Just as a follow-up to last night...

E4 show the movie Grease completely unedited, in the middle of the afternoon, complete with exactly the same kind of naughty references that they chop out of Friends. It's weird.

Anyway, I'm not entirely sure that this last week of blog posts really qualifies as the proper, long, interesting kind of blogging that I new-year-resolved to do, so I'll try to improve next week. If I feel like it.

Me and my Friends

I'm really going to miss watching repeats of Friends every day when E4 finally stop it later this year. I was thinking about buying the DVDs, but after all these years of watching the expurgated versions that E4 show, all of the passing mentions of pornography and prostitution in the uncut episodes would warp my fragile little mind.

I'll just have to watch cartoons in the evening instead.

Me me me

I thought I'd blog a thing or two about my profile pictures on Facebook, seeing as I just remembered that they exist. They're all really quite good pictures of me, except for one of them, and I very very rarely look good in photos.




This one over here, for example, looks like I'm doing some kind of street performance of memory skills.

I'm not. I'm looking through a pile of business cards, trying to find one of Gaby Kappus's that she could give to someone else. We're in France.




I don't know why I ever made this a profile picture. It's terrible. I think it was just a play on words, on account of it shows me in profile...

Check it out, there was a time when I had some remaining traces of hair on my head, no beard, and the original hat and lucky shirt! How I miss those days!

Me wearing Tony Buzan's hat, because
I'd lost my own, in Bahrain.

This one is from Central TV, which was a great interview, mainly because the TV image seemed to be stretched to make me look taller and thinner. I suspect one of the presenters is anorexic.

This one speaks for itself.

Coolest picture ever.

Not a resolution, but...

I'm playing othello online at the moment, for the first time in quite a while. Perhaps I'll add an extra new year's resolution to get good at othello, but I don't think I'll bother. One of these days, though, I'm going to memorise the best move in every possible position, just for the fun of it. Or the lack of fun of it, because doing that would quite literally take all the fun out of playing the game. But still, it'd be interesting...

Mr Sleepy

Among my many new year's resolutions was one to get up early in the morning and go to bed earlier the night before (I've heard it has health, wealth and wisdom benefits), thus enabling me to do a little bit of memory training in the morning, start work early, finish work early, do a little bit more memory training and have ample free time for lying around wasting time and eating cheesecake. Because next year, those two favourite pastimes of mine are going on the resolution list.

This seems to have completely thrown my body clock for a loop, with the result that I woke up at four o'clock this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so I got up, had a bath, had breakfast, practiced memorising historic dates, then went back to bed and got up again at half past eight. It's extremely confusing. Perhaps I should just stay in bed all day, every day, and not care about being healthy, wealthy and wise? Because let's face it, I'm overweight, unlikely to be paid any WMC prize money and generally stupid, and I'd hate to change too drastically in case nobody recognises me.

Foxfire

I had to download Firefox to get one particular website to work, but even now I've given it a trial run, I still disapprove. I'm sticking with Internet Explorer for everything else.

I tend to automatically disapprove of anything computer-related that is trumpeted as being 'better than what normal people use'. This is why I will never go within a mile of a Mac. Even though I went to school with Robert Webb. Advertising just turns me off.

Nor can I imagine ever putting my fingers to a dvorak keyboard. Yuck.

Memory training!

I've added historic dates and random words to my training schedule - I don't normally practice those at all, but I figure it can't hurt. I might even throw in a bit of names and faces practice too, if I can really force myself to (because, as we all know, I'm rubbish at names and faces and consequently don't like doing it). I've put together word-o-matic and date-o-matic Excel files, using a random words list from the internet, and all the available former dates papers I could find. It's harder to make a names-and-faces-o-matic, although that's a pretty poor excuse since there's a perfectly good training thing at memo-camp.de. But I don't really like training on the computer so much. I spend so much time staring at a computer screen, both at work and at home, that memory training is practically the only rest my poor long-suffering eyes get.

We'll just have to see how I feel.

The Sound of Music twice an hour, and Jaws One Two and Three

I haven't watched very much TV over the Christmas holidays, which might explain the following alarming statement: The best thing I've seen on telly lately was "The One Ronnie". To celebrate his eightieth birthday, Ronnie Corbett stars in a show full of Two-Ronnies-style sketches with a lot of comedians from the present day. And it worked! It was genuinely funny all the way through, and perfectly in the classic style. It was like watching a brand new Two Ronnies Christmas special, and not even noticing the absence of Ronnie Barker! Harking back to the glory days of British comedy (you know, the days when saying "bottom" guaranteed a huge laugh from the audience), it was great entertainment.

Which made it all the more surprising that Matt Lucas and David Walliams, who were among the guest stars in that show, have come up with something so terrible as their new series "Come Fly With Me". I'm not sure if it's harking back to the glory days of British racism, or to the glory days of fly-on-the-wall documentaries being new enough that you can parody them in original ways, but it didn't really work. There just aren't enough jokes about budget airlines to fill a whole series, and so a lot of scenes derive all their humour from the two actors in blackface, talking in silly accents. Very strange programme.

As for Doctor Who, it was pretty good. On the one hand, if you're reduced to doing "A Christmas Carol" for your Christmas special, it's probably time to give up, but on the other hand this episode did do some interesting and clever things with the concept of time travel. I've been wanting to see this for quite some time - Doctor Who is a programme about a man with a time machine, but the new series doesn't really get to grips with that idea. When the Doctor travels to a different time, it's treated as if he's just gone down the road to another place. Probably the fault of the insistence on having continuing subplots running through each season, but it's nice to see some actual use of the Tardis in this one. (Yes, the Doctor does things that he's specifically said in earlier episodes that he's not allowed to do, but I don't care.) And the time-travel logic more or less made sense all the way through, give or take, sort of.

Now, the best way to write about time travel is demonstrated in the awesome movie I saw on the plane coming back from China - "Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel". It's absolute genius, and I don't know why I'd never heard of it before now. I obviously need to spend more time hanging out on nerdy websites.

Two thousand and eleven

I'm not calling it "twenty-eleven" because that sounds like a silly made-up number. Anyway, I'm very resolute about this new year. I'm going to follow a realistic schedule of memory training, and I'm going to cut cherry coke out of my diet. So by the end of 2011, I'll be the world memory champion again and I'll be painfully thin, and so I'll have to resolve to not do any more training and to gorge myself with delicious unhealthy drinks!

More news from China

Dear Ben

Mr.Guo would like to explain to you why they hold the prize money, New Mind need to pay media publicity, for the hotel, for volunteers, ...etc a lot after the competition
they are really facing a cash flow problem now
but he guarantee as soon as the situation not that difficult, they will transmit the prize money to you
thanks for your understanding and i am really sorry for that


Sounds like it might be a while before I get to roll around in my huge pile of prize money. All those Ferraris and helicopters I bought on credit might end up being reposessed, which would probably be a good thing all in all - they're really cluttering up my spare room.

The lurgey

I'm off work today because I'm not well, and it's really annoying. Not just because I've just had four days off work and have done everything that there is to be done while lying around the house in your pyjamas, but because I like to think of myself as someone who never gets ill, and it's hard to maintain that belief when you're poorly. I'm probably going to have to register with a GP and everything, and that's a horrible inconvenience.

It's probably China's fault - I haven't been feeling 100% ever since I was out there. It'll be malaria. The blood donor people wouldn't let me give blood last week, because I'd been to what they call the 'danger zone'. That sounds rather groovy, like I've been trekking across a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, but if I've been to a danger zone I expect to mutate into a horrific monstrosity with superpowers, not just get an ear infection and diarrhoea.

Anyway, I've got New Year Resolutions that I'm just itching to put into effect, one of which is to write a proper blog entry every day and keep my many fans happy (if they're wanting a critique of Christmas television, an essay about the potential for a sequel to 'The Woman In White', diatribes about cartoons and not so much about memory competitions, anyway), so you'll be hearing more from me in 2011. If I'm feeling better.

A few football observations

I love this Premier League season! I particularly like the way that public sympathies have shifted over the last few years, so that a lot of people are now saying 'Yay, Man Utd are winning!', as opposed to 'Bah, Man Utd are winning again!'

Chelsea are really struggling to escape the gypsy curse that Ray Wilkins inflicted them with. When they sacked their assistant coach on November 11th (probably at 11:11 in the morning), they were in a dominant position on the top of the table. Now, with only one win in the eight games they've played since then (and that one being an irrelevant European game against MSK Zilina), they're languishing in fourth and have the ignominy of Bolton Wanderers nipping at their heels.

Bolton travel to Chelsea on Wednesday night, knowing that a win at Stamford Bridge would move them ahead of Chelsea in the league. Yes, they've played a game more, but nobody cares about that when they're getting excited about league positions. This would be an ideal time for Chelsea to record a convincing win (as all logic says they should) and break the curse, giving themselves a bit of renewed confidence going into the new year. If they lose, though...

If they lose, they might well end up in sixth, with Tottenham Hotspur also moving ahead of them if they can beat Newcastle (something which they historically tend not to do). This is another of the great things about this year - Spurs have spent outrageously large sums of money in building up their squad to potential-top-four standard, but because they haven't spent quite as much money as Manchester City, everyone's still cheering them on as the plucky underdogs. It's a great position to be in.

The money thing is interesting, too - at the start of the season, everyone was hoping that Spurs would once again pip City to the all-important fourth place in the league table. Everyone was resigned to the fact that equally wealthy Chelsea were sure to end up in the top four. But now everyone's seized on the possibility of Chelsea not making it, and if the pendulum swings just a little bit farther, soon the masses will be celebrating Man City's triumph over the rich boys. Mob psychology is awesome.

And poor old Liverpool have drifted into obscurity. Their poor run of form has gone on long enough that it's no longer a story that they're languishing in mid-table. Unless they do something dramatic, they've turned into Aston Villa.

Aston Villa, of course, have turned into relegation-strugglers, but nobody cares about that.

The thing about new year resolutions

Is that you have to make them significant. Consequently, to add weight to the resolution I'm going to make in a couple of days, I'm currently lying around drinking cherry coke by the gallon and scoffing toffee crisp clusters. I'm going to miss these things...

Old Year's Resolutions

I've been really insanely busy with work just lately, but that's probably my own fault for spending so much time travelling around the world to memorise things lately. But I've been spending my spare seconds planning what to resolve to do in the new year, memory-wise. And that involves a sort of pre-resolution to spend the bank holidays after Christmas doing a sort of practice World Memory Championship so that I've got a record of what my scores are at the start of the year, and thus can improve them radically by means of all the training I'm going to do.

There will probably be other resolutions too, but I haven't finished resolving them yet.

No snow

Not a single flake in Boston, nor in Beeston. And yet they cancelled all the football matches around the country. Wimps.

Home is where the Hart is

Ahh, the White Hart hotel, the only nice hotel in Boston. I think that's their slogan. Haven't been here for years, but it's nice to come back to the old town once in a while.

I spent the train journey making the first attempt at creating a list of 10,000 images, and... it's going to be a long, long job. Even the me of 2003, who was completely obsessed with developing the best memory system ever, might have balked at this task. Perhaps I could stick with the three-digit system and just practice with it intensively? But I really want a four-digit system. If only there was some way I could just skip the boring preparation and get immediately to the point where I've created and learnt all the images...

How to really, really impress someone with your memory skills

Hi, can I speak to Darren, please?

He's just on the phone. What's it regarding?

He wanted to talk to me about a Japanese TV documentary. I'm a memory man.

Oh, yes. Can you leave your number, and he'll call you back?

Yes, it's 0115... 8...

01158...

I've forgotten. Um... [frantically hunting for my latest phone bill]


Eventually I told her a number, hung up, found the phone bill, called back to tell her the right number, and hung up again in deep embarrassment. And he didn't call me back.

One Two Three, Sesame Tree

Here's something different to talk about: Muppets! Not something that I've mentioned nearly enough in my blog over the years. But I've got quite into "Sesame Tree" these last few weeks - it's the Northern Irish take on the Sesame Street franchise, and it's really quite fun.

Sesame Street has never really caught on in a big way over here - when I was of a suitable age for watching it, back in the early eighties, it used to be on Channel 4, although I never really paid much attention to it. Nowadays, it's been off British screens for a long time (I think it might be on some super-obscure cable channel, but not one that anyone watches), except for the not-very-good "Elmo's World" segment, which shows up on Channel 5. Performed by the genuinely-very-good Kevin Clash, by the way, against whom I won't hear a word of criticism.

But this hasn't deterred BBC NI from buying into the concept and adapting it for the unique audience of Northern Ireland. It's set in a big hollow tree, and stars Potto the giant purple agoraphobic monster (he's genuinely afraid to leave the tree, but this is played strictly for laughs, even in episodes with the moral that you should try not to be afraid of things), Hilda the hare and Archie the young squirrel (who lives upstairs with his unseen mum - the tree seems to be a block of flats).

Episodes follow a very rigid pattern, and each one revolves around answering a question from a young Irish child, which coincidentally is on the same subject as the cast are already discussing among themselves. These questions, nine times out of ten, boil down to whether or not people should be friends and work together with other people regardless of any difference of opinion. Politics and religion aren't mentioned, but clearly the hope is that Northern Irish kids will pick up on the subtle brainwashing and apply it to adult life in the future.

There's still room for plenty of fun and traditional muppet-style humour around the edges of the many identical sequences (like the looking in on 'what our friends in Sesame Street are up to', as an excuse for a brief American clip on a vaguely similar subject to the episode's theme) in every fifteen-minute episode, and the characters are all genuinely likeable and funny. There's something about Muppets, wherever in the world they get to, that is always watchable, and the performances in this incarnation are really great all round!

One episode had a guest appearance of Oscar the Grouch, which struck me as a strange choice, him being the most extremely American of the Sesame Street cast. And if you're going to fly Caroll Spinney out for some puppeteering (which everyone should do, at every opportunity), why not have him play Big Bird? I personally find Big Bird scary, but everyone else likes him!

It must be Christmas time

I've been in Chesterfield today, working in the store there as part of the usual annual make-the-head-office-people-do-some-real-work-for-once initiative. Then I'm not working at all for the next two days, because on Saturday and Sunday I'm going to Boston to work in the store there. It's all terribly complicated, but it will give me time to plan a memory-training routine and/or a new memory system. I'll also try to think of something other than memory to write about, because I'm sure you're all bored with it by now.

Systems are doing it for themselves

Here's an interesting fact about me: I'm actually not all that good at memorising things. I can memorise cards and binary digits better than anyone else because I invented a cool system for doing so more efficiently, and have been using this system since 2003. On the other hand, the 'numbers' element of the Ben System (I'm officially calling it that now - people have stopped using the name so much, and I realise that I like it after all) is exactly the same as, if not worse than, the systems used by other people.

So I need to expand it. Turning four digits into one image is the way to go, I've known that for a long time but been nervous of trying to do it, thinking that it'd be too much. But now I'm pretty sure it has to be done, so I'm going to give it a try.

Consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel is too restrictive, so my current thinking is that each image will have a two-part name, the first part starting with one consonant-vowel combination, and the second with another. Thinking up all the images is going to be tricky; committing them to long-term memory is going to be even trickier. But I think it's within the bounds of possibility. I'll let you know how I get on.