Just plain mental

I've been practicing mental calculations. There are six events at the MCWC - adding ten ten-digit numbers, multiplying two eight-digit numbers, finding the square root (to eight significant figures) of a six-digit number, and naming the day of the week for a given date, plus two "surprise" tasks. In each case you get a certain amount of time to do as many of the tasks as possible - ten minutes for the addition, fifteen minutes for the multiplication and roots, and just a minute for the calendar calculations. Which is a bit of a rush if like me you're not particularly brilliant.

You're given ten of each task, and I can just about do eight additions in the time, and six multiplications. The trick is to keep practicing so that I get most or all of them correct, because I have too many little errors at the moment. Dates is more a case of getting my mind in gear as quickly as possible - once you get going, it really is easy to rattle them off in a few seconds, but I seem to struggle to get warmed up properly.

Square roots are my weak point at the moment. I'm still not entirely sure what approach to take for them. I'd quite like to memorise all the six-digit squares and their roots, which would give me a head start, but it's quite a big task and I worry that that amount of long-term memory stuff would get in the way of the short-term memory stuff I'll want to do for the memory competition on the Sunday.

I've been doing a bit of practice for that, too - did 780 in five-minute binary today, which would equal my world record, but I know I can do more than that on a good day. Also a fifteen-minute number, where I was going for four journeys' worth of digits, 936, but had lots of gaps. I'm pretty sure that's a realistically possible figure, though, so I'm going to stick with it. I'm just pleased that I've been more or less in the training mood today!

The Unblogged

I feel like I should offer a heartfelt apology for yesterday's post. It may not be immediately obvious, but I do have certain standards here, and I do feel bad when I churn out a few unentertaining lines when it's late at night and I'm in a bad mood because of technical problems. I know I have literally more than one reader who tunes into this blog every day, so I'd hate to let you down. The whole MSN Messenger thing is fixed, anyway - turns out it was upset by me changing the date on my laptop in order to fool a dimwitted free trial of Microsoft Office into thinking it hadn't expired. Who would have thought that breaking the law could have consequences?

I did have a blog entry all planned in my head yesterday, before I spent the evening getting frustrated with these new-fangled machines. It was going to be about the fact that I forgot my tie when I went to work yesterday. I'm definitely cracking up, it's official. Nobody noticed, which just goes to prove something. Perhaps I'll try going to the office without trousers next, see what happens.

This isn't the first time I've had the intention of writing about something here and then ended up not, for one reason or another. I know it might sometimes seem like I chronicle every little thought in my head in excruciating detail, but you'd be surprised how much happens to me that I don't get a chance to mention. It seems terribly unfair on these things, although on the other hand if you start feeling sorry for abstract concepts, that's probably another sign of insanity.

Technical hitches

As I mentioned a few days ago, my laptop has decided not to let me use MSN Messenger. This is inconvenient, as it forces me to use my desktop when I want to chat with people, and my desktop is elderly and getting to a state where it's not a lot of use. It definitely can't cope with three or four messenger conversations at once, and takes five minutes of whirring every time I switch from one window to another. Tomorrow night I must sit down and mess with the laptop to persuade it to work properly.

Also, I have to invite people to the big birthday bash. I've decided to go for a meal and a lot of drinking in Nottingham, and so it's just a matter of seeing how many people want to turn up...

We struggled hard all our lives to get by

There are times when I really don't like my job. Today was most definitely one of those times. There should be a law against making people work for a living, especially when the work involves finding that you've made stupid mistakes in the course of putting figures together over the last month and having to apologise and correct them in a very short space of time. What I should have done is only given one month's notice, then I could have spent today sitting around doing nothing.

I still need to find some more wholesome activities to fill my time when I am jobless - this sabbatical needs to be a learning experience, rather than giving myself an excuse to be lazy. If I'm not enriched, fulfilled and a better person all round by, say, Christmas time, I'll be annoyed with myself. So, which languages should I learn? What useful charitable acts can I perform other than volunteering in a shop, which seems just too obvious? What should I create a website about? Which chapters of How To Be Clever should I write first? Answers on a postcard.

They fell apart some time ago

I went into a shoe shop today, for the first time in living memory. Mainly to see whether the "buy one get one free" sign in the window meant one shoe or one pair of shoes, but since my boots have reached the point where it is in fact painful to walk around in them, I did think it might be a good idea to get some new ones. But I didn't like any of the ones in the shop, so I'll leave it till the weekend.

I had the leisure time to hang around shoe shops, of course, because I did all my work for the day before 9am - twelve very quick interviews with local radio stations (it should have been 14, but Sheffield had technical problems and York cancelled. Typical Yorkshire people.)* It was fun noticing the very slight different in format and questions from each one - some focused on serious talking about Alzheimer's, others were more interested in getting me to recount my amazing memory achievements. Radio Lancashire decided to take the approach of making me out to be a complete sad case. I'd complain, except I am in fact a complete sad case.

I did do a bit of mental calculation practice, and I was pleased to see I'm not far off the level I was at in 2004 when I last did it. I'm not going to break any records there, but I should put in a respectable kind of performance.

*I have no previous experience of the habits of Yorkshire people when it comes to arranging radio interviews, so I'm just assuming based on today that they're always having technical problems or cancelling them at short notice. This prejudice doesn't apply to local radio stations in Leeds.

Video killed the radio star

Early start tomorrow - interviews on the early morning shows of lots of BBC local radio stations about the launch of the Alzheimer's campaign. Still don't know which stations, or exactly when, so if you want to listen to me it's more a matter of tune in and hope. I won't be saying anything interesting, anyway - I've got a very detailed briefing that should more than cover a couple of minute's chat in each case.

Disappointingly, I won't be flying from one radio station to another in a private helicopter, but doing the whole thing from Radio Derby down the road. I'll be finished by nine o'clock, and after that I've got the whole day off work to do something useful.

Also in the news, and I don't normally mention celebrity birthdays here, but I've just heard that June Foray is 89 today. And still doing cartoon voices, as she has been doing for well over sixty years now. Happy birthday, Granny!

Ah'm fed up! I never get ony fun here.

I'm bored! And by that I mean that there are many, many things I could be doing, like memory training, or mental calculations training, or writing books, cleaning my flat, arranging my birthday party, watching videos, playing games, emailing people, phoning people, heck, even leaving the flat and going for a drink, but for some reason none of these wholesome activities hold any appeal for me at the moment. The only thing I can reconcile myself to doing is lying around the place at 8pm on a Sunday night and moaning because I'm bored.

Have I mentioned that the day after the mental calculation world cup in Gießen, there's a memory competition in Stuttgart that I'm also competing in? I'm trying to work out how best to balance training for the two - the mental calculation bit involves some long-term memory of numbers, which kind of gets in the way of practising the short-term things for the memory competition. Although since, as previously mentioned, I'm not doing either right at the moment, perhaps it's just an academic question.

Cartoons R Fun

I know I've wittered on a lot about finding old cartoon videos in charity shops lately, but that's only because I've found such a lot of them. I'm most fascinated by a range called "Cartoons R Fun". I had never heard of this particular packager of public domain toons a month ago, although they're dated 1990, and in the last couple of weeks I've found five of their releases - one in London, two in Boston and now two in Derby. Is there someone out there with a complete collection who's following me around and planting them in charity shops for me to find? If so, I'm very grateful. You obviously appreciate that I prefer finding them like that to having them given to me. You should be a psychiatrist. Perhaps you are.

They come in cheap cardboard packages with a badly-drawn representation of a scene from the cartoon on the front - these people obviously couldn't afford plastic or screen captures. They also seemingly couldn't afford the effort of taking the copy-protection tabs off the tapes (so one of today's finds is enhanced by a couple of seconds of early-nineties Grange Hill presumably taped on it by mistake by the previous owner), although they did splash out on some sticky plastic labels that look surprisingly professional.

On the back of the each box is a picture of a gorilla and an organ-grinder's monkey (probably inspired by that Bugs Bunny cartoon, what was it called?) holding a sign detailing the cartoons to be found on the tape (usually just one cartoon with "and many more" written afterwards, to give the impression you're getting more than three seven-minute toons for your money. To be fair, these tapes would have been a complete ripoff when they were new, but for 50p from Oxfam they're a bargain!). The ones I found today even have the listed cartoons on them, which is more than can be said for the previous three. Good cartoons too - five late-thirties/early-forties gems from Warner Bros: "Porky's Hired Hand", "Farm Frolics", "Hamateur Night", "The Fifth-Column Mouse" (war propaganda at its very best) and the really brilliant "Robin Hood Makes Good", plus a Noveltoon from 1946 called "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" with an extensive follow-the-bouncing-ball singalong of the title song. Must have gone down well in the cinemas.

While I'm on the subject of cartoons (am I ever off it?), I've been indulging in some deep self-analysis today. You may recall me mentioning that Furrball is probably my favourite character on Tiny Toon Adventures? Well, having been watching an episode a day for the past two weeks, I've realised that the character I most look forward to seeing is Calamity Coyote. And I have not the faintest idea why! I always have a favourite character on a cartoon, but I can normally provide a rational explanation as to why. My preference for Calamity, though, seems to have bypassed my brain completely - he's almost exclusively a minor background character (he takes centre stage in a couple of shows, but not any of the ones I've seen this past fortnight), he doesn't really have any of the personality traits that normally appeal to me, he's not especially cute, I just really like him. Does there have to be a reason?

See, how many other blogs give you ruminations as to the writer's preference of characters on a decade-and-a-half old children's cartoon? You get something unusual here.

Spick and span

I remember about a month ago mentioning that I'd got a new oven that looked very out of place because it was so clean and shiny. Well, you'll be pleased to hear that it fits right in now after a slight setting-kitchen-on-fire incident while cooking my tea last night. If I can be bothered at the weekend, I'll have to try to clean up the smoke damage.

I should also do something about the smoke detector in my flat. We noticed at my birthday party last year during an episode involving indoor fireworks that the smoke detector either doesn't detect smoke at all, or chooses not to tell anyone about it if it does. That was eleven months ago and I realise now that I never did do anything about the thing. It's a wonder that I've lived to such an advanced age, really.

Dulce Domum

It was a quiet day at home for Ethelbert and Ethel. They both had jobs to go to, but had decided not to bother, as it looked like rain outside. Ethelbert was sitting in his armchair in the lounge reading a newspaper published several years previously and Ethel was practising swimming in a paddling pool on the dining room table. In the kitchen, a man was attempting to convert the oven from gas to electric. Ethelbert and Ethel each assumed that the other had arranged for this man to come round, but in fact he should have been at their next door neighbour's house and had been confused by the fact that both houses had the same number.

"Margaret Thatcher says she won't step down," observed Ethelbert.

"Doesn't surprise me," said Ethel, trying to remember how you're supposed to move your legs when doing the butterfly stroke.

"I'll turn on the telly and see if she's still saying it," pronounced Ethelbert.

The television, which was either psychic or just paying attention to the conversation, turned itself on without human intervention and tuned itself to BBC News 24, where a dancing gorilla was eating Portuguese food for the entertainment of an audience of Senegalese septuagenarians.

"Telly's not showing the right thing," observed Ethelbert.

"Ask it whether you're supposed to move your legs up and down both together or one at a time," Ethel requested.

"It doesn't know," Ethelbert replied without asking.

"You're not supposed to move them at all," called the man from the kitchen. "Sort of stretch them out behind you. Streamlining. Hydrodynamics. Like dolphins, only with legs stretched out behind you."

"Do you know anything about tellies?" Ethelbert shouted back.

"Yeah, you see that button on the remote control?" asked the man, "Press it a couple of times."

"It didn't work," said Ethelbert, without trying it.

"What's the problem, exactly?" asked Doris next door, opening the hatch in the connecting wall and looking into the lounge.

"Telly's showing a gorilla instead of the newsreader," said the vicar, passing by the window.

"It'll be the vertical hold," opined the portrait of Gladstone on the wall, which wasn't up to date with the workings of modern television apparati.

"I only wanted to know about Margaret Thatcher," sighed Ethelbert.

"Oh, that's not on the news any more," scoffed the vicar. "It's all about this plane today. Seems the pilot didn't turn up for work this morning because it looks a bit like rain, and now it's going to crash."

"Not my fault," protested Ethel, inaccurately, "I haven't got an umbrella and I've just had my hair done."

"You've got three umbrellas and no hair," said the man.

"Have you converted my oven yet?" asked Doris.

"So is Margaret Thatcher still the Prime Minister?" asked Ethelbert.

"No, I'm wearing a swimming cap, so it looks like I've got no hair," explained Ethel.

"Any chance of a cup of tea, while I'm here?" asked the vicar.

"I've nearly finished," said the man, still under a misapprehension as to his job.

"You might need to go up on the roof and adjust the aerial," said Gladstone.

"One lump or two?" asked Ethelbert.

"I think she's dead," said Doris.

"And those are ornamental parasols, made of paper and cocktail sticks, designed to decorate exotic drinks, not to protect against the elements," elaborated Ethel.

"Two please," said the vicar. "And I'll have the sunday roast with cabbages and radishes."

"It's cable, there isn't an aerial, she can't be dead because I saw her on telly last year before the gorilla came on, this isn't a pub, it's a private house and we don't serve meals, and you don't have radishes with a sunday roast, you have them as part of a salad and they don't taste very nice anyway, if I don't move my legs I don't move forwards at all, I just sort of bob up and down, and who are you anyway?" asked Ethel.

"Me?" asked Ethelbert.

"No, that man in the kitchen," explained Ethel.

"He's working on my oven," said Doris.

"Oh yes, that's right, I was getting confused," said the vicar. "I came round to tell you about that plane that's going to crash on your house, on my way to the pub. Then when you offered me a cup of tea, the drinks theme made me believe I already was in the pub, so I ordered lunch."

"In my day, we didn't have radishes," mused the portrait of Gladstone.

"Here's your tea, anyway," said Ethelbert, without having got out of his chair or made any drinks.

"Oven's done. Runs on gas now," said the man, wiping his hands on the teatowel in satisfaction.

"It ran on gas in the first place," muttered Ethel to herself, being too polite to say it to the man.

Then the plane crashed on the house, and although it killed everyone in it, the tip of the wing banged the television and fixed it.

"Told you that would sort it," lied the portrait of Gladstone, lying on top of the rubble.

"Hope the builder hurries up and fixes their house," said Doris. "It lowers the property values having a crash site next door."

"I wouldn't hold your breath," laughed the vicar. "Ethelbert was the local builder, and he didn't go to work today because it looks like rain!"

The special stuff

I'm watching the League of Gentlemen movie on Film 4. I didn't go to see it at the cinema because I thought it would just be a tired, money-grabbing rehash of the TV series. Turns out that it's brilliant, and now I feel guilty about not paying to see it, and thereby depriving the creators of some money. It must be at least 50p each. I'll have to send them a cheque.

I've done a tiny bit of memory training tonight, in amongst installing internet explorer 6 on this old desktop so that I can install MSN Messenger whatever-version-it-is. I don't know, you start installing something and then it forces you to install something else. I'd complain to Bill Gates, but he probably hears that enough as it is.

At the weekend, I'll sort out a proper kind of training schedule for that and the mental calculations. And by that I mean "I'm making an excuse not to do it for the next couple of days, and then come the weekend I'll find something better to do..."

Quote unquote

I've just had the Alzheimer's press release sent to me for my approval:

Ben Pridmore, a memory master and former world memory champ has signed up in support of the Million Memories campaign to offer top tips on memory. He says,

‘Your memory is a marvellous tool – I have trained my memory to do incredible things. If you want to improve your memory then a top tip is to think in pictures, your brain process pictures more easily than words. It is hard to imagine how devastating it must be to be affected by a disease like Alzheimer’s, which robs people of their memories. That’s why I am supporting the Million Memories campaign – and telling people memories do matter.’

I never said anything even remotely like that. The phrasing is horrible, for one thing. I don't ever say I can do incredible things, for another. The top tip (which, unlike the rest of it, is at least a paraphrase of something I did say) comes across like a complete non sequitur. On the other hand, I'm not so picky as to insist that people who claim to quote me actually quote something I said, so I'll just ask them to get rid of the "I have trained my memory to do incredible things" bit rather than insisting on wholesale changes. They have captured my tendency to overuse dashes in my writing, though - that's quite impressive, even if it was just by accident.

I still need to ask my boss if I can have next Tuesday off to do a couple of radio interviews and things for the Alzheimer's people. I've technically already taken more holidays than my entitlement, so they'd be within their rights to not let me. But on the other hand, since they've done nothing about recruiting a replacement and asked me to come back on a consultancy basis for a week or so in early November, I've got a strongish bargaining position.

As previously mentioned, several times, I'm not keen on doing radio interviews anyway. But I suppose it would help my renewed fame-and-fortune campaign.

Urgh

I'm definitely struggling just at the moment to force myself to do anything, anything at all other than sitting around not paying attention to what's on telly. I really should snap out of it. Last night, after posting about my birthday, I looked back at last year's posts, and noticed that I haven't actually achieved any of the things I resolved to do the day before my birthday last year. Which came as quite a surprise, since I was thinking this had been a pretty good year, all in all. Should I make more resolutions on October 13th this year, or just give it up as a bad job? I vote for the latter. That way, anything I do accomplish will be all the more impressive!

There was a really cool thunderstorm here earlier this evening, but it seems to have stopped now. It's been hot for the last week or so after a cold and miserable August, so maybe that's it for summer this year. Not cycling to work in the winter will be a pleasant change (I imagine I'll be cycling to other places rather than sitting at home all day, but if it's not work, it doesn't count as unpleasant).

Happy Birthday To Me

In just over a month, anyway. I need to arrange some kind of party. I feel like hiring a room somewhere and having a big bash. With karaoke. And a magician. It'll double as a leaving-work party, because I can invite my colleagues to this kind of thing now I don't have to worry about them meeting my friends and the resulting collision of accountant-Zoomy and fun-Zoomy causing the universe to explode, which means it'll have to be quite a big deal, and I think last year demonstrated that fitting more than ten people in this place would be a bit on the tricky side. I've been meaning for weeks to look into getting the bar and lounge at the Dragons health club, where I went to a party last year - the place has a very appropriate name, plus it's right by the train station and so perfectly located for a party to which most of the guests will be travelling from afar. Obviously, anybody reading this blog can consider themselves invited. More details if and when I sort them out.

I also need to get back into the habit of memory training. With the MSO and work overload, I haven't done any since the world championships last month, but I've given my brain enough of a rest now. If I can find the time and inclination, I should do a bit of mental calculation and a bit of memory every evening. We'll see how it goes.

Good game, good game

See, I knew if I went along to support the Pilgrims, they'd win! A well-deserved 2-1 victory over some unimpressive opposition. We might just avoid relegation yet. Although a terminal shortage of fans might still kill the club off - York Street was half empty, and the total attendance was just 1700. That's a really sharp drop from the kind of crowds they were getting just a few years ago - never Man Utd kind of levels, or even any-other-team-in-the-league kind of levels, but always comfortably over 2000. Apparently, this has been going on for a while, and it's a great shame. There were about a hundred travelling Stockport fans, and they made much more noise between them than any Bostonians. Hardly a home game at all for the poor players.

They did well, though. With Paul Ellender suspended, goalie Andy Marriott was acting captain, and he had an excellent game, making a couple of really first-class saves. The one goal he let in nobody could have done anything about, it was a surprising deflection. We went 1-0 up from a Tim Ryan penalty for handball (slightly unlucky, to be fair, it was ball to hand), they equalised almost immediately and then a bit before half time Anthony Elding celebrated his first home game back with Boston with the winner. The highlight of the second half was a fantastic run from out of nowhere by Dany N'Guessan, skipping past the defence as if they weren't there and cracking a shot which the Stockport keeper tipped over the bar. Lee Canoville had a brilliant game too, not putting a foot wrong in central defence. It wasn't what you'd call a promotion-worthy display, but it was definitely the performance of a team that can avoid relegation again this season.

I need to go to more games. With the other old-timers Mark Greaves and Simon Rusk both out injured, this team were practically strangers to me. And they obviously need all the support they can get.

While in Boston, I also did my usual check of the charity shops for cartoon videos and found three brilliant public domain collections, all of them containing entirely different cartoons to the ones listed on the packaging but with some fascinating selections - apart from some of the old Warner Bros ones I'm looking for, there's Westward Whoa (not, as you might expect on a Porky Pig tape, the 1936 cartoon featuring Porky and the rest of the Beans Gang that I've never seen and really want to find, but the Mutt and Jeff from ten years earlier that I'd also never seen and didn't particularly want to, but it's fun nonetheless), Molly Moo-Cow and the Indians and "Jasper and the Watermelons", a weird George Pal Modeltoon from 1942 which I'd never even heard of before today, but now I want to find some more of them.

Also encountered a big, friendly, but cowardly liver-spotted dalmatian in the park. He was happily bouncing around all the people sitting on the benches trying to persuade them to give him some of their food, until a man came past with a little jack russell on a lead, which barked at him. Whereupon the dalmatian, roughly ten times the little thing's size, hid behind his owners.

Furrball's unlucky

Fans of cartoons, or just people who care whether I'm entertained or not, will be pleased to hear that Boomerang have got over their summer Scooby Doo obsession and started showing a wider variety of cartoons again. Even better, they've started repeating Tiny Toon Adventures, most episodes of which I haven't seen for years! Today's was the all-Furrball show, starring possibly my favourite character, so I'm happy. Including the cartoon where his owner takes him on holiday to stop him eating her pet bird, but whenever her back's turned for two minutes he dashes from Florida to California to try to catch it. Very funny stuff. Not to mention Frank Welker's unique vocal stylings, always a treat. Also, it's Friday!

And while we're talking about cats I like, I appreciate that I've mentioned this before and possibly freaked out a reader or two, but I'm still in love with Nigel from Newshounds. Just look at his facial expression in the last panel of today's strip - I wish I could draw that well. Or at all. Isn't he adorable?

Another thing I've just remembered today is that I promised to sponsor Ed a penny per digit memorised at the world memory championship in aid of Romanian orphans and then forgot to send the money. That's the kind of excuse that nobody ever believes from me, although it happens surprisingly often.

Anyway, I feel inclined to go down to Boston tomorrow and watch the football match. I feel bad about calling myself a fan if I don't see one live game a season, and we've had a dreadful start this year (not least because those eejits in charge of the club sold Julian Joachim after all - I remember praising them last year for not doing so), and we're at home to Stockport tomorrow, who are always rubbish, so we should get a good morale-boosting win which I can take the credit for by claiming it was all my cheering that did it. I need to pick up my books for college tomorrow morning too - I hope I can remember some of the stuff I did for the earlier stages of CIMA all those years ago before I start again. I need to keep my reputation as the swotty teacher's pet.

And I've been working like a dog doesn't

And actually, doing quite well considering I'm facing deadlines that Superman would have trouble meeting. And not just because of his lack of basic accountancy experience, either. So it's one more day to finish off a lot of little bits and pieces, then the next week of other, more annoying and pointless, stuff to finish, then the week after that being pestered by auditors, and THEN it'll all be smooth sailing towards October 13th. Except that I'll probably have to teach the job to my replacement in that time, which is something I really hate doing too. Sigh. Still, just a month and a bit to go...

Also, my MSN messenger isn't working, and I suspect it's something to do with the unfathomable security programs this laptop comes equipped with. Honestly, I'd uninstall the lot of them if I had the faintest idea how to go about it. Nobody's ever going to hack into my computer - I'm much too nice for anyone to want to be mean to me.

I'm competing in the Mental Calculation World Cup in November, in Gießen, Germany, and that means I really need to start practicing. Or at least remembering how to do square roots, because I honestly can't right now. I used to be able to do them, I'm sure. Still, it'll be a lot of fun, I'm sure. The previous one in 2004 was great - the competitors were treated like royalty, with tours of the town (Annaberg-Buchholz) by the mayor, free accommodation and meals (at a restaurant that specialises in potato dishes - had I known that there were such places, I would have informed someone beforehand that I'm not all that keen on potatoes, and avoided the potato soup followed by baked potato and for all I know a potato-based pudding too but I'd given up on the food by that point). I also attempted and spectacularly failed a world record attempt at memorising cards, as well as competing unspectacularly in the calculations competition. So this time round, having failed to learn from my mistakes, I'm going to go for another record - 1 minute binary, which I notice has recently been broken by an Israeli guy I've never heard of with a very impressive 240. I'm pretty sure I can manage 270 or maybe a round 300 with a bit of practice.

By the way, the Mental Calculations World Cup isn't to be confused with the Mental Calculations World Championship, which is the MSO event. That's where I stole the idea of asking Andi to rename his world memory championship from, back in 2004.

Only smarties have the answer

I bought a tube of smarties today on my way home. I had vowed never to buy them again after they changed to the hexagonal packaging, but I was peckish and they looked appetising and I figured they'd been punished enough. It's not the same, though. There's no excitement, wondering what letter will be on the underside of the lid. And the new all-cardboard packs just look so cheap and nasty.

Still, there's good news too. In London I found a video of Bobobobs, the extremely weird cartoon series (originally Spanish, I think), that in its English translation appeared on channel 4 in around 1990. It's a very unusual space-odyssey saga about a large cast of little people who sail their wooden spaceship around the universe. They're theoretically on a quest to find a distant planet (Earth, according to the endless theme song) and save the inhabitants from dinosaurs, but in practice they just have a different adventure every week and never really get anywhere. It's one of those things you have to see to understand the appeal, so just take it from me.

My ear's burning. Someone's talking about me. Must be one of the people I just emailed - only three 'fan mails' to catch up with after a week and a half at the MSO, obviously nobody likes me any more. Or perhaps it's because I never get round to writing to people unless they write to me first. I'm terrible like that, it's nothing personal, I assure you.

What a headache

I went through the arduous process of enrolling at the university tonight, for my final year's CIMA course (which is nowadays called Strategic Level, because Final Level sounded too simple. And it was only called that for a couple of years - when I started CIMA back in days of old, it was Level 4), so I'm now officially a student again! I've got a card with an unflattering photo and NUS written on it! I haven't had one of those for ages!

I've also had a headache of a more literal kind on and off all afternoon. Too much work, in too little time.

So many topics, so little time

Well, I'm back home after all that London extravagance, and I find that there are dozens of things I want to write about tonight. A sort of blog backlog, or backblog, if you will.

Also, I still need to iron some shirts and trousers for next week before I go to bed tonight, so I'll keep this brief.

So, I didn't win any medals at the MSO, which is a bit disappointing. I always used to aim to win at least one. But then, I wasn't there at all for the last couple of days, and they didn't have the events I'm really great at, and I wasn't all that interested in it anyway, but it still annoys me. I was hoping for a last hoorah, like a typically zoomy flukey win in a poker tournament, but even though I was sticking closely to my usual strategy of bad play and outrageous good luck, it didn't get me very far this year. Indeed, on the last night I went out to a guy who combined both those skills much more adeptly than I ever did, and won two consecutive big hands with a better full house than another player had, cleaning me out on the second. Darn it.

But I'm pretty sure I won't bother going to the MSO again. If there's a memory championship there, I'll probably go along to that but not the rest of the event. The main problem with the MSO nowadays is that the only people who bother to come are the ones who take it very, very seriously - it's just too expensive and out of the way to attract the kind of person who just wants to play games for fun. So there are a lot of people there who spend half an hour before, during and after every event arguing about petty details of the rules. Which always gets on my nerves. And no, I don't do that to anything like the same degree in memory.

That wasn't very nice of me. I was intending to be all cheerful this evening, too. Must be the impending horror of going back to work tomorrow. Ah well, it'll soon be over...