Nottingham Ukulele Group, which is probably going to be formed shortly by someone else who was there today.

I appreciate that I'm probably never going to be the World Ukulele Champion, both because no such title exists and because my fingers are generally clumsy and useless, but it would almost certainly be fun anyway...

Drat those logistics!

The latest collection of classic Broons and Oor Wullie comics is in the shops now! Well, according to Lew Stringer, who knows about these things, it's been out for a month, but this is the first time I've seen it. Anyway, once I'd read the comics, my eye was drawn to the small print on the first page - "While every effort has been made to preserve the authenticity of the pages reproduced here, for logistical reasons, certain minor adjustments have been made."

That's strange, I thought - previous collections haven't had a disclaimer like that. And what are "logistical reasons" when you're reproducing old newspaper comics? Well, I had to investigate further, and here's one of those minor adjustments that were logistically necessary! Here's one of the reprinted strips from this year's collection:

And here's the strip as it originally appeared in 1937:





Spot the minor adjustment? Now, don't get me wrong here. As a general rule, I do think racism is a bad thing, all in all (I would hope that goes without saying, but you never know). But I don't like the idea of reprinting old comics and whitewashing out the offensive racial stereotypes. Besides which, that unfortunate black member of Wullie's old gang (I've seen him referred to as 'Ezzy', but he's unnamed in all the comics I've seen - Wullie's original gang were a nameless horde, hugely indebted to the Our Gang movies, for the first couple of years) wasn't there in an attempt at racism, he was an attempt at political correctness, 1930s-style, and inclusion. He's drawn like that because that's how you drew black people in those days.

And okay, there were some Oor Wullie strips where his purpose is to play up the usual comedy-nigger clichés, but he's always just one of the gang, and a valued member at that. Here's one of his greatest moments, where he's elevated from the ranks of the horde to become Wullie's most loyal sidekick:



(Note the fat one called 'Sandy' in that strip, by the way - after a couple of months as 'Geordie', he became 'Fat Bob', shoved the rest of the old gang aside, and the comic evolved into the familiar lineup we know and love today)

So here's to Ezzy, or whatever his name was, and I want you all to go and draw him back into your copies of "The Broons and Oor Wullie - Family Fun Through The Years"! For logistical reasons!

"Are, in retrospect, glorious..."

Someone found my blog by googling "The follies of men's youth" today. I'm going to have to stop reading that stats page, it's terribly addictive.

Anyway, looking back at 2006 to see the blog entry I wrote with that title, I noticed just how much of this blog is devoted to whining that I'm not sufficiently prepared for memory competitions. Now I come to think about it, I don't think I've ever felt that I've done enough training, since the world championship in 2004. Perhaps I should just give up on the subconscious desire to recapture the downright obsessive practicing I was doing before I won the world championship for the first time, because it's never going to happen.

Really, I'd settle for forcing myself to do just a little bit of speed numbers and binary training to get my speed back up again, between now and the Swedish championship. I'll see if I can muster the enthusiasm tomorrow...

An aid to memory

I feel that I should record for posterity that my favourite poem is Rudyard Kipling's "If". The subject of favourite poems came up recently in a conversation, and for some reason I couldn't think of one on the spur of the moment. So in accordance with the well-known mnemonic principle of 'write it down and even if you never look at the writing again, you'll remember it', let me just say that I absolutely worship and adore that poem, and it's always going to be the one that springs to my mind when asked for a favourite.

Then I'll follow it with an apology for choosing the poem that everyone lists as their all-time favourite, but it really is. Sorry.

Stats!

Hey, this is something new! Or maybe it was always there and I just didn't notice, but it's new to me! Blogger comes with stats telling you who's reading your blog and why!

Today, my viewers come from:

United Kingdom 70
United States 45
Australia 9
India 6
Sweden 4
Latvia 3
Canada 2
Germany 2
France 2
Hong Kong 2

Who's reading me in Latvia? I don't know any Latvians. I mentioned Lithuania the other day, but not Latvia. Perhaps they were offended! If I'd known I had Latvian readers, I would have pretended to think Latvia was great!

Furthermore, I've had a visit from the New Zealand version of Google, searching for "how to give myself food poisoning". I hope my blog was instructive - open a tin of tuna yesterday, save half of it until today, assume it'll be fine.

And people have been looking for Krypton Force again! I haven't done a blog post about Krypton Force videos for ages. I must devote another blog to Marc's artwork again soon. And people have been sent here by recordholders.org, too - I didn't know that site even still existed, let alone had a link to my blog. You learn something new every day. And, thanks to Blogger, the things I'm going to learn revolve around the question of who's reading my blog!

A need for speed

The only real problem I had at the UK Championship was that my brain was running too slowly. It was taking me more time than it should have done to look at the numbers/cards/whatevers and translate them into images. Once I'd done that, my recall was excellent and my mind really wasn't wandering at all, which surprised me a bit, because I haven't done very much marathon-memory training in the last year or so. So really, I just need a bit of regular evening practice going as quickly as possible, and hopefully I'll be back up to somewhere close to my best, possibly...

On the other hand, I was really super-fast with the random words last week. The first three or four columns of words just sunk into my brain with no trouble at all, it really struck me as weird. Maybe there's a reason behind that, or maybe they were just easy words.

Book report

While in London, I came across the most completely awesome book - "Find Chaffy", by the completely awesome Jamie Smart. It's like Where's Wally, but mixed with Jamie Smart's trademark weird and wonderful sense of humour, and you all really should go and buy it now.

I also found a copy of the first G-Man collection by Chris Giarrusso, which I've been meaning to buy for ages - it's also quite screamingly funny and clever and recommended to everyone. Also, it steals my ideas, but it's probably a coincidence.

And I also bought something by Charles Dickens, but he hasn't got a website yet. It's no wonder he's not cool.