Jacob's Kriek

Sorry I didn't post anything yesterday - there was no reason, I just didn't. But you can take comfort in the fact that I'm posting something today, even though I've been drinking kriek all afternoon with my brother, who's almost called Jacob.

However, it's something of a pyrrhic victory for my blog readers, because all I'm going to write about tonight is my suspicion that Declan Donnelly is being played by a different actor lately - I've just seen him on an advert, not having watched any of their programmes for a few years, and he looks distinctly different. Older, for one thing. Perhaps they ought to stop trying to look young and cool. Of course, I'm not really one to talk, since they don't look as old as me yet, and I'm a year younger than them.

Not my birthday any more

Boo. But on the other hand, it's another 364 days until I have to be 34. 34 is a terrible age to be. It symbolises being in the middle third of my first hundred years of life, and thus being middle-aged. And I'm not fat enough to be middle aged yet.

Happy birthday!

So very many people have said that to me today, either face-to-face or electronically, that I really have no choice but to obey and be happy. Thank you, everyone! Special mention to my number one fan, Mike, for this:

And to Steve of the Fact of the day blog, who has made me today's fact, albeit with the assertion that I was born in 1967 rather than 1976.

And, for that matter, that I was born in Derby rather than Boston - my wikipedia page used to say I was born in Derby until Tim the Enchanter deleted all my birth details earlier this year because they were unverifiable. Perhaps I should post my birth certificate online, a la Barack Obama, but I can't really be bothered.

Toothpasteadverts

One of the many things in this world that irritate and infuriate me beyond belief is adverts for toothpaste or toothbrushes where they cut out the little pauses in the professional-sounding person's speech so that they can cram just a tiny little bit more dialogue into it. It just sounds weird.

I was going to write a long speech about the concept of qualifying for the world memory championships, but I found that I couldn't be bothered. Hey, it's my birthday tomorrow, I can do what I want. It's the law.

I... remember... everything!

There really is no need to nag or persecute me about memory training, because I can safely report that this weekend I did a full practice run of abstract images, 30-minute binary, hour numbers and hour cards. First time in a long while that I've managed to do what I used to think of as a full weekend's training.

I really had to force myself to do it, though, and the results I got still weren't up to world-championship-winning standard. In the hour cards, which I did late last night, I seemed to spend the first few packs not fully concentrating on what I was seeing, and being more interested in keeping track of how much time it was taking me, so my recall was pretty poor. I didn't click into proper memorising mode until about a quarter of the way through, and even then I had a lot of gaps. I'm hoping I can click back into real form before the competition - it's just a month away!

And I've got a trip to Japan in between now and then, but that's probably a good thing - I'm going to do an hour cards on the Friday before I leave to catch my plane, and take a lot of numbers along with me to memorise in my hotel in spare moments (I've often taken numbers with me to foreign climes before and never yet found a spare moment in amongst all the sightseeing, but I live in hope...)

Sign up, sign up

Registration for the World Memory Championship is closing tomorrow, so make sure you go to the website and register, otherwise they might not let you in. They probably will, but it's best to be on the safe side. The list of 'registered competitors is nearly a hundred people now, so even if you apply the usual rule of somewhere around 50% of them actually competing, we might just still beat the all-time record!