I went to London today to do a bit of Christmas shopping. As it turned out, I didn't do any at all, and just bought things for myself, but that's what I always do on the first shopping trip I make. I never seem to see anything that looks like a suitable gift until the very last minute. I've left it too late to post presents to people now, anyway, because I've got to be in the office Monday to Thursday next week and I won't get a chance to go to the post office.
I nearly spent £120 on a present for my brother - a Japanese boxed set of Predacons from that cool little comic shop on Tottenham Court Road - but decided against it in the end. We don't generally go above a fiver on our presents to each other, the rule is quality and entertainment value rather than material worth, and while that doesn't necessarily preclude buying something that's both cool and expensive, I don't really like to. It might look like I'm saying "Ha ha, I've got more money than you!"
So I need another shopping trip tomorrow to actually buy cards and presents, and maybe that laptop computer for myself that I've been meaning to buy for ages. I bought some CDs today, including a big Christmas compilation that my brother and I are going to spend the whole of Christmas listening to whether we like it or not (I insist, it's not Christmas without Christmas songs), and the CD player on my current computer is increasingly senile and non-working. I'll need a laptop for organising that memory competition anyway, so it's a worthwhile expenditure. I'll do something big and charitable to make up for it.
I need to buy decorations and food for the aforementioned festive fraternal visit - this'll be the first time I've entertained someone at Christmas time, and I'm determined to make a proper turkey dinner, and Christmas pudding and everything. I don't know how it's come round so quickly this year, it still feels like November to me.
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Friday, December 16, 2005
But it makes me look like a geek!
I've got one of those luminous reflective jackets (with Parkhouse Recruitment written on it in big letters - I don't pay for my clothes, as a rule) that is very useful for stopping lorries from running me over when I'm cycling home from work in the dark. Or it would be, if I wore the thing. You see, that kind of thing is just so uncool. It screams 'trainspotter' to anyone who sees me wearing it. And because I'm so worried about total strangers' opinions of my sartorial elegance, I'm very reluctant to wear this potentially life-saving item.
"But Zoomy," I hear you say, "you look so cool that no amount of reflective safety gear could harm your image!"
Or, if you're more honest, "But Zoomy, nobody gives a monkeys what you wear anyway, least of all people who catch a fleeting glimpse of you from the pavement as you cycle past. And even if they did, they'd laugh at your normal clothes anyway, so you really don't need to worry."
So okay, I'll wear the nerdy thing. But I'm not wearing a helmet.
"But Zoomy," I hear you say, "you look so cool that no amount of reflective safety gear could harm your image!"
Or, if you're more honest, "But Zoomy, nobody gives a monkeys what you wear anyway, least of all people who catch a fleeting glimpse of you from the pavement as you cycle past. And even if they did, they'd laugh at your normal clothes anyway, so you really don't need to worry."
So okay, I'll wear the nerdy thing. But I'm not wearing a helmet.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Perchance
I don't know why, but I've had really epic dreams for the last couple of nights. Or maybe it's just that I've remembered them better than I usually do, by virtue of waking up half an hour or so before I need to get out of bed and thus having ample time to analyse my subconscious meanderings. But each of them came in three distinct interlinked sections, with a whole host of characters, strange locations and goings-on. This morning I even woke up with a catchy original tune running around my head, but I've forgotten it now, annoyingly enough. I do have another dream-composition from a few months ago that's going to be a hit single some day, or at least a popular jingle for a bacon advert (the lyrics involve getting out of bed and having a bacon sandwich, which was obviously something on my mind at the time).
A guy on an internet message board for idiots who want people to think they're clever (one of my favourites, naturally, although I don't post there much any more) is fond of saying that you only dream if you have unresolved thoughts in your mind when you go to sleep. So, he says, a practicioner of yoga (or whatever he does) doesn't need to dream and is therefore an altogether better person. Being too polite to say so to his face, I'll say here behind his back that this is the most ridiculously, colossally STUPID thing I have ever heard. Why on earth would you want to not have dreams? Letting your subconscious play around and entertain you is something that you should try to do as much as possible! In fact, what the world needs is a way to make people dream much more than they do at the moment. That would make the world a better place.
Last night's dream actually posed me a moral dilemma that I was ruminating about at work today. Going into detail would be long, complicated and incomprehensible, but the basic idea in this dream was that a friend of mine was unhappy, and I came up with a solution that basically involved taking her mind off things for an evening, rather than doing anything about the long-term cause. Indeed, when presented with an opportunity to ask for help from someone who might have been able to do more (but might have made things worse), I deliberately didn't. This, it seems to me, is typical of the way I always go about things. I do go out of my way to make other people happy, but only in the immediate kind of way you can do with a hug or a kind gesture. I generally avoid doing anything to help people deal with serious problems of their own. If someone's upset, my usual solution is to do something silly and keep everyone entertained, leaving someone else to do the comforting. Perhaps I should make more of an effort to do some good in the world. Or possibly I should stop overthinking everything and just carry on the way I am.
See what I mean about Christmas time? I'm getting all introspective and serious. It won't last. Anyway, if anybody was wondering how the new job's coming along, it's not too bad. I don't entirely know what I'm doing, but everyone else there is to a greater or lesser degree in the same situation, so it could be a lot worse. Still don't know if I'll stay there in the long term, but I'll cross that bridge when I either get fired or find out that I've been there for forty years and I'm retiring next week.
A guy on an internet message board for idiots who want people to think they're clever (one of my favourites, naturally, although I don't post there much any more) is fond of saying that you only dream if you have unresolved thoughts in your mind when you go to sleep. So, he says, a practicioner of yoga (or whatever he does) doesn't need to dream and is therefore an altogether better person. Being too polite to say so to his face, I'll say here behind his back that this is the most ridiculously, colossally STUPID thing I have ever heard. Why on earth would you want to not have dreams? Letting your subconscious play around and entertain you is something that you should try to do as much as possible! In fact, what the world needs is a way to make people dream much more than they do at the moment. That would make the world a better place.
Last night's dream actually posed me a moral dilemma that I was ruminating about at work today. Going into detail would be long, complicated and incomprehensible, but the basic idea in this dream was that a friend of mine was unhappy, and I came up with a solution that basically involved taking her mind off things for an evening, rather than doing anything about the long-term cause. Indeed, when presented with an opportunity to ask for help from someone who might have been able to do more (but might have made things worse), I deliberately didn't. This, it seems to me, is typical of the way I always go about things. I do go out of my way to make other people happy, but only in the immediate kind of way you can do with a hug or a kind gesture. I generally avoid doing anything to help people deal with serious problems of their own. If someone's upset, my usual solution is to do something silly and keep everyone entertained, leaving someone else to do the comforting. Perhaps I should make more of an effort to do some good in the world. Or possibly I should stop overthinking everything and just carry on the way I am.
See what I mean about Christmas time? I'm getting all introspective and serious. It won't last. Anyway, if anybody was wondering how the new job's coming along, it's not too bad. I don't entirely know what I'm doing, but everyone else there is to a greater or lesser degree in the same situation, so it could be a lot worse. Still don't know if I'll stay there in the long term, but I'll cross that bridge when I either get fired or find out that I've been there for forty years and I'm retiring next week.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Fantastic and Terrific
By way of a belated birthday present, my brother found me a fantastic old comic, in more ways than one. It's issue 78 of Fantastic, the magazine of choice in the late sixties for British children who wanted to read American superhero comics but couldn't get hold of the originals. Or at least I assume it was - I've never heard of it before.
Actually, the title at this point in the comic's history was "Fantastic and Terrific", with the "and Terrific" in very small letters. This used to be a common sight on British comics - an unsuccessful one would be swallowed up by a more popular title, and the names would both be featured prominently on the covers for a while, so as to make sure not to lose the few readers who only liked the failing comic, before the second name, like Terrific, was quietly dropped. The cover also features the logo "A Power Comic", with a picture of a fist just to emphasise how powerful it is, the date (10 August 1968) and a little copyright notice for Odhams Press Ltd.
It was on sale every Monday for 9d - Australia 10c, South Africa 10c, East Africa 1.25, New Zealand 1/- (10c), Rhodesia 1/3, West Africa 1/-. So it's educational too - NZ was obviously in the process of decimalisation at the time, and a shilling went further in West Africa than it did in Rhodesia. The rather uninspired cover illustration is a close-up of the superhero Goliath's head, and a photo of the Fantastic Book of Soccer Stars that could be found inside.
The front and back covers are the only splash of colour in the comic - the British standard at the time was anthology magazines, in black and white, with five or six stories of five or six pages maximum each, with the obligatory crossword puzzles, letters pages, competitions and fun facts to pad out the stuff that people actually wanted to read. So ignoring the fact that the American material being repeated was designed to be read in full colour, in 20-page bursts every month, Fantastic strictly follows the British format. We get a luxurious nine pages of Avengers, Goliath and his friends battling the evil alien Ixar, five pages of Dr Strange in the middle of a longer magical fight scene with Yandroth, five pages of the X-Men thwarting the plans of the Mutant-Master and Factor Three, six pages of Thor exploring Ego the Living Planet, including a glorious double-page spread that must have looked so much better in colour, and eight pages of the Hulk fighting the Sub-Mariner. Plus a full-colour back-page pin-up of Unus the Untouchable, a crossword that you need to know the name of the Beast's girlfriend to solve, a "Spot the Boob" competition which isn't nearly as fun as it sounds (it's a spot-the-deliberate-mistake thing), letters and editorials. All for ninepence!
There's three-quarters of a page of adverts in the entire comic - two little ads for stamp collectors' outfits, and an encouragement to buy Tonibell Miniballs - the ball with the ice cream inside - in order to enter a competition and win £50 of vouchers to spend in London's biggest toy shop. Oh, and rather incongrously in amongst all the superheroes, there's the first of five pull-out profiles of famous footballers, that you can put together to make a little book, just in time for the 1968/69 season. This week it's Bobby Moore (who gets the front page, of course), Billy Bremner, Billy McNeill and Jeff Astle. Bremner's Leeds went on to win the league that year, if anyone's interested, so the Fantastic editors Bart and Alf (whose names replaced Stan Lee's in rewritten footnotes to the superhero comics) obviously knew how to pick the winners.
They really don't make them like that any more.
Actually, the title at this point in the comic's history was "Fantastic and Terrific", with the "and Terrific" in very small letters. This used to be a common sight on British comics - an unsuccessful one would be swallowed up by a more popular title, and the names would both be featured prominently on the covers for a while, so as to make sure not to lose the few readers who only liked the failing comic, before the second name, like Terrific, was quietly dropped. The cover also features the logo "A Power Comic", with a picture of a fist just to emphasise how powerful it is, the date (10 August 1968) and a little copyright notice for Odhams Press Ltd.
It was on sale every Monday for 9d - Australia 10c, South Africa 10c, East Africa 1.25, New Zealand 1/- (10c), Rhodesia 1/3, West Africa 1/-. So it's educational too - NZ was obviously in the process of decimalisation at the time, and a shilling went further in West Africa than it did in Rhodesia. The rather uninspired cover illustration is a close-up of the superhero Goliath's head, and a photo of the Fantastic Book of Soccer Stars that could be found inside.
The front and back covers are the only splash of colour in the comic - the British standard at the time was anthology magazines, in black and white, with five or six stories of five or six pages maximum each, with the obligatory crossword puzzles, letters pages, competitions and fun facts to pad out the stuff that people actually wanted to read. So ignoring the fact that the American material being repeated was designed to be read in full colour, in 20-page bursts every month, Fantastic strictly follows the British format. We get a luxurious nine pages of Avengers, Goliath and his friends battling the evil alien Ixar, five pages of Dr Strange in the middle of a longer magical fight scene with Yandroth, five pages of the X-Men thwarting the plans of the Mutant-Master and Factor Three, six pages of Thor exploring Ego the Living Planet, including a glorious double-page spread that must have looked so much better in colour, and eight pages of the Hulk fighting the Sub-Mariner. Plus a full-colour back-page pin-up of Unus the Untouchable, a crossword that you need to know the name of the Beast's girlfriend to solve, a "Spot the Boob" competition which isn't nearly as fun as it sounds (it's a spot-the-deliberate-mistake thing), letters and editorials. All for ninepence!
There's three-quarters of a page of adverts in the entire comic - two little ads for stamp collectors' outfits, and an encouragement to buy Tonibell Miniballs - the ball with the ice cream inside - in order to enter a competition and win £50 of vouchers to spend in London's biggest toy shop. Oh, and rather incongrously in amongst all the superheroes, there's the first of five pull-out profiles of famous footballers, that you can put together to make a little book, just in time for the 1968/69 season. This week it's Bobby Moore (who gets the front page, of course), Billy Bremner, Billy McNeill and Jeff Astle. Bremner's Leeds went on to win the league that year, if anyone's interested, so the Fantastic editors Bart and Alf (whose names replaced Stan Lee's in rewritten footnotes to the superhero comics) obviously knew how to pick the winners.
They really don't make them like that any more.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Seasons in the sun
It occurred to me today that the next few months are going to be comparatively dull reading if you're mainly interested in this blog for the memory or othello talk. Memory competitions are traditionally all crammed into July and August, although there'll be anything up to two of them in March next year, which would be good. And even othello has now stopped until the end of February.
I've sort-of volunteered to organise one of the regional othello tournaments here in Derby next year. I never wanted to do one in Boston, because the place is so impossible to get to by public transport that it would just be inconvenient for everyone, but I've got no such excuse in Derby, so it's about time I did. If I put the tournament on in April, it'll be good practice for the memory competition I'm planning to hold in May - another thing I've been promising to do for years but haven't got round to it.
The othello will be a lot easier than the memory - that'll involve lots of advance preparation and (unless it's unlike every other memory competition ever held) a lot of unexpected problems causing it to run wildly behind schedule until we get pestered by caretakers trying to throw us out of the building. Which comes in handy when you need extra arbiters for the speed cards.
I've sort-of volunteered to organise one of the regional othello tournaments here in Derby next year. I never wanted to do one in Boston, because the place is so impossible to get to by public transport that it would just be inconvenient for everyone, but I've got no such excuse in Derby, so it's about time I did. If I put the tournament on in April, it'll be good practice for the memory competition I'm planning to hold in May - another thing I've been promising to do for years but haven't got round to it.
The othello will be a lot easier than the memory - that'll involve lots of advance preparation and (unless it's unlike every other memory competition ever held) a lot of unexpected problems causing it to run wildly behind schedule until we get pestered by caretakers trying to throw us out of the building. Which comes in handy when you need extra arbiters for the speed cards.
Monday, December 12, 2005
How To Be Friendly
I was wondering today why I don't like a particular person more than I do, when we've got such a lot in common and like most of the same things, and that led me to speculate about what qualities my favourite people have that makes them my friends. I decided in the end that it's not shared interests, so much - most of my friends aren't particularly interested in memory, or cartoons, or board games, or things like that. Likewise, more often than not I don't share their own favourite things and activities either.
I think it's more a shared mindset, or similar sense of humour - the people I like the most are the ones who I can have a really strange conversation with, both of us reacting to and building on the other's comments until the whole discussion is a lot more fun than either of us could hope to produce with anyone else. I also concluded that a special friend needs to be the kind of person who doesn't run away screaming when I mention that I'm in love with Piper O'Possum from Nick Jr.
I seem to have been doing a lot of thinking today. I've also been considering this book I keep talking about writing, and whether I'm going about it the wrong way. What I should maybe have done is taken a month or two off work with my redundancy money and devoted myself to it with some kind of seriousness. What I should also maybe have done is gone about approaching publishers and people like that first, rather than waiting until I've written the thing.
I know I had perfectly good reasons for not doing that - I didn't want to agree to write the book before I'd done it, because that would turn it from a hobby into a job, and thus make it a lot less fun. Also, there was that time a couple of years ago when I was asked to write a book, agreed to do it and then changed my mind and had to tell the company in question that I had (which is the kind of thing I really don't like doing). But now I'm starting to think that exploring the possibility of getting the thing published might be fun in itself, and might also inspire me to get writing.
Incidentally, more than one person has told me exactly that in the past, and I've replied that no, my brain doesn't work that way, so it wouldn't work. So I'm not claiming any originality in this idea, and I give full credit to everyone who's given me such good advice. But that's my plan for the moment - as soon as I get round to it, I'll look into people who publish how-to-be-clever kind of books and see about sending them a synopsis and sample chapters.
I think it's more a shared mindset, or similar sense of humour - the people I like the most are the ones who I can have a really strange conversation with, both of us reacting to and building on the other's comments until the whole discussion is a lot more fun than either of us could hope to produce with anyone else. I also concluded that a special friend needs to be the kind of person who doesn't run away screaming when I mention that I'm in love with Piper O'Possum from Nick Jr.
I seem to have been doing a lot of thinking today. I've also been considering this book I keep talking about writing, and whether I'm going about it the wrong way. What I should maybe have done is taken a month or two off work with my redundancy money and devoted myself to it with some kind of seriousness. What I should also maybe have done is gone about approaching publishers and people like that first, rather than waiting until I've written the thing.
I know I had perfectly good reasons for not doing that - I didn't want to agree to write the book before I'd done it, because that would turn it from a hobby into a job, and thus make it a lot less fun. Also, there was that time a couple of years ago when I was asked to write a book, agreed to do it and then changed my mind and had to tell the company in question that I had (which is the kind of thing I really don't like doing). But now I'm starting to think that exploring the possibility of getting the thing published might be fun in itself, and might also inspire me to get writing.
Incidentally, more than one person has told me exactly that in the past, and I've replied that no, my brain doesn't work that way, so it wouldn't work. So I'm not claiming any originality in this idea, and I give full credit to everyone who's given me such good advice. But that's my plan for the moment - as soon as I get round to it, I'll look into people who publish how-to-be-clever kind of books and see about sending them a synopsis and sample chapters.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
log, on, secure, online, free
That's the title of the HSBC personal internet banking web page. Log, on, secure, online, free. It's said that for at least a couple of years, too. It's the kind of thing that makes you think you're logging on to an amateurish phishing attempt instead of an official website of a really big company.
I know that talking about other things I've seen on the internet is meant to be the kind of thing I don't do, but it was that or write a long essay about the things I've removed from and added to my Favourites list today, and I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be anything more boring than that. Except maybe the BBC Sports Review of the Year, which I've just turned off. I don't know why I always start to watch the thing every year, it's never remotely interesting. I might tune in again later to see who wins the award, but it's a foregone conclusion this time round anyway, so I might not.
So, fourteen more sleeps till Santa. Christmas seems to have come round unreasonably quickly this year. I still don't properly feel like the festive season has really started. Which is probably a good thing, because I usually get terminally depressed at this time of year, and I'm only just easing into that mental state now. Still, just two more weeks and it'll all be over, so if you see me in the meantime and I'm manically cheerful or sulky and uncommunicative, bear with me. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible after Boxing Day.
I know that talking about other things I've seen on the internet is meant to be the kind of thing I don't do, but it was that or write a long essay about the things I've removed from and added to my Favourites list today, and I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be anything more boring than that. Except maybe the BBC Sports Review of the Year, which I've just turned off. I don't know why I always start to watch the thing every year, it's never remotely interesting. I might tune in again later to see who wins the award, but it's a foregone conclusion this time round anyway, so I might not.
So, fourteen more sleeps till Santa. Christmas seems to have come round unreasonably quickly this year. I still don't properly feel like the festive season has really started. Which is probably a good thing, because I usually get terminally depressed at this time of year, and I'm only just easing into that mental state now. Still, just two more weeks and it'll all be over, so if you see me in the meantime and I'm manically cheerful or sulky and uncommunicative, bear with me. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible after Boxing Day.
Friday, December 09, 2005
Freedom!
Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's how I feel. The office in Burton is finally more or less ready, so I don't have to work in Cheadle any more! Except on Monday when I have to have a final bit of training up there, but that's just a day trip. No more hotels! No more free swimming pool that I could never drag myself out of bed to use! No more meals cooked for me and paid for by my company every morning and evening! No more quality time away from cartoons and the internet to concentrate on winning the world memory championship!
Okay, it hasn't been all bad, but I'm still glad to be back home for good, hopefully. Of course, the others might still go into Burton on Monday and find that the building's completely unusable, but that's a little unlikely. I'll celebrate being able to post something on this blog every day by not posting anything tomorrow - my brother's coming round for the weekend, so I probably won't get a chance. But after that, I'll return to the daily dose of dementia, rather than doing anything productive.
Incidentally, I was a little disturbed to find out last night that the financial controller not only knows about my memory competitions, but knows enough about it to be aware that names and faces are my weakest event. If the boss is going to be checking up on me so thoroughly, he might find this blog, which presents a dilemma. Should I only say nice things about the job, just in case, or should I stick with the honest approach and say what I think? Not that I've got anything bad to say at the moment, but suppose I have in future? Censorship is bad, but then again as Thumper's mother's always telling me, if you can't say anything nice it's better not to say anything at all. Also last night, I sang 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love' at a karaoke place, to the admiration of my colleagues. Admiration is good, being filmed by mobile phones doing it isn't. Horrible inventions. And I was trying to get a good reputation at the new place too, as a hard-working, serious, kind of guy. Ah well.
On the subject of work, I have rather rashly promised to take my final CIMA exams in June, or May, or whenever it is. This will involve a heck of a lot of studying (I haven't taken an accountancy exam since 2002, so I've forgotten all the stupid technical stuff that nobody knows in real life but you have to memorise to pass exams). What bothers me the most is that this will really get in the way of my memory training - I didn't start serious training until early 2003, so I've never had to combine the two before. Of course, if I just wrote a best-selling book, or taught courses to stupid businessmen, I wouldn't have to have a day job at all, so I've only got myself to blame. I'm sure I'll manage to juggle the two somehow.
I need a trip to London some time soon. Christmas shopping needs doing and (more importantly) I need to buy a whole pile of comics, too, I've got out of touch with some of my favourites just lately with one thing and another. And I really do need some new work shoes. To be honest, I needed some six months ago, but it's now got to the point where the left one is actively disintegrating as I walk around. Another week or two and there won't be any sole left - which will be fine as long as I'm careful not to be seen walking around the office, and avoid puddles when I'm outside, but it's probably time I got a new pair.
Okay, it hasn't been all bad, but I'm still glad to be back home for good, hopefully. Of course, the others might still go into Burton on Monday and find that the building's completely unusable, but that's a little unlikely. I'll celebrate being able to post something on this blog every day by not posting anything tomorrow - my brother's coming round for the weekend, so I probably won't get a chance. But after that, I'll return to the daily dose of dementia, rather than doing anything productive.
Incidentally, I was a little disturbed to find out last night that the financial controller not only knows about my memory competitions, but knows enough about it to be aware that names and faces are my weakest event. If the boss is going to be checking up on me so thoroughly, he might find this blog, which presents a dilemma. Should I only say nice things about the job, just in case, or should I stick with the honest approach and say what I think? Not that I've got anything bad to say at the moment, but suppose I have in future? Censorship is bad, but then again as Thumper's mother's always telling me, if you can't say anything nice it's better not to say anything at all. Also last night, I sang 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love' at a karaoke place, to the admiration of my colleagues. Admiration is good, being filmed by mobile phones doing it isn't. Horrible inventions. And I was trying to get a good reputation at the new place too, as a hard-working, serious, kind of guy. Ah well.
On the subject of work, I have rather rashly promised to take my final CIMA exams in June, or May, or whenever it is. This will involve a heck of a lot of studying (I haven't taken an accountancy exam since 2002, so I've forgotten all the stupid technical stuff that nobody knows in real life but you have to memorise to pass exams). What bothers me the most is that this will really get in the way of my memory training - I didn't start serious training until early 2003, so I've never had to combine the two before. Of course, if I just wrote a best-selling book, or taught courses to stupid businessmen, I wouldn't have to have a day job at all, so I've only got myself to blame. I'm sure I'll manage to juggle the two somehow.
I need a trip to London some time soon. Christmas shopping needs doing and (more importantly) I need to buy a whole pile of comics, too, I've got out of touch with some of my favourites just lately with one thing and another. And I really do need some new work shoes. To be honest, I needed some six months ago, but it's now got to the point where the left one is actively disintegrating as I walk around. Another week or two and there won't be any sole left - which will be fine as long as I'm careful not to be seen walking around the office, and avoid puddles when I'm outside, but it's probably time I got a new pair.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Great Googly-Moogly
Of course, the problem with spending a weekend doing absolutely nothing is that you don't have much of interest to put in your blog on the Sunday night. So for want of anything better to do, I'll enthuse about one of my favourite cartoons. Ntl's revolving sample channels (a great idea for encouraging people to pay for more expensive packages) has brought me Nick Jr again this month, so I get to watch Maggie and the Ferocious Beast. Yay!
The show is about a girl called Maggie, who has created an imaginary world called Nowhere Land, populated by an assortment of toys, birds, monsters, jelly beans and the like, foremost among them being the Ferocious Beast (a big, friendly, slightly dimwitted orange thing with red polka-dots) and a slightly neurotic pig called Hamilton. Yes, there are three equally important central characters and only two of them get a name-check in the series title. Poor Hamilton. The fact that the setting and everyone in it are figments of Maggie's imagination doesn't generally come up in the stories at all - they're light, uncomplicated, surprisingly philosophical adventures, occasionally with a moral but more often completely pointless (in a good way). We never see the real world, although Maggie goes back there at the end of the day.
It's the kind of show in which the best episodes are the ones where nothing happens at all. There are some fantastically off-beat episodes - "Morning in Nowhere Land" has no dialogue at all, and just shows the Beast and Hamilton waking up and going through their morning routine to the accompaniment of orchestral music until Maggie shows up and they start the day's adventure. "Where's Maggie" features Hamilton and the Beast sitting on a hill wondering why Maggie's so late coming back from her holiday, and worrying that she might not come back at all.
There are some great supporting characters too - Rudy the mouse is notable for the fact that his hat and boots don't come off. Everybody treats this as a perfectly normal thing, except the Beast, who keeps bringing it up in conversation in the hope that someone will explain it to him. Nedley the rabbit is entirely amoral, and just unable to see the point of doing anything that doesn't benefit him directly. In one episode he borrows Hamilton's jumper and then just refuses to return it because he likes it so much. Rather than ordering him to give it back, because that kind of thing just isn't done in Nowhere Land, the plan Maggie comes up with is to go to the beach, where he'll get so hot that he'll have to take it off.
You have to watch it to appreciate it, plot summaries don't do the series justice. "The Push-Me Popper" (in which Hamilton gets a new toy and won't let the Beast play with it because he'll break it, so the Beast takes it anyway and does break it) doesn't sound at all different from a million other cartoons, but there's something about the characters and the writing that makes it hilarious. I was laughing out loud when I watched it for the first time.
Anyway, back to Cheadle tomorrow. Last week there, fingers crossed, touch wood. See you Friday.
The show is about a girl called Maggie, who has created an imaginary world called Nowhere Land, populated by an assortment of toys, birds, monsters, jelly beans and the like, foremost among them being the Ferocious Beast (a big, friendly, slightly dimwitted orange thing with red polka-dots) and a slightly neurotic pig called Hamilton. Yes, there are three equally important central characters and only two of them get a name-check in the series title. Poor Hamilton. The fact that the setting and everyone in it are figments of Maggie's imagination doesn't generally come up in the stories at all - they're light, uncomplicated, surprisingly philosophical adventures, occasionally with a moral but more often completely pointless (in a good way). We never see the real world, although Maggie goes back there at the end of the day.
It's the kind of show in which the best episodes are the ones where nothing happens at all. There are some fantastically off-beat episodes - "Morning in Nowhere Land" has no dialogue at all, and just shows the Beast and Hamilton waking up and going through their morning routine to the accompaniment of orchestral music until Maggie shows up and they start the day's adventure. "Where's Maggie" features Hamilton and the Beast sitting on a hill wondering why Maggie's so late coming back from her holiday, and worrying that she might not come back at all.
There are some great supporting characters too - Rudy the mouse is notable for the fact that his hat and boots don't come off. Everybody treats this as a perfectly normal thing, except the Beast, who keeps bringing it up in conversation in the hope that someone will explain it to him. Nedley the rabbit is entirely amoral, and just unable to see the point of doing anything that doesn't benefit him directly. In one episode he borrows Hamilton's jumper and then just refuses to return it because he likes it so much. Rather than ordering him to give it back, because that kind of thing just isn't done in Nowhere Land, the plan Maggie comes up with is to go to the beach, where he'll get so hot that he'll have to take it off.
You have to watch it to appreciate it, plot summaries don't do the series justice. "The Push-Me Popper" (in which Hamilton gets a new toy and won't let the Beast play with it because he'll break it, so the Beast takes it anyway and does break it) doesn't sound at all different from a million other cartoons, but there's something about the characters and the writing that makes it hilarious. I was laughing out loud when I watched it for the first time.
Anyway, back to Cheadle tomorrow. Last week there, fingers crossed, touch wood. See you Friday.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
That's better
Ahh, a day sitting at home doing nothing. You can't beat it. Well, nothing with a side order of memory-training, but I've talked about that more than enough here already.
Let's talk about my brother, instead, Doctor Joseph Pridmore. He passed his viva yesterday and got his PhD, which comes as no surprise to anyone but him - he's one of those genius types who goes through life assuming everything he does is going to be some kind of abject failure even though it never is. It's a good way to be, really - you're always sure to be pleasantly surprised. Anyway, I'm terribly impressed. I sometimes think about going back to university and trying to get at least a degree, just so as not to feel quite so inferior to everyone else. I know too many doctors already - lots of othello players and memory people have PhDs too, and there's only so much satisfaction you can get from boasting about being an unusually young university dropout (I went there at the age of 17 and gave up on it after a few months).
Still, now I get to introduce my bro to people as "This is my brother, the doctor." And I can always add under my breath "(albeit only a doctor of English literature, which isn't a real kind of doctorate)" if I get too envious.
Let's talk about my brother, instead, Doctor Joseph Pridmore. He passed his viva yesterday and got his PhD, which comes as no surprise to anyone but him - he's one of those genius types who goes through life assuming everything he does is going to be some kind of abject failure even though it never is. It's a good way to be, really - you're always sure to be pleasantly surprised. Anyway, I'm terribly impressed. I sometimes think about going back to university and trying to get at least a degree, just so as not to feel quite so inferior to everyone else. I know too many doctors already - lots of othello players and memory people have PhDs too, and there's only so much satisfaction you can get from boasting about being an unusually young university dropout (I went there at the age of 17 and gave up on it after a few months).
Still, now I get to introduce my bro to people as "This is my brother, the doctor." And I can always add under my breath "(albeit only a doctor of English literature, which isn't a real kind of doctorate)" if I get too envious.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Green Grow The Rushes-O
The poohsticks gang are meeting up tomorrow in a pub called the Seven Stars, in London, but I'm not sure whether I want to go or not. I feel like I haven't been at home here for years, what with being away last weekend and the last two weeks in Cheadle (surprisingly enough, the new building in Burton still isn't ready, so I'm back in the hotel next week too), and I feel like I need to recharge my batteries, rather than having another late-night drinking session.
It's been quite a fun week, though - we went into Manchester on Wednesday night to see the football. There were six of us, proudly walking from the car park to the Old Trafford stadium for the George Best tribute and a quite good game too. The tickets were very cheap by Man Utd standards - £19 each, and in the front row, right behind the goal, and everyone got a free George Best poster, to hold up during the minute's silence. 50,000 people being silent in a big stadium like that is quite a thing to experience. The game itself was enjoyable, too - for the benefit of non-football-liking readers, it was a Carling Cup game, which often means one or both teams aren't actually trying to win (the Carling Cup is not seen as an important trophy, so teams who want to concentrate on doing well in the league, FA Cup or European competitions traditionally field teams made up of reserve and youth players). But Man Utd, realising it was the first home game after Best died, played not quite their best team, but a team that most clubs would be happy to have playing for them in any competition. West Brom took the game seriously too, but they were outclassed, and lost 3-1.
You get a great kind of mob psychology going at football games - we were sitting with the Man U supporters, and so even though I'm cheering for West Brom this year (they survived a great relegation battle last year and I hope they can stay up in the premiership now they've got through that difficult first season) I was yelling for United on Wednesday night. The day before, we went to a pub to watch Doncaster playing Aston Villa. Villa are one of the rare top-level teams who always try to win the Carling Cup, so it was fun to watch them get comprehensively thrashed by Doncaster (who are two divisions below them in the league).
Anyway, I'm back home at number five now (although the 5 symbol at the door is still missing - someone really needs to get a new one) and I don't feel like leaving it for a weekend out in London. I might change my mind tomorrow, I'll see how I feel. But I'd quite like to do a bit of memory training this weekend (beat 30 seconds in the cards for the first time this week, now I need to practise the longer events that I don't have time to do at the hotel), with just a quick walk into Derby for fresh air and a bit of pre-Christmas shopping. I need to get a new book to read next week. After forgetting to bring one the first week and having to make do with Gideon's Bible (which, with the greatest respect to the Gospel makers, isn't an enthralling read), I've been making do with re-reading Stephen King and Flann O'Brien since then, but I could do with something new. I have to read something for twenty minutes or so before I go to sleep - it's a tradition.
Anyway, I need to have a think about memory things - Aubrey de Grey suggested not one but two great ideas for me to work on last Saturday. The first was an offhand remark about my ideas for memorising othello games - I'd said that the problem was there being so many possible moves to remember, to which Aubrey replied "I didn't think that would bother you." And he's right, of course - I've been trying to think of ways to minimise the amount of information I'd have to take on board, but why would I care about that? If I can memorise 50,000 digits of pi without batting an eyelid, why would I care how many othello moves I need to cram into my brain? I'll just do it the long-winded way, and see how far I can get! The other suggestion was for names and faces - apart from the idea a lot of people have toyed with over the years, classifying faces according to things like shape, hair colour and so on and converting that information into something that can be memorised, he suggested memorising a list of faces, and a separate list of names - and that way if both lists are in order, you don't need to associate the name with the face at all. It's food for thought.
Also in memory news, Boris Konrad's Speed Cards Challenge looks like it's definitely going ahead next year - a whole day of people memorising packs of cards, head-to-head against an opponent. It'll be great fun, and great TV - we'll have to see if we can get someone to take an interest. It'll be in Germany, during the World Cup, so there'll be press interest in an 'alternative sport' like that. There'll even be prize money! I might win it, although I'll have at least three rivals who stand a very good chance - Clemens is very fast with the cards, Lukas is great and Andi might just come along to this kind of thing too if we're lucky.
I can't think of any topic to discuss that might involve a reference to lily-white boys clothed all in green-o, so I'll give up on the ingeniuously themed blog and just observe that anyone who's ignored my previous advice to read Ozy and Millie needs to know that the last couple of week's comics have been on the subject of blogs. They answer a lot of important questions about what a blog should be like and why. And I hope my blog comes close to the obvious perfection achieved by Timulty's. Read it here!
Oh, and I've got another documentary-maker calling me tomorrow. I gave her my number especially so I can practice saying no to people over the phone. I do have a very good excuse for not wanting to get involved in this one, after all...
It's been quite a fun week, though - we went into Manchester on Wednesday night to see the football. There were six of us, proudly walking from the car park to the Old Trafford stadium for the George Best tribute and a quite good game too. The tickets were very cheap by Man Utd standards - £19 each, and in the front row, right behind the goal, and everyone got a free George Best poster, to hold up during the minute's silence. 50,000 people being silent in a big stadium like that is quite a thing to experience. The game itself was enjoyable, too - for the benefit of non-football-liking readers, it was a Carling Cup game, which often means one or both teams aren't actually trying to win (the Carling Cup is not seen as an important trophy, so teams who want to concentrate on doing well in the league, FA Cup or European competitions traditionally field teams made up of reserve and youth players). But Man Utd, realising it was the first home game after Best died, played not quite their best team, but a team that most clubs would be happy to have playing for them in any competition. West Brom took the game seriously too, but they were outclassed, and lost 3-1.
You get a great kind of mob psychology going at football games - we were sitting with the Man U supporters, and so even though I'm cheering for West Brom this year (they survived a great relegation battle last year and I hope they can stay up in the premiership now they've got through that difficult first season) I was yelling for United on Wednesday night. The day before, we went to a pub to watch Doncaster playing Aston Villa. Villa are one of the rare top-level teams who always try to win the Carling Cup, so it was fun to watch them get comprehensively thrashed by Doncaster (who are two divisions below them in the league).
Anyway, I'm back home at number five now (although the 5 symbol at the door is still missing - someone really needs to get a new one) and I don't feel like leaving it for a weekend out in London. I might change my mind tomorrow, I'll see how I feel. But I'd quite like to do a bit of memory training this weekend (beat 30 seconds in the cards for the first time this week, now I need to practise the longer events that I don't have time to do at the hotel), with just a quick walk into Derby for fresh air and a bit of pre-Christmas shopping. I need to get a new book to read next week. After forgetting to bring one the first week and having to make do with Gideon's Bible (which, with the greatest respect to the Gospel makers, isn't an enthralling read), I've been making do with re-reading Stephen King and Flann O'Brien since then, but I could do with something new. I have to read something for twenty minutes or so before I go to sleep - it's a tradition.
Anyway, I need to have a think about memory things - Aubrey de Grey suggested not one but two great ideas for me to work on last Saturday. The first was an offhand remark about my ideas for memorising othello games - I'd said that the problem was there being so many possible moves to remember, to which Aubrey replied "I didn't think that would bother you." And he's right, of course - I've been trying to think of ways to minimise the amount of information I'd have to take on board, but why would I care about that? If I can memorise 50,000 digits of pi without batting an eyelid, why would I care how many othello moves I need to cram into my brain? I'll just do it the long-winded way, and see how far I can get! The other suggestion was for names and faces - apart from the idea a lot of people have toyed with over the years, classifying faces according to things like shape, hair colour and so on and converting that information into something that can be memorised, he suggested memorising a list of faces, and a separate list of names - and that way if both lists are in order, you don't need to associate the name with the face at all. It's food for thought.
Also in memory news, Boris Konrad's Speed Cards Challenge looks like it's definitely going ahead next year - a whole day of people memorising packs of cards, head-to-head against an opponent. It'll be great fun, and great TV - we'll have to see if we can get someone to take an interest. It'll be in Germany, during the World Cup, so there'll be press interest in an 'alternative sport' like that. There'll even be prize money! I might win it, although I'll have at least three rivals who stand a very good chance - Clemens is very fast with the cards, Lukas is great and Andi might just come along to this kind of thing too if we're lucky.
I can't think of any topic to discuss that might involve a reference to lily-white boys clothed all in green-o, so I'll give up on the ingeniuously themed blog and just observe that anyone who's ignored my previous advice to read Ozy and Millie needs to know that the last couple of week's comics have been on the subject of blogs. They answer a lot of important questions about what a blog should be like and why. And I hope my blog comes close to the obvious perfection achieved by Timulty's. Read it here!
Oh, and I've got another documentary-maker calling me tomorrow. I gave her my number especially so I can practice saying no to people over the phone. I do have a very good excuse for not wanting to get involved in this one, after all...
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Christmas in Cambridge
Having finally got home from Cambridge after an adventure that involves missing one train, having the next one cancelled and trying to get back to Derby by an ingenious and circuitous route that took roughly three times as long as the original journey would have, I find myself needing to pack for next week's (hopefully) final jaunt up to Cheadle, but feeling like I'd rather spend the time recounting the fun I've had this weekend while WZebra (the othello program) chugs away in the background analysing my games from Saturday and telling me what I did right and wrong. I only ever pay attention to the things I did right, having no interest at all in being told I'm not a brilliant player. This is why the vast majority of my analysis goes into the ones I've won. And why I'm actually not a brilliant player, of course.
Before that, though, I should transcribe the conversation I had at dinner-time when Jenny and I went to a cafe in Cambridge city centre. There was quite a long queue, probably because while there were three women serving food to the customers, one man was entrusted at the end of the line with serving drinks and then working the till. Although a charming, friendly kind of chap, he didn't seem entirely focused on what he was doing, and the following is an extract from the dialogue that passed between us:
Man: And what would you like to drink, sir?
Me: Coke, please.
Man: Small, medium or large?
Me: Medium, please.
Man: There you go. Oh, I've done you a small one there. I'll only charge you for a small one, don't worry. That's £7.70 altogether, please.
[I gave him a five-pound note and three pound coins, and he gave me 30p back, then put my money into the till. He paused and looked at the note in his hand.]
Man: Oh, wait, that's only a five, I gave you change for a ten.
Me: No, I gave you a five and three ones, and you gave me 30p back. That's right.
Man: Oh yes, sorry. [Turning to Jenny] And what would you like to drink, sir?
Jenny: Um...
Man: I mean madam, sorry. I'll get my head working right in a minute...
Anyway, going back in time a day and a half, I got up on Saturday at the ungodly hour of 5:15, in order to catch the 6:00 train down to Cambridge. It turned out that 5:14 would have been a better time to set the alarm for, because I was seconds too late to catch it. That left me to get the 6:53 and still get there more or less in time, although it put a dent in the plans of Nick, who had come down to film me at it and had wanted to tape me arriving and talking a bit about memory in scenic surroundings before the tournament started. So he went off to a meeting and came back later, and everything worked out fine.
The traditional Cambridge Christmas Friendly was a little unusual this year. Not because of the date, it's traditionally held at the end of November, but because of the unusual number of people there. Apart from Nick and his camera, there were three new players (very rare at othello tournaments), and two people lurking outside the door armed with giant waterpistols. It turns out that they were lying in wait for one of the aforementioned new players, who's a student at Cambridge and part of the 'Ring of Death', in which students try to assassinate each other with waterpistols, poison (vaseline) and other such nefarious means. My best friend in days gone by, David 'Noddy' Page, was involved in that in his Cambridge days too. Aidan, the assassinee, spent the first round hiding in the toilet, arranging with friends via his mobile phone to get rid of the assassins.
I beat one of the other new people in the first round, which is always a nice way to start. Although we probably should encourage new people to come back to future tournaments by not beating them, I don't feel too guilty, because I at least had the decency to beat Fran 45-19, whereas Aubrey wiped out the other new bug, James. Other people probably beat other people too, but I haven't got all the results to hand - the ever-reliable Roy strangely hasn't posted the final scores on the mailing list yet, which he normally does via his mobile on the train home.
Anyway, after round one, we paused for a quick filming break. Nick had roped in Aubrey, who is very very good at interviews, to come over to the Trinity College quad with me and walk around talking about science and memory. I think it went very well, mainly because I was able to just name-drop some technical-sounding words like 'anterior cingulate' and let Aubrey talk about them at length. Incidentally, there's further proof to my theory that Nick is secretly evil and planning to make me look bad - he made a point of advising Aubrey to wear his hat because it was spitting with rain. Which might be quite innocuous, obviously, but Aubrey's hat is a crotcheted woollen bonnet that does look a little silly. He does have the accompanying genius that makes things like that and his yard-long beard qualify as 'eccentric', rather than just 'weird' like my own silly hat, so it's quite alright.
With Nick buzzing around with his camera, we went back to the Junior Parlour for round two, which put me up against Imre Leader, one of the absolute-tippy-top players in the country for the last twenty-odd years, British champion and the kind of guy the mention of whose name produces awe and respect from anyone with a basic knowledge of the othello world. And my win against him was duly captured for posterity, which is nice. Hope it makes it into the final film. I then beat Aubrey (also an othello legend) in round three, also under the watching eye of Nick's camera. The game was scintillatingly complicated, and I look forward to having Zebra's opinion on whether some of the weird moves I played were brilliant or awful, and what I should actually have done in the endgame when time-pressure forced me to cut short my calculations and just make a best guess.
Having thus made myself look much better at the game than I actually am, we adjourned to the pub for lunch and the committee meeting, which was quite productive. We settled on a probable venue and date for the Nationals next year, made at least one or two other decisions that were probably important, and the sausage, egg and chips were both cheap and delicious. Aubrey discussed his work in detail for Nick, who it turns out runs an annual charity event in which a scientist and an artist debate some fascinating issue. He felt that bringing Aubrey together with Damien Hirst to discuss aging would be a dream combination, and Aubrey wholeheartedly agreed, as did everyone else there. I'll certainly be going to see it if it happens.
Nick went back home after that, and it became clear that the presence of the camera had either spurred me on or put off my opponents, because my fourth-round game against Geoff Hubbard (who had also beaten Imre, and was the only other player on three points) was a complete disaster. It went wrong for me somewhere around move 20, which meant Geoff had the last two thirds of the game to contemplate at leisure the best way to go about completely thrashing me. Neither of us could quite work out a way to wipe me out, and he had to settle for winning 63-1 in the end.
My camera-inspired abilities didn't really come back to me in the remaining three games either - I did beat Yvette Campbell, but lost to Jeremy Dyer and Roy Arnold, which is nothing to be ashamed of, but I don't think I was playing half as well as I had been in the morning. Geoff won his first six games to make sure of winning the tournament with a round to spare, but then lost his final one to Aidan, which must have been some consolation for missing the first round and still ending up being assassinated after all.
All in all, it was a tournament that had everything. And as I said a few days ago, if anyone reading this likes the sound of it and wants to come to future tournaments, we could always do with more players. Check out the British Othello Federation homepage for more details - the next one's not till February, so there's plenty of time to make your mind up. And remember, othello is the same thing as reversi*.
*Footnote: Othello isn't the same thing as reversi, if you're going to be really pedantic about it. I've explained it here before somewhere, but it's really not important. For all practical purposes, anything you see called 'reversi' is exactly the same thing as anything you see called 'othello'. All clear?
Before that, though, I should transcribe the conversation I had at dinner-time when Jenny and I went to a cafe in Cambridge city centre. There was quite a long queue, probably because while there were three women serving food to the customers, one man was entrusted at the end of the line with serving drinks and then working the till. Although a charming, friendly kind of chap, he didn't seem entirely focused on what he was doing, and the following is an extract from the dialogue that passed between us:
Man: And what would you like to drink, sir?
Me: Coke, please.
Man: Small, medium or large?
Me: Medium, please.
Man: There you go. Oh, I've done you a small one there. I'll only charge you for a small one, don't worry. That's £7.70 altogether, please.
[I gave him a five-pound note and three pound coins, and he gave me 30p back, then put my money into the till. He paused and looked at the note in his hand.]
Man: Oh, wait, that's only a five, I gave you change for a ten.
Me: No, I gave you a five and three ones, and you gave me 30p back. That's right.
Man: Oh yes, sorry. [Turning to Jenny] And what would you like to drink, sir?
Jenny: Um...
Man: I mean madam, sorry. I'll get my head working right in a minute...
Anyway, going back in time a day and a half, I got up on Saturday at the ungodly hour of 5:15, in order to catch the 6:00 train down to Cambridge. It turned out that 5:14 would have been a better time to set the alarm for, because I was seconds too late to catch it. That left me to get the 6:53 and still get there more or less in time, although it put a dent in the plans of Nick, who had come down to film me at it and had wanted to tape me arriving and talking a bit about memory in scenic surroundings before the tournament started. So he went off to a meeting and came back later, and everything worked out fine.
The traditional Cambridge Christmas Friendly was a little unusual this year. Not because of the date, it's traditionally held at the end of November, but because of the unusual number of people there. Apart from Nick and his camera, there were three new players (very rare at othello tournaments), and two people lurking outside the door armed with giant waterpistols. It turns out that they were lying in wait for one of the aforementioned new players, who's a student at Cambridge and part of the 'Ring of Death', in which students try to assassinate each other with waterpistols, poison (vaseline) and other such nefarious means. My best friend in days gone by, David 'Noddy' Page, was involved in that in his Cambridge days too. Aidan, the assassinee, spent the first round hiding in the toilet, arranging with friends via his mobile phone to get rid of the assassins.
I beat one of the other new people in the first round, which is always a nice way to start. Although we probably should encourage new people to come back to future tournaments by not beating them, I don't feel too guilty, because I at least had the decency to beat Fran 45-19, whereas Aubrey wiped out the other new bug, James. Other people probably beat other people too, but I haven't got all the results to hand - the ever-reliable Roy strangely hasn't posted the final scores on the mailing list yet, which he normally does via his mobile on the train home.
Anyway, after round one, we paused for a quick filming break. Nick had roped in Aubrey, who is very very good at interviews, to come over to the Trinity College quad with me and walk around talking about science and memory. I think it went very well, mainly because I was able to just name-drop some technical-sounding words like 'anterior cingulate' and let Aubrey talk about them at length. Incidentally, there's further proof to my theory that Nick is secretly evil and planning to make me look bad - he made a point of advising Aubrey to wear his hat because it was spitting with rain. Which might be quite innocuous, obviously, but Aubrey's hat is a crotcheted woollen bonnet that does look a little silly. He does have the accompanying genius that makes things like that and his yard-long beard qualify as 'eccentric', rather than just 'weird' like my own silly hat, so it's quite alright.
With Nick buzzing around with his camera, we went back to the Junior Parlour for round two, which put me up against Imre Leader, one of the absolute-tippy-top players in the country for the last twenty-odd years, British champion and the kind of guy the mention of whose name produces awe and respect from anyone with a basic knowledge of the othello world. And my win against him was duly captured for posterity, which is nice. Hope it makes it into the final film. I then beat Aubrey (also an othello legend) in round three, also under the watching eye of Nick's camera. The game was scintillatingly complicated, and I look forward to having Zebra's opinion on whether some of the weird moves I played were brilliant or awful, and what I should actually have done in the endgame when time-pressure forced me to cut short my calculations and just make a best guess.
Having thus made myself look much better at the game than I actually am, we adjourned to the pub for lunch and the committee meeting, which was quite productive. We settled on a probable venue and date for the Nationals next year, made at least one or two other decisions that were probably important, and the sausage, egg and chips were both cheap and delicious. Aubrey discussed his work in detail for Nick, who it turns out runs an annual charity event in which a scientist and an artist debate some fascinating issue. He felt that bringing Aubrey together with Damien Hirst to discuss aging would be a dream combination, and Aubrey wholeheartedly agreed, as did everyone else there. I'll certainly be going to see it if it happens.
Nick went back home after that, and it became clear that the presence of the camera had either spurred me on or put off my opponents, because my fourth-round game against Geoff Hubbard (who had also beaten Imre, and was the only other player on three points) was a complete disaster. It went wrong for me somewhere around move 20, which meant Geoff had the last two thirds of the game to contemplate at leisure the best way to go about completely thrashing me. Neither of us could quite work out a way to wipe me out, and he had to settle for winning 63-1 in the end.
My camera-inspired abilities didn't really come back to me in the remaining three games either - I did beat Yvette Campbell, but lost to Jeremy Dyer and Roy Arnold, which is nothing to be ashamed of, but I don't think I was playing half as well as I had been in the morning. Geoff won his first six games to make sure of winning the tournament with a round to spare, but then lost his final one to Aidan, which must have been some consolation for missing the first round and still ending up being assassinated after all.
All in all, it was a tournament that had everything. And as I said a few days ago, if anyone reading this likes the sound of it and wants to come to future tournaments, we could always do with more players. Check out the British Othello Federation homepage for more details - the next one's not till February, so there's plenty of time to make your mind up. And remember, othello is the same thing as reversi*.
*Footnote: Othello isn't the same thing as reversi, if you're going to be really pedantic about it. I've explained it here before somewhere, but it's really not important. For all practical purposes, anything you see called 'reversi' is exactly the same thing as anything you see called 'othello'. All clear?
Friday, November 25, 2005
Hotel Hypocrisy
Sorry I didn't post anything last night like I promised - the planned moving of the servers down to Burton has been postponed, so we're staying in Cheadle for another week. What's more, I might miss tomorrow night too, since I'm staying over in Cambridge after the othello, so as to meet up with Jenny on the Sunday. Although I might find an internet cafe and bring you all up to date on the othello world, devoted readers.
Or you can just wait a year or so and see the movie - Nick will be filming me there, probably (we haven't actually arranged to meet anywhere, but I'm sure we'll manage to get together somehow - I object on principle to phoning the guy up to make sure he's going to make a film about me, it just sounds a bit desperate for the fame and glory...)
Anyway, this last-minute-ish change of plans (well, actually I'd been thinking of staying overnight anyway, to avoid the football fans who always share the trains from Cambridge to Derby at that time of night - there's invariably a match somewhere in the country with away fans who use that route) meant finding a hotel in Cambridge, and annoyingly enough my first choice is fully booked.
Sleeperz, while I'm on the subject, is the best hotel in Cambridge by far. It's literally right next door to the train station, it's staggeringly cheap, and much much nicer than any hotel that charges so little has any right to be. I discovered it one night many years ago, when my train was delayed by something like three hours due to a fatality on the line (this happens to me surprisingly often) and I couldn't face looking for the B&B I'd booked on a cold late night. And I've been a big fan ever since.
But seeing as it was full up this time round, I had to find another, and so I decided to splash out on an expensive one in the city centre. Then I remembered that the last time I booked a hotel and wrote about it here, I decided to splash out on a relatively expensive one for once too. Obviously, despite my mental image of myself, I'm not the kind of person who stays in cheap hotels after all. I'm the kind of fat cat who squanders his hard-earned cash on posh hotels and extravagant luxuries when it could be used to better the human condition. I mean, £80 for a night, it's disgraceful. Daylight robbery of the kind that happens at night, and I'm giving it my enthusiastic endorsement. Ah well.
Or you can just wait a year or so and see the movie - Nick will be filming me there, probably (we haven't actually arranged to meet anywhere, but I'm sure we'll manage to get together somehow - I object on principle to phoning the guy up to make sure he's going to make a film about me, it just sounds a bit desperate for the fame and glory...)
Anyway, this last-minute-ish change of plans (well, actually I'd been thinking of staying overnight anyway, to avoid the football fans who always share the trains from Cambridge to Derby at that time of night - there's invariably a match somewhere in the country with away fans who use that route) meant finding a hotel in Cambridge, and annoyingly enough my first choice is fully booked.
Sleeperz, while I'm on the subject, is the best hotel in Cambridge by far. It's literally right next door to the train station, it's staggeringly cheap, and much much nicer than any hotel that charges so little has any right to be. I discovered it one night many years ago, when my train was delayed by something like three hours due to a fatality on the line (this happens to me surprisingly often) and I couldn't face looking for the B&B I'd booked on a cold late night. And I've been a big fan ever since.
But seeing as it was full up this time round, I had to find another, and so I decided to splash out on an expensive one in the city centre. Then I remembered that the last time I booked a hotel and wrote about it here, I decided to splash out on a relatively expensive one for once too. Obviously, despite my mental image of myself, I'm not the kind of person who stays in cheap hotels after all. I'm the kind of fat cat who squanders his hard-earned cash on posh hotels and extravagant luxuries when it could be used to better the human condition. I mean, £80 for a night, it's disgraceful. Daylight robbery of the kind that happens at night, and I'm giving it my enthusiastic endorsement. Ah well.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
It has robbed me of the wee bit of sense I had
So as I was saying last night, football. I do like watching football, and while you might say to that 'so what', I think that's something that's still worthy of comment. For all that it's the most popular sport in the world, I think a clear majority of the people I like to hang out with don't like the game. It's a matter of principle for a lot of people, a way of emphasising how they're different from the masses, but I think they're missing a treat. It does make me wonder, though - I'm a self-confessed nerd, and proud of it, and in theory I should go on at length to anyone who'll listen to me about how I have more intellectual things to do with my time than watch stupid games like football. I could say that whole speech off by heart, actually, having heard it so many times from my nerdy friends.
The nerds who do like football generally like it in a nerdy way - they memorise the winners and runners-up of every FA Cup in history, can tell you how many consecutive seasons Arsenal have spent in the top division and who came third in the fourth division in 1977. And then they fall asleep if they ever find themselves having to sit through an actual game.
But I'm quite prepared to make a stand on this point - footy is great. If I ever have to miss Match of the Day on a Saturday night, I get all grumpy about it. I'd go to live games every other weekend if there was one within cycling distance that didn't charge as much as Derby County do. There are very few things in this country as exciting as watching a good game of football, and anyone who refuses to watch a game on the grounds that they're too clever gets the same withering stare from me that I normally reserve for people who refuse to read the Harry Potter books because they're so popular.
Obviously the moral is that I should stop hanging out with nerds and start associating with different social circles, but football fans scare me.
The nerds who do like football generally like it in a nerdy way - they memorise the winners and runners-up of every FA Cup in history, can tell you how many consecutive seasons Arsenal have spent in the top division and who came third in the fourth division in 1977. And then they fall asleep if they ever find themselves having to sit through an actual game.
But I'm quite prepared to make a stand on this point - footy is great. If I ever have to miss Match of the Day on a Saturday night, I get all grumpy about it. I'd go to live games every other weekend if there was one within cycling distance that didn't charge as much as Derby County do. There are very few things in this country as exciting as watching a good game of football, and anyone who refuses to watch a game on the grounds that they're too clever gets the same withering stare from me that I normally reserve for people who refuse to read the Harry Potter books because they're so popular.
Obviously the moral is that I should stop hanging out with nerds and start associating with different social circles, but football fans scare me.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
Then again, I haven't written anything like this for a while...
When Harvey published the proof of his newly-discovered process for turning raisins back into grapes, he was awarded three Nobel prizes (literature, chemistry and peace) and the freedom of the city of Doncaster. Overcome with joy, he declaimed the following song:
I have more fingers on my left hand than my right;
Horses often look at me in an unusual way.
But receiving such honours brings me great delight,
And therefore to Doncaster I will journey today.
Setting forth in his clockwork-powered car from his home in Bognor Regis, he drove in a roughly eastward direction for three hours, hoping to see some sign that would tell him the way to Doncaster, but in vain. Finally, finding himself stuck in a deep pool of mud in the middle of a field, he shouted to a farmer slaughtering animals nearby, phrasing his request for assistance in verse, thus:
You there, farmer, with sharpened farming tool,
Allow me to trade my vehicle for a horse or mule,
Thereby traversing this muddy field the faster,
In order to speedily arrive at the town of Doncaster.
The farmer considered the request carefully, before responding in the following manner:
Bog off.
Harvey, a little disheartened but still determined to exercise the freedom of a city he had never so much as heard of the day before, climbed out of the car and walked across the remainder of the field, losing his shoes, hat and underpants to the mud along the way. Climbing over the stile, he found that the field bordered a supermarket car park with integrated international airport. A passing Boeing 747 stopped and asked him if he needed a ride anywhere, to which Harvey answered:
Aeroplane pilot with protruding nose,
I do indeed need a ride somewhere.
But please tell me where your aircraft goes,
So that I can know whether I should go there.
The pilot ventured that this was the worst example of improvised poetry that he had heard in his thirty-seven years as a commercial airline pilot, and asked Harvey why he didn't talk properly. Harvey explained by means of a shrug and offensive hand-gesture that while normal people might speak in such vulgar, non-rhyming ways, anyone who had the freedom of the city of Doncaster was surely honour-bound to convey their every thought and feeling by means of elegantly-crafted song. The pilot replied that his plane was in fact going to Doncaster, so if Harvey could refrain from polluting the air with further manglings of the English language, he would be happy to provide a ride. Harvey said:
Okay then. Suit yourself.
Seventy-three minutes later, the plane crash-landed in Venezuela. The pilot explained that he had pressed a wrong button, but that he wasn't to blame as the button in question did look very similar to the one that he should have pressed. If anyone was to blame, therefore, it was the person who built the aeroplane in the first place, who obviously didn't know anything about their business. Harvey, despite his earlier promise, was moved to comment on the situation in this way:
Although this morning I set out with the intention of visiting Doncaster,
Events have taken a series of unexpected turns.
And now I find myself somewhere in the mountains of Venezuela,
While all around me a Boeing 737 burns.
Will someone rescue me from this plight?
Has anyone yet pulled my car from that mud?
Will I reach Doncaster before EastEnders comes on tonight?
Or must I watch the omnibus on Sunday, which isn't anywhere near as good?
Upon being told by the pilot, the only other survivor of the crash, that the plane was a 747, that his song barely rhymed and didn't scan and that there is no material difference between the EastEnders omnibus and the daily episodes, Harvey added the following verse:
Why must you always criticise my verse?
I am the winner of several Nobel prizes!
I have the freedom of the city of Doncaster!
Which I will be able to exercise if the opportunity ever arises!
The pilot, already somewhat irritable as a result of the crash, was unable to tolerate Harvey's bizarre rhyming of 'verse' with 'Doncaster', and beat him to death with a severed piece of the wing. Harvey's last words were these:
Ow. If only I had remained in Bognor Regis,
And paid - ouch, stop it - the normal price for everyday services,
I would be - aargh! - in a much better situation than my current one is,
Oooarrgh, aieee, ungh.
Regretting his actions, the pilot developed a technique for bringing dead people back to life, only without an inclination to improvise songs, and used it on Harvey. He was awarded a number of Nobel prizes too, and the freedom of several cities, which he always made a point of never visiting, having been taught a valuable lesson by the day's events. Harvey missed three episodes of EastEnders while he was dead, and never found out whether or not Harold and Desiderata got married without Richard Burlington-Sykes revealing that they were in fact one and the same person. The farmer sold Harvey's car for fifty pounds and a bag of carrots and later denied that he had ever laid eyes on the vehicle.
I have more fingers on my left hand than my right;
Horses often look at me in an unusual way.
But receiving such honours brings me great delight,
And therefore to Doncaster I will journey today.
Setting forth in his clockwork-powered car from his home in Bognor Regis, he drove in a roughly eastward direction for three hours, hoping to see some sign that would tell him the way to Doncaster, but in vain. Finally, finding himself stuck in a deep pool of mud in the middle of a field, he shouted to a farmer slaughtering animals nearby, phrasing his request for assistance in verse, thus:
You there, farmer, with sharpened farming tool,
Allow me to trade my vehicle for a horse or mule,
Thereby traversing this muddy field the faster,
In order to speedily arrive at the town of Doncaster.
The farmer considered the request carefully, before responding in the following manner:
Bog off.
Harvey, a little disheartened but still determined to exercise the freedom of a city he had never so much as heard of the day before, climbed out of the car and walked across the remainder of the field, losing his shoes, hat and underpants to the mud along the way. Climbing over the stile, he found that the field bordered a supermarket car park with integrated international airport. A passing Boeing 747 stopped and asked him if he needed a ride anywhere, to which Harvey answered:
Aeroplane pilot with protruding nose,
I do indeed need a ride somewhere.
But please tell me where your aircraft goes,
So that I can know whether I should go there.
The pilot ventured that this was the worst example of improvised poetry that he had heard in his thirty-seven years as a commercial airline pilot, and asked Harvey why he didn't talk properly. Harvey explained by means of a shrug and offensive hand-gesture that while normal people might speak in such vulgar, non-rhyming ways, anyone who had the freedom of the city of Doncaster was surely honour-bound to convey their every thought and feeling by means of elegantly-crafted song. The pilot replied that his plane was in fact going to Doncaster, so if Harvey could refrain from polluting the air with further manglings of the English language, he would be happy to provide a ride. Harvey said:
Okay then. Suit yourself.
Seventy-three minutes later, the plane crash-landed in Venezuela. The pilot explained that he had pressed a wrong button, but that he wasn't to blame as the button in question did look very similar to the one that he should have pressed. If anyone was to blame, therefore, it was the person who built the aeroplane in the first place, who obviously didn't know anything about their business. Harvey, despite his earlier promise, was moved to comment on the situation in this way:
Although this morning I set out with the intention of visiting Doncaster,
Events have taken a series of unexpected turns.
And now I find myself somewhere in the mountains of Venezuela,
While all around me a Boeing 737 burns.
Will someone rescue me from this plight?
Has anyone yet pulled my car from that mud?
Will I reach Doncaster before EastEnders comes on tonight?
Or must I watch the omnibus on Sunday, which isn't anywhere near as good?
Upon being told by the pilot, the only other survivor of the crash, that the plane was a 747, that his song barely rhymed and didn't scan and that there is no material difference between the EastEnders omnibus and the daily episodes, Harvey added the following verse:
Why must you always criticise my verse?
I am the winner of several Nobel prizes!
I have the freedom of the city of Doncaster!
Which I will be able to exercise if the opportunity ever arises!
The pilot, already somewhat irritable as a result of the crash, was unable to tolerate Harvey's bizarre rhyming of 'verse' with 'Doncaster', and beat him to death with a severed piece of the wing. Harvey's last words were these:
Ow. If only I had remained in Bognor Regis,
And paid - ouch, stop it - the normal price for everyday services,
I would be - aargh! - in a much better situation than my current one is,
Oooarrgh, aieee, ungh.
Regretting his actions, the pilot developed a technique for bringing dead people back to life, only without an inclination to improvise songs, and used it on Harvey. He was awarded a number of Nobel prizes too, and the freedom of several cities, which he always made a point of never visiting, having been taught a valuable lesson by the day's events. Harvey missed three episodes of EastEnders while he was dead, and never found out whether or not Harold and Desiderata got married without Richard Burlington-Sykes revealing that they were in fact one and the same person. The farmer sold Harvey's car for fifty pounds and a bag of carrots and later denied that he had ever laid eyes on the vehicle.
The goose is getting fat
Christmas is coming. I can tell, because not only did I hear 'Fairytale of New York' playing in a shop this morning, the fabulous singing tree has reappeared in the shopping centre. If you're ever in Derby, you really should go along and see it. It was there when I first moved to the big city two years ago (doesn't time fly?), and its appearance coincides with other good things about the festive season, like late-night shopping and pretty lights everywhere. I love this time of year.
Also, I'm really on fire with the memory training. I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record here, but this kind of thing is important to me. I've never really managed to express how frustrating and upsetting it was to have the memory equivalent of writer's block last year, but it really did bother me no end not to be able to sit down and stare at numbers or cards for long periods of time. It seems that the only problem was that I was the world champion - the solution, and key to lifelong happiness, is obviously to try my best and only come second every year. But the way I'm going now, I'm pretty sure I'll win it next time unless someone else gets really good between now and then. Perhaps overconfidence will be my downfall. That would be good.
I'll add some more later - two posts in one day will make up for missing all those days in the last couple of weeks, and I feel like talking about football.
Also, I'm really on fire with the memory training. I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record here, but this kind of thing is important to me. I've never really managed to express how frustrating and upsetting it was to have the memory equivalent of writer's block last year, but it really did bother me no end not to be able to sit down and stare at numbers or cards for long periods of time. It seems that the only problem was that I was the world champion - the solution, and key to lifelong happiness, is obviously to try my best and only come second every year. But the way I'm going now, I'm pretty sure I'll win it next time unless someone else gets really good between now and then. Perhaps overconfidence will be my downfall. That would be good.
I'll add some more later - two posts in one day will make up for missing all those days in the last couple of weeks, and I feel like talking about football.
Friday, November 18, 2005
Pumping Iron
Well, I'm back home again after a longer-than-usual car journey - to avoid a big traffic jam on the M6, the drivers among us opted to sit through a series of smaller traffic jams on a lot of minor roads, getting lost three or four times along the way for good measure.
But apart from that, it's been quite a fun week. I actually went swimming before breakfast twice. The first time it very nearly killed me - after six lengths I got out of the pool and went back to the changing room not feeling too bad, then tried to restore my breathing rate to something close to normal and realised I was on the point of having a heart attack, or at least being sick all over that nice hotel's floor. It was about five hours later before I felt more or less okay again. But this morning I swam a bit further and recovered a lot quicker, and I think it's more or less done me some good, probably.
Not that I'm quite the slob I do my best to convince people I am. It's one of those secret skeletons in my cupboard that I don't tell people about, but I do thirty press-ups a night, whenever I can be bothered (about four times a week on average), and as many sit-ups as I can manage whenever I get a spare moment on my own. It started out a couple of years ago as part of a secret plan to become huge and muscular and impress people when I took my shirt off. It never really worked out like that, but on the other hand I suppose I could look worse. I've got a pot belly that I don't imagine I'll ever get rid of, but I'm not what you'd call fat. And maybe the swimming will build up some muscles, although since I'll be stopping after next week when I'm not in a hotel with a free pool any more, maybe it won't.
I'm coming home on Thursday night next week, and working in Burton on Friday, so only three more days without a blog entry before I get back on my surprisingly reliable schedule.
Anyway, I haven't just been pushing my body to the limits of physical effort this week, I've been really doing great with the memory training too. It's not having the internet or cable TV to distract me in the evenings that does it, I think. I beat my personal best time at speed cards twice in a row - 30.23 seconds is my new record. Which is quite encouraging, since I normally do better in competitions than I do at home, so I might well beat my official record next time I'm competing, fingers crossed. Also did quite a bit of training on numbers, and I think I've got past my minor mental block there. I'm really in the mood to win the world championship now - if only I didn't have this documentary thing ready to annoy me out of it...
But apart from that, it's been quite a fun week. I actually went swimming before breakfast twice. The first time it very nearly killed me - after six lengths I got out of the pool and went back to the changing room not feeling too bad, then tried to restore my breathing rate to something close to normal and realised I was on the point of having a heart attack, or at least being sick all over that nice hotel's floor. It was about five hours later before I felt more or less okay again. But this morning I swam a bit further and recovered a lot quicker, and I think it's more or less done me some good, probably.
Not that I'm quite the slob I do my best to convince people I am. It's one of those secret skeletons in my cupboard that I don't tell people about, but I do thirty press-ups a night, whenever I can be bothered (about four times a week on average), and as many sit-ups as I can manage whenever I get a spare moment on my own. It started out a couple of years ago as part of a secret plan to become huge and muscular and impress people when I took my shirt off. It never really worked out like that, but on the other hand I suppose I could look worse. I've got a pot belly that I don't imagine I'll ever get rid of, but I'm not what you'd call fat. And maybe the swimming will build up some muscles, although since I'll be stopping after next week when I'm not in a hotel with a free pool any more, maybe it won't.
I'm coming home on Thursday night next week, and working in Burton on Friday, so only three more days without a blog entry before I get back on my surprisingly reliable schedule.
Anyway, I haven't just been pushing my body to the limits of physical effort this week, I've been really doing great with the memory training too. It's not having the internet or cable TV to distract me in the evenings that does it, I think. I beat my personal best time at speed cards twice in a row - 30.23 seconds is my new record. Which is quite encouraging, since I normally do better in competitions than I do at home, so I might well beat my official record next time I'm competing, fingers crossed. Also did quite a bit of training on numbers, and I think I've got past my minor mental block there. I'm really in the mood to win the world championship now - if only I didn't have this documentary thing ready to annoy me out of it...
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Hey ho, away we go
Sigh, another week in a nice hotel, all expenses paid. I shouldn't moan, really, but I think I'd still rather not have to work for a living at all. Although when I've tried that in the past it turned out to be excruciatingly boring. Anyway, since work's reducing me to only blogging on the weekends, this will be the last one till Friday. I'd like to say I've had a flood of emails and phone calls, letters, smoke signals and messages conveyed via swarms of locusts telling me people missed reading this thing every day last week and begging me to come back and entertain the masses, but I don't honestly think anyone but me has really noticed it was gone...
Perhaps if I actually wrote about something it would be more interesting, but then nothing has really happened to me. I could talk about my magic rubber duck, Mandrake, but he's the quiet type and wouldn't really fill much more than a paragraph or two.
I think I'm going to get one of those little pocket DVD players with the tiny little screens. They're really cool, and I need a new CD player since the one on my computer doesn't work properly, so it's a completely justifiable expense. The really top-of-the-range ones are only about £200, anyway, so it's hardly any money at all when you're as rich as I am. And, you know, the starving millions in the world will probably be okay anyway...
Oh, for anyone who's following my progress in memory training, I topped 3000 in half-hour binary practice today, which was great. I'm still a way short of my best (exactly 700 digits short, to be precise), but I love to see an improvement in my scores like this. My problem, though, is that I should be practicing with decimal digits, where I'm much further off the pace, rather than binary (only me and Gunther have done 3000 in competition), but I like binary more. I'm going to force myself to practice some speed decimals this week in the evenings and hopefully get my mind thinking they're fun too.
Perhaps if I actually wrote about something it would be more interesting, but then nothing has really happened to me. I could talk about my magic rubber duck, Mandrake, but he's the quiet type and wouldn't really fill much more than a paragraph or two.
I think I'm going to get one of those little pocket DVD players with the tiny little screens. They're really cool, and I need a new CD player since the one on my computer doesn't work properly, so it's a completely justifiable expense. The really top-of-the-range ones are only about £200, anyway, so it's hardly any money at all when you're as rich as I am. And, you know, the starving millions in the world will probably be okay anyway...
Oh, for anyone who's following my progress in memory training, I topped 3000 in half-hour binary practice today, which was great. I'm still a way short of my best (exactly 700 digits short, to be precise), but I love to see an improvement in my scores like this. My problem, though, is that I should be practicing with decimal digits, where I'm much further off the pace, rather than binary (only me and Gunther have done 3000 in competition), but I like binary more. I'm going to force myself to practice some speed decimals this week in the evenings and hopefully get my mind thinking they're fun too.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Unexpected sweeties
I've just found half a tube of cherry drops down the back of my settee. They're a bit sticky and difficult to separate from the plastic wrappers, but it's always good to find something like this that I'd forgotten about. Especially since I always consume sweets as soon as I've bought them, so gawd knows how I didn't scoff these ones.
If my memory was as good as everyone seems to think it is, of course, I would have known about these cherry drops all along, and finding them would have been much less fun. What always bugs me a bit about the memory thing is that everybody who hears about it assumes that it's some kind of natural genius on my part, rather than something I've had to do a heck of a lot of work to achieve. The question I get asked most by people (even more than 'why the heck would you want to do it?', which is a perfectly good question that I'd like to hear more often) is "How do you practice something like that?" whenever I mention that I've been practicing memorising cards or numbers or things.
I think I'd rather be sort-of-famous for achieving something by virtue of years of training and hard work, rather than by being freakishly clever. It's certainly closer to the truth, anyway, although of course I only do the 'work' because I find that kind of thing fun.
In other news, Hideshi Tamenori did win the Othello championship, although Takuji Kashiwabara gave him a scare in the semis - they drew the first game (it's best of three) and Kashiwabara won the second before Tamenori came through and won the last by a higher margin. After that, the finals were comparatively easy. That's Hideshi's sixth win in nineteen years, which is a heck of a long time to be at the top of the world like that.
I bought a lottery ticket tonight for the first time in ages. I don't know why, since I've already got more money than I know what to do with, but I didn't win anyway, so I don't have the burden of additional wealth to worry about. But that did remind me that I haven't decided what to do with that pile of cash sitting in my savings account now. Saving it for a rainy day seems contrary to the Zoomy philosophy. I'm still delaying the decision until I'm sure I'll be at this new job for a while, but now I'm rather less worried about being sacked for gross incompetence (I'm pretty sure I can at least bluff my way through the job) I probably should start making my mind up. Any suggestions would be gratefully received!
If my memory was as good as everyone seems to think it is, of course, I would have known about these cherry drops all along, and finding them would have been much less fun. What always bugs me a bit about the memory thing is that everybody who hears about it assumes that it's some kind of natural genius on my part, rather than something I've had to do a heck of a lot of work to achieve. The question I get asked most by people (even more than 'why the heck would you want to do it?', which is a perfectly good question that I'd like to hear more often) is "How do you practice something like that?" whenever I mention that I've been practicing memorising cards or numbers or things.
I think I'd rather be sort-of-famous for achieving something by virtue of years of training and hard work, rather than by being freakishly clever. It's certainly closer to the truth, anyway, although of course I only do the 'work' because I find that kind of thing fun.
In other news, Hideshi Tamenori did win the Othello championship, although Takuji Kashiwabara gave him a scare in the semis - they drew the first game (it's best of three) and Kashiwabara won the second before Tamenori came through and won the last by a higher margin. After that, the finals were comparatively easy. That's Hideshi's sixth win in nineteen years, which is a heck of a long time to be at the top of the world like that.
I bought a lottery ticket tonight for the first time in ages. I don't know why, since I've already got more money than I know what to do with, but I didn't win anyway, so I don't have the burden of additional wealth to worry about. But that did remind me that I haven't decided what to do with that pile of cash sitting in my savings account now. Saving it for a rainy day seems contrary to the Zoomy philosophy. I'm still delaying the decision until I'm sure I'll be at this new job for a while, but now I'm rather less worried about being sacked for gross incompetence (I'm pretty sure I can at least bluff my way through the job) I probably should start making my mind up. Any suggestions would be gratefully received!
Friday, November 11, 2005
Home again, home again, jiggety-jig!
Hooray for the weekend! I didn't have a chance to keep the blog updated while I was in the wilds of Cheadle this week. I did write an entry every night with pen and paper, intending to type them up when I got home, but I can't really be bothered. Sorry. Maybe if I'm bored tomorrow.
Anyway, the World Othello Championships have been happening while I've been incommunicado - Britain's star players Graham Brightwell and Imre Leader both narrowly missed out on making the semi-finals, and so did reigning champ Ben Seeley. The semis and grand final are tomorrow, and I don't think anyone would bet against Hideshi Tamenori winning for the sixth time. And not just because bookies don't take bets on othello championships.
Incidentally, anyone wanting to come to the Cambridge 'Christmas' championship on November 26th might end up on the documentary I've been moaning about for the last month or so. If that encourages you rather than scares you off, we could always use some more othello players.
Hmm, what did I write about this week? I could put the edited highlights here... nah, it wouldn't be much fun for anyone. Except the bit where I call Sam a blithering idiot, since he was complaining that I don't insult him enough.
Anyway, the World Othello Championships have been happening while I've been incommunicado - Britain's star players Graham Brightwell and Imre Leader both narrowly missed out on making the semi-finals, and so did reigning champ Ben Seeley. The semis and grand final are tomorrow, and I don't think anyone would bet against Hideshi Tamenori winning for the sixth time. And not just because bookies don't take bets on othello championships.
Incidentally, anyone wanting to come to the Cambridge 'Christmas' championship on November 26th might end up on the documentary I've been moaning about for the last month or so. If that encourages you rather than scares you off, we could always use some more othello players.
Hmm, what did I write about this week? I could put the edited highlights here... nah, it wouldn't be much fun for anyone. Except the bit where I call Sam a blithering idiot, since he was complaining that I don't insult him enough.
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