Wifi on planes? Whatever next?

Well, since it's here, I'd better use it for a blog update. And before we get into Chinese airspace, too.

Anyway, I'm on my way to Nanjing! I'll be away from home until the 29th, then on February 1st I launch into a new job, in Redditch, which means I'll be moving house again, too. It's all go, but basically I've resolved not to think about any of that until I get back from China, because there's only so much my brain can deal with at once.

I've done my hugely unsatisfactory Images qualifying for the XMT - really annoyingly, I did a practice run of a perfect 18.70 seconds, or something like that, first thing this morning, and then couldn't get close to that any time that I had the 'qualification attempt' box ticked. I'm resigned to setting my sights a bit lower now, and aiming for "just barely scraping into the top sixteen". We'll see how it goes.

Luke Spacewalker

There's a British astronaut going spacewalking at the space station today, which reminds me of a picture I'd like to find from an old Beano comic, some time in the early eighties. The Beano often liked to boast that Mark Hamill was a member of the Dennis the Menace Fan Club, and one time on the letters page some editor (who clearly knew nothing at all about Mark Hamill except what he could deduce from the names 'Star Wars' and 'Luke Skywalker') quipped that he should remember not to pin his fan club badges on his spacesuit when he next goes spacewalking, illustrated with a picture of an astronaut being blown away into space by a puncture. It was a really impressive attempt to show that the Beano was down with the kids!

It begins!

Qualification for the world's coolest memory tournament is underway! Week one is the coolest discipline, speed cards!

The way qualifying works is that you have a week for each discipline, in which you get to make five attempts and choose your best time. Attempts have to be videoed and comply with specific rules to prevent cheating, which means the world gets to see everyone sitting at computers and remembering things...

Here's my first attempt, 25.85 seconds, which would be an entirely okay time to submit even if I don't manage to go any faster in the remaining four.



Cards is the one where I really need to set a very good time to start off with, because people are going to catch up and overtake me in a big way on some of the other disciplines. This one, though, I'm still one of the best at - I hope.

Extremely extreme!

It's that time of the year, everyone - qualifying for the Extreme Memory Tournament starts next Monday!

Go to the training website, sign up, pay a little bit of money if you have to, it's worth it, and take part in the qualification tournament!

I have to qualify this year, and it makes me nervous. I did a practice run yesterday and got some pretty good scores (400 points' worth), which most people think would be enough to get into the tournament, though I'm a little concerned that there'll be some extremely big scores from a lot of people this time round...

The thing about qualifying is that you really want to end up in the top four of the sixteen qualifying competitors - the top eight from last year will (I assume) be the top eight seeds again, which should mean that when everyone's drawn into six groups for the XMT itself, the top four qualifiers will get into pot two (along with Jonas and Enkhjin) and theoretically have a slightly easier group stage draw. Although the top six seeds are all pretty scary (Hannes, Boris, Simon, Alex, Katie, Christian), so there really isn't going to be a super-easy draw for anyone.

But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it! The first step is to qualify, starting with speed cards, and my aim there is to get a time better than the 100-points record of 23.34 seconds. I did 23.33 in my practice session yesterday, so that counts as a success!

I'm flying to China on the 19th and back on the 29th, which will get in the way a little, or a lot. I think I'll have to do the images qualification on the 18th before I go, since I'll be spending the remainder of the week in Nanjing rehearsing and performing, and then do the names qualification on the weekend after I return, since I'll be spending the first half of the week in Harbin with probably little access to the internet and a lot of access to beer and a brother I haven't hung out with for ages. But we'll see how it goes!

And if you're keen to read about actual memory competitions, rather than prospective qualification for future competitions, you really must check out new World Memory Champion Alex Mullen's account of how he won, thoroughly squishing my two remaining world records along the way. I think we can safely say that the top memory competitors' scores have now reached a level that makes my performances way back when look quite embarrassingly bad...

Back in the red

Taking an excellent suggestion from Danny at work, I spent three hours of today very productively; watching Red Dwarf. He was thinking more in terms of watching the DVDs, but I'm old-fashioned and still have video tapes that I recorded off the TV, twenty years ago. Nearly exactly twenty years ago, as it turns out - my tape of series 6 was apparently recorded when it was repeated in early 1996. I can tell this from the BBC announcement that because of the events in the news at the time, "Rimmerworld" was postponed and replaced by "Out of Time". I had to check the internet to find out that it was the Dunblane massacre, which just made me wonder why the latter episode was considered more suitable - if anything, it's got rather more shooting and violence in it than the other. I also find myself wondering why I didn't also tape Fist Of Fun which according to the BBC continuity announcer was shown right after the Red Dwarf repeats - not only was it hilarious, but it had text at the end designed to be recorded and watched with the aid of the pause button. Maybe I did tape it but lost the tape at some time since then, I don't know. Twenty years is a long time.

I haven't been entirely idle today, though, because XMT qualification starts soon, and I've been doing a bit of practice for that. I'll blog at greater length soon about the qualification tournament and how I'm going to arrange it around a two-week visit to China. You know, once I've worked out how exactly I'm going to do that...

I'm going to China!

I know I've been going to China for a while now, but it's official - I've got my visa, and they'll let me into the country! Unless something goes wrong. I mean, they might change their minds...

I always worry too much about this kind of thing. Anything that involves getting official approval just scares me. Officials are frightening people.

Job satisfaction

I'm starting to worry that I really like my job. It's not what you'd call mentally exerting, but it's sort of fun. This is a terrible kind of mental attitude to have, I really should try to do something about it.

There are many things I don't understand

Did you know that the day after Christmas isn't called Boxing Day in the USA? They don't even call it anything, it's just December 26th!

Well, I didn't know that until today, and the thought of my ignorance just seriously freaks me out. I mean, this is the fortieth Boxing Day I've spent on this planet, and while the first few of them were before the internet existed and America was just this sort of magical fictional place where they had all the cool Transformers toys that we didn't, Wikipedia's been around for quite a while now and I've been in regular contact with American friends since at least, ooh, must be 1998. How has this not come up in conversation?

What else am I taking for granted as a universal concept when actually it's just a silly local thing? I mean, it was freaky enough when I learned that they don't have Christmas crackers over there either, but Boxing Day?

Freaky, I tells you.

What's on TV?

I might spend the whole of Christmas watching cartoon videos, actually.

Solstice

I would be out prancing around Stonehenge, but it's raining.

Some like it hot

I take any slight decrease in the temperature outside as a good excuse to have my radiators on full blast. There's nothing like being lightly toasted on a winter's night.

Christmassy weather

It's like a sort of dull, colder version of summer around here at the moment. I'm not saying I want snow and ice - in fact, this weather's just fine for me, thanks - but there's automatically something disappointing about not having a white Christmas...

Private viewing

Went to the cinema today, for the first time in however many years - I'm not what you'd call a regular moviegoer. And no, not to see Star Wars, despite what I was saying just yesterday; I thought I'd check out Charlie Brown and Snoopy. I was going to go and see Star Wars afterwards - the Showcase in Derby was showing it every fifteen minutes on one of its many screens, while the Peanuts gang were only on once, at 10:30 in the morning - but Charlie Brown's adventures turned out to be such a feel-good movie I decided to just be satisfied with the warm glow it gave me, and check out what Middle-Aged Luke Skywalker is up to some other time.

I had Screen 3 at the Showcase entirely to myself - everybody else clearly had better things to do on the last Saturday morning before Christmas (Star Wars, probably) - so I got to see the whole thing in glorious 3D in comfort and quiet. I should go to the cinema more often! And what a great movie it is, too! The animation is wonderful - as per the current fashion they clearly spent ridiculous amounts of time and money on making Snoopy's fur look realistic, but the whole thing is brilliantly designed to reflect its roots as line drawings in the newspaper funnies; it goes with the 'drawings come to life' kind of approach rather than the 'look what we can do with computer animation nowadays', and it looks just perfect.

And the writing is spot on, too - perhaps a little more inspired by the cartoons than the comics, but nicely hitting the feel of them both, not really trying to be deliberately old-fashioned but coming across as perfectly timeless. Charlie Brown is the loveable loser he's always been and all the others have their little character moments which I think work as well for first-time viewers (if there is such a thing) as for people familiar with all the old stuff. It's not trying to do anything new, but it's certainly not just re-hashing old ideas and making them look pretty. I love it!

46 years ago the first Peanuts movie, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, was in the cinemas - that one ends with Charlie Brown losing the spelling bee ("And did you notice? The world didn't come to an end!") while this new movie gives him a happy ending, but if you think about it they both convey the same general moral; life goes on, don't worry about it. Charlie Brown will never kick the football, but he'll always be a truly great human being. Fantastic movie, I recommend it to everyone!

Use the force

I'm hearing people say the new Star Wars is good, which surprises me. I was assuming everyone would automatically say it was rubbish. I've misjudged the human race, obviously. Or at least the part of it that goes and watches Star Wars the day it comes out. I really must go and see it myself.

Names and faces again

Watching an old episode of Blake's 7 this morning, I was wondering who that familiar-looking actor was. It took me a while to penetrate the clean-shaven young face, sideburns and late-seventies hairstyle, before his voice made me realise "Oh, it's Inspector Grim! David Haig!" And then immediately after that revelation I got an email from David Haigh, no relation, which just makes me think that things would be a lot simpler all round if everybody had the same name. So from now on, everybody has to be called David Haig(h), okay? You can choose whether or not to put an H on the end. I'm sure this will improve world understanding and harmony immeasurably.

Hi there

Bumped into someone I used to know today - or at least I can only assume I used to know him, since he clearly knew me and chatted about what I'd been doing for the last couple of years. Could have been anyone, really. One of these days, I need to learn how to remember names and faces...

Light the lights

I'm still loving The Muppets. It's great when I have pretty high expectations of something and they get surpassed anyway! I was going to write at length on the subject, but I'm too tired, so at some point in the future I'll get round to it. Feel free to wave your arms like Kermit and cheer "Yaaaaaaaaay!"

Vis-a-vis the visa

Tomorrow's task - apply for a visa to visit China. I always get nervous about it, not so much because they might refuse to let me into the country, but because I might accidentally lose/destroy/eat my passport or something and not be able to arrange the visa in time. Never happened yet, but it still might...

It's time to get extreme again!

Qualifying for the 2016 XMT starts in January! January 11th, to be precise, and one week for each discipline. Since I'm going to China on the 19th and coming back on the 29th, I might have to cram my images qualification into the day before, and names the weekend after I get back, but I'm sure I'll cope...

Right, let's get training, I'll need some impressive scores if I'm going to qualify!

Pardon me, Duchess

I've just got an email from the Duchess Theatre in Long Eaton with a subject "Appologies for the errors in the previous email." I wonder if they're going to send another one apologising for the spelling in this one?

I really should take myself off the Duchess Theatre's mailing list, anyway. I've only been there once, years and years ago. I'm not really a theatre-goer. Maybe I'll become one when I'm wealthy. Or have nothing better to do with my time.