The solution to everything

You've got to feel a bit sorry for David Ferrer. He's really awesome at tennis, but he doesn't get to be Spain's national hero because Rafael Nadal's that little bit better. And he's playing better than ever at the age of 31, but nobody really notices that because Roger Federer's eight months older and slightly better.

What he needs to do, clearly, is wear a stylish hat. Then he can be the world's best stylish-hat-wearing tennis player!

(Ferrer for the last few years has been consistently the world number 5 in tennis - I see him as a kindred spirit)

I'm not lazy, I've got a good excuse

Writer's block. Of a very psychological kind. See, I agreed to write memory-related things in return for money, and the idea seems to have horrified me so much that I've been completely unable to do anything even slightly like that ever since. But I'm determined to get over it, this weekend. I'll try getting drunk - I've been told that alcohol is the solution to all the world's problems.

It's a fine art

The Quad in Derby is launching a season on the theme of memory, and an exhibition of the works of William Kentridge. And seeing as I've got connections to Derby, memory and (tenuously) art, they asked me along to the opening night to recite the titles of all the artwork on display and try to impress people with the artistic way that people memorise things.

It was a lot of fun, too! And I met a hypnotist who's doing a talk on memory there next month, that I might go along to. Anything to help with the motivation to memorise things!

I'm inclined to blog about tonight in the form of contemporary art, rather than writing, but I'm too lazy. It would be a collage, superimposed on a page ripped out of my collection of Synapsia magazines, and would include a black cat, a joint of ham, a stopwatch and the panel from From Hell of Melville MacNaghten saying "Few too many art-wallahs for my taste".

What's my age again?

Someone I know was convinced that it was his 38th birthday the other day, until I pointed out that if he was born in 1976, same as me, that would mean he just turned 37.

Funnily enough, I've also really struggled for the last few months to remember that I'm 36 and not 37. The number 37 has always sort of rattled around my subconscious mind in a disturbing way, but since I'm currently re-reading Thief Of Time, by Terry Pratchett, on the train to work, I can't help suspecting that someone has stolen a year of everyone's lives, or just stuck time back together in the wrong way, so that I'm currently 37 but will turn 36 in October. If so, I think that's probably a great improvement.

Cartoon Time

I haven't talked about cartoons on here for a while, so I thought I should place on record that the best cartoons to come along in the last couple of years are Adventure Time and Regular Show.

Adventure Time has a tendency to make me really laugh out loud at times, and not many TV shows do that. Regular Show is downright brilliant in the scope of its imagination and silliness. Both of them should be watched by all my blog readers!

How to pass the time on the train to work

What's a good nickname for a man with a staggeringly 1980s hairstyle, sunglasses whatever the weather and a suede jacket with the sleeves rolled up? He's the boyfriend of Leather Tuscadero, but I don't really want to call him Fonzie...

Can't they pre-tape it?

Twice in a row, the Channel 4 continuity announcer has stumbled over his witty scripted lines. They need to either hire someone who can read from a piece of paper, or stop trying to be funny and go back to just saying "And now The Simpsons". I vote for the latter.

Yes, there are better things I could be doing on a Sunday afternoon, but I don't care.

World rankings

Rafael Nadal and David Ferrer are playing in the French Open final tomorrow. They're currently number 4 and 5 in the world ranking list, but irrespective of the result of tomorrow's game, Ferrer will move up above Nadal in the rankings. That's because tennis world rankings cover the last twelve months, and Nadal's win last year will drop out of the total points, so he can't increase his total score even if he wins, while Ferrer only got to the semi-final last year, so he's guaranteed to increase his total.

Is this a good system? Actually, I think it is pretty good, and any kind of silliness like that is just of academic interest - Nadal will zoom back up to first or second later this year anyway, when he plays in the tournaments he missed through injury in 2012. The really interesting part is that tennis rankings give you a certain number of points in each tournament, depending which round you reach. This I think is less of a good system - if you're a lower-ranking player and you get drawn against the likes of Nadal in the first round, you'll score less points than some other lower-ranking player who gets a lucky draw and gets through to the third or fourth round without playing anyone really good. I'm sure it evens out, but there does seem to be quite a lot of random chance involved.

Or maybe I'm just prejudiced because othello has a cooler system. Your ranking points (there isn't a universally-accepted world ranking, though the one on the French website has gained a lot of support these past few years; the one that British people care about is the British rankings) go up and down depending on the ranking points total of the individual players you win or lose against. Othello doesn't have knockout tournaments, so we couldn't use the tennis-style rankings even if we wanted to, but nothing's stopping tennis from adopting othello-style rankings. Maybe they should.

And othello doesn't claim to have invented that system, I just like to talk in terms of the things I like. Just in case anyone was wondering.

Memory sports, of course, has a different kind of thing altogether. You get a certain amount of points in a competition, and your world ranking score is the highest you've ever achieved in a competition. Even if your best score was donkey's years ago. That's an okay system too, but I'd like to see something based on people's best scores in individual disciplines - perhaps two different ranking lists, in fact - one based on just scores achieved at the world championship, another based on all the disciplines from all the different types of competition. Maybe I'll work these alternatives out and see if there's any way to make my "official world ranking" (another thing about memory competitions is that people freely use the word "official" to describe anything they want) higher than fifth-best in the world!

Social commentary

According to my stats page, Dai's number-themed comment on yesterday's blog post was the 3000th comment published on this blog!

I don't think that's enough, really. Throw me some more comments, people! Get a discussion going in that hidden secret little bit that you get to by clicking at the bottom of my ramblings!

11:11

You know that thing people say, that they only ever look at a clock when it's 11:11? All very psychological. Well, the headlines on the Yahoo news summary that you get when you log in to Yahoo mail, whether you want to or not, have:

Teachers: 11 Not Banned Despite 'Misconduct'

Isle Of Man TT Race Crash: 11 Spectators Hurt

Cyber disputes loom large as Obama meets China's Xi


Not that I paid particular attention to them, but the third one made me stop and think "Obama meets China's Eleven"? What, are they playing cricket or something? It took me ages to readjust my brain into reading "Xi" instead of "XI", all because of those rogue elevens just up above. It's all very psychological.

Legalities

I like overhearing snatches of conversation from people on the street and then speculating on what they might be talking about. I just cycled past a gang of youths as one of them was saying, authoritatively if perhaps slightly drunkenly, "The only way you could be done for attempted murder is if he actually dies..."

I'm not a legal expert, but I'm pretty sure it's usually the other way round. But even so, have I overheard discussion of an actual murder attempt, or a joke? You can usually tell from the tone of voice, but this one really could have gone either way...

The story so far

If you want to keep up with what's happening in the big wild world of memory competitions, you really need to be reading Johann Randall Abrina's blog! Just to look at that summary of all the competitions so far this year fills an old-timer like me with a warm glow of satisfaction - when I started out, there were three or four competitions a year, at the very most, in the whole world! Now even a backwater of modern memory like the British Isles has that many itself, and the cool countries are all running their own competitions all over the place too!

I think the 'big' competition before the world championships is still the German Memory Open, buried though it is in such a busy summer calendar, but don't forget the UK Memory Championship a month later (that link isn't a website of its own, just a note that it's going to happen, but it really is definitely going to happen, and worth going to!)

Or take your pick from any other event on the calendar - that's Mnemotechnics.org, which keeps a good and accurate list of what's happening. There will be a World Memory Championship too, most likely, but they're adopting the successful technique from last year of not revealing any details and then having to retract it when they change. So I don't need to warn anyone not to book their plane tickets, unless they're the kind of person who just guesses the date and location of a memory championship, buys a first class ticket and hopes for the best. And if they are, they probably wouldn't listen to me.

We haven't moonwalked with horses for a while

The following statements were collected by the police:

GUSTAF BOGGINS, HORSE POLISHER: "So there I were, out on the street, washing me 'orse wi' soap an' water before I gives 'im the polish, when round the corner comes this bloke what weren't wearin' no busters [trousers] and I faints clean away in the gutter."

LORD VALIANT, OWNER OF HORSE: "I went into the street to remind the horse polisher to pay particular attention to the tail area, when I suddenly saw him gasp, point and collapse. I looked in the indicated direction and saw a man looking for all the world like Vocator [legendary figure who wore trousers] before he first donned the garment that made him famous. On closer inspection, I saw that he was whirling his Vocator's Article [trousers] about his head in a mad manner. I hastened back inside, fearing the social ruination that would come from being seen in the proximity of such a man, and so didn't see where he went."

VIC BANDYSHAW, HORSE POLISHER'S SUPERVISOR: "I was just checkin' up on Gustaf on account of that toffee-nosed twerp what owns the horse being so particular about its bum being polished good, when here comes this bloke waving 'is Blandford Forums [trousers] in the air instead of putting 'em on his legs like normal folks do. So I shouts 'Hoy, Parcruxis [foe of Vocator and thus by extension a derisory term for anyone opposed to trousers, although the legendary Parcruxis did in fact wear trousers himself], put yer Blandfords [trousers] back on and stop botherin' my 'orse polisher!' But he didn't pay no attention to me, so I just goes and picks Gustaf up out of the gutter, on account of he's sensitive about these things and he'd gone and fainted, so I didn't see what 'appened to old Parcruxis."

DAME DORIS GURDY, GENTLEWOMAN: "I happened to glance out of my window, and what should I see but a pair of overlegs [trousers] being brandished in a most alarming manner. I would have watched further, but I noticed Lord Valiant in the vicinity and hurried away to telephone all our social acquaintances. Now he won't be able to enter a room in decent society without being greeted with 'Good morning, Doctor Overlegs [trousers]!' That's the end of him, socially speaking! So no, I didn't pay any more attention to Mister Lacking-In-Noncontrivances [trousers, but only when the word is used, as in this case, in a negative construction; otherwise it means baked beans] and can't tell you any more."

"BROWN HAROLD", HORSE: "Neigh, whinney, neigh-neigh, hrrumph [trousers], whinney, neiiiiiiiigh."

Spare change?

Okay, here's the thing. For people who haven't been following my life in full detail (which I suppose I can forgive, since I haven't been blogging about it very much, so you would have had to be using some kind of spy satellites and phone-tapping), I've been only sporadically working for the last two years, rather beyond the limits of the time I intended to take off full-time good-money-earning accountancy-cum-financial-analysis, and for want of being able to land a permanent job in that field, I'm currently working in a lower-level admin job. Which, to my surprise, I'm really completely loving and want to do forever, if not for the teensy problem that it doesn't quite pay enough money to cover the costs of the various debts I've racked up.

So, basically, I find myself needing an influx of cash, to pay life's unavoidable bills and not end up out on the streets. So if anyone could throw a little into my begging bowl, which is a Paypal account using my email address, which is zoom_zoom_ben and it's at yahoo.co.uk, I'd really really appreciate it. Any money received will be considered a loan, to be paid back with interest and gratitude as and when my ship comes in. Regular readers will know that my ship does come in, fairly regularly, every now and then, whenever people see fit to give me money for being good at remembering things. And that there really are people out there who still pay big salaries for people who are good with Excel spreadsheets (though I think their numbers are diminishing - big bosses know how to turn on a computer nowadays, which is bad news for the financial analysts of the world).

I do have one memory gig coming up next week, at an art exhibition. Maybe that's a good way to shmooze with modern art people, who always like to pay me to do things. I really need to make more of an effort to make money in these last dying seconds of my fifteen minutes of fame.

Anyway, in summary - money, please? Paypal? zoom_zoom_ben? yahoo.co.uk? Cheques also accepted? Undying gratitude will be forthcoming?

What's the point of toes, anyway?

They don't really do anything, even if they're freakishly long like mine, and they really hurt if you somehow open the bathroom door over your big toe in the morning. And since I was in a hurry to get ready for work, I just put my sock on over it, and my shoe basically filled with blood over the course of the day. Really, it's a terrible wound, and it hurts a lot, so I'm quite entitled to whine about it.

D-d d-d d-d d, Turnabout!

Watching the tennis on Eurosport (which is better than watching it on ITV, even though they show exactly the same footage at exactly the same time, because on my telly at least Eurosport fits slightly more of the picture onto the screen, so you can actually see the score box rather than it being pushed off the left-hand side) always makes me think of Turnabout, the really great daytime quiz show of the early nineties, hosted by Rob Curling, who's now found gainful employment as Eurosport's tennis presenter. During school holidays or other idle time like study leave for GCSEs and A-levels, Turnabout was very much a highlight of the day! There was no Eurosport or anything like that back then, remember, just four channels, and very little to distract you from your revision on any of them. If not for Turnabout, I might even have had to do some work and pass my exams! So we've all got a lot to be thankful to Rob Curling for.

It's not just mobile phones

Really, it's any kind of modern technology. I mean, I hear there's some kind of new X-Box or Playstation or something that's just come out, that allows the government to spy on you, or something (or maybe it's just that it's not compatible with some other kind of X-Box or Playstation, but I hear a lot of people complaining, anyway) that I know not even the most basic thing about. Perhaps I should try to learn about these things, but I think I'll stick with playing Bubble Bobble on my Master System. It's a lot more fun than these modern games, according to my limited understanding of them.

I haven't got a microwave, either.

I've got a mobile phone!

Well, it's Dai's, he left it here by mistake, and the battery's flat. I think the main thing preventing me from getting a mobile now, apart from that I've got no money, is that I'd have to learn how to use one. It's a bit embarrassing, really. If I ask anyone for instructions, they'll think I'm some kind of unbelievably ignorant eejit. Which I am, but people don't have to know about it.

Rain, rain, go away

What's with the weather? We had a beautiful, hot, sunny bank holiday weekend, and then it went back to cold and rainy and horrible when we go back to work! How are we supposed to complain about the weather if it does things that we want it to do?

All friends together

The Friendly Memory Championship 2013 was a great and friendly success! For one thing, the weather was lovely and sunny after a pretty miserable, cold and rainy week - it always seems to improve when I hold an event at Attenborough Nature Reserve, I should do it more often and fix the whole British-weather problem overnight.

On Saturday people started arriving in Beeston or Attenborough, and we got together in the evening at the Victoria pub down the road, which I heartily recommended but turned out to be having a bad day, and took absolutely ages to bring us our food - but still, a good time was had by all. Dai Griffiths had brought along newcomer-to-the-memory-world Peter Broomhall, as well as a whole lot of pot noodles (I'm still not sure exactly why), to stay at my place and act as arbiters in the competition, and competitor Ryan Smith was crashing here too - I'm always impressed by how amicably memory people settle the question of who gets my spare bed and who gets my very small and uncomfortable sofa.

So to the competition day on Sunday! We arrived at the nature centre's conference room just a bit after nine, thanks to a lost debit card along the way (don't worry, it turned up in Ryan's bag) and greeted the gang of competitors who'd travelled from all over the world, mostly Scandinavia, to be there. We had Jonas von Essen from Sweden, Ola Kåre Risa from Norway and Søren Damtoft from Denmark, for a complete set of nordic languages represented; Takeru Aoki all the way from Japan, just for this competition (how awesome is that?); and Hein van Heck all the way from, well, Wales, but he's Dutch, so it counts as international.

We also had a whole gang of English competitors, all except Ryan being new to memory competitions this year - Darren Ferguson, Phil Peskett and Mike Outram who made their debuts in Wales, and Robert Frost and Phill Ash appearing for the first time here (Phill's appearance was a bit delayed, he turned up late and joined the fun after lunch, but it still counts). Hopefully we're genuinely starting to build up a crowd of regular British memory competitors now, because I'd been worried we were going to become extinct altogether. Completing the set was Darren's wife Claire, joining the team of arbiters.

I'd been very worried about the arbiting, since Phil Chambers couldn't come and he's usually so instrumental in making things work, but everything ran smoothly all day, thanks to our team. We were still able to keep the Friendly Championship tradition of marking papers and announcing results quickly and accurately, even with the need to triple-check a couple of particularly impressive results. The only glaring error came with the spoken numbers, when I'd managed to save a 400-digit collection with the 100-digit filename, and so played too many numbers before we realised what was wrong. It didn't seem to disturb the leading contenders too much, though...

The first of those particularly impressive results came in the second discipline, 5-minute binary, when Ola produced a phenomenal score of 1016! New world record, which he had obviously been working hard on ever since at the Italian championship this year he beat the existing record only to have it simultaneously beaten at the same time by two even better scores. Our other world record came from Jonas in the spoken numbers, with a completely awesome 318! Scores in spoken numbers are just skyrocketing lately, I don't know why that is.

For both of our Scandinavian superbrains, that was their first world record - breaking the German/Chinese domination of the world record list up a little! Ola's record gave him the lead in the competition which he narrowly held until the spoken numbers, when Jonas moved back ahead and eventually won, with both of them getting a safe but still impressive time of just over 45 seconds in the speed cards. Takeru and Søren fought it out for third, with Takeru ending up on top, Hein came fifth and the battle of the English was won by Phil, with Robert pushing him close all the way.

After the competition and the traditional drink in the pub down the road, a gang of us came back to my place to eat pot noodles and watch The Mentalists, which Dai had brought with him on DVD. During the day I'd been wearing my Memory Man costume, including the black turtleneck, and then changed into my Yellow Submarine T-shirt, so it was funny to see myself modelling both of those on the documentary from six years ago - possibly I need to buy new clothes more often. Still good to see that impressive capturing of the 2007 memory world, though the pot noodles didn't go down too well with our foreign guests. I think you have to be British to appreciate them.

The scores can all be seen here - Jonas's win moves him to fourth place on the world ranking list, displacing me down to fifth, and Ola climbs to number seven! But I'm sure our new team of English superstars-in-the-making will be up in the top ten in no time.

In the evening, Jonas and Ola asked me what my first world record was, and I couldn't really remember. There was the poem world record that didn't really count, in the MSO competition 2001 (it was a much more memorable poem than the rules dictated it should be), and I suppose that had already got me excited enough that when I did break an official record (historic dates, world championship 2003) it got swallowed up in the general excitement of doing so well in the world championship overall. Or maybe it did mean more to me, and I've just forgotten over the last ten years - I do remember taking some pride in listing the world records and seeing my name on the list alongside the real greats. I'm getting old...