Woo!

Wireless internet access in my hotel room! A laptop with the ability to connect to wireless internet access in my hotel room! I'm not used to such technology. Actually, I didn't see anything in the hotel information about this, so possibly I'm hacking into a neighbour's bandwidth, but never mind. Anyway, for those hanging on my every word, I did find a hotel (you've probably worked that out by now by yourselves, I suppose). It's literally miles away from the venue - four and a half miles to be precise, but it was the only one not fully booked and with online booking facilities. Also, the buses don't run early on Sunday mornings, so I'll have to either walk with an EXTREMELY heavy bag full of laptop, cards and papers, or get a taxi. And I hate getting taxis, it's so non-working-class, I feel bad about it.

Anyway, I did unbelievably badly at the othello tournament today. I did win one game out of seven, but that wasn't exactly my greatest performance ever. I'm out of practice and steadily getting worse, which annoys me. Imre won, various interesting things happened, but even though I know a lot of othello players actually read this thing and I'd hate to disappoint them, I haven't got the time to write about it right now. I've got lots of packs of German cards to shuffle in preparation for tomorrow. And I'm all nervous now - I'm thinking of the competition in terms of a friendly get-together in the spirit of fun, and certain German doctors who will remain nameless are clearly taking the whole thing very seriously indeed and will look down his nose at the unprofessional organisation of the whole thing. Ah well.

Laugh about it, shout about it, when you've got to choose...

Local council election day, and despite my self-imposed ban on talking politics, I just wanted to record that I'm pleased with myself for remembering to vote, considering how busy I've been both at work and sorting out all the things for Sunday that I forgot to sort out earlier (little details like the spreadsheet for calculating scores, vitally important things like that...) So I can rest safe in the knowledge that I've contributed towards making the not-as-pretty-as-it-sounds Arboretum ward of Derby the democratic paradise that it is.

And it's hot! I'm not used to this kind of temperature. But apparently it's not going to last, so that's okay. I wouldn't want to be outside a building made predominantly of glass during our occasional outbreaks of nice weather, after all. It was seriously uncomfortable in the office today.

No time to go on at length, still haven't found a hotel so might be sleeping on the streets of Cambridge over the weekend.

Oh yes, and...

Well, I did say tonight's blogging would be long and boring. I just remembered something else I was going to talk about that I feel the need to record for posterity. Since I was talking the other night about dream analysis, I felt it worth mentioning that I had a dream about Daffy Duck last night. It occurs to me that this is the first time I can remember him making an appearance in my dreams, although Sylvester's popped up two or three times that I can recall. What this might mean, I couldn't say, but I just thought it was interesting.

Butterscotchy Goodness

Looking through a file of old invoices at work today, I flicked past one for the nurseries that said 'Butterscotch, Dry Goods', among other things. I misread it as 'butterscotchy goodness' and had to go back and see what it really said. It set my brain spiralling off on a spirally train of thought, and reminded me in turn that Bart Simpson is allergic to butterscotch and imitation butterscotch; that butterscotch flavour angel delight is quite nice; that butterscotch is a really weird word and I have no idea how it originated; and that the first time I had a butterscotch flavoured sweet was at Tumby Woodside Primary School when I was four or five years old at most (it closed down in 1982).

This kind of thing fascinates me. I'm pretty sure I've thought about butterscotch before without dredging up this early childhood memory, so what caused me to unlock that particular filing cabinet in the back of my brain today? I'm fond of talking about filing cabinets when people ask me technical questions about memory - my theory is that we remember everything we've ever experienced, but it's filed away very bady, associated with other things we were experienced at the same time and cross-referenced randomly so we can't dig it out easily. And the trick to memory skills is to file away information efficiently so that it can all be dug out of the filing cabinet in order and neatly stapled together with colourful dividers and everything.

I'm wondering if it's something to do with the big windows in reception at Nord House - I was coming downstairs at the moment that I recalled that twenty-something-years-ago boiled sweet. Our building was a car showroom at some point in its history, and has a lot of glass. The reception area has a very, very high roof (something like 30 feet) with windows all the way up. This made it unbearably hot, so they've recently put opaque plastic over the glass above head height. It doesn't look nearly as pretty, but then I don't have to sit there. Anyway, the point of this rambling is that Tumby Woodside school also had high ceilings (granted, I was nearer to the ground in those days, but even so) and big tall windows. Maybe the similarity there combined with the thought of butterscotch to dig up that useless chunk of memory.

While I'm talking memory, I had a call from another TV researcher who's interested in filming Cambridge today. (Yes, I'm still giving my number freely to these people! Aren't I good? Although I've just remembered now that I never replied to that Mexican. Oops. Tomorrow.) Anyway, I think I've put her off the idea of filming memory competitions for life - you could just hear her getting less and less enthusiastic about the project as I told her what actually happens there. She was thinking in terms of people standing up and reciting exciting and lengthy speeches.

And I know I'm vain, but I much prefer the kind of media person who says it's really great that I was the world champion and stuff (even if they're transparently just saying that so I'll do what they want) to the kind who ask me 'do you ever compete in these things yourself, or just organise them?' It's hard to lament about being a semi-celebrity when nobody in the world has heard of you.

Tomorrow night I've got to pack everything for the weekend - I'll need to dash off fairly promptly on Friday night to get to Cambridge at a reasonable time of night, assuming I've found a hotel (had a look at lunchtime, but they're all either miles away from the venue or fully booked, or both. Or else don't have an online booking facility. I hate phone calls, but I'm going to have to make some, I can tell.) So for those of you who hang on my every word, tomorrow will be my last blog entry until Monday night. I'm sure you'll survive.

I have nothing to say

I've been waiting for inspiration to strike, but it's time for bed and I can't think of anything interesting to write about, so I won't. Tell you what, to make up for it I'll do a really long and boring blog entry tomorrow night.

Mike Teevee

Okay, we've got sound files for spoken numbers, historic events translated acceptably into German, abstract images, sheets of numbers coming out of the wazoo, everything you could possibly need for a memory competition! Now all I have to do is find a place to stay in Cambridge and remember to take everything with me when I go.

Not bad, considering Boomerang have been showing nothing but Warner Bros cartoons all day. From Kitty Kornered to Catty Cornered, I've had at least one square eye on the screen pretty much non-stop. Apart from the occasional trip out for essentials like sweets. I spent a long time racked with indecision over whether to get murray mints or mintoes. I'm pretty sure they're the same thing, but I normally have murray mints, so I thought I should probably get mintoes to see if they're noticeably different after all. But I chickened out in the end in case they were nasty. I fear change, you see.

Heavy workload

Who would have thought organising a memory competition was so much hassle? Still, it's nearly all finished now, so assuming I can find a hotel in Cambridge, everything should go all right. I've been trying to think of all the worst-case scenarios that could happen and prepare for them, but I bet something drastic and unexpected happens, like a shark attack, and everyone blames me for not having provided shark-proof cards to memorise.

I had a weird dream last night where I was a newspaper reporter (except for one sequence where I was Archduke Ferdinand) travelling by taxi to cover some distant news story, but in order to get there I'd told the taxi driver that I was going to cover the taxi drivers' convention in a town slightly further away in the same direction.

And another dream in which I was a football player for Burton Albion, which is quite cool - I quite often dream that I play for Boston United, but this is the first time my subconscious has caught up with where I'm living nowadays. That dream also involved travelling to a distant game, come to think of it. There's probably a deeper meaning behind the whole long-journey motif there, maybe I should see a psychiatrist about it. Or about my many, many other mental problems, perhaps.

I've got soul but I'm not a soldier

I was walking through town today, and the Socialist Worker people were out in force with petitions. I'd gone past without looking and was round the corner before it occurred to me - I always used to sign those things. When did I stop? It's not like I ever had the idea that it would make any difference, but it doesn't hurt to put your name on a list in a good cause, right? And it's years since I went to an anti-war protest march. I think the last one was the big one in early 2003, in fact. And it's not as if the world is such a happy, peaceful place nowadays that I don't feel the need to do anything. I've just got out of the habit. I still criticise people at every opportunity for their apathy, but when did I last do anything constructive to protest the state of things? Long, long ago.

And thinking about it, I seem to have dropped the anti-war stuff at exactly the same time I started getting seriously into memory training. I'm sure there are other factors involved too - that was also the time I came down from my six-month lost weekend and got a horrible new accountancy job - but it's rather worrying now that I come to think of it. So anyway, I turned round, signed the petition and resolved to go to the next event that comes along. World, get ready for the return of Activist Zoomy.

Although the standard of protests seems to have gone down since my day - the only march on the Stop The War Coalition's calendar for the next few months is an anti-Israel thing, and that segment of the Stop The War crowd always got on my nerves. Okay, there's a don't-attack-Iran day next Saturday which I just can't get involved in because I have to be in Cambridge for the competition, but it's May Day on Monday, for crying out loud! What kind of socialists don't hold mass protests on May Day?

Damn, I should have titled this post "Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?" Oh well, I'll save that for the next time I want to agonise about being a semi-celebrity. I'm sure it'll happen again. Anyway, I bought the Killers album "Hot Fuss" today, I'd been meaning to for ages because I love "All These Things That I've Done" so much, but I don't like buying an album based on one song. But the rest of the tracks are okay, if not all that exceptional, so it was probably worth it. I should get in to downloading music, but that just seems a bit technological for an activist hippy like me.

Oh, and tonight's Doctor Who (the one with Sarah Jane and K-9) was brilliant.

With a boulder on my shoulder, feelin' kinda older

I've decided not to send any more emails to people about abstract images. I was getting way too caught up in the whole argument today. I think the whole thing's been more or less settled now, anyway, probably. Not to my satisfaction, but there are many more important things in life to get worked up about.

Anyway, while I wasn't reading and writing emails at work today, I had my six-monthly appraisal, which went very well. I came across as all professional and efficient and accountanty, which is quite a trick considering I'm not at all. What was more fun was appraising my own underlings a couple of days ago - I've never done that before, but I quite enjoyed it. Luckily I have good underlings who know what they're doing and get on with it without me having to do boss things, so it's not too difficult. I should remember not to call them underlings in the office, though, it sounds kind of rude.

Ah, and a three day weekend! The first of two in a row, since I've also got the next Monday off to recover from Cambridge. And speaking of Cambridge, I had an email from Boris today asking me if I knew of any accommodation there that wasn't fully booked, which reminded me I haven't booked a room myself for the weekend either. This could be a problem - I'll have to find somewhere tomorrow. I phoned Sleeperz tonight, but they're full on the Saturday.

I need to trim my beard and get a haircut. It's at times like this that I wish I had the option of changing my hairstyle and doing something new, but short of shaving it all off, that's genetically impossible. I'd like to have long hair, but I can't even do that - it gets to roughly collar length and then just won't go any longer than that. I miss the days when I could toy with a side or centre parting.

Un-be-freaking-lievable!

They did it! In exactly the same way as against Basle! Maccarone scored in the last minute to win the game! Good grief, if this was fiction nobody would like it because it takes far-fetched to the point of absurdity...

Little bits of memory

There's a Mexican journalist who's sent me an email wanting to do an interview, who's apparently 'like 80% English speaker', which automatically makes me feel bad about asking to do it in writing rather than talking on the phone, in case she thinks I'm saying I don't think she speaks good enough English to do a spoken interview. Even though I ALWAYS ask journalists if we can do the interview in writing, yes. I worry about these things.

I also worry for the laws of nature - there's an ongoing debate about the new 'abstract images', and I'm agreeing with Gunther about absolutely everything! We're normally diametrically opposed on every subject vaguely related to memory. The problem is, we feel (and Clemens, Astrid and Joachim back us up on this), that if the random shapes Phil's fancy new random shape generator produces are coloured in, it makes it much easier to memorise them, because you only need to look at the colours. To be fair, it's not like they're primary colours, it's patterns and textures, but the point still stands.

Phil, Mind Map fanatic that he is, thinks that colours are essential to 'stimulate creativity', but I think that's nonsense. Memory competitions should be about giving the competitors things that are DIFFICULT to remember, and making them come up with creative ways to memorise them. Giving them things that make it easier to remember defeats the whole object. But it looks like the united front of the top competitors isn't going to get us anywhere again. Shocking. I'd complain and boycott things if I was the type to give a monkey's.

I'm watching the most amazing football match while I'm typing this - I know I've written about footy a lot on here lately, but this is something special. Middlesbrough came into the second leg of the Uefa Cup semi-final against Steaua Bucharest 1-0 down, played terribly for the first twenty minutes and conceded two more goals. With the away goals rule, that meant they had to score four to stay in the competition.

Now, for those of you unfamiliar with football, coming back from 3-0 down is a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of thing. But it's something that Middlesbrough actually did in the previous round of the Uefa Cup, against FC Basle, and somehow that statistic has inspired them to stage another amazing recovery. And everyone in the crowd is right behind them too - somehow, from the moment they went three down, they were hot favourites to win the game! As I write this, there's five minutes left and they've scored three of the required four. Unbelievable.

A bit more useless trivia - I've had the song 'Cool For Cats' stuck in my head all day.

Horses for Courses

It occurred to me that I should write something about eating horses, and call it 'Horses for Courses'. But then I realised that that would just be silly.

What would be better would be to write about a funeral director who decided to give away all his vehicles to the people who swore at him in the most creative way, and call it 'Hearses for Curses'. But that would essentially be the joke right there, and I've already given away the punchline, so I won't.

Fate mocks me once again

I had a plan tonight - get a snack on the way home, do some memory training once I got in, then cook tea in time for the football.

Got to Burton station in ample time to buy a bite to eat from the shop if the train was a couple of minutes late like it always is, but it was bang on time, so I didn't get a chance. And then it trundled out of the station a little way and stopped dead. The 'senior conductor' (I'm pretty sure there's only one conductor on these trains, but that's how he introduced himself) apologised over the tannoy and explained that the points were broken up ahead. So we sat around in the middle of nowhere for quite some time until the tracks were clear enough for us to back up to the previous set of points and move onto another track to continue towards Derby.

Also, it was the train with the display that says the train will be calling at 'Derby, Long Eaton, Long Eaton, Attenborough and Nottingham'. There should be one less stop at Long Eaton and one more at Beeston in between Attenborough and Nottingham.

Lehmann just saved a penalty!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, so by the time I got home I judged that there wasn't time for any memory stuff. I've not been in the mood for it just lately, and I don't want to push things and force myself to do it. I'm still in good shape, mentally speaking, so I could give things a rest for a while until I'm more excited about it. Cambridge will probably have that effect on me.

Woohoo, Arsenal are in the final!

Snookered

I've just been watching a very entertaining snooker match between Ronnie O'Sullivan and Ryan Day. Day was 9-7 up going into the evening session, lost the first frame but was about to win the 18th when he had one of those complete nightmare moments - taking aim to pot a straight pink with just the colours left on the table he miscued horribly, bounced the cue ball right over the pink and straight into the pocket. And from that point on, everything that could possibly go wrong for him, did. You had to feel sorry for the guy. Ronnie won 13-10 in the end.

Talking of Snooker, I saw in HMV yesterday that there's a DVD of Maid Marian and her Merry Men, which I was sorely tempted to buy. In fact, I was tempted to buy about a dozen diverse DVDs, and the only reason I didn't was that I knew I'd just spend all my time sitting watching them and not doing anything useful. I still haven't written that book, after all, and I haven't done any memory training for the last few days either. But on the other hand, I'd like to experiment a bit more with my laptop's amazing DVD-playing abilities, and to see the entire run of Allo Allo in one sitting, intermingled with a few obscure old episodes of Doctor Who...

Cloth cap and whippet

I've spent a lot of today sorting out the things people are going to memorise at Cambridge. The random words was fun, if horribly time-consuming. I have an Excel spreadsheet that picks random words from a list of about 50,000 English words, but for the competition I had to pick out the reasonably common ones - I like to think I've got a pretty cromulent vocabulary, but there are plenty of big words that thing comes up with that I've never heard of.

Having done that, then they need to be translated into German. Which means rejecting another bunch of words if the dictionary can't find them or can't provide a one-word synonym (had to lose 'whippet', because the best translation I could find online was 'kleiner Rennhund'). And then there's agonising over whether it's more or less difficult in the two different languages. In my considered opinion, based as it is on my imperfect grasp of German, the two versions are about as equal as it's possible to get in terms of how commonly used the words are, how easy it is to confuse a word with a similar one, and so on. And they're all spelt right, I can promise that much at least.

I've also finished off the names and faces papers - roughly one third English names, one third German and one third international. Again, with the same difficulty level whichever of the two main languages is your first, scrupulously measured. That just leaves the spoken numbers to generate and record (on my laptop and on cassette in case of technological disaster - no translations here because there isn't the time or the technology, but I need at least two different sets of 100 and 200 digits in case something goes wrong) and the historic dates to do (relatively easy, although again the German translations are a headache).

Organisers of memory competitions always get blamed for everything that goes wrong, and get no credit for everything that goes right. It's like being a football referee.

Chewing gum for the eyes

I haven't done much but watch TV today. I did go to the trouble of shuffling 33 packs of cards with the intention of memorising them, then remembered that my printer's still broken and I'd run out of my card recall sheets. So I went to Curry's and got a new printer, and printed some out, but by then I hadn't got a three-hour gap anywhere in between all the things I wanted to watch on telly, so I didn't do anything.

Still, today's Ben 10 was very good, the football was quite a fun game and Chelsea lost (always a good thing). Doctor Who wasn't as good as usual - you'd think after 40 years they'd know that the show doesn't work when it's based around some rather dodgy special effects, and the werewolf just didn't look like it was there, I'm afraid. You'd see the characters reacting in horror and then a cut to what looked like an advert for a video game. It wasn't Skarasen levels of badness, but it was in the same ballpark.

St George's Day tomorrow, and I've noticed that some optimistic card-manufacturers are trying to sell St George's Day cards. And I bet nobody gets me one, either.

tweezers continuous

The lastest strategy of those dedicated people who bring you automated spam emails to confound the evil schemes of anti-spam programs is to put random words into the subject lines. I've had a couple over the last week with only a single random word, but today I had one with two - "tweezers continuous". I just love the phrase "tweezers continuous". It sounds like it should be part of a surreal poem, about a beautician with arms long and sinuous, plucking infinite eyebrows with tweezers continuous.

I'm going to find a way to work those words into every conversation I can.

Funny coincidences are great

I just turned off the snooker on BBCi when the match finished, which took me back to BBC2, where Mastermind was on. And the woman in the big black chair was answering on her specialist subject of Antonia Forest's books about the Marlow family. Which I absolutely love! I haven't watched Mastermind for years, and I practically never see a specialist subject that I can answer nearly as many questions as the contestant on.

The next guy's subject is the Indian cricket team, and I didn't get any of them. Hmm, and the next one is British Dreadnoughts 1906-1957. I think I'll change channels.

I've just had a horrible thought!

In three days' time, it will be the tenth anniversary of me starting my first job. Ten years as a wage slave! It doesn't bear thinking about. Perhaps it really is time to give the whole normal-job thing a rest and do something different.

But where did the time go? Ten years ago I was all excited about starting as a trainee accountant, six and a half grand a year, at an exciting meat factory a couple of miles outside Boston. Getting a lift from my dad while saving up for a scooter. Full head of hair, more or less. Never used the internet, and had only the vaguest idea of what it was. Never heard of the world memory championship, or othello tournaments, or the MSO. Granted, the latter didn't exist yet so I can be forgiven for that, but still.

I'd never met any of the people I hang out with nowadays, family excepted. If you'd told me I'd be calling myself Zoomy and writing every evening about my everyday life for a potential audience of millions and an actual audience of at least two or three, I would have looked at you as if you were mad. Which, let's face it, you would have been. Unless you were somehow armed with knowledge of the future, in which case you could still have used it a lot more productively than alarming an innocent nineteen-year-old when he should have been concentrating on his new job.

Memory ramblings

A few months ago I started on a new memory training regimen, which I've stuck with very impressively by my standards - every night I memorise 750 binary digits, 234 decimal digits and three packs of cards, as quickly as possible. The intention is to do 234 spoken digits after that, too, but by the time I get to that point I'm a bit bored with the whole thing, and turning my computer on is too much of a temptation to waste time on the internet. Then the plan is to do hour numbers, hour cards and 30-minute binaries at the weekends.

The logic behind this is that I've previously not done much practice for the five-minute disciplines and need to put a bit more work into them, and that getting faster and more accurate in the short term will improve my performance in the longer disciplines too.

I don't know why, but I've always had the idea that I'm better at the longer disciplines than the shorter one. I think I hold the world record in just about every single five-minute discipline, and neither of the hour-long ones, but my gut beliefs about myself are never based on facts.

Anyway, I've been doing this for quite a while now, and it's going well. I'm certainly faster than I have been before. But I'm letting the longer discipline training slide a bit lately, and when I tried a half-hour binary yesterday, it went pretty terribly. I did a half-hour cards afterwards to make myself feel better, and that went more or less okay (attempting 15 packs, and got eleven or twelve right). But I think I need to work on stamina, so the new plan is to do a half-hour binary, numbers or cards every other night, alternating with the speed training.

This increases the time I spend memorising in a night to 90 minutes, including recall time, which is quite a lot. Not that I spend my evenings doing productive and important things of great benefit to the world, but I do like to spend time staring vacantly at the television for hours on end, or chatting on the internet. Still, while I'm still enjoying the memory stuff, I'm going to keep at it.