Third boxcar, midnight train

On the train on the way to London, taking advantage of East Midlands Trains free wifi for five minutes at a time, that I don't think is supposed to exist but does. Two days of filming, coming up - hope the weather's good...

Karaoke

A comment on last night's blog suggested a karaoke-themed memory test. While I do like the idea of setting one of Tony Buzan's poems to the latest hit music and making us memorise it, I don't think it'd work. Let's just have a singing contest instead of all future memory championships!

Ars Memoria

So last night an anonymouse (who I suspect of being an anonykitten, actually) asked me "Hmmm maybe a beginner's guide to Ars Memoria?

I understand the principle well enough - constructing the memory palace and populating it with symbolic objects, but never quite figured out how to conduct the journey itself..."

A lot of people talk about visualising yourself walking around your 'memory palace' (incidentally, I prefer to just call them 'journeys', and also tend to shun unnecessary Latin like 'ars memoria'), but that's not really how it works for me. It's another one of those things that differ from person to person, I think, but for me it's more like watching a cartoon. Sort of visualise your point of view gradually moving from place to place, with your objects all interacting with each other.

I don't tend to put as much focus on the journeys themselves as some people do - as I always say, they're more like backdrops to the main action, as conveyed by the objects and people. Sort of a backup thing so if I get lost somewhere in the recall, I can pick a place to start and try to picture it more clearly in my head.

I'm very bad at explaining these things...

Umm...

You know, I really can't think what to blog about tonight. Has anyone got any ideas?

London style!

Going down to the big city at the weekend, for two whole days of filming for China. It'll be a lot of fun, I'm sure! But it'd be better if it wasn't so very cold...

Black Friday?

Since when do British stores do Black Friday sales? How can we import a traditional day-after-Thanksgiving thing from America when we don't do Thanksgiving? Everybody should absolutely refuse to buy anything at all on Friday unless they're given a day off work and a lot of turkey the day before!

Djoking Apart

I admit to being a huge fan of Novak Djokovic. It's sort of unfashionable to be a fan of his, since he wins all the time, but I really admire his attitude and all-conquering talent. Go No-Djo!