I still don't like modern technology, though

Did you ever hear of such a thing as a TV that tells you your remote control's batteries are running out and you should change them? Look here, television, I'll change the batteries AFTER the remote control stops working, and no sooner! Yes, even if that means leaving the telly on the same channel for weeks until I get round to going out to the shops for some new batteries. I don't take orders from my television set.

I'll just switch it off and go out and do something less boring instead, since that classic lyric is back in fashion.

Down under

I've mentioned before that all video games created since roughly 1995 are rubbish, and I stand by that belief resolutely. There are exceptions to this rule, like Sonic Mania Plus, which I mentioned the last time I made that sweeping condemnation of a quarter of a century's hard work by game designers, and another one I think it's only fair to mention is Undertale.

In the old days, you see, video games had lastability. You could go back and play them again and again, because it's always fun to do. Shoot all the space invaders a bit more quickly every time, or whatever. You can always defeat Dr Robotnik over and over again, because you can have fun along the way, take a different route around the levels, challenge yourself in different ways. A lot of modern games, though, tend to be basically like watching a movie, and not a very good one either. You press a button now and then, but it's mainly just about sitting and watching the story. And once you've finished the game, there's no point in playing it again, because you already know what happens.

There's one game, though, that I finished three months ago, and would quite like to play again. But it's difficult, because one of the characters told me that restarting the game and playing it again would be tantamount to killing all my friends, after I'd given them all a happy ending. That's the kind of game Undertale is.

When the game first came out, back in something like 2015, I tried to avoid hearing anything about it, because it sounded like something I might want to play some day, without spoilers. So when I eventually noticed that you can get it on the Nintendo Switch now, and that I own one of those things, I had to finally give it a try. And I'll avoid any kind of spoilers here, as much as possible, in case you want to try it too, but wow, Undertale is the most amazing game. It remembers you.

You can go through the game and kill the monsters and win, but on the other hand you can also try talking to them and sorting things out more peacefully, and win in a different way. And when you start again, some of the monsters have a sense of deja vu, and act a bit differently this time round. And some of them remember everything, and tell you all about it. It's the kind of game where actions have consequences, as well as the kind of game that's often screamingly funny and entertaining to play! If you haven't played before, you really should go out and give it a try.

Meanwhile, until I find a way to wipe my own memory so I can play through the game again, I've been spending a lot of time catching up on all the fan comics, music, animations and other wonderful things Undertale has inspired in the last four years! But save them until you've played through the game. Spoilers!

I also like cricket

In a sort of occasionally-watch-test-matches way, at least. But this last couple of days I've tuned in to the world cup and quite enjoyed it, so maybe I'm turning into more of a modern cricket fan.

But could we persuade a couple of West Indies players to change their names? Whenever I see "C. Brathwaite", I assume it's Kraigg, even though I know he spells his name with a K. I'm not sure what I'm mentally spelling Carlos with...

The lost decade

I like tennis at the moment. I recall blogging here, at some point in the distant past, that tennis was rubbish, but it's got better since then. One main reason for that is the continued dominance of three comparatively elderly men, which is always nice to see in any competitive sport (mind or otherwise).

As a general rule, I like useful pieces of trivial knowledge, like the fact that nobody born in the 1990s has ever won a non-senior/junior/wheelchair/female men's singles grand slam tournament (tennis is a sport where you have to specify exactly what kind of people are allowed to compete in the competitions you're talking about), and dislike it when that kind of thing stops being true. So I'm pleased to see that the latest new star of the tennis world, Felix Auger-Aliassime, was born in 2000. Now he can go on and win Wimbledon if the 1980s generation finally get too old for it, and that line at the bottom of the chart can remain at zero and provide a trivial piece of interesting small talk forever!

(Although of course the real reason is that there aren't as many best-of-five-sets matches nowadays, so the younger generations take longer to build up the necessary stamina to play in them, and Young Felix hasn't really shown any signs of being an exception yet, but possibly that's another thing you're not supposed to mention in tennis. Tennis people are sensitive.)

Actually, the one I feel sorry for in all this arbitrary grouping into decades is Kei Nishikori, who was born on December 29, 1989. If he'd come along three days later, he would have had the added motivation of trying to be the first 1990s man to win a grand slam, and he'd probably have won dozens of them by now.

Family fun

I haven't talked family trees on this blog for a long time - when the 1921 census comes out in January 2022, I'll have to get into the whole extensive research again. The Pridmore branch of the family had been seriously reduced by the war and disease since 1911, but I still have plenty of relatives to dig up.

Meanwhile, here's my favourite historical document - my great-grandparents' marriage certificate!

Great-granddad is being a bit creative when asked his father's name and occupation; he was actually the illegitimate son of Eliza Pridmore, unmarried domestic servant, and an unknown father. He's only a tiny bit creative, though - it's not that much of a stretch of the imagination to invent a father called William Pridmore, labourer. If you're going to invent a father, couldn't you give him a cool name and say he's some kind of secret international spy who couldn't come to the wedding because he's busy doing important government work in South Africa?

I think we can forgive the white lie, though - not only was he a man "of full age" marrying "a minor" (they were 21 and 17, so it's really not quite as bad as that makes it sound), but their first child was born a bit under four months later, so the reason for the hasty wedding was probably well known. Under the circumstances, when the curate asks "Father's name?", not many people would be up to replying "No idea, sorry."


His mother Eliza, who was also illegitimate, didn't have any qualms about leaving those two boxes blank when she got married fifteen years earlier - but then, she was also illiterate, so probably didn't much care what got written down on the paper. This is the kind of thing I love about researching the ancestors, and there are still a lot of them I haven't fully explored!

And while I'm recommending things

If you've got Netflix, check out Memory Games! The documentary following Nelson, Yanjaa, Simon and Hannes around the world of memory competitions!

I don't actually know how the whole Netflix thing works, and I've always thought that I should probably find out some day, so maybe this is a good reason to finally get up to date...

An oxymoron worth checking out

There's a website called Raffolux, which offers "exclusive raffles for everyone", that apparently very few people know about but which is (I'm reliably informed) a real and actual thing that gives you a good chance of winning cool prizes. Joe from the office, who is young and tends to have his finger on the pulse of cool things, won a hairdryer from it. And assures me that it's the kind of hairdryer that people with hair who like it dry think is really cool and desirable. I'd recommend buying a ticket or two. It says it gives money to charity, as well.

That film with the aliens

I'm going to America for the 4th of July, and not for memory-related reasons either. It's absolutely ages since I went anywhere exotic and it wasn't for a memory competition or something to do with being a memory master. I'll probably forget I'm not there to remember things, and go around memorising everything and expecting people to tell me I'm clever when I recite it back to them.

Play your didgeridoo, Blue

What's the best new pre-school cartoon out there, I hear you ask? That would be "Bluey", an Australian work of genius that hasn't officially reached these shores yet, but is apparently on its way to CBeebies eventually.

Actually, 'pre-school' probably isn't the right word; the central character is six years old, but you know what I mean. She's an anthropomorphic dog living in Australia with her parents and younger sister, and the episodes are an absolutely brilliant seven-minute slice-of-life, with really great animation and some absolutely hilarious writing (by a guy called Joe Brumm). I'm an enormous fan!

The dad is a real character, so this is a very appropriate subject to blog about on Father's Day. Make sure to watch it if and when it appears on TV in your country!

Oh, right, the blog!

I realise I haven't posted anything here for a long time, and I do apologise to all the people out there who in my imagination are hanging on my every word and eagerly awaiting a daily update. I'll do my best to keep in touch in future!

Blogger.com tells me I've had a comment left somewhere by Basem, but doesn't say which post it was left on, so I'll reply here - yes, I'm Ben Pridmore from Moonwalking With Einstein, and it's nice to meet you! Good luck with memory training!

I'll post something fascinating here on a daily basis now. Did you know that if St Vitus's Day be rainy weather, it will rain for thirty days together? It's mostly not raining today, though - it's sort of overcast and occasionally a tiny bit drizzly, but does that count as rainy weather? St Vitus should have just stuck to dancing, and left the weather-predicting to Swithin. He obviously wasn't very good at it.

French memories

This will be fun - the French Memory Championship in October, just before my birthday! Well worth a trip across the channel!

The fourth installment of the French Memory Open Championships will take place on the 12th and 13th of October 2019 at the ENSEA (Engineering School of Electronics and Telecommunications) in Cergy-Pontoise, north-west of Paris. The competition will be in an IAM National format and will be overseen by Francoise-Marie Thuillier, the main organizer and Idriz Zogaj, the arbiter in chief.

As was the case in a number of recent competitions, the memorization will be done on paper and the recall will be performed digitally (using the standard-memory site) for all the disciplines apart from Speed Cards. The modalities of registration and the entry fee will be announced before late. The competition is open to everyone, regardless of previous experience, whether you're there to break records, advance in the world rankings, a total beginner looking to get inspired by discussing with the French National team members (who scored a silver medal in the rankings by nations at the past World Championships in Vienna) and other international competitors or talk hippocampus-hacking all weekend long with like-minded mnemonists. Feel free to contact the IAM in case you have any questions about this particular event or memory training for competitions in general. À bientôt !

No spoilers

But I have to say, I feel very lucky to live in a universe where the Marvel Cinematic Universe exists.

And now it's going to rain for the next week and a half

I'm still really impressed by the four days of summery sunshine over the four-day weekend, immediately changing back to grey unexceptionalness as soon as people go back to work. But anyway, I've just had an email from the Gold Coast hotel in Las Vegas, who have been sending me emails ever since I gave them my address in January 2002, advertising misleadingly low 'room rates' (which, in true American fashion, don't include tax, or 'resort fees', or tax on resort fees) and it makes me think I'm way, way overdue for another holiday there.

I should just book a week in the Gold Coast right now, and see how much the place has changed in the what must be about eight years since I was last there! I bet it isn't raining in Las Vegas!

Memory leaguing

Those following my cycling updates will be pleased to know I did indeed bike from Derby to Nottingham today, completing an impressive four-day sequence of healthy outdoor pursuits. Now tomorrow I have to go back to the office and vegetate some more - I'm really going to have to quit that job some time soon and become a full-time (or couple-of-hours-a-day) recreational cyclist.

But to look on the bright side, it's nearly May, and Memory League May is with us again. Get yourself a free three month subscription to Memory League by following the instructions here!

If you've never even heard of Memory League, check out the site and give it a try. It's fun! If you're already familiar with it, join the latest season of the Online Memory League Championship! It works like this:

 The Online Memory League Championship is a competition open to everybody. Competitors are divided into groups of around six players (with each division consisting of two groups) - new players this season are put into divisions based on their leaderboard position, so you will be playing against people at the same kind of level as you.

 In a season, each competitor will play each of the others in the group once, with one match per week, on a schedule drawn randomly at the start of the season. Players can be flexible about when they play their matches, depending on availability and circumstances, but should try to stick to the schedule as much as possible. You will need to communicate with your opponents - leave messages on the Memory League website, or the Art of Memory forum, or the Facebook group "World Memory Championships". We can help you get in touch with people - just send me a message if you need help!

 Matches will consist of six games - each player chooses three different disciplines, with the choice alternating. The first player on the scheduled match list chooses the first discipline; the schedule will be arranged so that each player gets a roughly equal distribution of 'home' and 'away' matches. Draws are possible, both in individual disciplines and in the match as a whole.

 If the match is a 3:3 draw, the players can (if they both agree to it) play a one-game 'decider', which can be any discipline they choose. If they don't both agree to play the decider, then the match is a draw.

 The league table gives two points for a match won, one for a match drawn. Players on the same number of points are ranked by number of disciplines won.

 At the end of the season, the bottom two in each division are relegated to the division below, and the top two in each division are promoted to the division above. There are play-offs between the runner-up in each group and the second-last in a group from the division above to determine promotion and relegation.

 The top four in the first division go into play-offs for the grand title, followed by a grand final to determine the League Champion!

 This season will last five weeks, starting at the beginning of May and ending at the end. Or at least that's the plan! Everybody who takes part will need to be prepared to play five matches in May. So if that works for you, please sign up on the forum!

I'm fitter than I thought I was

I was only planning to go as far as Kings Norton on the bike today, but once I'd got there I thought I might as well carry on all the way to Birmingham, so I did, even if it meant missing the first half hour of the football. And as a bonus, on the train back someone told me I look just like that guy who can remember everything, and was even more impressed when I confessed that I actually AM that guy!

This whole less-cake-more-exercise thing is working out surprisingly well, actually. Tomorrow I might get the train up to Derby or Nottingham, and bike the old route between the two, just to finish off an Easter weekend of pedal-power. By next weekend, I'll probably be running marathons.

A bunch of fives

The people in charge of weather have shown unusual good taste and made this four-day Easter weekend into four days of gorgeous summer sunshine, after months of general miserableness. So, since it takes a lot of really devoted denial to pretend I haven't put on any weight over the winter, I decided that this Easter will be dedicated to a lot of healthy exercise and a sharp reduction in the volume of sweets I stuff my face with on a daily basis.

Luckily, Redditch is a great place to live if you like to cycle along handily-signposted long-distance cycle routes. It's the place where National Cycle Route 55 splits off from the main Route 5, giving me a choice of three directions to go, starting practically right on my doorstep. Yesterday I went all the way down to Stratford-upon-Avon (and then got the train back, which probably takes longer than cycling since you have to go all the way to Birmingham and back out again, but which is fine because that means I can drop into the comic shop while I'm there), today I went to Bromsgrove and back, and tomorrow or Monday I'll complete the triad and venture up towards Birmingham by the more direct route. That will hopefully make it easier to close the buttons on my work shirts when I go back to the office on Tuesday.

Delight

Two entirely unrelated people today have mentioned the chronicles of Narnia, with particular reference to Edmund's love of Turkish delight, in conversation with me. It must be an omen of some kind, but I can't quite figure out what it's omening. I'll have to go and look in the wardrobe.

Time marches on

I really don't like seeing a football headline saying "Brighton are in the FA Cup semi-finals for the first time in 36 years". I remember the previous time, you see. It happened in my lifetime. That can only possibly mean that I'm old enough to remember things that happened 36 years ago, which is a very disturbing thought.

It's Brighton's fault. If they'd won the cup every year since 1983, the sports pages would just say "Brighton are in the FA Cup semi-finals, just like last year", and I don't particularly mind remembering things that happened a year ago.

Do the math

Some time back in the late nineties or early 2000s, when England had four teams in the Champions League quarter-finals and someone complained in my hearing that the draw was obviously a fix because two of the English teams were drawn against each other, I quickly played about with Excel in order to add some mathematical accuracy to my counter-argument that that person was extremely stupid, and worked out that the chance of all four games being one English team and one foreign team was only twenty-two-and-six-sevenths percent.

But that figure seemed so obviously not right, because I would have thought it was exactly 25% if it was anything, that I assumed I'd done something wrong, so I never did come back with my brilliant rebuttal of the whole 'fix' calumny. However, I just did the same thing with my more advanced version of Excel, and it still only says 22.857142 recurring percent, so either I'm very consistent in doing something wrong after all these years, or the universe really is so badly aligned that the chance of all four English teams ending up in different games doesn't work out to a nice round number.

Somebody out there please do some maths, because otherwise I'm going to have to devote hours to doing the whole thing properly.

The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill

And there's no need to activate the aura of negativism (if anyone gets that reference, award yourself a promotion to colonel), because I'm still as wildly impressed and entertained by the Marvel Cinematic Universe as ever! Captain Marvel is great, and I'm going to use it as a good excuse to re-watch all twenty previous movies preparatory to seeing Avengers: Endgame. There might maybe exist some more productive uses of my time, but I don't care. Excelsior!