The books on my bookcase

That new bookcase I bought a couple of weeks ago had a tendency to tilt wildly to the side and make all the books piled on top of it (I've still got more books than shelves) fall off. I could prevent it doing that by propping a vacuum cleaner against it and making sure all the shelves were packed tightly with books, but that only worked until you took a book out. So there was nothing else for it, I had to buy a hammer today to nail the back panels on and finish putting it together. So, now it's fixed and I've got my books piled into and on top of it, in a random order (the only people who alphabetise their books are the ones who never read them), and the second shelf down struck me as being an extremely groovy cross-section of my tastes in reading. So I thought I'd list all the books here, for the entertainment of my blog-readers.

I mean, I could have spent this evening writing the article for the othello newsletter that I promised faithfully to write today but still haven't, but I thought this was more important.

Adolf: Days of Infamy - Osamu Tezuka (translated by Yuji Oniki, edited by Annette Roman)
Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
The Four Immigrants Manga - Henry Kiyama (translated and edited by Frederik L. Schodt)
The Riverside Chaucer (complete works) - Geoffrey Chaucer (edited by various, general editor Larry D. Benson)
Elidor - Alan Garner
Voyage of the Dawntreader - C.S. Lewis
Mostly Harmless - Douglas Adams
The Last Hero - Terry Pratchett (illustrated by Paul Kidby)
Four Tragedies (Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth) - William Shakespeare (edited by various)
One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish - Dr. Seuss
The Decameron - Giovanni Boccaccio (illustrated by Louis Chalon, translated by J. M. Rigg)
A Dark Horn Blowing - Dahlov Ipcar
The Beatles Diary volume 1: The Beatles Years - Barry Miles
Who Really Killed Cock Robin? - Norman Iles
The Journey of Self-Discovery - His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda
Lustiges Taschenbuch 350 - (various writers and artists - it's a collection of German Donald Duck comics)
Time Trap - Nicholas Fisk
The Twits - Roald Dahl (illustrated by Quentin Blake)
The Witches - Roald Dahl (illustrated by Quentin Blake)
Whatever Love Means - David Baddiel
Discworld's Unseen University Diary 1998 - Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs (illustrated by Paul Kidby)
Hard Times - Charles Dickens
Northern Lights - Philip Pullman
Curiosities of Literature - John Sutherland
Doctor Who The Handbook: The Fourth Doctor - David J. Howe, Mark Stammers, Stephen James Walker
The Illustrated Guide to Blackjack - Dennis Purdy
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Brontë
Abbott's New Card Games - Robert Abbott
A Treasury of Royal Scandals - Michael Farquhar
Dragon's Egg: The Complete Guide to Rearing Your Dragon - Claire Hawcock and Niroot Puttapipat
Dreamcatcher - Stephen King
Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and other stories (The Canterville Ghost, The Sphinx without a Secret, The Model Millionaire, The Portrait of Mr. W.H.) - Oscar Wilde

So there you have it, my second shelf down. Go and read them all, and I'll be testing you later. Except on the couple of books on that list that I bought but never finished. I don't really recommend all of them, but at least they look good on the shelf.

... that hadde ylad of dong ful many a fother

A day spent pushing wheelbarrows full of compost up a really quite steep hill really does make a refreshing change from sitting at a computer all day, playing with spreadsheets. Actually, 'refreshing' isn't quite the word, now I come to think of it. Still, it was fun, and almost certainly good for me.

The only trouble is, it was sunnier than I thought at the time, considering it was raining on and off all day, and I've got sunburnt on my face and arms. This wouldn't be a huge problem, I get sunburn all the time and it just turns into a really nice tan - but I was wearing my stylish bandana on my head, and now I've got a really visible tan line across my forehead. I look, to put it as nicely as possible, like a complete weirdo. I'm going to have to wear a hat or bandana constantly. Not a terrible hardship for me, obviously, but it's going to look weird at the office.

Hey, I know what I'll do! I'll wear a wig! It'll look very professional, and stylish!

Working time

It's our department's now-annual Business In The Community day tomorrow, so we're all trekking out to a field behind a school to haul loads of compost up a hill and plant things in a garden. At least the weather will be nice, hopefully.

And then, well, after a normal working day on Friday, I've got three days' holiday at the start of next week. The plan is to jump-start my memory training and/or find something else exciting to do with my life (I haven't decided yet), although I'm also going to do an interview on Radio Nottingham on Monday morning, since they asked nicely. Still, five days off, I can do no end of productive things in that time! I won't, of course, but it's theoretically possible!

Memory Gym

A couple of people have asked me what I use to practice memorising spoken numbers. And since I seem to be too lazy to reply to emails at the moment, here's a public plug for The Memory Gym, as created long ago by Australian memory men Tansel Ali and Metin Hassan. There's more than just spoken numbers on the website, but that's a good place to start, it's a quick and convenient way to do a bit of training. Have fun!

Silver lining

If anyone's keeping track, you might have noticed that not only did England lose to Germany, but Switzerland are also out of the World Cup, meaning that not only will I not win the office sweepstake (another £2 down the drain - gambling will be the ruin of me), but also I won't win the World Memory Championship unless I can find another omen to put my faith in.

What with Germany winning the Eurovision Song Contest and Britain coming last, it seems clear that I need to find some kind of international competition that Britain can beat Germany at, just to prove that it's still possible. Luckily, it turns out that it's still Wimbledon fortnight, and the entire nation of Germany has been completely rubbish at tennis ever since Boris Becker and Steffi Graf retired. Consequently, I can say with great confidence that as long as Andy Murray refrains from being knocked out until after the remaining Germans in the doubles competitions have made their exit, Britain will have been proved to be the best after all, and the WMC is mine all mine!

And it's entirely the referee's fault!

It would have been so much more thematically appropriate if England had lost 4-2 to Germany, with one of England's goals being a controversial one that hit the crossbar and bounced just behind the line. Bad refereeing and a lack of hawkeye technology on the goalline has ruined a resoundingly ironic scoreline. Bad drama.

Anyway, I got a Whoopee Annual 1985 for 50p today (most of the pages are detached from the spine, but they're all in there), so I'm happy. Ah, the Bumpkin Billionaires. Now that's skillful writing - every strip had a plot of "the family try to get rid of all their money but somehow end up richer than ever", and they produced one a week for something like twenty years, and they were usually very funny too! And Fun Fear and 'Orrible Hole and Evil Eye... it's been said before but it's still true, kids these days are terribly deprived, growing up without entertainment like this.

That last blog post was an accident

I clicked the "Publish Post" button before so much as typing a single word, and for some reason Blogger isn't programmed to ask you "Are you sure you want to publish a completely blank post?" Which is nice to know, just in case I do want to publish something completely blank in future.

Anyway, what I was going to say was that I've had an extremely satisfactory day today - I've practiced memorising countless packs of cards, abstract images and spoken numbers, watched two quite good games of football and one downright excellent episode of Doctor Who (I haven't been hugely impressed with the latest series, generally, but the final two-parter was awesome) and eaten a lot of food that isn't good for me. What more could anyone want from a Saturday in summer?

Well, it would have been more satisfactory if my experiment to speed up my speed cards speed had been a bit more successful (and speedy), but never mind. Failed experiments are useful too, and I'm sure I can come up with a short-cut to get consistently below that 21.9-second mark...

All's well that ends well

I've been in a shakespearey kind of mood recently. On the way to Germany the other week I bought an inexpensive collection of four tragedies, and I can safely say that Hamlet and King Lear are both really quite awesome. I must get myself a complete works some time. It'd look good on my new bookcase.

Tennis!

See, I told you I'd blog about something different tonight! Tennis, or men's singles tennis at any rate, is rubbish. It went through a period a few years ago where it wasn't so rubbish, but now it's more rubbish than it ever was. Case in point - that match tonight that has just been suspended at 59 games each in the final set. No breaks of serve. This is what happens when players are all about big serves and no technique, and that's a fair description of all the top players in the men's game at the moment. So now once again people are saying we should scrap the rule that there are no tie-breaks in the final set, but frankly if you do that you might as well just have the two players toss a coin at the start of the game to decide who wins - it would be just as accurate a measure of tennis-playing ability.

Tennis bosses, whoever you may be (I don't really know who owns tennis nowadays), take the technology out of it, make them play with old-fashioned wood-and-catgut rackets, and we might actually see some interesting games.

More Memory News!

I know, I know, but there's a whole lot of news happening in the memory-sports world at the moment, and I feel that I really need to report this one too. Tomorrow, I'll talk about something completely unrelated to memory. And not about football either, even if Capello leaves Jermain Defoe and Joe Cole on the bench and England lose miserably and Emile Heskey accidentally permanently cripples Wayne Rooney by tackling him by mistake...

So, here's the latest news, as emailed out to everyone at lunchtime today:

The UK Open International Memory Championships

Competition Schedule published

In view of the fact the the World Memory Championships has been postponed till December, the WMSC has acted swiftly to keep faith with competitors who have been preparing so hard for those dates. The UK Open International Championships will now be staged in London on Thursday and Friday August 26/27 - the same we we had all planned to be in China. This will be a two day event to International Standards and arbited by Phil Chambers.

The venue is being kindly sponsored by MWB Business Exchange who operate a number of excellent meeting venues around London and beyond. Their website is www.mwbex.com We are still in dicsussions with them as to which of their venue would be most suitable. This will be announced shortly.

Already current reigning World Champion Ben Pridmore has registered, along with past World Champion Andi Bell. Boris Konrad, the President of MemoryXL will also be there along with competitors from Philippines, Turkey, Netherlands, USA, Wales, Sweden and Norway. The competitor registration fee will be 40 pounds to cover the cost of translations and printing of papers. A registration form can be found by clicking here REGISTRATION FORM
The Programme is as follows
DAY ONE:

8:45 Competitors Arrive and take seats
9:00 Welcome
9:30 15 Minute Abstract Images
9:45 Collection of papers
9:50 30 min Recall
10:30 30 Minute Binary
11:00 Collection of papers
11:05 1 hour Recall


12:05 LUNCH

1:05 Competitors take seats
1:15 15 Minute Names and Faces
1:30 Collection of papers
1:35 30 min Recall

2:15 5 Minute Numbers (trial 1)
2:20 Collection of papers
2:25 15 min Recall
3:00 scores announced

3:15 5 Minute Numbers (trial 2)
3:20 Collection of papers
3:25 15 min Recall

3:55 30 Minute Cards
4:25 Collection of cards
4:35 1 hour recall
5:35 End of day 1 (marking cards event)


DAY TWO:


8:45 Competitors Arrive and take seats
9:00 Announcement of scores


9:20 15 Minute Words
9:35 Collection of papers
9:40 30 min recall


10:30 30 Minute Numbers
11:00 Collection of papers
11:05 1 hour Recall


12:05 LUNCH



1:05 5 Minute Historic Dates
1:10 Collection of papers
1:15 15 min recall


1:45 Sound test for spoken numbers
2:00 Spoken Numbers (trial 1 - 100s) - papers on floor
2:02 5 min Recall
2:25 Announcement of scores


2:35 Spoken Numbers (trial 2 - 200s) - papers on floor
2:39 10 min Recall
3:05 Announcement of scores


3:20 Setup for Speed Cards
3:40 5 min max - Speed Cards
3:45 5 min Recall
3:50 Check speed cards
4:00 Announce results


4:15 Setup for Speed Cards
4:35 5 min max - Speed Cards
4:40 5 min Recall
4:45 Check speed cards
5:00 End of competition


7:30 Prize Ceremony
8:15 Celebrations

Look out for a further announcement shortly


Well, I suppose I'd better go and register, seeing as they're telling everybody that I already have. But anyway, this is excellent news! A proper 'international standard' competition in Britain! And the timing of memory championships is now very nice, with this one in August, Germany in November and then the big kahuna in December (hopefully)! Coupled with a good training regimen, I might do okay after all...

The most interesting news is that Andi Bell has 'registered' for the UK championship (might be in the same way that I've 'registered', by sending Chris an email saying I'd come along if they organised a championship, but still). Andi at a WMSC-organised competition with no prize money? That would be something new. I was expecting to see him at the world championship, but if he's really coming to London, that suggests a fundamental change in his attitude.

Andi's main weakness is his monumental power of self-belief. He's spent the last five or six years coming to competitions with the genuine belief that he's going to win, and then finding out that he's not been training and can't achieve the wonders he thought he could. If he's going to take part in a two-day competition like this, it's because he wants to practice for the world championship, which means he's being realistic about his abilities, which means he might be a genuine threat in China in December! Sounds like it might be a great championship...

Magdeburg Hemispheres

I didn't go bike-riding today, I went to Sheffield on the train instead. It still counts as avoiding memory training, I suppose, but at least it's creative. I also bought a new bookcase from Argos yesterday and assembled it myself tonight while watching the football. This will, when I've got round to putting books on it, remove the pile of books currently littering my bedroom floor and will make my flat a more orderly place, more conducive to memory training, so it doesn't count as procrastination at all.

On the way to Sheffield, I passed the time by mentally calculating the volume of a hemisphere of radius 17.3... somethings. I don't actually know what the unit of measurement was, but it doesn't really matter. Anyway, the reason for this is that it was the final task in the Mental Calculation World Cup, and I thought it was a completely awesome question to ask (Magdeburg is big on hemispheres - Otto von Guericke demonstrated the amazing capabilities of his vacuum pump by way of hemispheres and horses in Magdeburg). We got the formula two-thirds-pi-r-cubed and pi to 50 decimal places, and ten minutes to work out the answer as accurately as possible. I got it completely wrong on the day, so this was an exercise to prove I'm entirely capable of doing something like that really. The ability to memorise intermediate results really comes in handy in that kind of question, so it should be a speciality of mine. And yay, I did get it right today (within 0.015, anyway), so that just goes to prove something. Maybe I'll make more of an effort before the next mental calculation competition and try to get good at it.

Also, here's an interesting point raised by an anonymouse - the Asian Games are from November 12 to November 27, the World Memory Championship is now scheduled from December 1 to December 6, and then the Asian Para Games will take place from December 12 to December 19, all in Guangzhou. If the government of Guangzhou doesn't want the WMC to happen before the Asian Games, do they really want it to be sandwiched in between the two like that? (And then there's the question of whether the official explanation is entirely accurate. I'm saying nothing, except to point out that last year's wasn't...)

Vicious cycle

It's the Great Notts Bike Ride tomorrow. I haven't registered for it this time, but I'm sort of contemplating going along anyway. I probably won't, if only because I realise I'd only be doing it as an excuse not to practice memorising, and I want to be fierce with myself about that. If I've got until December now, it's actually not impossible for me to do reasonably well, with just a little bit more devotion and motivation than I'm currently mustering.

Still, I'm going to stop blogging about memory stuff now, I've been doing that too much lately. I'll find a new and exciting subject tomorrow.

Post-match postscript

Well, that was rubbish. I'm watching the Slovenia game on Wednesday on the big screen in one of the conference rooms at work, and we'd better win that, or the combination of England going out of the World Cup and me being at work would just be too depressing for words...

Spreading the word

Just for the benefit of anyone whose sole source of memory-related information is my blog, here's the email we got from the WMSC early this morning, just as I was about to set off for work:

URGENT and IMPORTANT Announcement
The China Organising committee has written the following letter to the World Memory Sports Council and have asked that we immediately pass this on to all competitors.

“Dear World Memory Sports Council,

It’s known that China had won the bid to host the 19th World Memory Championships in 2010, and it was to be held from August 21st to August 27th in Guangzhou, China.

This will be the first time for China to host this international memory sports event. World Memory Championships represents the world’s greatest test of memory and is of great importance to the development of human minds and the Chinese people are endeavouring to host a high-level and distinctive WMC.

We are grateful for the trust that WMSC puts in us and are honoured to be given the opportunity to host this great event. At the same time, we are also keenly aware of the heavy yet lofty responsibilities we bear.

In order to maximize the international influence of the WMC and make it more authoritative, we’ve been seeking the co-operation of the Guangzhou government since the successful bid of the 19th WMC, with the hope of attracting the public, news medias and more memory sports fans to participate in this championship.

However, as the 16th Asian Games are to be held in Guangzhou from November 12th to November 27th, this become the focus of the Guangzhou government and they have now made it clear that there should be no big event to take place in Guangzhou before the Asian Games.

Under these circumstances, the 19th WMC is now officially postponed to a new date, December 1-6 , 2010 . All other previous arrangements, including the prize find, will be honoured then in full.

So China Organizing Committee informs all the foreign competitors to suspend their bookings of airline tickets and hotels. We are sorry for the inconveniences caused by this decision, and we sincerely hope that WMSC can assist us in informing the registered competitors of this delay as well as explaining to them the reasons why we must make such a decision. We (China Organizing Committee) extend our sincere thanks here.”

On receiving this, the Council has naturally made forceful representations on behalf of all competitors to our hosts in China, to ascertain why this announcement has been made now, so close to the event. We understand that they have been in negotiations for some time with the Provincial Government to try and avert this possibility, but to no avail. We are only too aware of the enormous upset and inconvenience their announcement is going to cause. It has come as a great surprise and shock to us all.

We will share any further information as soon as we receive it.


And this from the GGK, about the German championship:

Hallo Ben,

the next German Memo Open will be in Heilbronn on the 12./13. th of November 2010.

We would be glad to see you again .

Klaus Kolb


Short and sweet, that one. Anyway, this is terrible! Shocking! Enormously upsetting! That means no memory competitions at all this summer! What am I going to do for my summer holidays? I'll have to go to the seaside, like normal people! I'll be forced to sit in a deckchair on Skegness beach, wearing a knotted hanky on my head and reading a newspaper! And I bet a crab will come along and nip my toes, too! Not to mention the horrific cruelty I'll have to inflict on some poor donkey by riding on its back, and it's ENTIRELY the fault of the WMSC and GGK and whatever-initials-the-Chinese-memory-organisation-uses!


But to be serious, although this rearrangement can actually only be a good thing for me, assuming it happens like that (let's face it, there's a good chance that 'postponed' will be a precursor to 'cancelled altogether'), because I now have six months to prepare for the WMC instead of two, I'll get the German championship and maybe a UK championship before it, to build up the preparation and stamina, and because I feel vindicated in my "don't book your flights and hotels until the last possible moment, everyone" advice once again... on behalf of the memory competitor community in general, I'm annoyed. 'Enormous upset' is putting it a little too strongly, but definitely annoyed. The more the WMSC pretends it's a real organisation with official bids and forceful representations and things, the more annoying it is when things go wrong every year. If they'd just act like the well-meaning and generous amateurs they are, we'd all have more of a sense of all being in it together, easy-come-easy-go, never-mind-eh, let's-get-together-and-decide-what-to-do-next kind of spirit, and we'd get a proper World Memory Championship every year without the plans being changed at the last minute.

So, let's assume that we do get a full memory competition schedule in the winter - we really need to fill that summer gap with something. Everybody except me has been training hard for a World Memory Championship in August, I say we arrange a full three-day competition somewhere cheap, in Britain, Germany or wherever is convenient, on or around the dates when we were expecting to be in China. And everyone can help out with the organisational duties. Who's interested?

Interview

There's a journalist who's sent me four emails over the course of the last day, asking for a quick interview. I've just been too lazy to reply (I've got the usual pile of emails from friends that I haven't responded to yet, let alone the emails from the international press [by which I mean Radio Nottingham and a French magazine], so I apologise to anyone reading this who's waiting to hear from me), and it occurred to me that I should prepare some answers in advance, since people always ask the same questions. So, all you journalists out there, here's the Zoomy FAQ:

Q: How do you remember things?
A: I don't remember things, I'm just really good at guessing.

Q: I've forgotten where I put my car keys, can you help?
A: They're on the kitchen floor, near the sink.

Q: Have any interesting memory-related things happened to you, involving Japanese chimpanzees?
A: Yes, I was once abducted by Japanese chimpanzees and forced to compete against them in a series of memory tests. I won easily, and the chimps conceded that humans are superior to them in every way.

Q: Why is your lucky shirt lucky?
A: Luckily enough, it conceals a very lucky small computer, hidden under the picture of a dragon, into which I can type all the numbers/words/abstract images I'm pretending to memorise, pretending to scratch my chest. Then in the recall period, by a remarkable stroke of luck, I can print out a perfectly-recalled paper and win every competition. Also, the shirt was bought for my by my gal pal Emma Picot.

Q: What's your favourite colour?
A: I'm actually blind, and don't know what colours are.

Q: Please recite pi to 50,000 decimal places.
A: I've forgotten it. The 50,001st digit is 3, though.

Ovgu!

The Mental Calculation World Cup was held at Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg, and everyone got official university T-shirts that said "JETZT ABER OVGU!" in big letters on the back. I was confidently expecting 'ovgu' to turn out to be an obscenity in the native language of one of the competitors, but unfortunately it didn't. Still, I'm sure one day I'll be walking along the street and suddenly find myself punched in the back of the head by an offended Uzbek.

But nevertheless, I'm in a good mood today, because I got Switzerland in the office World Cup sweepstake, and they unexpectedly won. It's another of those omens I like to attribute to the World Memory Championship - if Switzerland win the competition, I will be absolutely guaranteed to win too!

Whine, whine, whine

It seems like all I do lately is whine about lacking motivation to practice memory. You'd think losing my favourite world record would get me back into it, but no. (Theatrical sigh) Ah well, maybe I'll just go to China and set a new world record for the worst ever score by a reigning world champion. It'll be hard to beat Clemens Mayer's 2007 record of scoring zero points by not competing, but I'll try.

Bah.

This is what comes of playing Emile Heskey. Why has Fabio Capello not listened to my constant moaning in private conversations with friends? He's only got himself to blame.

Anyway, this morning, I went into the Oxfam shop where I found that Bobby Bear annual a few weeks ago, and what do you know, now they've got Teddy Tail's Annual 1934! I'm quite certain that wasn't there the last time. But it's come from the same person - the Bobby Bear had 'David Hill, Xmas 1932' written by an adult on the inside front cover, this one has 'David Hill, 6, Xmas 1933' written presumably by David himself. He'd also grown out of the habit of scribbling on his books with pencil over the course of the year. He might have been disappointed with his 1933 Xmas present, though - it's nowhere near as much fun as the Bobby Bear. I know Teddy had slightly more history and prestige behind him, but his adventures aren't as interesting.

Anyway, I need to track down David Hill or the relatives who are posthumously giving his books to Oxfam - I have visions of a whole house full of classic comics that are being chucked in the recycling bin as we speak...

Congratulations!! You are the master of othello game!

You can play the 1988 NES othello video game here, if you want. It's very complimentary to you if you beat it.