Only he's a gay American now! For want of anything better to do before the rugby tonight, I watched the new American sitcom "The Class" on E4, which the Radio Times had half-heartedly recommended. Although their suggestion to "Keep an eye on this - it could be a grower" is a bit silly - a cursory internet search tells me it's already been cancelled in the US. But it does star Sean Maguire, doing an impressive American accent, and claiming to have gone to school with the other central characters, when we all know he really went to Grange Hill, as Terence "Tegs" Ratcliffe, in my year, before showing up on EastEnders as an Irish football player. The show itself had some funny moments, but not enough to justify watching the rest of the series.
Anyway, tomorrow I'm competing in the first Online Memory Challenge, organised by Simon Orton, which should be fun. Basically a mini-memory championship, all done over the internet with participants promising not to cheat. It'll be a useful bit of practice, an enjoyable experience and hopefully the start of a lot of things like that to come!
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Friday, October 19, 2007
Hey, I know him!
Look, Ed Byrne's a guest on Have I Got News For You! I wonder if he mentioned having this memory guy as a guest on The Panel and suggested that I'd make a perfect HIGNFY host?
Actually, it's quite cool how many famous people I've met now. You can hardly turn on the TV without seeing someone I've crossed paths with. As long as you exclusively watch the kind of programmes that Phillip Schofield presents. And yes, I kind of miss all the excitement of being on TV now that the buzz of the world memory championship has died down and I'm a nobody again until next year. Can we have another WMC next week? I'd do badly in it, because I haven't been practicing, but I don't think any of the people who interviewed me this year really knew or cared whether I'd won or not...
Actually, it's quite cool how many famous people I've met now. You can hardly turn on the TV without seeing someone I've crossed paths with. As long as you exclusively watch the kind of programmes that Phillip Schofield presents. And yes, I kind of miss all the excitement of being on TV now that the buzz of the world memory championship has died down and I'm a nobody again until next year. Can we have another WMC next week? I'd do badly in it, because I haven't been practicing, but I don't think any of the people who interviewed me this year really knew or cared whether I'd won or not...
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Vital statistics
There's the 21st-century equivalent of a speak-your-weight machine in Woolworth's, and I had a go on it yesterday. You tell it how old and male you are and it scans you and does the rest. It gave me a little print-out that says
---------------------------------------------------------
YOUR MEASUREMENTS
Weight.......................12st4.6lb/78.3 kg
Height.......................5ft8.5in/174 cm
Body Fat Estimation:
Fat Index.................21.7%
Fat Mass..................2st9.2lb/16.9 kg
Free F.Mass...............9st9.3lb/61.4 kg
Age and Gender...............31 ♂
REFERENCES
Your Normal Weight is between:
60.6 kg-75.4 kg
9st7.6lb-11st12.2lb
Your current Body Mass Index
is 25.9 kg/m². The Normal B.M.I.
value is between 20 and 24.9
Normal Fat Index............17-23 %
Normal Fat Mass: 12.6-18.3 kg or
1st13.7lb-2st12.3lb
17/10/07,Wednesday...........11:54:59
This in not a medical act.
· Do not self medicate.
· Control your weight.
· Consult your doctor regularly
or pharmacist.
---------------------------------------------------------
Well, I thought I should share it. You all want to know everything about me, right? In my defence, I had just had a Drifter and a can of cherry coke (yes, I eat sweets before lunchtime and ruin my appetite), and I was wearing my shoes and clothes and hat, that has to add a bit of extra weight.
I'm not sure I should take advice on losing weight from any machine that says "this in not a medical act", but you know, maybe I should make an effort to get back into my Normal Weight range. It wouldn't take too much effort, would it? Half a stone? Any old fool can lose that much. You just have to go to the world memory championship for a day. I think I might make this a project. November 17th, I'll go back to the machine and see if it tells me I'm Normal!
Note for Americans - 14 pounds to a stone. Do the math, if you really want to.
---------------------------------------------------------
YOUR MEASUREMENTS
Weight.......................12st4.6lb/78.3 kg
Height.......................5ft8.5in/174 cm
Body Fat Estimation:
Fat Index.................21.7%
Fat Mass..................2st9.2lb/16.9 kg
Free F.Mass...............9st9.3lb/61.4 kg
Age and Gender...............31 ♂
REFERENCES
Your Normal Weight is between:
60.6 kg-75.4 kg
9st7.6lb-11st12.2lb
Your current Body Mass Index
is 25.9 kg/m². The Normal B.M.I.
value is between 20 and 24.9
Normal Fat Index............17-23 %
Normal Fat Mass: 12.6-18.3 kg or
1st13.7lb-2st12.3lb
17/10/07,Wednesday...........11:54:59
This in not a medical act.
· Do not self medicate.
· Control your weight.
· Consult your doctor regularly
or pharmacist.
---------------------------------------------------------
Well, I thought I should share it. You all want to know everything about me, right? In my defence, I had just had a Drifter and a can of cherry coke (yes, I eat sweets before lunchtime and ruin my appetite), and I was wearing my shoes and clothes and hat, that has to add a bit of extra weight.
I'm not sure I should take advice on losing weight from any machine that says "this in not a medical act", but you know, maybe I should make an effort to get back into my Normal Weight range. It wouldn't take too much effort, would it? Half a stone? Any old fool can lose that much. You just have to go to the world memory championship for a day. I think I might make this a project. November 17th, I'll go back to the machine and see if it tells me I'm Normal!
Note for Americans - 14 pounds to a stone. Do the math, if you really want to.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Reader mail
Thanks to Boris, Gregory and Mike for responding to my request for subjects to write about! This is going to be a long (and hopefully interesting) blog entry...
I´d like to read, how your telephone interview went like.
Really? Because last night, sitting down and intending to write about my telephone interview was what made me think 'this blog of mine is getting really boring nowadays'. But hey, if you really want to know about my half-hearted job-hunting... It went quite well, really. I was talking to the financial director and an HR person - this job reports directly to the FD, which is a bit unusual, there's normally another level separating the big boss from the management accountant - and I think I mostly gave the impression of knowing what I'm talking about. I did have one embarrassing blank spot though - they asked me the routine question of what I know about their company, and I suddenly realised I couldn't think of anything. It's the telephone's fault (curse you, Alexander Graham Bell!), because normally while I'm travelling to an interview, I take a printout of interesting pages from the company website with me and read through them, memorising useful snippets of information. In this case, I hadn't done that and couldn't even remember which of the various companies I've been looking at lately I was talking to at that moment. I stumbled through it in the end, and I do have the Excel skills they want (and very few people do have that level of ability), so we'll see if I get a second interview. If I do, that one will be face-to-face, at least.
Do you have any ideas on how to make memory sports more popular especially for new competitors with and without taking into account limits on people and money to do the necessary tasks?
Yes, I do. I think a large part of any plan to increase the popularity of 'memory sports' would have to be to make the general public aware of its existence, and to give them the impression that it's something anyone can do, and have fun doing! I would like to see a televised memory championship along the lines of the US Championship, only with more emphasis on the numbers and cards, so as to show off the more impressive skills of the European competitors. This TV competition (which would be made in a swish TV studio with groovy graphics and things) would be in addition to, not replacing, the normal memory competitions, and would mainly be to highlight to the general public what's possible with memory skills. I think it'd get a good audience on Channel 4.
Apart from that, what we need is more publicity, and a lot more teaching of memory skills at a basic level to people who've never heard of it before. This is something that's been done in Germany but has been completely neglected in Britain in the past. There are plans in the works right now for a couple of different projects to go into schools and universities and organise competitions - one of them is being organised by the WMSC, and so probably won't happen (they're good at planning things but not at actually doing anything about their plans), the other is by someone else and really is likely to make a difference and bring in more competitors.
One more thing we need, naturally, is more championships, with accessible locations, lots of advance publicity and maybe even some prize money. Most championships in the past have managed one or two of the three - if someone manages to hold a competition that brings all of those together, it really will excite interest on a much wider scale.
Discuss the developments in England between 1815-1832. Explain why Parliament eventually chose to pass the reform bill of 1832.
Something that I think is often neglected in discussion of the buildup to the Great Reform Bill (which wasn't really all that great, if you ask me, although at least it laid the groundwork for later electoral reforms that really achieved something) is the role of the monarchy. People answering this kind of essay question like to say how the industrial revolution and the defeat of Napoleon had given the average Briton more time on their hands to complain about iniquities, without looking at the way Parliament had gradually assumed a much more important role in recent years, due to the diminishment of the traditional role of the King.
Until after the end of the 18th century, there was still a general feeling that Parliament existed to fulfil its traditional role of gathering together important people to advise the King on how to rule his country. George III had always taken a very active part in politics, but by 1815 he was incurably insane and his fat, lazy, useless son was technically in charge of Britain. George IV wasn't interested in politics at all, unless it directly affected his plans to stuff his face and have fun, and reduced his role in the great events of the day to agreeing with whatever politician had spoken to him last. Parliament for the first time in many years was free to do what it wanted, without the monarch butting in. Naturally, the likes of Earl Grey took the opportunity to make the Commons into a fairer representation of the average working man.
I'm in college and this is a question our professor gave us in advance for Donnerstag. can you give some advice on how one can utilize memory techniques in essay writing?
No. No, I really can't. I've never used memory techniques for essay writing or anything vaguely like it. I use memory techniques for the sole purpose of trying and failing to win the world memory championship, not in any everyday-life application.
Is there a way to make a journey follow the ideas of an essay? I suppose you could use the same strategy that you employ for poems, but I think the richness of imagery in poetry lends itself to mnemonics much more easily. What mnemonic techniques could I use for this essay for example?
Well, I suppose you could use a journey to sort concepts or ideas into the sequence that you're intending to use them. I think that's what the books on the subject advise you to do, anyway, although I have no idea whether it would work or not. Or you could use the kind of technique we use in the 'historic dates' discipline to associate images with the year and the events that happened in it - 1832 for me is the obscure 1940s superhero the Fin (he wore a suit with a big shark fin on his head); I'd imagine him lecturing parliament or maybe rampaging through a rotten borough, denouncing it loudly, and probably drinking Earl Grey tea as he did so. That's quite fun, actually. 1833, abolition of slavery - the characters from badly-written preschool children's TV show the Fimbles, slaving away in chains being whipped by that frog they hang out with, until they're liberated. 1834, Tolpuddle Martyrs - a muscleman ('virile man' is the phrase, for anyone who's following the Ben-system logic) being loaded onto a ship, singing trade union songs in a manly kind of way. I could work through a whole history book like this. Maybe I should...
write about your teenage years =D
Well, my teenage years were in the early nineties, so I'm not sure it would mean anything to a current teenager like you. If memory serves, I mainly spent my time waiting for the internet to be invented. Well, that and playing chess. A gang of us at school used to spend every spare moment playing chess. Which is what the cool kids did in those days. All the handsome, athletic types were deeply envious of us. Really.
Apart from that, I don't think I ever really did anything worth writing about. I was living in the middle of nowhere with my dad and brother, going to Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Horncastle, as previously mentioned, and generally not working as hard as I should, if at all. Then I left school and briefly went to Kingston University before giving it up as a bad idea, then went to a training centre to do an NVQ in accountancy, then got a job, then stopped being a teenager.
Outside my own life, things of vague interest were happening. I remember being excited when Margaret Thatcher resigned when I was 14 - she'd been PM since I was two and a half, so deep down I still think she's really cool, despite all rational thought on the subject. I also remember hearing that John Smith had died - I was in the sixth form common room and someone had been listening to the radio on a walkman. When he heard the headline, he got up and turned on the radio to play it to the whole room. That's one of those rare moments where I really do remember where I was when it happened.
I´d like to read, how your telephone interview went like.
Really? Because last night, sitting down and intending to write about my telephone interview was what made me think 'this blog of mine is getting really boring nowadays'. But hey, if you really want to know about my half-hearted job-hunting... It went quite well, really. I was talking to the financial director and an HR person - this job reports directly to the FD, which is a bit unusual, there's normally another level separating the big boss from the management accountant - and I think I mostly gave the impression of knowing what I'm talking about. I did have one embarrassing blank spot though - they asked me the routine question of what I know about their company, and I suddenly realised I couldn't think of anything. It's the telephone's fault (curse you, Alexander Graham Bell!), because normally while I'm travelling to an interview, I take a printout of interesting pages from the company website with me and read through them, memorising useful snippets of information. In this case, I hadn't done that and couldn't even remember which of the various companies I've been looking at lately I was talking to at that moment. I stumbled through it in the end, and I do have the Excel skills they want (and very few people do have that level of ability), so we'll see if I get a second interview. If I do, that one will be face-to-face, at least.
Do you have any ideas on how to make memory sports more popular especially for new competitors with and without taking into account limits on people and money to do the necessary tasks?
Yes, I do. I think a large part of any plan to increase the popularity of 'memory sports' would have to be to make the general public aware of its existence, and to give them the impression that it's something anyone can do, and have fun doing! I would like to see a televised memory championship along the lines of the US Championship, only with more emphasis on the numbers and cards, so as to show off the more impressive skills of the European competitors. This TV competition (which would be made in a swish TV studio with groovy graphics and things) would be in addition to, not replacing, the normal memory competitions, and would mainly be to highlight to the general public what's possible with memory skills. I think it'd get a good audience on Channel 4.
Apart from that, what we need is more publicity, and a lot more teaching of memory skills at a basic level to people who've never heard of it before. This is something that's been done in Germany but has been completely neglected in Britain in the past. There are plans in the works right now for a couple of different projects to go into schools and universities and organise competitions - one of them is being organised by the WMSC, and so probably won't happen (they're good at planning things but not at actually doing anything about their plans), the other is by someone else and really is likely to make a difference and bring in more competitors.
One more thing we need, naturally, is more championships, with accessible locations, lots of advance publicity and maybe even some prize money. Most championships in the past have managed one or two of the three - if someone manages to hold a competition that brings all of those together, it really will excite interest on a much wider scale.
Discuss the developments in England between 1815-1832. Explain why Parliament eventually chose to pass the reform bill of 1832.
Something that I think is often neglected in discussion of the buildup to the Great Reform Bill (which wasn't really all that great, if you ask me, although at least it laid the groundwork for later electoral reforms that really achieved something) is the role of the monarchy. People answering this kind of essay question like to say how the industrial revolution and the defeat of Napoleon had given the average Briton more time on their hands to complain about iniquities, without looking at the way Parliament had gradually assumed a much more important role in recent years, due to the diminishment of the traditional role of the King.
Until after the end of the 18th century, there was still a general feeling that Parliament existed to fulfil its traditional role of gathering together important people to advise the King on how to rule his country. George III had always taken a very active part in politics, but by 1815 he was incurably insane and his fat, lazy, useless son was technically in charge of Britain. George IV wasn't interested in politics at all, unless it directly affected his plans to stuff his face and have fun, and reduced his role in the great events of the day to agreeing with whatever politician had spoken to him last. Parliament for the first time in many years was free to do what it wanted, without the monarch butting in. Naturally, the likes of Earl Grey took the opportunity to make the Commons into a fairer representation of the average working man.
I'm in college and this is a question our professor gave us in advance for Donnerstag. can you give some advice on how one can utilize memory techniques in essay writing?
No. No, I really can't. I've never used memory techniques for essay writing or anything vaguely like it. I use memory techniques for the sole purpose of trying and failing to win the world memory championship, not in any everyday-life application.
Is there a way to make a journey follow the ideas of an essay? I suppose you could use the same strategy that you employ for poems, but I think the richness of imagery in poetry lends itself to mnemonics much more easily. What mnemonic techniques could I use for this essay for example?
Well, I suppose you could use a journey to sort concepts or ideas into the sequence that you're intending to use them. I think that's what the books on the subject advise you to do, anyway, although I have no idea whether it would work or not. Or you could use the kind of technique we use in the 'historic dates' discipline to associate images with the year and the events that happened in it - 1832 for me is the obscure 1940s superhero the Fin (he wore a suit with a big shark fin on his head); I'd imagine him lecturing parliament or maybe rampaging through a rotten borough, denouncing it loudly, and probably drinking Earl Grey tea as he did so. That's quite fun, actually. 1833, abolition of slavery - the characters from badly-written preschool children's TV show the Fimbles, slaving away in chains being whipped by that frog they hang out with, until they're liberated. 1834, Tolpuddle Martyrs - a muscleman ('virile man' is the phrase, for anyone who's following the Ben-system logic) being loaded onto a ship, singing trade union songs in a manly kind of way. I could work through a whole history book like this. Maybe I should...
write about your teenage years =D
Well, my teenage years were in the early nineties, so I'm not sure it would mean anything to a current teenager like you. If memory serves, I mainly spent my time waiting for the internet to be invented. Well, that and playing chess. A gang of us at school used to spend every spare moment playing chess. Which is what the cool kids did in those days. All the handsome, athletic types were deeply envious of us. Really.
Apart from that, I don't think I ever really did anything worth writing about. I was living in the middle of nowhere with my dad and brother, going to Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Horncastle, as previously mentioned, and generally not working as hard as I should, if at all. Then I left school and briefly went to Kingston University before giving it up as a bad idea, then went to a training centre to do an NVQ in accountancy, then got a job, then stopped being a teenager.
Outside my own life, things of vague interest were happening. I remember being excited when Margaret Thatcher resigned when I was 14 - she'd been PM since I was two and a half, so deep down I still think she's really cool, despite all rational thought on the subject. I also remember hearing that John Smith had died - I was in the sixth form common room and someone had been listening to the radio on a walkman. When he heard the headline, he got up and turned on the radio to play it to the whole room. That's one of those rare moments where I really do remember where I was when it happened.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Being Boring
You know, I get the feeling that I haven't written anything interesting in this blog lately. I think it's mainly because I haven't done anything interesting lately, but I still feel guilty about depriving my readers of interesting babblings every evening. So I'd like to ask for suggestions - what should I write about? I mean, I generally write this thing to entertain myself, but it would be nice to know what my various weird readers enjoy reading about and what they don't. Someone tell me what to write, and I'll do it tomorrow. That way I don't have to think of something myself, and I preserve my brain cells, in case I need them later.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Everyone wants a piece of me
One advantage (possibly the only advantage) to being imminently featured on a Channel 5 documentary is that it makes it easier to decline offers to be the subject of other documentaries. Another producer called me today, thinking of making a documentary about me (she'd looked me up in the electoral roll, she said - I never cease to be amazed by the ways people go to get in contact with me. Just put my name into google, you'll even find my phone number quoted without my permission in a press release...), but was easily deterred when I pointed out that a documentary about me is in the final stages of editing at the moment. Nick says I'll like it - I very much doubt that I will, but we'll see.
I was less successful in saying no to the one accountancy recruitment agency who I neglected to tell that I don't want any more temp jobs, when they called a bit later on to offer me an interview-followed-by-immediate-start kind of thing at Bombardier the train people down the road, lasting till Christmas doing project work of some kind. It's on Thursday, unless I find a way to get out of it.
Before that, though, there's a telephone interview tomorrow for a real job, with Proquest in Cambridge, which sounds like it might be fun. It's a very Excel-heavy job, that sounds like it might be right up my street, although they might want some more VBA programming experience than I've got. I got a crash-course book to refresh my knowledge of it, and I'm pleased to see that I do mostly know what I'm doing after all. Might be a cool job, if it works out. But telephone interviews are a terrible thing. I hate phone calls in general, and especially phone calls when they're important. What's wrong with dressing up in smart clothes and shiny shoes and talking to people face to face? Yes, I dislike that too, but not as much as telephone interviews.
I was less successful in saying no to the one accountancy recruitment agency who I neglected to tell that I don't want any more temp jobs, when they called a bit later on to offer me an interview-followed-by-immediate-start kind of thing at Bombardier the train people down the road, lasting till Christmas doing project work of some kind. It's on Thursday, unless I find a way to get out of it.
Before that, though, there's a telephone interview tomorrow for a real job, with Proquest in Cambridge, which sounds like it might be fun. It's a very Excel-heavy job, that sounds like it might be right up my street, although they might want some more VBA programming experience than I've got. I got a crash-course book to refresh my knowledge of it, and I'm pleased to see that I do mostly know what I'm doing after all. Might be a cool job, if it works out. But telephone interviews are a terrible thing. I hate phone calls in general, and especially phone calls when they're important. What's wrong with dressing up in smart clothes and shiny shoes and talking to people face to face? Yes, I dislike that too, but not as much as telephone interviews.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
I want a star!
Roger Moore got a star on the walk of fame for his birthday, and I want one too! I could be an actor. The evil English genius, as someone suggested recently. Still hoping someone plays me that way in the movie of "Moonwalking With Einstein". Or I think I'd make a good evil scientist in a Japanese monster movie, the kind who starts out seeming like one of the good guys, but turns out to in fact want the monster to destroy Tokyo.
Anyway, happy birthday to me, and Roger, and Cliff Richard, the late E E Cummings and the very late Battle of Hastings, and Jason (someone on the rugby coverage was just holding up a sign saying "happy birthday Jason"). Also, happy birthday yesterday to the other Ben Pridmore on Facebook (the one who formerly had dreadlocks) - had I been born five minutes earlier, we'd have shared a birthday as well as a name and a fondness for silly hairstyles. We should have had a double party, open only to people called Ben Pridmore who are celebrating a birthday this weekend. It would have been great.
Also, you should watch Pillow's Pillow's Story, made years ago but I've only just discovered it's on YouTube. The voice of the pillow is my brother.
Anyway, happy birthday to me, and Roger, and Cliff Richard, the late E E Cummings and the very late Battle of Hastings, and Jason (someone on the rugby coverage was just holding up a sign saying "happy birthday Jason"). Also, happy birthday yesterday to the other Ben Pridmore on Facebook (the one who formerly had dreadlocks) - had I been born five minutes earlier, we'd have shared a birthday as well as a name and a fondness for silly hairstyles. We should have had a double party, open only to people called Ben Pridmore who are celebrating a birthday this weekend. It would have been great.
Also, you should watch Pillow's Pillow's Story, made years ago but I've only just discovered it's on YouTube. The voice of the pillow is my brother.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Try, try again
The commentator on the rugby tonight described Sébastien Chabal as 'the 21st century Asterix', because he's really large. Honestly, what do they teach them at school nowadays?
Watching the game right now, after the football this afternoon, not to mention a bit of golf before that. It's not my fault if I haven't achieved anything productive today, it's the TV people.
Also, yes, Boris, got your emails, I'll reply as soon as I get a chance. Likewise James, and no doubt lots of other people too. I'm just lazy. As you can see from the short blog entry tonight.
Watching the game right now, after the football this afternoon, not to mention a bit of golf before that. It's not my fault if I haven't achieved anything productive today, it's the TV people.
Also, yes, Boris, got your emails, I'll reply as soon as I get a chance. Likewise James, and no doubt lots of other people too. I'm just lazy. As you can see from the short blog entry tonight.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Nimble fingers!
Woo! I memorised a pack of cards in 23.05 seconds today! I should have switched to that shuffling-the-cards-between-my-fingers method years ago! It really is a lot quicker than turning them over two at a time, and it didn't take long to get used to it at all. I've hardly done any practice since the world championship, and I'm well over two seconds better than my previous best. I might just beat 25 seconds in a competition next year!
I also did a perfect 200 in spoken numbers today, for the first time ever. So all in all, I'm extremely happy with myself and in the mood to boast to everybody else in the world that I'm better than them. On the other hand, what I actually need to work on if I'm going to win the blasted WMC next year is the long events - it wasn't really the speed cards that lost me the world championship this year, it was the mess I made of the hour cards, and that was all down to me not having practiced the long disciplines enough, and built up the stamina you need to memorise for hours and hours over a three-day period. I would vow to spend all this weekend doing hour cards, hour numbers and half-hour binary, but a) you all know I wouldn't do it anyway and b) it's my birthday and I don't want you to think I'm a complete saddo.
Although I'm not having a party for another fortnight, and I don't actually have any plans for Sunday. Maybe I am a complete saddo...
I also did a perfect 200 in spoken numbers today, for the first time ever. So all in all, I'm extremely happy with myself and in the mood to boast to everybody else in the world that I'm better than them. On the other hand, what I actually need to work on if I'm going to win the blasted WMC next year is the long events - it wasn't really the speed cards that lost me the world championship this year, it was the mess I made of the hour cards, and that was all down to me not having practiced the long disciplines enough, and built up the stamina you need to memorise for hours and hours over a three-day period. I would vow to spend all this weekend doing hour cards, hour numbers and half-hour binary, but a) you all know I wouldn't do it anyway and b) it's my birthday and I don't want you to think I'm a complete saddo.
Although I'm not having a party for another fortnight, and I don't actually have any plans for Sunday. Maybe I am a complete saddo...
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Should've wispaed a bit louder
I was quite surprised to read on Sam's blog that Wispas are being re-launched. I'd genuinely never noticed that they'd stopped selling them. Four years ago. How could that, and the subsequent internet campaigns and petitions, have passed me by so completely? It's not like I'm one of those health-food-eating, chocolate-hating weirdos you hear about - whenever I'm passing a newsagent or corner shop, I'll have a choc bar of some description. I quite like Wispas. Has it really been four years since I had one?
What other confectioneries might have been scrapped without my noticing? I'll have to take a thorough inventory of all the sweetie shelves in Derby. Trying to think what chocolate bars I haven't seen lately... Do they still make Topics? Never liked them, but haven't seen one for a while. I'm pretty sure they stopped making Fuse bars, which is a shame, because they were great. I think I heard something about Ripples recently, too - have they stopped, or restarted, those? I remember when they first came out. Wispas too. It's disgraceful that they should stop selling these things without asking me first.
What other confectioneries might have been scrapped without my noticing? I'll have to take a thorough inventory of all the sweetie shelves in Derby. Trying to think what chocolate bars I haven't seen lately... Do they still make Topics? Never liked them, but haven't seen one for a while. I'm pretty sure they stopped making Fuse bars, which is a shame, because they were great. I think I heard something about Ripples recently, too - have they stopped, or restarted, those? I remember when they first came out. Wispas too. It's disgraceful that they should stop selling these things without asking me first.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Gizza job
So, I promised you a funny story about jobs, didn't I? Well, I had an email from D E Shaw & Co, an American investment company that has a tradition of employing people with impressive mental abilities - chess champions, international maths olympiad medallists, that kind of thing, and they suggested I might want to apply for a job with them, seeing as I won the decamentathlon in 2001.
That's right, the decamentathlon - the little four-hour MSO competition involving solving puzzles in ten different 'mind sports'. Not the memory stuff, they'd never even heard of that, nor the mental calculation competitions, or the World Intelligence Championship I also won in 2001, or even my amazing skill as an othello player, but they were really impressed by the decamentathlon. I've always kind of thought it would be cool if some company wanted to employ me solely for the purpose of boasting that they employed a memory champion, but I never expected something like this.
Of course, if it was the kind of company that hired people solely on the strength of their decamentathlon performances, it really wouldn't be the kind of company I'd want to work for (it would also be the kind of company that goes out of business very very quickly), and once they'd seen my CV, they let me know that as expected, your background and accomplishments are impressive, and it is clear that you have much to offer. While we have not been able to identify an immediate opportunity that would be a good match for you, we will keep your resume in our files on the chance that a suitable position should become available at a later date. In the meantime, we wish you much success in all your endeavors.
Still, it would have been groovy to work in New York. Perhaps I should think more about applying for jobs in America - there are, I'm reliably informed by non-American comedians, lots of really stupid and wealthy people over there, and perhaps there really is a company out there that would want me as a sort of trophy employee, paying me a small fortune and not expecting me to actually do any work. And then I'd be able to compete in the US Memory Championship too! And attempt to qualify for the US othello team (although that's generally just as difficult, if not more so, as qualifying for the British team, so it's probably not worth emigrating just for that).
On the other hand, I have got an interview lined up (sort of - haven't fixed the date yet) with a company in Cambridge. Emigrating to Cambridge would be quite cool, too.
That's right, the decamentathlon - the little four-hour MSO competition involving solving puzzles in ten different 'mind sports'. Not the memory stuff, they'd never even heard of that, nor the mental calculation competitions, or the World Intelligence Championship I also won in 2001, or even my amazing skill as an othello player, but they were really impressed by the decamentathlon. I've always kind of thought it would be cool if some company wanted to employ me solely for the purpose of boasting that they employed a memory champion, but I never expected something like this.
Of course, if it was the kind of company that hired people solely on the strength of their decamentathlon performances, it really wouldn't be the kind of company I'd want to work for (it would also be the kind of company that goes out of business very very quickly), and once they'd seen my CV, they let me know that as expected, your background and accomplishments are impressive, and it is clear that you have much to offer. While we have not been able to identify an immediate opportunity that would be a good match for you, we will keep your resume in our files on the chance that a suitable position should become available at a later date. In the meantime, we wish you much success in all your endeavors.
Still, it would have been groovy to work in New York. Perhaps I should think more about applying for jobs in America - there are, I'm reliably informed by non-American comedians, lots of really stupid and wealthy people over there, and perhaps there really is a company out there that would want me as a sort of trophy employee, paying me a small fortune and not expecting me to actually do any work. And then I'd be able to compete in the US Memory Championship too! And attempt to qualify for the US othello team (although that's generally just as difficult, if not more so, as qualifying for the British team, so it's probably not worth emigrating just for that).
On the other hand, I have got an interview lined up (sort of - haven't fixed the date yet) with a company in Cambridge. Emigrating to Cambridge would be quite cool, too.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Sequel
Bumped into I'm-almost-certain-her-name's-Sarah-now again today. It's like buses - you don't see a bus for two years after you and the bus were both made redundant from the same company, then you see the bus in town twice on consecutive days. But she had her daughter with her this time, so that resolves that minor mystery that was puzzling me yesterday. And as a follow-up to what I was going on about the day before yesterday, the new shopping centre in Derby was officially opened today! I'm disappointed that they didn't ask me to cut the ribbon, but never mind. Anyway, it's really big and shiny and new and full of exciting things. I'm all in favour of it! It really makes a difference to have a real shopping centre in the city - all this time I've been living in Derby I could just hear Nottingham sneering at us, mocking the size of our mall. "I've got two gigantic ones," it said, "and all you've got to offer is this tiny little one-storey thing." Well, nyah nyah, Nottingham, now Derby's got a cool place to go and look at shops too!
Wow, I'm almost feeling a sense of civic pride here. I must have been brainwashed by the local media.
Wow, I'm almost feeling a sense of civic pride here. I must have been brainwashed by the local media.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Sonic 2
Wow, but Sonic 2 is a great game! I haven't played it for years, and it was wonderful to remember all the little bits and pieces of it. I can't believe it's 15 years since it came out. If they'd make video games like that nowadays, I might still play them.
But that isn't quite all I've done today, don't worry. I've also done a bit of memory practice and applied for a couple of jobs - one which would be extremely groovy but is very unlikely to happen (won't go into detail yet in case I jinx it, I'll tell you a funny story about it when they tell me I haven't got it), and another which would also be rather cool, to a slightly lesser extent, but which I think there's a better chance of success with. Then there's other memory-related things that might happen and be groovy, but I'm not supposed to write about them either until everything's set up, so never mind. This is a terribly uninformative blog post, isn't it?
I also bumped into probably-Sarah who I worked with at almost-definitely-Parkhouse today, and spent the ensuing friendly conversation (carefully structured to avoid revealing that I'm only 70% certain of her name) resolving to make a real effort to memorise people's names and personal details in future, in case I need to talk to them a couple of years down the road. It'll reduce the need to exchange pleasantries like 'how's the daughter or possibly son that I'm fairly sure you had?'
But that isn't quite all I've done today, don't worry. I've also done a bit of memory practice and applied for a couple of jobs - one which would be extremely groovy but is very unlikely to happen (won't go into detail yet in case I jinx it, I'll tell you a funny story about it when they tell me I haven't got it), and another which would also be rather cool, to a slightly lesser extent, but which I think there's a better chance of success with. Then there's other memory-related things that might happen and be groovy, but I'm not supposed to write about them either until everything's set up, so never mind. This is a terribly uninformative blog post, isn't it?
I also bumped into probably-Sarah who I worked with at almost-definitely-Parkhouse today, and spent the ensuing friendly conversation (carefully structured to avoid revealing that I'm only 70% certain of her name) resolving to make a real effort to memorise people's names and personal details in future, in case I need to talk to them a couple of years down the road. It'll reduce the need to exchange pleasantries like 'how's the daughter or possibly son that I'm fairly sure you had?'
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Sonic 3
The big shopping centre in Derby has been a building site for just about as long as I can remember (so at least a week, then), but the new-look, much-bigger-than-before, all-different Westfield Centre is opening on Tuesday. It's terribly exciting. Makes me wonder what will happen to the army of builders who've been hanging around the city centre having tea-breaks for twelve hours a day, every day for the last couple of years. But to explain the title of this blog post, you can see into the new section from the back of W H Smith, with its shiny new empty shops and gleaming new escalators, but you can't get into it yet. It reminds me of the classic video game, Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
Not that Sonic 3 was set in a shopping centre (although that would have been cool), but it was released in a hurry, before they'd finished programming it. It's a cool game,
(I must just interrupt myself here to record the fact that an absolutely gigantic spider has just nonchalently strolled across my living room floor. Don't know where he came from, but that maybe explains why I haven't been bothered with flies so much this year. The thing's the size of a house!)
but it's really obviously not finished, because there are parts when you can see into big sections of the game that you can't get into. If you do the cheat that lets you pass through walls, you can see these big sections generally have bits missing, or stop dead at unexpected points. A bit later they released 'Sonic and Knuckles', which you could plug Sonic 3 into and get the full game as it should have been if they'd been able to take their time making it in the first place. That shopping centre has really put me in the mood to get my old mega drive out and play through all the Sonic games. I can see that's what I'm going to spend tomorrow doing, rather than anything halfway useful. Somebody tell me off, will you? I need discipline.
Not that Sonic 3 was set in a shopping centre (although that would have been cool), but it was released in a hurry, before they'd finished programming it. It's a cool game,
(I must just interrupt myself here to record the fact that an absolutely gigantic spider has just nonchalently strolled across my living room floor. Don't know where he came from, but that maybe explains why I haven't been bothered with flies so much this year. The thing's the size of a house!)
but it's really obviously not finished, because there are parts when you can see into big sections of the game that you can't get into. If you do the cheat that lets you pass through walls, you can see these big sections generally have bits missing, or stop dead at unexpected points. A bit later they released 'Sonic and Knuckles', which you could plug Sonic 3 into and get the full game as it should have been if they'd been able to take their time making it in the first place. That shopping centre has really put me in the mood to get my old mega drive out and play through all the Sonic games. I can see that's what I'm going to spend tomorrow doing, rather than anything halfway useful. Somebody tell me off, will you? I need discipline.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Hey, wait a minute, I've stopped being famous!
Apart from the Channel 5 photo shoot, I've got nothing lined up or likely to be lined up in terms of memory publicity. Does this mean I'm settling back into comfortable obscurity again? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Tell you what, let's call it a bit of breathing space to write my book and then decide if I want to try to publicise it.
Anyway, it's my birthday next Sunday! Thirty-one years old! Who'da thunk it? I'm going to think of some more new-year-of-my-life resolutions and see if I can achieve them this time. I'm not having the party till a fortnight afterwards, so perhaps I'll spend the day in quiet reflection wailing and lamenting my old age, screaming curses at the gods and attempting to hypnotise myself into believing I'm still a young vigorous twenty-something. Or maybe I'll go out drinking. We'll have to see.
Anyway, it's my birthday next Sunday! Thirty-one years old! Who'da thunk it? I'm going to think of some more new-year-of-my-life resolutions and see if I can achieve them this time. I'm not having the party till a fortnight afterwards, so perhaps I'll spend the day in quiet reflection wailing and lamenting my old age, screaming curses at the gods and attempting to hypnotise myself into believing I'm still a young vigorous twenty-something. Or maybe I'll go out drinking. We'll have to see.
Friday, October 05, 2007
Losing track of time
What with going to London yesterday, I spent the whole day thinking it was Saturday. On the train ride home I repeatedly caught myself wondering what had happened in the football and looking forward to watching the highlights. Which is particularly silly, since most of this weekend's games are on Sunday anyway. But it's carried over into today, and I'm still feeling like it's Sunday night right now.
Of course, my life is a succession of Saturdays and Sundays at the moment, so it doesn't make much difference, but it's still nice to know that there's another weekend starting tomorrow, right after this one. I really need to get a job, though - a couple of interesting prospects in the pipeline, we'll have to see what develops.
Of course, my life is a succession of Saturdays and Sundays at the moment, so it doesn't make much difference, but it's still nice to know that there's another weekend starting tomorrow, right after this one. I really need to get a job, though - a couple of interesting prospects in the pipeline, we'll have to see what develops.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Humans 1, Chimps 0
Yes, I succeeded in performing a memory test similar but not identical to the one that the Japanese chimps do. Which is good, because they'd also tried it on the average man on the street in Hammersmith, and apparently the general public struggled with it. So I defended the intellectual honour of the human race there. And a bit earlier on in Soho I recited pi to a thousand places for Tiger Aspect productions, which was fun. I'd insisted on doing that, just because I wanted a change from the inevitable pack of cards I always do for these people (I also did a pack of cards for Blink, the TV company with the monkeys*). And I think I got it right, too, after a bit of revision on the train journey from Derby.
And speaking of memory, if you send a company an email about a job, mention the memory stuff in it, and forget to attach your CV, that's probably not a good move, is it?
Also, check out Gaby Kappus's website for a very cool picture of me!
*Monkeys aren't chimps, and vice versa, I'm well aware of that. But I think 'monkeys' sounds funnier in a blog post.
And speaking of memory, if you send a company an email about a job, mention the memory stuff in it, and forget to attach your CV, that's probably not a good move, is it?
Also, check out Gaby Kappus's website for a very cool picture of me!
*Monkeys aren't chimps, and vice versa, I'm well aware of that. But I think 'monkeys' sounds funnier in a blog post.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Pin-up
So, down to London tomorrow for two different TV thingies, one of which involves monkeys. It was nearly three things - Channel 5 emailed today to say they want to do a photo shoot promoting the famous documentary, and I suggested tomorrow since I'll be in London anyway. But apparently that's too short notice. Presumably it takes a lot of planning, working out how to make me look attractive, intelligent or stupid, depending what slant the documentary is trying to take. Also, I forgot to ask if they're still going to call it "Brain Men". If they do, I'm going to decry it loudly in public and attempt to drag them through every court in the land, because that's a really rubbish title. For one thing, there's already a documentary about memory-related stuff called "Brain Man" - it's the American title of that one about Daniel Tammett that's called "The Boy With The Incredible Brain" or something equally silly in Britain. For another thing, "Brain Men" just sucks. It's okay making a reference to "Rain Man" in a documentary about a guy who goes around proclaiming that he's a savant, but it doesn't work for something that's rather further removed from the whole freaks-of-nature kind of angle. Hopefully. Unless they cut out all the bits where we demonstrate that memory techniques are something that any old idiot can do.
Still, it's probably a good thing that we're not doing photo shoots tomorrow, because I haven't got any trousers. I was basically down to my last good pair of trousers, the black ones, but the zip's gone and I need to get it fixed in order to go out and not get arrested. So I've been wearing my cords for the last couple of days, because they're almost acceptable except for a smallish hole that people can't see unless they limbo-dance underneath my spread legs. And I doubt that's likely to happen to me any time soon. But you never know what angles the Channel 5 people might want to photograph me from.
Maybe I'll get some new trousers tomorrow. They have clothes shops in London, right?
Still, it's probably a good thing that we're not doing photo shoots tomorrow, because I haven't got any trousers. I was basically down to my last good pair of trousers, the black ones, but the zip's gone and I need to get it fixed in order to go out and not get arrested. So I've been wearing my cords for the last couple of days, because they're almost acceptable except for a smallish hole that people can't see unless they limbo-dance underneath my spread legs. And I doubt that's likely to happen to me any time soon. But you never know what angles the Channel 5 people might want to photograph me from.
Maybe I'll get some new trousers tomorrow. They have clothes shops in London, right?
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Yawn
I'm watching a particularly dull football game tonight, and it seems to have drained my brain of anything fun or exciting to talk about. I have had a sort of job offer that made me giggle, but I don't really want to write about it now in case it's genuine and they're reading my blog (see, I'm paranoid about that kind of thing now). So this is just going to be one of those blog posts where I apologise for not saying anything in my blog post and leave it at that. Sorry!
Monday, October 01, 2007
Áth Cliath
In Dublin's fair city, and so on. The TV people flew me out there with Ryanair, which is the first time I've done that. It's actually a perfectly okay airline, and I'll have to fly on the cheap with them again. The plane was delayed, but only by an hour or so, and I had plenty of time to hang out with Charlie and watch Ireland be comprehensively outclassed by Argentina in the rugby, before being driven out to Blanchardstown and the Draoicht Theatre, to film The Panel.
I found out talking to the various staff of the Panel that it was originally an Australian show, and their Irish counterparts bought the format from them. Since the show consists of five people sitting around a desk and making jokes about the news, I don't see that they needed to spend money on it, but then I don't work in TV. I also got to sit around the green room with the very cool James Cromwell. Having read the website's blurb about him, I'd concluded that I'd never heard of him before, and it was only this morning that I re-read it, even the sentence I'd skipped previously, and realised I'd been hanging out with Zefram Cochrane! For crying out loud! How did I not realise that at the time?
Anyway, the show was quite groovy, and the makeup artist recognised me and thought she'd made me up before, only for it to turn out that she'd seen me on This Morning, and actually remembered me! But it wasn't one of my greatest performances. I've never done TV in front of a live audience before, unless you count Caldeirão do Huck in Brazil. But the audience there, consisting of scantily-clad young women, were there to jump up and down excitedly regardless of what was happening in front of them. I've never played to an audience who react to the people on stage before. And when I said something that was supposed to be funny (I can't remember what it was, and I'm sure it wasn't funny at all, but that's not the point) and got just a couple of scattered chuckles, it made me a bit over-conscious of their presence, and I spent the rest of the interview glancing at the crowd of shadowy watchers and trying to make them laugh at me properly.
But I did memorise a pack of cards and generally give the impression of being good at memorising a pack of cards, so what more could I want? Well, actually, I'll answer that - both on the show and talking before, nobody wanted to ask me anything not related to memory. Whereas with James Cromwell, everyone immediately started asking him about his political views and opinions on the state of the world. I'd like to be asked that kind of thing from time to time. Not so much because I want to convert people to my political viewpoint, or even because I want the world to know it - it would just be nice if people wanted to know that I've got one. So my new ambition is to do a TV show where someone asks me a non-memory question! That way I will be able to proudly say that I'm not just a bit of two-minute filler, but a Real Celebrity Guest!
(Probably not going to happen, is it?)
I found out talking to the various staff of the Panel that it was originally an Australian show, and their Irish counterparts bought the format from them. Since the show consists of five people sitting around a desk and making jokes about the news, I don't see that they needed to spend money on it, but then I don't work in TV. I also got to sit around the green room with the very cool James Cromwell. Having read the website's blurb about him, I'd concluded that I'd never heard of him before, and it was only this morning that I re-read it, even the sentence I'd skipped previously, and realised I'd been hanging out with Zefram Cochrane! For crying out loud! How did I not realise that at the time?
Anyway, the show was quite groovy, and the makeup artist recognised me and thought she'd made me up before, only for it to turn out that she'd seen me on This Morning, and actually remembered me! But it wasn't one of my greatest performances. I've never done TV in front of a live audience before, unless you count Caldeirão do Huck in Brazil. But the audience there, consisting of scantily-clad young women, were there to jump up and down excitedly regardless of what was happening in front of them. I've never played to an audience who react to the people on stage before. And when I said something that was supposed to be funny (I can't remember what it was, and I'm sure it wasn't funny at all, but that's not the point) and got just a couple of scattered chuckles, it made me a bit over-conscious of their presence, and I spent the rest of the interview glancing at the crowd of shadowy watchers and trying to make them laugh at me properly.
But I did memorise a pack of cards and generally give the impression of being good at memorising a pack of cards, so what more could I want? Well, actually, I'll answer that - both on the show and talking before, nobody wanted to ask me anything not related to memory. Whereas with James Cromwell, everyone immediately started asking him about his political views and opinions on the state of the world. I'd like to be asked that kind of thing from time to time. Not so much because I want to convert people to my political viewpoint, or even because I want the world to know it - it would just be nice if people wanted to know that I've got one. So my new ambition is to do a TV show where someone asks me a non-memory question! That way I will be able to proudly say that I'm not just a bit of two-minute filler, but a Real Celebrity Guest!
(Probably not going to happen, is it?)
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