Time travel

Putting the clocks back is the signal that I'll have to dig out my bike lights and resign myself to the miserable situation of spending all the daylight hours in the office. Or else I'll just emigrate to Australia. I'll see what I feel like doing.

The world is very much my oyster

Having the next week off work with nothing specific I need to do in that time, I'm at liberty to book myself into a relatively inexpensive hotel somewhere and relax in scenic surroundings while planning various memory-related events. But where? Maybe I'll just stick a pin in a map, although since the only maps I have available are on the internet, the pin probably won't stick in the screen. And if it does, it'd only break my computer. Which is already somewhere near breaking, because the cooling fan's broken, so it's liable to explode at any...

[the blog entry is left unfinished at this point; the smouldering crater that is all that remains of Worcestershire stands as testimony to the importance of getting the fans on laptops fixed in good time.]

Listen very carefully, I will say this only once

To get rid of some of those vouchers people keep giving me (I also got thirty pounds' worth from Eon electricity for some reason or other), I bought a box set of 'Allo 'Allo DVDs the other weekend and have been having great fun watching my way through the episodes. It's a kind of sitcom that's gone out of fashion these days and really needs to make a comeback - the big ensemble cast (eighteen characters at its peak) who have to appear and say their catchphrase every week sounds like it wouldn't leave much room for anything else to happen in a 30-minute episode, but it's actually hugely inventive, clever and funny, every time. I can see it working in the hands of some of the trendy young comedians of today. They should all get together and give it a go - just think of a premise and you're basically sorted!

Upcoming mentalities

I've got next week off work, which I'll maybe even use productively in preparation for the UK Memory League Championship in Ascot on the Saturday and Sunday. It will, if nothing else, ease me back into the competing-in-more-memory-championships thing I'm planning for next year, and it will certainly be a lot of fun!

Then, if you want to see me in my capacity as a memory man (I was going to say 'professional', but that sort of implies I do these things for pay, rather than for free whenever someone asks me), drop by the museum in Oxford on November 17th for a sort of late-night intellectual lock-in. I'll be there, saying or doing something (next week will also be partly devoted to working out exactly what), and so will lots of other interesting people. Check it out!

And if even that isn't enough Memory Man Ben Pridmore for you, come to Lancaster University on November 30th/December 1st for Making Memories Intelligible, a workshop in which I will attempt to give a "keynote speech" that qualifies as "intelligible", in an obvious departure from my usual habits. I'm sure it'll be great!

Then, continuing the university theme, but in a more traditional board-gamey way, it's the Cambridge Christmas Othello Tournament, unusually close to Christmas this year on December 16th. I need to practice my othello quite a lot more, too. The World Championship is happening in Ghent next week, so follow all the excitement on the website, even though I won't be there!

When Quinn the Eskimo gets here, all the pigeons gonna run to him

I've never seen a pigeon run, but despite this, I've got that song in my head somehow. Wikipedia describes it as "The subject of the song is the arrival of the mighty Quinn (an Eskimo), who changes despair into joy and chaos into rest, and attracts attention from the animals." Which I guess is accurate, but somehow doesn't quite sound sensible to me.

Here's a question

Does anybody out there remember when Thundercats Ho - The Movie came out on video in Britain? It's entirely irrelevant trivia, but it would be nice to know. My brother and I can't definitely fix the date when we got it, even with his world-beating memory skills.

I need a holiday

And I'm finding it very difficult to keep myself from buying an expensive one. Credit cards are tempting things when they've got thousands of pounds of essentially free money available on them that you'll only have to pay back at some nebulous time in "the future". Future Zoomy can deal with it, he's cool.

But no, because Past Zoomy maxed those credit cards out while he was extensively not working for a living and then taking much longer than expected to get back into a job that paid enough money to reduce the balances, Present Zoomy is going to continue to be good for the next six months or so and pay everything off, and then next summer, Future Zoomy can decide what to do with himself, all debt-free again.

I've got five days of holiday still to book before the end of the year, and that doesn't count the two days I've got booked already for that whatever-it-is "keynote speaker" thing I said I'd do somewhere at the end of November, nor does it count the Bit In Between Christmas And The New Year when the whole company I work for is closed down. So really, I don't have to do very much work at all in the rest of 2017. I'm also doing another whatever-it-is, possibly in Oxford, some time in November, which I should perhaps prepare for and maybe even book a day off work for, since it's on a Friday night, but we'll see. I'll find an inexpensive thing I can do with a week's holiday, and I hope Future Zoomy remembers to thank me for it.

Blown away by Brian

I do wish they wouldn't give names to the piddling little storms we get in this country. It makes us look like we're trying to be as cool as the places that get hurricanes. And Brian's a silly name anyway, that just makes me think of a Monty Python sketch. But at least it's an improvement on the previous one, which they saw fit to name after my mother. Imagine if I'd been somehow killed by Storm Aileen! I can just see Sigmund Freud watching from the hereafter and saying "See, that's exactly the kind of thing I was always talking about!"

And then my mother would say "It's not even remotely like anything you ever talked about. Stop taking credit for everything involving mothers!" and Sigmund Freud would say "Fair enough, sorry. Want another game of mah-jong, or whatever we do to pass the time in the afterlife?"

And then I'd come along (having, as I said earlier, just been killed somehow by the slightly-stronger-than-usual winds) and say "Are you talking about me?", and Sigmund Freud would say "No, not really. Want to play mah-jong with us?", and I'd say "No, I never really understood that game. I'll go and play badminton with my dad over there," and Sigmund Freud would say "There, see, that's exactly the kind of thing I was always talking about!" and the whole thing would go on in that vein for a long time. It'd get boring very fast, so it's a good thing I wasn't killed by the storm.

Holy Toledo!

It's the European Memory Championship in Toledo, Spain, this weekend, and I nearly let that happen without writing a blog entry entitled "Holy Toledo!"

This just goes to show how out of touch I am with memory competitions just lately, but I do have firm resolutions to go to more of them in 2018. Assuming I keep working at my current employers, I'll have more money to play with by the middle of next year, and will be free to trot around the globe to my heart's content. I might even do some training, but let's not get carried away...

Rice pudding and income tax

I see our old friend AlphaGo is in the news again - or rather, a new improved version of it where they essentially just told it the rules of go and made it play a million games against itself until it had worked out the best strategies. This is very cool, and clearly leading up to the answer to the ultimate question any millennium now. It's a lot cooler than those robots they set to work bargaining with each other, who came to the conclusion that the one who shouts "I WANT" the most times gets the most stuff. That's the kind of thing that makes you wonder about the person who programmed them.

Anyway, it makes me think that memory competitions are on the low end of the 'humans beatable by machines' scale. We've basically been outclassed by machinery ever since it became possible to take photographs and develop them quick enough to fit in the competition time limits. Early Victorian machines could beat my score at hour numbers...

On the road to recovery

Having posted whining blog entries for the last two days about being unwell, I can't not post anything today, or you'll all assume I'm dead. But I'm going to start posting full and exciting daily journals just as soon as I feel like it, you'll see.

It's totally not my fault

I made a definite resolution to blog something interesting on a daily basis, but I'm still unwell. So I'll stick to the letter rather than the spirit of the resolution, and just say this.

Sniff, snort, snuffle

Clearly I've turned into an old man, because I can't even remember the last time I had a proper cold like this. But I feel really horrible today, so excuse me not writing about the whole red sun thing that everyone was excited about today. I'll just go to bed.

Memory competition preparation

Nick "The Greek" Papadopoulos, who in recent years has become my indispensable arbiter-in-chief at memory competitions I run, asked me (three months ago) if I could give him a checklist of everything I make sure to bring along to events. I said yes, of course, I'll do it next week when I get a chance, and it's been on my to-do list ever since. So here we go! If you're interested in running a competition yourself, you can use this as a rough guide, though I can't promise it's anywhere near perfect.


I turn up at the Friendly Championship (or whatever) with a big pile of envelopes and a few other important accessories. The general accessories you absolutely need to have, in descending order of absoluteness:


A timing device. You have to tell the competitors when to start and stop, as well as giving them reminders at set intervals. I use my trusty stopwatch - probably not a good idea to use an app on your phone, because phones have a tendency to make unexpected noises if somebody calls you, and you do need to set a good example for the competitors. It's traditional to start each discipline with one minute's "mental preparation time" and then go straight on to the start of memorising time, so for a five-minute discipline I start the stopwatch, give them one minute, say "Neurons on the ready, go!" when the watch shows 1:00, "One minute remaining" at 5:00 and "Stop memorising" when it says 6:00.

Pens. Memory competitors will always forget to bring a pen. Have several spares with you.

Laptop. It's important to keep track of the scores, so do make sure you have your laptop with Excel spreadsheet, or the whole thing falls down a little bit.


A typical 'national standard' competition will run like this. Fitting it all into one day is quite difficult and involves a bit of a rush; lots of people prefer to spread it over two days now. It can be done, as long as you're organised! I always arrange my envelopes in the order I'll be needing them before I come to the venue - usually with memorisation papers in white envelopes and recall in brown, to avoid confusion. Specific things you need for each discipline:


5 Min Random Words; 15 Min Recall
Memorisation papers will be in multiple languages (have each language in a separate envelope, and check before you hand them out!).
Recall papers are the same for everybody.


5 Min Binary; 15 Min Recall
Provide a 'sample sheet' (a memorisation paper with all zeroes) that competitors can use to draw lines on their transparencies if they want. Make sure it is exactly the same format as the memorisation papers. Make it available before the competition, and put it somewhere safely away before handing out the real papers.
Memorisation papers
Recall papers


5 Min Names; 15 Min Recall
Memorisation papers - it's helpful to know how many pictures are on a page, and how big the pages are, before you open the envelope, because someone always asks.
Recall papers
Answer papers - do make sure these are in an envelope of their own and don't get mixed in with the others! These have the faces in the recall-paper order, but with the names underneath. For arbiters only! I print them out in 'draft' format so they look noticeably different, just in case I open a wrong envelope by mistake.


15 Min Numbers; 30 Min Recall
Sample sheets again
Memorisation papers
Recall papers - some competitors bring their own, though it's more common with the cards.


10 Min Cards; 30 Min Recall
Cards - the top competitors will always bring their own, which need to be handed in and shuffled by the arbiters before we get to this point in the competition. Newcomers will often not know it's "the done thing" to bring your own cards, so I always make sure to have a good supply (already shuffled) with me.
Recall papers - these can vary in format from one event to another, so it's more common for people to bring their own. It's important to explain before the memorisation time exactly how to fill them in, for the benefit of new people; don't keep people waiting between memorisation and recall with explanations.


Lunch
This is a good time for a break. Classy competitions provide sandwiches or even hot meals as part of the entry fee! It's not essential, but it helps to know where's a good place to go and buy lunch, so you can tell the competitors.


5 Min Numbers 15 Min Recall
National standard competitions traditionally only have one go at this, but two trials can be done - make sure people know what you're doing in advance.
Sample sheets again - these might be the same ones as 15-minute numbers, as long as you've made sure the memorisation papers are exactly the same format.
Memorisation papers
Recall papers


5 Min Images 15 Min Recall
Important to remember the new 'concrete images' are only 5 minutes, not 15.
Memorisation papers
Recall papers
Answer papers - arbiters only; these will tend to be in the format of just a page of numbers, but make sure to keep them sealed away until they're needed.


5 Min Historic 15 Min Recall
Memorisation papers - multiple languages again
Recall papers - and this time, the recall papers are also language-specific.
Answer papers - these ones I normally print with a red heading, just so it's harder to accidentally hand them out to people.


Spoken 100 5 Min Recall
Spoken 550 25 Min Recall
Always worth checking immediately before the competition how many digits/trials is the 'standard' nowadays - it changes a lot.
I always make sure to have two sets of numbers prepared for each trial, just in case something goes wrong with the playback. This is the discipline where things are most likely to go wrong!
Recall papers - since the scoring is up to the first mistake, these don't have to be rows of 40; in fact, 30 is traditional for some reason.
Answer papers


5 Min Cards 5 Min Recall
5 Min Cards 5 Min Recall
Bring cards - as with the 10-minute cards above, a lot of people will bring their own, but some might not. There's no harm in re-using the cards from earlier as long as you make sure they've been extremely well shuffled. But if there are enough to go round, it's better to use different packs.
Also needed are 'speed stacks' timers, although again some competitors like to bring their own.
Some competitions like to have slips of paper to record the times on; it's not essential, but it's nice to have.


And finally
Don't forget to bring any prizes that might have been promised! Some people like to create certificates once the final results are known and hand them out in a prizegiving ceremony; Friendly Championships tend to be in venues where we need to vacate the room quickly after speed cards is finished, so the single most important bit of preparation for a competition is to know where there's a nearby pub everyone can go to celebrate when it's finished!



Did I forget anything important? Let me know, and I'll add it in before I finally cross this task off my list!

Because tomorrow, maybe you'll be gone

You know how Marvel comics keep trawling through their old characters to see who'd make a new money-generating movie, and then they re-launch the old comic to try to spin a bit more cash out of it, and it's always rubbish and really the whole thing's terribly disturbing if you were a big fan of the original incarnation? Well, you might not know that (a lot of my blog readers are still resisting my efforts to turn you into obsessive fans of superhero comics), but in any case, there's going to be a new TV series based on Runaways (which judging by what I read about it on the internet will be atrocious, despite a perfectly-cast James Marsters as Victor Stein) starting next month, and there's a new volume of the comic out there now, which started last month but I've only just summoned up the courage to look at today.

And it's completely totally awesome! It's absolutely perfectly right, exactly striking the tone of the Brian K Vaughan/Adrian Alphona original and moving it on in new ways rather than re-treading the old ground! I love it! You really should check it out, even if you're not an obsessive fan of superhero comics - I mean, I still do feel that the best thing Marvel are producing right now is Squirrel Girl, but you kind of do need to be a comic fan to get 90% of the jokes, whereas Runaways always was and now is again the perfect comic for a newcomer to pick up. Enormous admiration for Rainbow Rowell the writer (really) and Kris Anka the artist for hitting all the right notes! Where were they ten-and-a-bit years ago when we needed someone to keep the series going and Joss Whedon surprisingly turned out not to be up to the task? Here's hoping it's a long-lasting success...

It's that time again

I've developed a sort of resigned attitude to birthdays now. And saying "I'm forty" always sounds like a vague approximation, so possibly when I tell people I'm forty-one, it will actually sound younger. I'd still rather not be forty-anything, but what are you gonna do?

Roll one

We use a software at work called SmartAssessor, and when I see the link to the website on my screen, it shows up as https/www.smartass...

And when I'm on Facebook, and it wants to tell me that the International Association of Memory group has a new message, I see something like this:

It puts me in mind of the comic called Avengers & Power Pack Assembled, in which some artist cleverly positioned Captain America's shield on the cover of the first issue:

I could quote more examples, but I'll stop there. Nobody likes a smart alec.

Ch-ch-ch-cherry coca-cola, cherry coke!

They've changed the design of cherry coke bottles so they're now almost completely identical to normal coke - there's a thin band of slightly-darker-reddish-purple around the top, and a little picture of a cherry somewhere, but that's as far as it goes for differences. The practical upshot of this is that now whenever I buy cherry coke, the shopkeepers ask me "You know that's a cherry coke, right?"

Clearly they've had lots of complaints from customers who thought they were buying normal coke and ended up with horrid cherry flavour instead. Personally, I always drink the horrid cherry stuff if it's available (indeed, as I've lamented many times before, I'm chemically addicted to it and it's rapidly sending me to an early grave. Nobody cares.), so I resent the suggestion that I'm so stupid as to accidentally buy the wrong kind of coca-cola. What kind of a fool do all the local newsagents take me for?

Come on you Poachers!

Well, having come up with the idea that it would be good to come to Boston this weekend, I couldn't resist.

Quite a lot of things have drastically changed since I was last here (the old HSBC bank is standing empty and derelict, and they've moved into what used to be the McDonald's - a whole new twist on "my bank has become a trendy wine bar"), but a lot of things are still the same. Oldrids department store is basically untouched by the passage of time, even though Woolworths across the road is a Poundstretcher now. The Regal cinema and shopping centre have been completely bulldozed out of existence, but that bit of graffiti, "R.N. BOASTS WE SANK 2 IRAQI TANKERS", red-hot political observation when someone spray-painted it on a wall in around 1990 and which nobody ever erased... there's still part of it remaining! Now that's long-lasting vandalism.



Anyway, the big game, Boston Town v Hyde United was a cracker! Not daunted by playing a team from a higher level, Boston started off comfortably the best and went 1-0 up early on with a slightly scrambled but still well-taken goal. It wasn't a particularly brutal kind of game, though you might think that if you're reading the match reports and see that Boston's Ben Davison ("Bendy" to his fans, apparently) was knocked unconscious in a clash of heads and had to be taken to the hospital. Then when Hyde had a man sent off for a second yellow (a bit soft, but he couldn't say he hadn't just been warned), it looked like being the Poachers' day, but somehow playing with ten men seemed to put Hyde up into a new gear and they rather dominated from then on. They equalised before half-time, and it was anyone's guess how it would go in the end.

In the second half Boston got a maybe slightly dubious penalty and went ahead again, only for Hyde to get an equally contentious one at the other end and go level again. It all carried on in some style until just before the end a Hyde striker broke away, rounded the goalie and his shot at the open goal could only be stopped by a rather nice diving save from a Boston defender to bat it away with his hands. All he got for his pains was sent off and a penalty, which Hyde converted to take the 3-2 win.

Great effort from Boston, though, it's a shame to see them go out of the cup. Fraser Bayliss was particularly impressive on the wing - a couple of times he ran rings round the Hyde defenders only to find he'd outpaced his teammates too and there was nobody to get on the end of his cross. Still, they're a good team! I'll have to go and watch them more often! Maybe they'll put another good cup run together next year and get drawn against Redditch Utd?

Reasons to visit Boston

I just found out last night that there's a Bubblecar Museum in Langrick! That's about five miles down the road from Tumby Woodside, where I grew up. And I've always sort of wanted a bubble car. I might have to go there some time.

Possibly even on Saturday, because it's the third qualifying round of the FA Cup, and Boston Town (that's not Boston United, the 'big' team in Boston who I still theoretically support even though I haven't been there for years, this is the smaller local team) have won four games to get to that stage of the competition for the first time since 1980. I should go along and cheer them on against Hyde. United, who are nowadays low enough in the league pyramid that they have to start in the second qualifying round, are also still in it, so I confidently expect the cup final in May to be an all-Boston affair. Buy your tickets in advance, Bostonians!

Also worth checking out while I'm there (might have to hire a non-bubble car and terrify the Lincolnshire locals with my driving), I was looking at Google Maps to see where the museum is, and followed the road up past Tumby Woodside towards Coningsby and Tattershall, only to be appalled to see that Gibbet Nook garage is now labelled as "Lincolnshire Co-Op Filling Station". Gibbet Nook is a name with character, and I want to see it reinstated on maps!

The same goes for Clinton Park school, which is now calling itself Tattershall Primary School. And as for the Gartree renaming itself as "Barnes Wallis Academy"... really, I'm lost for words. If there's one place on earth you could expect to remain unchanged with the passage of time, it's surely rural Lincolnshire. I'm getting old, obviously.