Saturday, October 10, 2015
It's getting wintery...
I really prefer summer. One of these days, when I'm a millionaire, I'll spend winters in Australia or somewhere like that. New Zealand, maybe, because everyone goes to Australia and I wouldn't want to be accused of following the herd.
Friday, October 09, 2015
Have I mentioned that I like muppets?
Oh yes, that's right, several times. So as someone who thinks the world always needs more muppets on television, I'm currently being cautiously optimistic about the new series, and basically trying to avoid hearing anything about it until it debuts on Sky the Monday after next. It might be really good, you never know.
Thursday, October 08, 2015
Brief, you say?
Perhaps my recent blog posts have been a bit on the minimal side, but I've been working without a break for the last couple of weeks, covering for a colleague who's on a cruise. I'll have more time on my hands soon. Meanwhile, people might want to remember it's my birthday next Wednesday...
Wednesday, October 07, 2015
Tuesday, October 06, 2015
I'm not well
And I blame dieting. It never does anyone any good. Right, from now on, nothing but junk food!
Monday, October 05, 2015
False memories
I woke up this morning from a dream about remembering something I'd forgotten and trying to work out whether I was remembering it from a dream or in real life. It was terribly confusing. It may be my subconscious mind trying to tell me to do more memory stuff. Or maybe less memory stuff, I don't know. My subconscious mind is as bad as my conscious mind when it comes to explaining things.
Sunday, October 04, 2015
Peanuts in the Seventies
Presenting part three of the brilliantly unnecessary feature on which characters show up the most frequently in the long-running comic strip Peanuts.
The lines here are a lot more messy than the sixties chart, and there are a lot more characters on it as we enter into a phase of more than just the regulars showing up - a lot of named characters figure into one storyline and then go away again. But we can see the comic strip by the middle of the decade settling on the eight prominent characters who would sustain it right through to the end at the start of the year 2000 - Snoopy, Woodstock, Charlie Brown, Sally, Lucy, Linus, Peppermint Patty and Marcie. The originals are still around, of course, but in very diminished roles - Shermy shows up only once in the 70s (and that's more of a probably-Shermy than a definite sighting) and Pig-Pen only twice. Patty, Violet and Frieda are relegated firmly to the background, along with the likes of 5 and Roy.
The seventies is Snoopy's decade. He's now the central driver of practically every storyline (and the strip now focuses on storylines, rather than one-off gags), with the others supporting him in his adventures. This reduces the role of Lucy and Linus from their heights of the 1960s, and leaves Charlie Brown clear in second place.
The first big "new character" of the seventies has actually been around for a while - in 1970, Snoopy finds out the name of "that annoying little bird" who's been hanging around with him lately, and for a while Woodstock is a constant presence. He fades away a little, but only a little, after a year or so, and stays around as his friend of friends' sidekick for ever after.
Peppermint Patty has been around for a while, and adds another other-side-of-towner to her gang in 1970, the wonderfully unpleasant Thibault, but she finally gets what she needs to make her complete in 1971, when she meets her ever-loyal sidekick Marcie. The two of them form maybe the greatest double-act in newspaper-comic history and a lot of their appearances are just the two of them, separately from the other major characters.
Rerun, the little brother of Lucy and Linus, is born in 1972 (though we don't see him till the following year) and sets a new world record for remaining as a seldom-seen background character before growing up and joining the central cast in the mid-nineties. It was a strange decision to add another Van Pelt to the dynamic, and I get the feeling Schulz quickly wished he hadn't done it, but it all works out in the end - there are some classic three-handed comics in the nineties that show what a great idea it was, all along.
Poochie, an old friend who comes to visit in 1973 and is surprised by how Snoopy looks now, is pretty forgettable, as is Loretta, who sells girl scout cookies. Neither of them stick around. 1974, though, sees the debut of the strangest Peanuts character - the school building. It communicates, sort of, with Sally on a regular basis - for the purposes of this chart, only strips where we see that particular corner of the building and it has thought-bubbles are counted as 'appearances', although any other strip set in the school could technically count as well. The school building commits suicide in 1976, but the line on the chart includes its replacement, and also Peppermint Patty's school when Sally temporarily goes there and talks to it, too. Plenty of other inanimate objects follow the school's example and have thoughts of their own as Peanuts gets increasingly surreal, but the school is the only one with a real personality and a sort of name. It's also probably what elevates Sally to starring role status - she becomes much more frequently seen at around the time she starts talking to the school, and takes her place in the big eight central characters.
Spike, Snoopy's brother, makes his debut in 1975, and he's a strange one. Though his first storyline involves him coming to visit, after that he goes back to live in the desert with just the rocks and cacti for company, and when he appears in a strip he's almost always the only character who shows up, entirely disconnected from the rest of the Peanuts cast. At first there's usually a framing sequence of him writing to Snoopy, but after that it's just Spike on his own again. He stays around for the duration of the strip, and we'll see more of him in the eighties. Snoopy's sister Belle shows up as well in 1976 (as does her son in one strip, though he doesn't have a name). Other siblings come along in later years as the dogs steadily elbow aside the humans and take over the comic.
1976 also brings us Floyd in the now traditional summer camp storyline of that year, and then 1977 gives us four short-lived named characters in the diminutive Austin, Ruby, Leland and Milo, who look up to Charlie Brown for baseball advice. Later that year we meet Molly Volley, Snoopy's tennis partner, who continues to make occasional recurring appearances (during tennis season) for many years.
In 1978 we get our first introduction to the Beagle Scouts - with Snoopy as scoutmaster, he leads a quartet of identical birds on expeditions. Their names are given as Woodstock, Bill, Conrad and Olivier. Since all birds who appear in Peanuts from the seventies onwards are physically identical to Woodstock, it's difficult to tell who's who. Generally (because I was sure you'd want me to) I've credited Woodstock with appearing in any strip with one or more unnamed birds, and Bill, Conrad and Olivier with also appearing in any Beagle Scout or Foreign Legion strips, even if their names aren't mentioned. It all gets a bit more complicated in the eighties and beyond, with new Woodstock lookalikes appearing, but for the seventies it's comparatively simple...
Eudora, Sally's sidekick, shows up for the first time in 1978 and hangs around quite regularly (sometimes as support to Snoopy's flying ace, too) for the best part of a decade. "Crybaby" Boobie, Snoopy's tennis opponent, also continues to pop up infrequently for many years to come.
Which leads me into a tangent about major characters - the really quite brilliant Peanuts Wiki considers seventeen characters to be 'major'; a list which (indefensibly in my opinion) includes Eudora but not Spike. Peanuts.com goes with a slimmer list of eleven (Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Woodstock, Sally, Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, Franklin and Pig-Pen), omitting Eudora, Shermy, Original Patty, Violet, Frieda and Rerun from the wiki's list. The website for the awesome-looking upcoming movie restores Shermy, Patty, Violet and Frieda to starring roles, and also adds the little red-haired girl (whose 'thing' throughout the comics and most of the cartoons was that she was talked about a lot but never seen) and newly-created-for-the-movie dog Fifi.
This just illustrates that the old characters from the fifties always get remembered by the nostalgia buffs, while the likes of Rerun (whose five years of fame were the last five before Schulz's death) always get ignored. Which is a shame, because the comics from the nineties were some of the funniest, if you ask me.
To my mind, the 50-appearances-in-a-year line on the chart above are a good indicator of who's a major character and who isn't. If you're showing up in the comic at least once a week on average over a lengthy period, you've made the big time. So my list of the thirteen major Peanuts characters would go: Charlie Brown and Snoopy (throughout), Lucy and Linus (mid-fifties until the end), Woodstock, Sally, Peppermint Patty and Marcie (seventies until the end), Patty, Shermy, Violet and Schroeder (in the fifties; Schroeder's unique in continuing to show up more rarely all the way to the end) and Rerun (late nineties). Spike peaks at 49, by my count, and Frieda at 46. Eudora, Franklin and Pig-Pen don't even come close.
Stay tuned for the 1980s as Peanuts moves into modern times - by the end of the seventies it's safe to say we've already met all the memorable characters, but the next decade does introduce us to Lydia, Marbles, and... Tapioca Pudding.
The lines here are a lot more messy than the sixties chart, and there are a lot more characters on it as we enter into a phase of more than just the regulars showing up - a lot of named characters figure into one storyline and then go away again. But we can see the comic strip by the middle of the decade settling on the eight prominent characters who would sustain it right through to the end at the start of the year 2000 - Snoopy, Woodstock, Charlie Brown, Sally, Lucy, Linus, Peppermint Patty and Marcie. The originals are still around, of course, but in very diminished roles - Shermy shows up only once in the 70s (and that's more of a probably-Shermy than a definite sighting) and Pig-Pen only twice. Patty, Violet and Frieda are relegated firmly to the background, along with the likes of 5 and Roy.
The seventies is Snoopy's decade. He's now the central driver of practically every storyline (and the strip now focuses on storylines, rather than one-off gags), with the others supporting him in his adventures. This reduces the role of Lucy and Linus from their heights of the 1960s, and leaves Charlie Brown clear in second place.
The first big "new character" of the seventies has actually been around for a while - in 1970, Snoopy finds out the name of "that annoying little bird" who's been hanging around with him lately, and for a while Woodstock is a constant presence. He fades away a little, but only a little, after a year or so, and stays around as his friend of friends' sidekick for ever after.
Peppermint Patty has been around for a while, and adds another other-side-of-towner to her gang in 1970, the wonderfully unpleasant Thibault, but she finally gets what she needs to make her complete in 1971, when she meets her ever-loyal sidekick Marcie. The two of them form maybe the greatest double-act in newspaper-comic history and a lot of their appearances are just the two of them, separately from the other major characters.
Rerun, the little brother of Lucy and Linus, is born in 1972 (though we don't see him till the following year) and sets a new world record for remaining as a seldom-seen background character before growing up and joining the central cast in the mid-nineties. It was a strange decision to add another Van Pelt to the dynamic, and I get the feeling Schulz quickly wished he hadn't done it, but it all works out in the end - there are some classic three-handed comics in the nineties that show what a great idea it was, all along.
Poochie, an old friend who comes to visit in 1973 and is surprised by how Snoopy looks now, is pretty forgettable, as is Loretta, who sells girl scout cookies. Neither of them stick around. 1974, though, sees the debut of the strangest Peanuts character - the school building. It communicates, sort of, with Sally on a regular basis - for the purposes of this chart, only strips where we see that particular corner of the building and it has thought-bubbles are counted as 'appearances', although any other strip set in the school could technically count as well. The school building commits suicide in 1976, but the line on the chart includes its replacement, and also Peppermint Patty's school when Sally temporarily goes there and talks to it, too. Plenty of other inanimate objects follow the school's example and have thoughts of their own as Peanuts gets increasingly surreal, but the school is the only one with a real personality and a sort of name. It's also probably what elevates Sally to starring role status - she becomes much more frequently seen at around the time she starts talking to the school, and takes her place in the big eight central characters.
Spike, Snoopy's brother, makes his debut in 1975, and he's a strange one. Though his first storyline involves him coming to visit, after that he goes back to live in the desert with just the rocks and cacti for company, and when he appears in a strip he's almost always the only character who shows up, entirely disconnected from the rest of the Peanuts cast. At first there's usually a framing sequence of him writing to Snoopy, but after that it's just Spike on his own again. He stays around for the duration of the strip, and we'll see more of him in the eighties. Snoopy's sister Belle shows up as well in 1976 (as does her son in one strip, though he doesn't have a name). Other siblings come along in later years as the dogs steadily elbow aside the humans and take over the comic.
1976 also brings us Floyd in the now traditional summer camp storyline of that year, and then 1977 gives us four short-lived named characters in the diminutive Austin, Ruby, Leland and Milo, who look up to Charlie Brown for baseball advice. Later that year we meet Molly Volley, Snoopy's tennis partner, who continues to make occasional recurring appearances (during tennis season) for many years.
In 1978 we get our first introduction to the Beagle Scouts - with Snoopy as scoutmaster, he leads a quartet of identical birds on expeditions. Their names are given as Woodstock, Bill, Conrad and Olivier. Since all birds who appear in Peanuts from the seventies onwards are physically identical to Woodstock, it's difficult to tell who's who. Generally (because I was sure you'd want me to) I've credited Woodstock with appearing in any strip with one or more unnamed birds, and Bill, Conrad and Olivier with also appearing in any Beagle Scout or Foreign Legion strips, even if their names aren't mentioned. It all gets a bit more complicated in the eighties and beyond, with new Woodstock lookalikes appearing, but for the seventies it's comparatively simple...
Eudora, Sally's sidekick, shows up for the first time in 1978 and hangs around quite regularly (sometimes as support to Snoopy's flying ace, too) for the best part of a decade. "Crybaby" Boobie, Snoopy's tennis opponent, also continues to pop up infrequently for many years to come.
Which leads me into a tangent about major characters - the really quite brilliant Peanuts Wiki considers seventeen characters to be 'major'; a list which (indefensibly in my opinion) includes Eudora but not Spike. Peanuts.com goes with a slimmer list of eleven (Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Woodstock, Sally, Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, Franklin and Pig-Pen), omitting Eudora, Shermy, Original Patty, Violet, Frieda and Rerun from the wiki's list. The website for the awesome-looking upcoming movie restores Shermy, Patty, Violet and Frieda to starring roles, and also adds the little red-haired girl (whose 'thing' throughout the comics and most of the cartoons was that she was talked about a lot but never seen) and newly-created-for-the-movie dog Fifi.
This just illustrates that the old characters from the fifties always get remembered by the nostalgia buffs, while the likes of Rerun (whose five years of fame were the last five before Schulz's death) always get ignored. Which is a shame, because the comics from the nineties were some of the funniest, if you ask me.
To my mind, the 50-appearances-in-a-year line on the chart above are a good indicator of who's a major character and who isn't. If you're showing up in the comic at least once a week on average over a lengthy period, you've made the big time. So my list of the thirteen major Peanuts characters would go: Charlie Brown and Snoopy (throughout), Lucy and Linus (mid-fifties until the end), Woodstock, Sally, Peppermint Patty and Marcie (seventies until the end), Patty, Shermy, Violet and Schroeder (in the fifties; Schroeder's unique in continuing to show up more rarely all the way to the end) and Rerun (late nineties). Spike peaks at 49, by my count, and Frieda at 46. Eudora, Franklin and Pig-Pen don't even come close.
Stay tuned for the 1980s as Peanuts moves into modern times - by the end of the seventies it's safe to say we've already met all the memorable characters, but the next decade does introduce us to Lydia, Marbles, and... Tapioca Pudding.
Saturday, October 03, 2015
Come on you blues
I really shouldn't enjoy seeing Chelsea lose so much - football really brings out the worst in people, doesn't it? But, you know, it's just funny...
Friday, October 02, 2015
Ocean's One
I see from my Blogger stats page that someone's been paying attention to my old posts that mention card-counting at blackjack. I haven't had anyone asking me to do that for quite a long time, actually, which is a bit surprising - there's apparently been a movie which I haven't seen, and there's certainly been an episode of the Simpsons which I have, giving viewers the idea that it's something any old gang of idiots can do and guarantees them a vast fortune with no effort or possibility of losing. So I was kind of expecting a resurgence of people contacting me and asking me to go to a casino and win them huge piles of money.
I'm always up for it if anyone really wants to - fly me to Las Vegas for a week, give me a couple of grand to play with and you can have all the winnings. But when I add the proviso that there's still a sporting chance that you'll end up broke (because, card-counting or no card-counting, it's still actually gambling on getting the right cards at the right time), potential investors tend to change their minds.
Maybe I could teach a group of potential casino bank-breakers how to do it properly (I'm not talking about "add one for a high card, subtract one for a low card" here, I mean properly memorising every card that's come out and recalculating the odds on every hand). I could get a reputation as the godfather of the whole blackjack racket and charge huge amounts of money. And get payment in advance, because 99% of people who tried to learn that would give up pretty quickly when they realised how much work it would take to get good at it...
I'm always up for it if anyone really wants to - fly me to Las Vegas for a week, give me a couple of grand to play with and you can have all the winnings. But when I add the proviso that there's still a sporting chance that you'll end up broke (because, card-counting or no card-counting, it's still actually gambling on getting the right cards at the right time), potential investors tend to change their minds.
Maybe I could teach a group of potential casino bank-breakers how to do it properly (I'm not talking about "add one for a high card, subtract one for a low card" here, I mean properly memorising every card that's come out and recalculating the odds on every hand). I could get a reputation as the godfather of the whole blackjack racket and charge huge amounts of money. And get payment in advance, because 99% of people who tried to learn that would give up pretty quickly when they realised how much work it would take to get good at it...
Thursday, October 01, 2015
Something of the Daleks
It's not that Doctor Who completely sucks at the moment, it just really needs some new ideas and a touch of original thinking, rather than just doing the same story over and over again. The second part of the latest Dalek extravaganza wasn't so bad, all in all. It's just that it makes me think "Where have I seen this before? Oh yes, every 'epic' Doctor Who story for the last ten years... and also that Batman comic, of course."
At least they dropped one of the new ideas they've had - those horrid cheap-plastic-toy-looking Daleks that made their spectacular debut a few years back. I'm all for changing "classic" designs if the new ones are better, but maybe Daleks are one of those things you just can't really improve on.
At least they dropped one of the new ideas they've had - those horrid cheap-plastic-toy-looking Daleks that made their spectacular debut a few years back. I'm all for changing "classic" designs if the new ones are better, but maybe Daleks are one of those things you just can't really improve on.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Missed THAT part before
Here's the interesting page of the Guinness Book of Records 2016:
I do know it's called "Guinness World Records" nowadays, but I'm a traditionalist. What I didn't notice is that on the previous page I'm also credited with the world record for 5-minute binary - which was actually beaten quite a long time ago. I'm a fraud!
I do know it's called "Guinness World Records" nowadays, but I'm a traditionalist. What I didn't notice is that on the previous page I'm also credited with the world record for 5-minute binary - which was actually beaten quite a long time ago. I'm a fraud!
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Guinnesses all round!
The new Guinness Book of Records has a page of memory-themed records again - an interview with Johannes Mallow which claims he's the current world memory champion (he won it in 2012) and a couple of other bits, including crediting me with 30-minute and 60-minute cards. No photo of me this time, but at least my name's in the book... actually, the 2016 edition is a lot less cool than the 2014 one (on the memory page, at least) - back in 2014 it was shiny, exciting and well-written, but this one seems rather more phoned-in. But still, woohoo!
(Oh, and no Guinness beer for anyone - it's got gluten in it)
(Oh, and no Guinness beer for anyone - it's got gluten in it)
Monday, September 28, 2015
Othello trivia
This was the 11th time Imre has won the British Othello Championship, 32 years after the first time. That's a pretty impressive record, really, and not something that's anywhere close to being matched in memory competitions. Partly because there was no such thing as memory competitions before 1991, but also because it doesn't seem to be something that people can stick around at the top level of for more than a decade at most. But who knows, maybe there will be some kind of comeback by one of those old has-beens who used to be good at it...
Sunday, September 27, 2015
Hooray for othello!
I really need to play more, I'm so out of touch with othello that I've basically forgotten how to play the game at all. But Imre still remembers after all these years, and he won the UK Championship for the 187th time, beating David in the final. A lot of fun was had by all! Roll on the World Championships!
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Imperial Othello
It's the British Othello Championship, this year at the Imperial Rooms in Matlock. Well, the smaller of the Imperial Rooms, we're not using both of them. But we've got a healthy turnout of 17 competitors, and I've been playing as well as might be expected from someone who's barely touched an othello disc in the past twelve months. Still, it's all to play for tomorrow, so we'll see what might happen. After four of nine rounds, David Hand leads the field - and regular readers will be pleased to know I still instinctively wrote down his name as 'David B' while taking minutes at the AGM before the tournament...
Friday, September 25, 2015
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Travel broadens the mind
It's a long way to Brighton, it's no wonder I've never been there before. I'm still fairly sure that Skegness is the best seaside town, anyway. On the way home now after a day of memory stuff. I haven't had many days of memory stuff lately - I'm always thinking that perhaps I'm not in demand as a memory expert any more, seeing as it's been so many years since I was a world champion or anything like that, but then someone comes along and demands me again. Possibly it will never end...
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
This week I are been mostly doing memory man stuff
They always come in threes - today I've been preparing for my memory-based jaunt to Bristol tomorrow, and talking about the exciting possibility of another TV jaunt to China next year. I was also supposed to be getting a call from the journalist who's writing up the UK Memory Championship, but I think he must have forgotten.
I also bought a new toothbrush, and I was surprised to see that they come in a 'whitening' variety, just like toothpaste does. The packaging says that the bristles are arranged in some kind of special tooth-polishing way, but I'm pretty sure the 'whitening' ones are identical to the 'fresh breath' ones that I opted for. I examined them closely. Also, if I ever get to the point of worrying about what colour my teeth are, you can go ahead and shoot me.
I also bought a new toothbrush, and I was surprised to see that they come in a 'whitening' variety, just like toothpaste does. The packaging says that the bristles are arranged in some kind of special tooth-polishing way, but I'm pretty sure the 'whitening' ones are identical to the 'fresh breath' ones that I opted for. I examined them closely. Also, if I ever get to the point of worrying about what colour my teeth are, you can go ahead and shoot me.
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Oh, the places you'll go
I'm going to Brighton on Thursday, to record roughly three minutes' worth of quickfire videos for students about how to remember things. Perhaps hardly worth an eight-hour round trip, but it's nice to get out of the house once in a while. And then on Saturday and Sunday it's the British Othello Championship! Which comes with the possibility of qualifying for the World Championship, back in this country again in November! A pretty faint and remote kind of possibility in my case, since with one thing and another I've hardly played a game of othello since last year's nationals, but still, it's all terribly exciting. And since the nationals are in Matlock, I can drive there and back and not have to spend money on a hotel room. Which is good, since I haven't got any money and would have to either sneak into a hotel without paying or sleep on the streets. Or, I suppose, in my car, but somehow sleeping on the streets is cooler than sleeping in a car. I don't know why that is.
Monday, September 21, 2015
Doctor Who?
It still sucks. I'm really in the mood to go on at length about the many diverse ways in which it sucks, and make vague threats to stop watching it, as if this would somehow strike fear into the heart of Steven Moffat, but I'll just stick with saying it sucks. I do remain hopeful it'll get better again some day, though...
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