In fact, probably a bit better!
In the way of such things, the opening ceremony was half an hour late starting, and an hour late finishing - photos by the pool take up more time than anyone would expect - and the whole thing fell further behind schedule as the day went on. This is the way memory competitions always work, so it's good to see we're keeping with tradition. Apart from that, the whole thing was impeccably organised and wonderfully technological! All done on computers, which all worked fine (bar one little hiccup) and made everything very smooth and easy.
All in all, the Memoriad is an absolutely wonderful event that really needs to happen more often than once every four years. Can we have a mini-memoriad next year, please?
We started with speed cards, and I did a "safe" time of 33.61 seconds (safe in the sense that I only make mistakes about half the time when I go at that speed) and got it all right without too much difficulty. Nobody else had done a fast time without mistakes, but I expected them to in the second trial. I set out to do something faster, but got stuck half way through the memorisation, and didn't go much faster at all. A drawback with the Memoriad software is that you can't see your time after you stop the clock, which would be nice, but it turned out after I'd tried to recall it but got it wrong that my time was 33.56 - 0.05 seconds improvement is hardly worth all the effort.
But as it turned out, everyone trying for fast times had made mistakes again, so I won! Yay for me - lucky, I know, but I'll take what I can get. Someone who I don't even know and whose name I can't remember came second, and Lukas Amsüss was third, both with times of 50-something seconds.
After that nice start, we had mental multiplications. Fifteen minutes to multiply ten pairs of eight-digit numbers together - the best people do it in a lot less than fifteen minutes, but I'm happy if I get through five in that time. In the two trials this time, I got two right and three wrong in each one. I'm never going to be the mental calculation world champion.
Most of the top contenders in mental calculations nowadays, by the way, are around eight years old and mostly from India. It's a bit scary, really, but memory sports isn't currently showing any signs of such a youthful invasion.
Names and faces came next, and it took me a while to get into the mood to concentrate on it. I actually stopped after a couple of minutes, thinking I'd use the time to prepare my journeys for the afternoon, but then decided that was being silly, and made some kind of effort. I got 54, I think it was - Simon probably won with 150 or so, although there was a technical problem with the computer recognising the Turkish keyboard layout, so we'll get the final results tomorrow.
I decided to skip the mental square roots, since I didn't get round to looking up how to do it, and I was feeling a bit eyestrained after all that looking at computer screens. Instead, I went back to my room and had a relaxing jacuzzi. I could get used to this kind of thing, I really could.
Incidentally, I haven't mentioned yet just how awesome the Belconti Resort Hotel, Belek, Antalya, is. It's an amazing place, and if you need a relaxing holiday, it has my huge recommendation. There's the beach, swimming pools, fitness centre, lots of other great stuff, and the food is wonderful - I was worried that the meals at a place like this would be either posh or healthy, but no, it's just really really great food!
Anyway, we finished the day's entertainment with Hour Numbers - which I haven't practiced at all for at least a year and a bit. And it went really well! Somehow, being in a real memory competition gets me into the right mindset, and I don't have a problem with my mind wandering at all. I went for nine journeys, 2106 digits, with my method of reading through a journey, closing my eyes and making sure I know it, then moving on to the next one, followed by two or three more revisions of the whole lot at the end, and it worked splendidly! I ended up with a score of 1876, which is either a personal best or very close to it, and was able to think "if I'd only got the nun and the cigarette the right way round, I would have been over 1900!"
I know I could also have said "if I'd got them all correct, I would have got 2106," but I kept swapping that blasted nun and her fag around, unable to decide which order they came in. Oh well.
Anyway, I wasn't under any illusions that that might be the best score - my German enemies might have messed up the speed cards, but they're consistently better than me at hour numbers - but I wasn't expecting just how good they'd be! Simon ended up with 2440, Christian with 2343 and Johannes with 2280. Wow. So I was fourth, and just out of the prize-money places, but it's no shame to be beaten by that kind of performance. And 1876 is very much the kind of score I'd want to get in the world championship if I was going to win it, knowing that I always gain on my rivals in events like hour cards and 30-minute binary. I feel motivated again now!
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Luxury.
Hello from Antalya, where I'm in a hotel room that, to put it mildy, is palatial. There's enough wardrobe space to easily contain all the clothes I've ever owned. The bath is a jacuzzi. There's one of those couch things that I think is called a chaise longue. And I'm lying in a FOUR POSTER BED! For the first time in my life. I'm wearing a T-shirt proclaiming "A working class hero is something to be", and it seems a tiny bit out of place.
Now for the hand-written blog I wrote on the plane to pass the time:
The man sitting next to me recognised me, which is always nice and is probably a good omen for a memory competition, but wanted to talk about my opinions on string theory, the nature of the universe, the brain, perception and so forth. I'm always a sad disappointment to the inquiring mind - all I can really offer on the subject is a vague intention to one day learn what "string theory" is. I keep hearing people talk about it. I need to somehow change people's perception of me as a genius who likes that kind of thing - I, and all the memory people I know, are basically normal people with a weird hobby. There are bricklayers with the same creativity and passion for what they do, and I bet nobody asks them about string theory.
Then there's the embarrassment that Mohammed was able to chat about such things, fluently, in his second language, while here I am merrily on my way to Turkey and not speaking a single word of Turkish. I can't help thinking that this makes me a terrible person. As the pile of "Teach Yourself" books-and-CDs on my bookshelves will testify, I normally have the decency to try and fail to learn the basics before I go somewhere new, but I just haven't had the time this time around.
Well, to be fair, I've had plenty of time, I just haven't done it. I say it again - I'm not much of a genius.
I arrived at the airport at around 9:15pm, local time (two hours ahead of GMT), intending to get a taxi to the hotel by means of miming and waving a piece of paper with the address on it. Most people had arranged for the hotel to pick them up in a minibus, but I wasn't aware of anyone having arranged it for my arrival time, though I was secretly hoping to bump into someone and hitch a ride.
And I tell you, it's a good thing I wear a hat, or at least that I consort with people who can remember names and faces, because I'm going to admit here on my blog something that I didn't admit to the people concerned at the time...
In the arrivals place, I was greeted with "Hi, Ben!" by someone who didn't look at all familiar, but who had travelled from far away and was waiting for the rest of his group. No idea who it is. Maybe from the Phillipines, possibly from Hong Kong, I don't know. But they weren't leaving the airport immediately, so I said see-you-later and went outside to where the taxis were.
"Hi, Ben!" said someone else. I enthusiastically said hi back, and luckily the conversation very soon told me that I was talking to Jonas von Essen - who, you will remember, I saw a month ago when he came to my memory competition - and that he was waiting for Matteo Salvo to get their hotel minibus. I hitched a ride. Matteo arrived shortly afterwards - again, someone I really should recognise by now but whose face rang no bells with me - and we were brought here by our extremely friendly and helpful Memoriad host, who did tell me his name but not how to spell it, and I've seen millions of variations of it in the past so I'm not even going to try. But he was great, really.
I did recognise Boris when he said hello in the hotel lobby, even though he's changed his hairstyle, and I recognised Johannes by the wheelchair and Christian by the wild hair, so I feel better about myself now. Really, it normally only takes me two or three meetings to remember what people look like, I should be fine with Jonas and Matteo next time.
I'll be super-honest here - I didn't remember what Johannes looked like the second time I met him, and he looks quite distinctive on account of his medical condition, but I apparently didn't notice that the first time we met. Possibly I just don't look at people.
So, anyway, here I am at the Memoriad 2012, so let's see what the schedule holds for us. Tomorrow I intend to spend as much time as possible asleep in my four poster bed - I haven't spent enough time asleep lately, what with work and things, and a day of feeling like some kind of princess would be just the ticket.
Then on Saturday, we start at 10:00 with Speed Cards! That's the last event of a standard memory competition, but here we start with a bang! Two trials, all on computer software like everything else here (which is different but great), and how will I do? I've been able to do around 26-27 seconds in practice and get it right about half the time. Simon will certainly go faster than that, and there might be another couple who'll try it, but if I go for a safe-ish 30-second first attempt, and then go for something faster the second time, I should be in with a chance of a top-three place. Top three places in each event get the prize money, you see.
10:45 is mental multiplications. Yes, I'm doing the mental calculation events too, although the last time I practiced any of them was two and a half years ago - I won't do well.
12:00 we get names and faces, and well, see above. You get to choose the names of your own language, rather than having international ones, but that won't help me get a half-decent score.
After lunch, at 2:00, it's mental square roots. I've never been able to do that - I used to know in principle how it works, but I can't even remember that now. I'll try to revise tomorrow, but don't expect me to get a big score.
And at 3:15 it's hour numbers. I haven't practiced the hour-long memory disciplines for a very long time - when I'm at my best, I wouldn't expect to be in the top three among the field we've got here, so it would take an unexpectedly good performance and some disasters for the favourites for me to get anything out of this one.
Sunday starts at 9:00 with flash numbers - like spoken numbers, only they flash up on a screen instead. I'm not expecting big things here; I don't usually do spectacularly well at spoken numbers, but with an only-score-up-to-your-first-mistake rule, anything's possible. Two trials again, best score counts.
10:15 is mental additions. A bit of fun that I won't do very well at, again.
11:20 is mental calendar dates, which again I will just try my best at and see if I can still remember how to do it. I'm nowhere near the level of the world-beaters in any of the mental calculation events.
At 1:00, after lunch, we get Flash Anzan, an all-new thing where numbers flash up on screen very quickly and you have to add them together. Fun, but my score will be somewhere in the region of zero.
And finally at 2:50, we get 30-minute binary. Now, by all rights I should be the best in the world at this and win it comfortably. But I haven't done any proper regular training for a long time, so it's not impossible that I'll have a bit of a disaster. Even so, if I don't get in the top three here I'll be very disappointed, and if I don't win I'll be more than slightly annoyed with myself. I probably won't win, if I think about it logically, but I'll still be annoyed.
Right, now I'm going to have a bath, or a jacuzzi. I was going to do that as soon as I got up to my room, but then I saw I was staying in Buckingham-Palace-only-without-the-smell-of-corgis-and-royalty, I just had to blog about it. Hope you enjoyed!
Now for the hand-written blog I wrote on the plane to pass the time:
The man sitting next to me recognised me, which is always nice and is probably a good omen for a memory competition, but wanted to talk about my opinions on string theory, the nature of the universe, the brain, perception and so forth. I'm always a sad disappointment to the inquiring mind - all I can really offer on the subject is a vague intention to one day learn what "string theory" is. I keep hearing people talk about it. I need to somehow change people's perception of me as a genius who likes that kind of thing - I, and all the memory people I know, are basically normal people with a weird hobby. There are bricklayers with the same creativity and passion for what they do, and I bet nobody asks them about string theory.
Then there's the embarrassment that Mohammed was able to chat about such things, fluently, in his second language, while here I am merrily on my way to Turkey and not speaking a single word of Turkish. I can't help thinking that this makes me a terrible person. As the pile of "Teach Yourself" books-and-CDs on my bookshelves will testify, I normally have the decency to try and fail to learn the basics before I go somewhere new, but I just haven't had the time this time around.
Well, to be fair, I've had plenty of time, I just haven't done it. I say it again - I'm not much of a genius.
I arrived at the airport at around 9:15pm, local time (two hours ahead of GMT), intending to get a taxi to the hotel by means of miming and waving a piece of paper with the address on it. Most people had arranged for the hotel to pick them up in a minibus, but I wasn't aware of anyone having arranged it for my arrival time, though I was secretly hoping to bump into someone and hitch a ride.
And I tell you, it's a good thing I wear a hat, or at least that I consort with people who can remember names and faces, because I'm going to admit here on my blog something that I didn't admit to the people concerned at the time...
In the arrivals place, I was greeted with "Hi, Ben!" by someone who didn't look at all familiar, but who had travelled from far away and was waiting for the rest of his group. No idea who it is. Maybe from the Phillipines, possibly from Hong Kong, I don't know. But they weren't leaving the airport immediately, so I said see-you-later and went outside to where the taxis were.
"Hi, Ben!" said someone else. I enthusiastically said hi back, and luckily the conversation very soon told me that I was talking to Jonas von Essen - who, you will remember, I saw a month ago when he came to my memory competition - and that he was waiting for Matteo Salvo to get their hotel minibus. I hitched a ride. Matteo arrived shortly afterwards - again, someone I really should recognise by now but whose face rang no bells with me - and we were brought here by our extremely friendly and helpful Memoriad host, who did tell me his name but not how to spell it, and I've seen millions of variations of it in the past so I'm not even going to try. But he was great, really.
I did recognise Boris when he said hello in the hotel lobby, even though he's changed his hairstyle, and I recognised Johannes by the wheelchair and Christian by the wild hair, so I feel better about myself now. Really, it normally only takes me two or three meetings to remember what people look like, I should be fine with Jonas and Matteo next time.
I'll be super-honest here - I didn't remember what Johannes looked like the second time I met him, and he looks quite distinctive on account of his medical condition, but I apparently didn't notice that the first time we met. Possibly I just don't look at people.
So, anyway, here I am at the Memoriad 2012, so let's see what the schedule holds for us. Tomorrow I intend to spend as much time as possible asleep in my four poster bed - I haven't spent enough time asleep lately, what with work and things, and a day of feeling like some kind of princess would be just the ticket.
Then on Saturday, we start at 10:00 with Speed Cards! That's the last event of a standard memory competition, but here we start with a bang! Two trials, all on computer software like everything else here (which is different but great), and how will I do? I've been able to do around 26-27 seconds in practice and get it right about half the time. Simon will certainly go faster than that, and there might be another couple who'll try it, but if I go for a safe-ish 30-second first attempt, and then go for something faster the second time, I should be in with a chance of a top-three place. Top three places in each event get the prize money, you see.
10:45 is mental multiplications. Yes, I'm doing the mental calculation events too, although the last time I practiced any of them was two and a half years ago - I won't do well.
12:00 we get names and faces, and well, see above. You get to choose the names of your own language, rather than having international ones, but that won't help me get a half-decent score.
After lunch, at 2:00, it's mental square roots. I've never been able to do that - I used to know in principle how it works, but I can't even remember that now. I'll try to revise tomorrow, but don't expect me to get a big score.
And at 3:15 it's hour numbers. I haven't practiced the hour-long memory disciplines for a very long time - when I'm at my best, I wouldn't expect to be in the top three among the field we've got here, so it would take an unexpectedly good performance and some disasters for the favourites for me to get anything out of this one.
Sunday starts at 9:00 with flash numbers - like spoken numbers, only they flash up on a screen instead. I'm not expecting big things here; I don't usually do spectacularly well at spoken numbers, but with an only-score-up-to-your-first-mistake rule, anything's possible. Two trials again, best score counts.
10:15 is mental additions. A bit of fun that I won't do very well at, again.
11:20 is mental calendar dates, which again I will just try my best at and see if I can still remember how to do it. I'm nowhere near the level of the world-beaters in any of the mental calculation events.
At 1:00, after lunch, we get Flash Anzan, an all-new thing where numbers flash up on screen very quickly and you have to add them together. Fun, but my score will be somewhere in the region of zero.
And finally at 2:50, we get 30-minute binary. Now, by all rights I should be the best in the world at this and win it comfortably. But I haven't done any proper regular training for a long time, so it's not impossible that I'll have a bit of a disaster. Even so, if I don't get in the top three here I'll be very disappointed, and if I don't win I'll be more than slightly annoyed with myself. I probably won't win, if I think about it logically, but I'll still be annoyed.
Right, now I'm going to have a bath, or a jacuzzi. I was going to do that as soon as I got up to my room, but then I saw I was staying in Buckingham-Palace-only-without-the-smell-of-corgis-and-royalty, I just had to blog about it. Hope you enjoyed!
Sunday, November 18, 2012
I'll fly away
So, on Thursday, while the Americans are preparing to eat their turkey, I'll be jetting off to the country of Turkey, and sunning myself in Antalya, where the temperature is going to be around twenty degrees! As I might have mentioned before, I hate cold weather. If I had the money, I'd spend my life travelling around the world and living permanently somewhere warm.
The whole money thing would be helped if I'd practiced memorising over these past few months, and won the actual prize money at the Memoriad, but I suppose it's too late to do anything about it now. Great Davis Cup final today, though - well worth the time I spent not practicing hour numbers. Anyway, I've got yet another TV appearance coming up in December, and that comes with a fee (a "we don't know how much it'll be" fee, but a fee nonetheless, and since my TV stardom is invariably done on a just-for-the-fun-of-it basis, anything is fine with me), so I'll be able to cope with joblessness for the remainder of the year - I'm finishing my current contract immediately before the world memory championship starts on December 14th.
The whole money thing would be helped if I'd practiced memorising over these past few months, and won the actual prize money at the Memoriad, but I suppose it's too late to do anything about it now. Great Davis Cup final today, though - well worth the time I spent not practicing hour numbers. Anyway, I've got yet another TV appearance coming up in December, and that comes with a fee (a "we don't know how much it'll be" fee, but a fee nonetheless, and since my TV stardom is invariably done on a just-for-the-fun-of-it basis, anything is fine with me), so I'll be able to cope with joblessness for the remainder of the year - I'm finishing my current contract immediately before the world memory championship starts on December 14th.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Oh, this is funny
Ray Keene's email address has been hacked. I just got the classic "Dear unnamed friend, I'm on holiday somewhere exotic and had my money stole" email from him. Nobody send Ray money, please!
Monday, November 05, 2012
Happy beardday!
You know what it's the anniversary of? My beard! Ten years ago, give or take a week or so, I decided that shaving every morning was too much of a hassle, and I'd probably look better with a beard, and I've never looked back ever since. Down with razors! I'm like some kind of person who insists on everyone having beards - there must have been someone like that in history, but the only one I can think of is Peter the Great, who insisted that no-one have a beard. Who was his pro-beard equivalent?
Sunday, November 04, 2012
Britain's Brightest
The TV filming was fun - something like five hours of filming for a 2½-minute segment on the show, but that's how these things always work out. No hints about what it involved, you'll just have to wait until next January/February, I'm afraid. But it'll definitely be worth it, I assure you.
Saturday, November 03, 2012
Try try try
Being old, I don't like the kind of music that's in the pop charts nowadays, but the other day I heard "Try" by Pink in a shop, and found it really catchy in a gets-stuck-in-your-head kind of way. I actually quite like it. In fact, Pink quite often does songs that I think are okay, and I should probably stop categorising her as "one of those awful manufactured modern singers whom I despise so much" and start thinking of her as a 'real' musician. Maybe I'll even listen to her albums. It seems only fair.
And while I'm being a grumpy old man, let me observe that a week on Thursday there are elections for the Police and Crime Commissioner for the county. Electing people to this kind of position is an extraordinarily stupid idea that I'm sure the Americans are somehow to blame for (so shame on you, all my American readers. Shame on you.) and the Nottinghamshire Police's website impressively tells visitors that "Exactly how the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) will work in practice is yet to be finalised," so it's good to know that the £75,000 salary will be well-spent. I should have stood for election, shouldn't I? I'm always on the lookout for people who will pay me for doing nothing. And since 99% of the people in Nottinghamshire don't know the election's even happening, I'm sure I could have drummed up enough support to win in a landslide.
I wholeheartedly endorse the only candidate who's so far bothered to put a leaflet through my door, and thus the only one I know exists - Dr Raj Chandran. He's a former Police Surgeon, Mayor of Gedling, Territorial Army Major and recently retired GP, which doesn't sound like a particularly great CV for someone wanting to be in charge of the police, but it's probably better than the other candidates. And more importantly, I've scanned the whole leaflet, and the spelling and punctuation are all correct, though he does seem fond of using Capital Letters more than most sane people do. His ideas seem more or less sensible, although I'm not sure about the insistence that the police need more horses, in order to "bring back the honour of Nottinghamshire".
If and when any other candidate sees fit to let me know they're running, I might change my recommendation, but until then, I urge everyone in Nottinghamshire to go out and vote for this guy - remember, if you don't vote, then some other uninformed idiot will, and it'll be your fault!
Right, I'm going to London to be a TV star. It won't be on telly until some time early next year, but I'll let you know in plenty of time to set your video recorders. Being old, I assume everyone still uses video recorders.
And while I'm being a grumpy old man, let me observe that a week on Thursday there are elections for the Police and Crime Commissioner for the county. Electing people to this kind of position is an extraordinarily stupid idea that I'm sure the Americans are somehow to blame for (so shame on you, all my American readers. Shame on you.) and the Nottinghamshire Police's website impressively tells visitors that "Exactly how the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) will work in practice is yet to be finalised," so it's good to know that the £75,000 salary will be well-spent. I should have stood for election, shouldn't I? I'm always on the lookout for people who will pay me for doing nothing. And since 99% of the people in Nottinghamshire don't know the election's even happening, I'm sure I could have drummed up enough support to win in a landslide.
I wholeheartedly endorse the only candidate who's so far bothered to put a leaflet through my door, and thus the only one I know exists - Dr Raj Chandran. He's a former Police Surgeon, Mayor of Gedling, Territorial Army Major and recently retired GP, which doesn't sound like a particularly great CV for someone wanting to be in charge of the police, but it's probably better than the other candidates. And more importantly, I've scanned the whole leaflet, and the spelling and punctuation are all correct, though he does seem fond of using Capital Letters more than most sane people do. His ideas seem more or less sensible, although I'm not sure about the insistence that the police need more horses, in order to "bring back the honour of Nottinghamshire".
If and when any other candidate sees fit to let me know they're running, I might change my recommendation, but until then, I urge everyone in Nottinghamshire to go out and vote for this guy - remember, if you don't vote, then some other uninformed idiot will, and it'll be your fault!
Right, I'm going to London to be a TV star. It won't be on telly until some time early next year, but I'll let you know in plenty of time to set your video recorders. Being old, I assume everyone still uses video recorders.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
It's all kicking off
It's been a while since I was asked to do a memory-celebrity kind of thing, but the offers are coming thick and fast all of a sudden! There's an Italian TV show that I'm probably not going to be able to do, a BBC show that I'm going to be filming on Saturday, and a real movie that'll be shown in cinemas and everything (I'm told by the people making it, anyway) about this year's world championships. The latter two will both involve some kind of animated cartoon representations of memory journeys, too, which is awesome! There should be a lot more cartoons about memory.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Fun fun fun
The new series of Red Dwarf has been uniformly and embarrassingly awful... until this week's episode, which was really really good! Clever in a silly way and funny just like it used to be, however many decades ago it was when it was at its best! I'm looking forward to more now!
Monday, October 22, 2012
Weight off my mind
I hadn’t realised just how much time I’d spent making sure everything was ready for the memory championship these last few weeks, but I got an amazing sense of job-done when it was finished, and devoted a lot of time to planning what to do now that I’m not so busy.
The plan is to prepare for the Memoriad, which is only a month away. Practice 30-minute binary in the evenings if I can, and the hour numbers at weekends. If I’m to have any chance of not embarrassing myself horribly, I really need to get into the habit of doing marathon memory disciplines again.
Someone, possibly Jonas, reminded me on Saturday that when I was first starting out practicing memory, I only ever practiced the marathon disciplines. This is true, but it’s something that I’d completely forgotten - it comes to something when other people you’ve never met before remember more about your daily doings than you do yourself. Even so, it’s a sensible thing to do, and I think I’d like to revert to that habit. If you can do an hour numbers, you can do a five-minute numbers too, and quite fast at that. Getting accustomed to long periods of concentration is the key.
I’m talking as if I’m really back to regular, enthusiastic memory practice, but don’t get too excited yet. We’ll see how it goes.
The plan is to prepare for the Memoriad, which is only a month away. Practice 30-minute binary in the evenings if I can, and the hour numbers at weekends. If I’m to have any chance of not embarrassing myself horribly, I really need to get into the habit of doing marathon memory disciplines again.
Someone, possibly Jonas, reminded me on Saturday that when I was first starting out practicing memory, I only ever practiced the marathon disciplines. This is true, but it’s something that I’d completely forgotten - it comes to something when other people you’ve never met before remember more about your daily doings than you do yourself. Even so, it’s a sensible thing to do, and I think I’d like to revert to that habit. If you can do an hour numbers, you can do a five-minute numbers too, and quite fast at that. Getting accustomed to long periods of concentration is the key.
I’m talking as if I’m really back to regular, enthusiastic memory practice, but don’t get too excited yet. We’ll see how it goes.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Friendly!
And what a great Friendly Memory Championship it was, too! I had the usual mix of nationalities staying at my place on Friday night - Dai and John up from the Welsh valleys, and newcomer Jérôme all the way from Rennes, plus other newcomer Nick all the way originally from Greece, although he lives in England nowadays.
Dai, in typical Dai fashion, had invited Nick to sleep in my flat on the strength of a couple of messages exchanged on Facebook - "I'm not sure if it's a man or a woman," he cheerfully confessed. But in typical Me fashion, I said that was fine, and in typical memory-competitor fashion Nick turned out to be a perfectly nice person and not some kind of brutally-murder-you-all-while-you-sleep type, so everything was okay. He's a man, by the way.
Team Sweden, meanwhile (Idriz and two relative newcomers Jonas and Marwin who'd been really impressive at the Swedish championship last month, plus two embedded journalists) had got to their hotel at four in the morning, five hours before the competition was due to start. It seems to have affected Idriz, who was driving, more than the other two, so I assume they had more chance for forty winks here and there. And finally, Matteo was staying in the Rockaway hotel just over the road from my place, which he says is quite extraordinarily nice and friendly, so I'll be recommending that as a place to stay for any future competitions!
Dai and John had brought collapsible sunbeds to sleep on, although one of them turned out to be more permanently collapsible under the weight of three people sitting on it on Friday night. But still, it was perfectly serviceable, and with my little settee and my nice spare bed, nobody even had to sleep on the floor!
Phil drove down on Saturday morning to complete the set, and we all gathered at the always-wonderful Attenborough Nature Centre for the competition! Nobody at the centre knew there was a competition happening, but soon enough the always-awesome guy in charge (whose name I'm fairly sure is Tim, but I think I've met him too many times now to ask him to confirm his name, so I'll just have to hope somebody else says "Hi, Tim," within my earshot, so I know for sure) arrived and sorted everything out. As always, great hospitality, great lunch, great everything!
The whole competition went perfectly smoothly, and even finished well before six o'clock - I'd been confidently expecting to run late, because the recall times have been extended here and there since last year, as has the number of digits in spoken numbers. But it was all quick and flawless, we finished the fifth discipline exactly five minutes before the time we'd ordered lunch, and we finished the speed cards with plenty of time for congratulations and Swedish TV interviews afterwards!
The star of the show was the seriously awesome Jonas von Essen, who won by a country mile. He particularly excelled in abstract images, attempting the whole 475 of them and ending up with a nearly-record-breaking score of 354, and also a 204 in the spoken numbers. He ended up with 5930 points, which could have been even better had he managed to record a time in speed cards at the end - like I often do in this kind of situation, he made tiny but annoying mistakes in both attempts. Still, that moves him up to 13th in the world rankings, with a definite threat of breaking into the top ten at the WMC in December.
Between him and Marwin, who broke a Swedish record or two, even Idriz was nearly getting tired of enthusing that it was the first time a Swede had achieved such-and-such. Nearly, but not quite. Everyone should also congratulate Jérôme, who memorised a pack of cards in just over two minutes in his first ever competition!
After the championship, we followed the time-honoured tradition of going to the pub and talking about memory, before going to bed. Team Sweden, for whom sleep is clearly an optional kind of thing, had to leave at about one o'clock in the morning to catch their plane home from Stansted, while the journalists were last seen heading to a hotel in Oxford somewhere - I'm sure they all got back fine in the end.
Next year's competition will probably move back to its May spot in the schedule, if that doesn't clash with anything else. Book your plane tickets now!
(Not really)
Dai, in typical Dai fashion, had invited Nick to sleep in my flat on the strength of a couple of messages exchanged on Facebook - "I'm not sure if it's a man or a woman," he cheerfully confessed. But in typical Me fashion, I said that was fine, and in typical memory-competitor fashion Nick turned out to be a perfectly nice person and not some kind of brutally-murder-you-all-while-you-sleep type, so everything was okay. He's a man, by the way.
Team Sweden, meanwhile (Idriz and two relative newcomers Jonas and Marwin who'd been really impressive at the Swedish championship last month, plus two embedded journalists) had got to their hotel at four in the morning, five hours before the competition was due to start. It seems to have affected Idriz, who was driving, more than the other two, so I assume they had more chance for forty winks here and there. And finally, Matteo was staying in the Rockaway hotel just over the road from my place, which he says is quite extraordinarily nice and friendly, so I'll be recommending that as a place to stay for any future competitions!
Dai and John had brought collapsible sunbeds to sleep on, although one of them turned out to be more permanently collapsible under the weight of three people sitting on it on Friday night. But still, it was perfectly serviceable, and with my little settee and my nice spare bed, nobody even had to sleep on the floor!
Phil drove down on Saturday morning to complete the set, and we all gathered at the always-wonderful Attenborough Nature Centre for the competition! Nobody at the centre knew there was a competition happening, but soon enough the always-awesome guy in charge (whose name I'm fairly sure is Tim, but I think I've met him too many times now to ask him to confirm his name, so I'll just have to hope somebody else says "Hi, Tim," within my earshot, so I know for sure) arrived and sorted everything out. As always, great hospitality, great lunch, great everything!
The whole competition went perfectly smoothly, and even finished well before six o'clock - I'd been confidently expecting to run late, because the recall times have been extended here and there since last year, as has the number of digits in spoken numbers. But it was all quick and flawless, we finished the fifth discipline exactly five minutes before the time we'd ordered lunch, and we finished the speed cards with plenty of time for congratulations and Swedish TV interviews afterwards!
The star of the show was the seriously awesome Jonas von Essen, who won by a country mile. He particularly excelled in abstract images, attempting the whole 475 of them and ending up with a nearly-record-breaking score of 354, and also a 204 in the spoken numbers. He ended up with 5930 points, which could have been even better had he managed to record a time in speed cards at the end - like I often do in this kind of situation, he made tiny but annoying mistakes in both attempts. Still, that moves him up to 13th in the world rankings, with a definite threat of breaking into the top ten at the WMC in December.
Between him and Marwin, who broke a Swedish record or two, even Idriz was nearly getting tired of enthusing that it was the first time a Swede had achieved such-and-such. Nearly, but not quite. Everyone should also congratulate Jérôme, who memorised a pack of cards in just over two minutes in his first ever competition!
After the championship, we followed the time-honoured tradition of going to the pub and talking about memory, before going to bed. Team Sweden, for whom sleep is clearly an optional kind of thing, had to leave at about one o'clock in the morning to catch their plane home from Stansted, while the journalists were last seen heading to a hotel in Oxford somewhere - I'm sure they all got back fine in the end.
Next year's competition will probably move back to its May spot in the schedule, if that doesn't clash with anything else. Book your plane tickets now!
(Not really)
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Ben Pridmore's birthday is today
That's what Facebook tells me, anyway. But after a moment of confusion, I realised it was talking about that other Ben Pridmore I'm friends with, the one who's ten times cooler than me and is a fireman who used to have dreadlocks (we've never met, I only know him from occasional snippets of information in his Facebook status). I always forget his birthday is practically the same day as mine until I get this annual reminder.
My birthday is tomorrow. You can give me a present if you want.
My birthday is tomorrow. You can give me a present if you want.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Ra ra ra
It's not something that's really featured in my life recently, but I felt the need to vent my annoyance with books that tell you how to pronounce Japanese. Specifically, the Japanese r-sound, which I'm reliably told is sort of half-way between a 'r' and a 'l'.
That's just silly, isn't it? There isn't some kind of sliding scale with 'r' at one end and 'l' at the other. It's either one or the other. After some experimentation, involving saying "ra la la ra" to myself repeatedly, I can say with some confidence that you touch the roof of your mouth with your tongue to say 'la', and don't to say 'ra'.
In my experience, Japanese people either say 'r' or 'l', depending what they feel like at any given moment, and then insist that they make the same sound every time. Or that's how it seems to my English-speaking ears, anyway. I just say 'l', seeing as I always have a problem with that other sound. And saying 'w' instead of 'r' in Japanese is at least 50% more likely to lead to saying an actual different word, probably. I haven't checked, but it's best to avoid it anyway.
That's just silly, isn't it? There isn't some kind of sliding scale with 'r' at one end and 'l' at the other. It's either one or the other. After some experimentation, involving saying "ra la la ra" to myself repeatedly, I can say with some confidence that you touch the roof of your mouth with your tongue to say 'la', and don't to say 'ra'.
In my experience, Japanese people either say 'r' or 'l', depending what they feel like at any given moment, and then insist that they make the same sound every time. Or that's how it seems to my English-speaking ears, anyway. I just say 'l', seeing as I always have a problem with that other sound. And saying 'w' instead of 'r' in Japanese is at least 50% more likely to lead to saying an actual different word, probably. I haven't checked, but it's best to avoid it anyway.
Monday, October 08, 2012
Birthday work
It's my birthday on Sunday, yay. As I think I mentioned last year, I've always thought 36 is sort of a cool age to be, for some reason. It sounds rugged. Much better than 35! So I'm looking forward to this next year of my life!
Of course, my foolish 35-year-old planning has left me not really able to do anything for my birthday, because the Friendly Memory Championship (formerly known as the Cambridge Memory Championship) is happening on Saturday 20th, meaning that this coming weekend has to be the highlight of any memory-competition-organiser's year: Printing Things Out Weekend. All those memorisation papers. If I'd thought about it, I would've done it last weekend, but I never think about things. It's bad for you.
Of course, my foolish 35-year-old planning has left me not really able to do anything for my birthday, because the Friendly Memory Championship (formerly known as the Cambridge Memory Championship) is happening on Saturday 20th, meaning that this coming weekend has to be the highlight of any memory-competition-organiser's year: Printing Things Out Weekend. All those memorisation papers. If I'd thought about it, I would've done it last weekend, but I never think about things. It's bad for you.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Instincts
My horoscope says that now is the time to start following my instincts and stop worrying about pleasing others. This is probably a bad thing, because my instincts right now are quite strongly telling me to get on a flight to Las Vegas or anywhere that isn't in this miserable, rainy country, and not come back until it's summer. And really, my bank account won't stand for that.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Right, this looks like the button that fixes everything
It is good to have Doctor Who back on our screens - it really needs to be on at least 26 weeks a year, preferably more, and when I'm the director general of the BBC that'll be the first (and probably only) thing I do. And it's been pretty good, all in all. But I do wish they'd put a bit more effort into the plots of episodes like tonight's. Okay, you want to do one that focuses on the characters rather than the story, which is fine (especially with Amy and Rory, who continue to be the best companions ever - isn't this kind of episode with them so very much better than the sub-soap-opera stuff Rose and Mickey occasionally indulged in?), but really, another episode with a weird alien invasion that attacks people all over the world but which the Doctor solves by pressing the 'put everything back the way it was' button? They're not even trying. The ending was so perfunctory, it almost-but-not-quite got in the way of the episode being really a lot of fun!
Thursday, September 20, 2012
My minds are ganging up on me
I've had dreams about memory competitions (or at least about memorising things in a competition-like format) for the last two nights. And what with having said yesterday that I should be practicing more, it's clear that my conscious and subconscious minds want me to do some serious memory training. So that's the plan for this weekend. I'll let you know how it turns out.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Literature
I've been reading Frankenstein on the train journey to work in the morning - awesome book, and puts me in the mood to write a big long essay about it at the weekend, but I can't help feeling that I should be doing memory stuff. The whole me-being-good-at-memory-competitions thing came about because I spent long train journeys to and from work learning my original Ben-system list of images, way back in 2003. I should be doing the same thing again. But, much like Victor Frankenstein found, creating the first monster when you're all enthusiastic about something that's never been done before is much easier than creating the second one, when you're all horrified by your own creation and fearful for the fate of the entire human race.
Well, I wouldn't go that far, but I'm not as motivated any more. Maybe I should get a new hobby instead.
Well, I wouldn't go that far, but I'm not as motivated any more. Maybe I should get a new hobby instead.
Monday, September 17, 2012
One more othello post
I didn't mention that I came either fifth or sixth, depending on whether Pierluigi had a better BQ than me, which he probably had. Well above the half-way mark that I normally aim for, although not high enough to get me to the world championship unless practically everyone else doesn't want to go - and since it's in Holland this year, everyone does.
For the benefit of people who don't know much about othello, yes, it's the one that sort of looks like Go, only with discs that are black on one side and white on the other. More people call it reversi nowadays, which is the older, non-trademarked name. There's a world championship every year which three people from each country qualify for - in this country it's the top two in the nationals, plus the winner of the British Grand Prix, a series of smaller tournaments that I hardly went to any of this year, for one reason or another.
As for "BQ", that stands for Brightwell Quotient, the tie-breaking calculation for people who finish a tournament with the same number of wins. It's complicated, and made a teensy bit more so by the long-standing tradition that all that kind of thing at the nationals is done by Adelaide with pencil and paper, rather than one of those new-fangled computer things. This year it was necessary to work out the BQ for the three women who finished equal on points, so as to decide which two of them played-off for the spot on the women's team at the world championship - I double-checked Adelaide's calculations, with the aid of numerous people looking over my shoulder and pointing out my basic arithmetical errors (I multiplied 41 by 7 and got 288 at one point). A hard day-and-a-half's othelloing is very tiring and brain-draining.
For the benefit of people who don't know much about othello, yes, it's the one that sort of looks like Go, only with discs that are black on one side and white on the other. More people call it reversi nowadays, which is the older, non-trademarked name. There's a world championship every year which three people from each country qualify for - in this country it's the top two in the nationals, plus the winner of the British Grand Prix, a series of smaller tournaments that I hardly went to any of this year, for one reason or another.
As for "BQ", that stands for Brightwell Quotient, the tie-breaking calculation for people who finish a tournament with the same number of wins. It's complicated, and made a teensy bit more so by the long-standing tradition that all that kind of thing at the nationals is done by Adelaide with pencil and paper, rather than one of those new-fangled computer things. This year it was necessary to work out the BQ for the three women who finished equal on points, so as to decide which two of them played-off for the spot on the women's team at the world championship - I double-checked Adelaide's calculations, with the aid of numerous people looking over my shoulder and pointing out my basic arithmetical errors (I multiplied 41 by 7 and got 288 at one point). A hard day-and-a-half's othelloing is very tiring and brain-draining.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Othello amongst the ducks
It was a great Nationals, all in all! Which is good, because I was organising it, and I'd hate everyone to blame me when things go wrong. Of course, 'organising' in this case just means finding a venue and picking somewhere for us to eat on Saturday night, but that bit all went okay, more or less - we went to the Victoria, which turns out to disapprove of under-18s being there after 8pm (I'd never noticed that before), and also has trains going past noisily at frequent intervals, which scared the bejabers out of Imre the first couple of times it happened. But a good time was had by all, and that's what matters.
As for my performance, it was surprisingly good! I won five games out of nine, including a rather good one against Iain Barrass, and wasn't completely thrashed in any of the four I lost, except the one against Borja Moreno - and he went on to win the championship without losing a game, so I don't mind that much.
And, with the Nationals being on my doorstep this year, I'm at home already and it's five o'clock! Yay!
As for my performance, it was surprisingly good! I won five games out of nine, including a rather good one against Iain Barrass, and wasn't completely thrashed in any of the four I lost, except the one against Borja Moreno - and he went on to win the championship without losing a game, so I don't mind that much.
And, with the Nationals being on my doorstep this year, I'm at home already and it's five o'clock! Yay!
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