Technical question

Why doesn't my internet explorer auto-redirect me on some web pages that really want me to be redirected? I bet it's some kind of security setting. This stupid laptop is riddled with security programs and settings and things. Okay, it stops people using my computer for evil purposes, probably, but it's mildly annoying when it does things like this and I don't know how to stop it.

Speaking of people using computers for evil purposes, I decided to count up all the emails I get in my spam folder from the Bank of Africa in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso offering a share of some vast fortune left in the bank by a wealthy foreigner. I've had five different ones in the last two days, the most entertaining being the "very huge sum of money belonging to a deceased person Mr.Emmanuel Etukudo who died on May 2nd, 2004 in a gassy car accident with his entire family on there way back from Bobo-Dioulasso the formal capital city of Burkina-Faso, and the fund has been dormant in his account with this Bank without any claim of the fund in our custody either from his family or relation before our discovery to this development."

I hope I'm never involved in a gassy car accident, it sounds nasty. You know, I should create phishing emails for a living. I sometimes get some that I think would really work if only the creators had put a little bit more effort into it. I could make a really convincing one and con lots of stupid people out of lots of money. You know, if I had someone else on my team who could do HTML and things, obviously...

Nearly

The first game could easily have been a draw if not for one lucky goal, and Portugal did indeed win easily. See, I'm great at predicting football results. I'm a little less good at making lunch, possibly, having filled the flat with thick, acrid smoke while cooking chicken kievs, but I think the place is mostly aired out now, and the damage to my lungs probably wasn't too severe.

Oh, and Doctor Who tonight was complete gibberish. Complete gibberish that looked on the surface like intelligent, thoughtful and different semi-thriller drama, but think about any element of the plot for more than five seconds and it all falls apart.

Gambolling in the fields

An extra early-afternoon pre-kickoff blog today. In a probably vain attempt to make the England-free European Championship in some way interesting to me, and since I haven't had a bet on a football game since leaving Adams six years ago, and since gambling is the last refuge of the unemployed layabout, I've decided to have a flutter on the first three days of games. My picks are as follows:

Switzerland - Czech Republic draw (all sane logic suggests that the Czechs should win this one without any trouble, but it's the first game, the home fans will be excitable and it'll probably be an anticlimactic 0-0)

Portugal to beat Turkey (they could win this one with their eyes closed, barring any kind of injury to Ronaldo)

Croatia to beat Austria (Austria are hopeless and should lose every game without too much difficulty)

Germany to beat Poland (Poland aren't that bad, actually, but Germany should overwhelm them in the end. I'm thinking a late goal just when the Germans are starting to panic)

Romania to beat France (France have an amazing ability to mess up games like this, and I'm confident they can do it again)

Holland - Italy draw (another game that'll have lots of hype and very little action)

So now you can all follow along and see how wildly inaccurate my predictions are, as a substitute for getting excited about England's failure to win the championship. Yay!

Also, my tip to win - Greece. Nobody thought they had a chance four years ago, and strangely enough, nobody thinks they've got a chance this time either, although they're playing really well, they've still got the same great manager and a lot of the same great team, and they're looking like they could go far.

Boxes

I unpacked my big box of important papers and stuff the other day, and now the contents are sitting in the middle of my living room in a big, densely packed pile at least three times the size of the box they came out of. It's magic. I did find lots of cool stuff while failing to find what I was looking for in the first place - the posh photos I had taken in 2003, so now I can send one to that guy who wanted an autographed picture of me; my copy of Othello Brief & Basic that I thought I must have lent to someone else and lost long ago (maybe I'll donate it back to the BOF, we're running out of copies and can't get any new ones); lots of wild-west-themed cardboard accessories left over from that party many years ago (fun party, we need to have another one); and even my CIMA certificate so that any prospective employer who demands proof that I'm qualified won't have to just take my word for it. All these discoveries are well worth the inconvenience of no longer being able to see my living room floor.

Anyway, a weekend of memory training is coming up. I'm trying to get into the kind of training schedule I would be following if I was working (as, with any luck, I will be before too long - another interview on Tuesday, out Nottingham way this time), and that means long-discipline practice sessions every weekend I haven't got anything better to do. And there aren't many such weekends between now and Tuttlingen - next weekend I have the delights of my brother's fancy-dress thirtieth-birthday party (transvestism encouraged) and then, if I do end up having the money, there are other appointments for at least two of the weekends between now and the end of July. So it's important to get a good bit of training in this weekend in the 30-minute events and also in abstract images, trying to get that system up and running effectively. Let's make 2008 the year of me winning memory competitions, instead of coming second!

My stars!

On the train this morning I read my horoscope in the free paper, and it said something along the lines of "everything's topsy-turvy today, people you expect to be nice to you are nasty, and vice versa". And funnily enough, after I got back home I got a call from the bank - not the department of complaining about people who exceed their overdraft limit (which is apparently outsourced to India) who called me the other day, but the department of calling for a friendly chat and offering long-term customers credit cards and increased overdrafts (based at the local branch) who call once a year or so. I'd sorted out the overdraft miscalculation with some transfer of funds from that credit card I never use, and the guy who called me seemed blissfully unaware that I'd gone over the limit in the first place, calling me a valued and reliable customer and things like that. I didn't take him up on the offer of another credit card or a bigger overdraft or anything-else-we-can-do-to-make-your-banking-experience-more-satisfactory, but he still wasn't unpleasant about it.

So I've had the niceness from people I expect to be nasty (also a cheque from my mother, but if I list her as 'people I expect to be nasty' it would make me seem like a horribly ungrateful son, so I won't - thanks, Mum!) but I'm still waiting for the nastiness from people I expect to be nice to me. The interview today went fine, without any nastiness, so who's going to be mean to me? It's going to be the person I least expect, according to the horoscope. I'm a nervous wreck with anticipation...

Plans for the future

Interview tomorrow morning in, funnily enough, Oadby, just down the road from the church where I've lost many an othello game. Really good job for a company that I couldn't say anything bad about even if I didn't have this self-imposed ban on talking about companies I potentially work for - smallish family company that has a super-professional-looking website with perfect spelling, grammar and punctuation! What more could a friendly and pedantic accountant want in life?

So let's talk memory instead. I did a practice 30-minute cards this evening, attempting 21 packs and getting 14 right. But I really wasn't far off with the other seven, and I'm contemplating trying 21 at the German championship in just under two months' time. Now, some might say that would be unnecessarily risky (and others might describe it as 'ludicrously stupid') when I can attempt 18 and be reasonably confident of only making one or two mistakes and beating everyone else by some margin... but I wanna break records and it's pretty unlikely I'm going to break my new record of 17 if I only attempt 18.

Maybe I'll do a bit more practice and see how it goes. I'd hate to get even more of a reputation as the kind of person who loses big championships by trying to show off...

Drifters!

I've been extremely unhappy ever since Drifter chocolate-toffee-wafer bars stopped being available, so I was absolutely delighted to find them on sale in a newsagent's in Derby today. I think they were new ones, too, rather than leftover stock from last year, so I'm hopeful of seeing a new influx of my favourite unhealthy snack in the shops soon!

Really, I couldn't be happier - unless of course I had a job and money to put in the bank and stop them complaining about me going over my overdraft limit. Anyone got a bit of spare change that you might want to lend me until I'm back on my feet?

Job advertisements I considered

Dog Congratulator
Salary: £50k + car + donkey
Location: Biggleswade
Start date: June 2009

An experienced Dog Congratulator is required for a busy company located directly above Biggleswade town centre. Applicants should have at least three years' experience, preferably of congratulating dogs although experienced metalworkers will also be considered. The successful applicant will be between five foot eight and five foot eleven in height, admire the works of Chopin and disapprove of radio. Holders of a degree in dog congratulation need not apply.

Man
Salary: 3
Location: Biggleswade
Start date: Last week

A man is required to perform certain duties at a hockey stick and artificial dolphin factory in western Biggleswade. No experience necessary, but applicants must have a minimum of three GCSEs grade G or above. Five days holiday per year, uniform provided on Tuesdays. We are an equal opportunities employer, but no applications from women will be accepted.

Horse
Salary: oats
Location: Biggleswade
Start date: December 2037

A horse, a horse, our kingdom for a horse. Needed by a small company of financial consultants/dressmakers in Biggleswade. Duties include eating grass, swatting flies with tail and neighing. Applicants must have legs, tail, eyes and be a horse.

Management Accountant
Salary: none
Location: Giggleswick
Start date: immediate

A qualified and experienced Management Accountant is required for a friendly family company, not located in Biggleswade. Part-qualified CIMA preferred, good Excel skills and knowledge of Sage Line 50 essential. Good package except for lack of monetary payment. The successful applicant will be remorselessly flogged by a cruel slavedriver while attempting to perform his/her duties. All applications must be made by carrier pigeon or via a trained gorilla-impersonator. This job requires the wearing of clothes.

Right, job-hunting time

I've had more than enough of being unemployed. I'm going to spend tomorrow applying for jobs left, right and centre. I don't care how vaguely related to management accounts they are, if it's a job, anywhere in the country, it's going to get my CV. I'll probably end up as a window cleaner by accident and discover that it's the perfect job I've always been looking for.

Darkness and light

Hmm, I might take back what I said about it being good that Steven Moffat is taking over as executive producer of Doctor Who - "Silence In The Library" makes it look like he's really running out of ideas. It was a sort of mishmash of elements of the previous stories he's written, it wasn't scary like it was trying to be, and it was all very base-under-siege.

Still, to look on the bright side, we had a fun day of othello today here in Derby. Eight players, which is just perfect for a seven-round tournament because it doesn't need me to faff about with pairings and Swissness and byes. Everything worked out the way it should - the venue was very nice as usual (although rather more expensive than the income from entry fees), I hadn't forgotten to bring the boards, pieces, clocks, transcript sheets, list of people whose membership had expired, pens, round-robin pairings table or anything important. I had forgotten to bring tea and coffee, but since I don't drink the stuff, I wasn't inconvenienced. And since there's a Happy Shopper just down the road, neither was anyone else.

I beat David, which I always seem to do these days, and lost to Roy, which I also invariably seem to do, and ended up with four wins out of seven in total. I seem to have settled back into a happy mediocrity at othello tournaments now, which I'm perfectly happy with. David and Iain ended up tied for first place, with 6 wins each, and Geoff third with 5. The BGP is really quite exciting this year, even though I'm not in contention, with Iain a mere 20 points ahead of David going into the last regional in Farnborough on June 21st. Which I may or may not go to, depending on whether I've got any money by that time.

Classified ad

I got this wonderful little A6-size piece of card through the letterbox this morning:

I'm really thrilled to know that the first man to combine the powers of spirituality lives as nearby as Leicester. Maybe I'll pop round there tomorrow morning and get him to cast a spell to give me luck in the othello. I need a new lucky charm of some kind - ever since tidying my flat up last week, I've been unable to find my lucky Zoom-Zoom T-shirt. For the last day of the memory competition, I had to wear the original Zoom-Zoom shirt, which I retired a couple of years ago because it's sadly more hole than shirt these days and doesn't so much cover my torso as hang in rags from my neck.

Ooh, maybe Mr. Wahab can cast a powerful spell to help me find my lucky shirt!

Dedication, that's what you need

I have a feeling I might have used that title before, but I'm too lazy to check. One thing I'm not too lazy to do, though, is memory practice! I'm very much in the mood for it now, and I'm quite keen to go to Germany in July and break some world records. Specifically, I think it would be rather groovy to break the world record in the three half-hour disciplines that traditionally make up the first day of the competition - binary, cards and numbers, not necessarily in that order (I'm also too lazy to look up the timetable). I think that's an achievable goal, just about, if I'm really on super-top form, and it'd certainly get people talking. Talking about how great I am, too, which is the best kind of talking.

In all seriousness, I do really want to get the record for half-hour numbers or speed numbers. It bugs me that I don't hold any of the numbers records any more - I see it as a failing of "the Ben system" that it doesn't give me any kind of advantage over my rivals when it comes to numbers (unlike binary and cards, where it's really really great). But I've never been able to think of a way to improve my system and give myself an edge over the likes of Gunther and Andi. Maybe it'll come to me in a flash of inspiration some day. Or maybe I'll just work at it the old-fashioned way and beat the Gunthers of this world by dint of traditional elbow-grease. I'm sure I can manage to be only selectively lazy if I really put my mind to it.

Tello

It's the first-ever-as-far-as-I-know Derby Regional othello tournament this Saturday. Yay! And with any luck, there'll be more competitors at that than turned up for the memory competition last weekend. In fact, if you're reading this, I command you to come along and play othello! No excuses!

All good Things...

I've been thinking. I've been told off more than once just lately for certain ill-advised blog entries of mine, and it's making me think that I should either a) stop occasionally saying cruel and hurtful things about people or institutions; or b) start blogging in a slightly less public way.

So I'm considering moving Zoomy's Thing to my LiveJournal account (which exists solely in order to access certain people's friends-only journals), setting it to friends-only and accepting friend requests from anyone who chooses to make one. That way everyone who wants to read my ramblings will still have a chance to, this site will still be here so new readers will still be able to stumble across it and then read the further adventures on LJ, and if I, for example, choose to mercilessly mock a school's website's punctuation and philosophy, I'll be able to do so without them relaying reprimands to me via Phil at memory competitions.

What do my loyal readers think about the pros and cons of this approach? I know some of you are the shy, retiring types who might not want to create a LJ account, friend me and thus identify yourself, but I assure you it won't be any trouble. Besides, this is post number 976 on Blogger, and I think it would be cool to finish here on a nice round 1000, and move over to a brand new adventure.

Making up for lost time

Okay, I've done very little blogging for the last several days, for various reasons, so tonight you get a whole lot. Before I start talking about something that some of my readers might possibly want to hear, could I please direct your attention here? It's the E Nesbit short story "The Cockatoucan", which I've just discovered is available online and read for the first time. I've been looking for it (in my usual passive way of looking for things, which means I've been sitting around and waiting for it to fall into my lap) for quite some time, since I heard that it is practically the only work of fiction in the English language to feature a character called Pridmore.

Now that I've read it, I can say that it's not Nesbit's best work, but I urge you to go and read it anyway, just for the unusual Pridmore-content. She's an unpleasant nursemaid who gets turned into an Automatic Nagging Machine.

And while we're talking about children's books, I noticed today that my copy of "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" has an obvious edit in it that I've somehow never spotted before - on page 53, "This is not good and I know why. A mouse has cut the wire. Good-bye!" The 'good-bye' is in a slightly different font and has the tell-tale faint rectangular outline around it that shows it's been literally cut-and-pasted on top of the original text.

A quick Google search for "a mouse has cut the wire" shows that roughly half of the results say "Good-by" after it. Have any of my readers got an original edition and can confirm that the recent edition amended the outdated spelling? I'll feel very clever if you can tell me I'm right to make that deduction.

Right, was there something else you wanted to know about? Oh, yes, the Derby Memory Championship. The excitement started on Friday night, when Nik (who was born in Russia, lived most of his life in Norway and is now over here studying) and Dai (who's Welsh) arrived at my place, after an extensive and very enjoyable day's filming with the ITV people. It's going to be a very fun programme. I had successfully cleared just enough floor space to accommodate them both, and even though I'd never met either of them in real life before, neither of them turned out to be the kind of person who'd murder me in my bed, which was nice.

We set off for the community centre bright and early, which was a good thing since we went in Dai's car and I gave some very bad directions. But when we eventually found the place, everything went smoothly from then on. We were joined by our very select crowd of competitors - Gaby and Dagfinn, who can take credit for the competition not being cancelled when it became clear that nobody else was going to turn up, since they'd already booked their flights and hotels and in Gaby's case her week-long sightseeing holiday in Britain - and Phil, bearing a big box of memorisation and recall papers provided by James Paterson. My gratitude to both of them is overwhelming.

The actual competition went pretty well for me. I'm completely out of practice at spending a whole weekend memorising, but I managed to keep the right mental state going anyway, once I'd warmed up a bit - I only managed mediocre results in the random words and binary, but after skipping names and faces to do a final set of interviews with the TV crew, I produced a quite respectable 995 in 30-minute numbers, which I haven't practiced at all. I'm sure I can do 1200 or so in Germany with just a little bit more effort in the meantime. Then I did the TV-special world record attempt with Ray Keene and various spectators in attendance, which I'm going to refrain from talking about since the TV people want it to be a surprise. Although the show won't be on TV till later this year, by which time there will hopefully have been other memory-related headlines.

That was the end of the first day's excitement, and we went to Burger King to celebrate. Nik was reluctant, since he tries to eat healthy food as much as possible (people with that attitude should probably stay away from me at memory competitions), but faced with not only my insistence that junk food is very much the way to go if you want to be a great memoriser, but also Dagfinn's enthusiastic agreement and reportedly his psychologist wife's wholehearted condoning of my 'eat food that makes you happy and you'll do better in life' philosophy, he gave in and had a bacon double cheeseburger. A victory for the forces of fast food! We'll soon have wiped all that omega-3 stuff out of existence!

Sunday, being free from the stress of TV cameras, was quieter and simpler, but no less interesting. I started off with a new record of 17 packs in 30-minute cards (attempting 18 and the only problems came right at the end of the 18th pack), I gave my new abstract images system its first trial run and got a personal best of 142 - with a bit more work, it's going to be really good, I'm sure - and followed it up with an acceptable 320 in speed numbers and a decent 90 in historic dates. I still want to get those two world records back, but it'll have to wait until later this year. I had to skip the spoken numbers event - there'd been a problem with the file James had sent to Phil, so I had to create some new numbers myself at short notice on Saturday night - and we had our only delay of the competition before it, waiting for the noisy cistern in the otherwise perfectly quiet venue to finish filling up before we could begin.

That only left speed cards, but despite having two chances to break my own record, I didn't manage to do it. I recorded a snazzy time of 22.88 in the first attempt but the recall was pretty awful, and the second time round I took it just a bit too slowly, stopped the clock at 26.58 and failed to remember it properly anyway. Still, I'm sure it'll all go right at some competition in the near future.

So, I won, Gaby came second and claimed the prize money. Oh knickers, just now as I type this I remember that I promised James J that I'd get him photos of the prize-winners. And I didn't. Hmm, Gaby did take some pictures, we might be able to come up with something to go on the Science House website... Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Dagfinn came third and took the second-place-apart-from-Ben prize and Nik scooped the best (and only) beginner money. So it's a good thing that only four people came to the competition, because everybody was able to leave with significantly more money than they arrived with!

Except me, obviously. My monetary state is really, really not good at the moment. If I don't get a job and/or a big pile of money some time soon, I'm going to have serious problems here. Still, never mind, something'll turn up, I'm sure...

A memorable weekend

...which I'm too worn out from memorising to write about tonight. Sorry, and also sorry for not blogging at all for the last two days due to Dai and Nik staying with me. But in brief, we had a great international turnout at the Derby Memory Championship (a German, a Russian Norwegian and a Norwegian Norwegian) and an awful British turnout, a great competition, at least one world record (17 packs of cards in 30 minutes) and one non-competition world record attempt for the benefit of the TV crew who were only there on Saturday (see the result when the programme is broadcast!), and I'll tell you about it all at more length tomorrow.

Sorry, sorry

It seems that with all the fun filming today and everything (which I would really love to write about - possibly I'll break my rule and tell all the backstage secrets after all), I underestimated how much time I'd have to get my flat into the kind of state that two guests can sleep in tomorrow night. So I'm taking a two-minute break from a frenzied process of shovelling rubbish into the corners to clear a bit of space, in order to post this quick blogging instead of the lengthy and fictional entry I promised for tonight. Sorry about that.

Little girls from Sweden dream of silver-screen flirtation

As I've mentioned before, I'm being filmed extensively for the next three days. Some of the stuff we're doing sounds like fun, but this time round I won't talk about it that much, I'll leave it as a surprise for when the "Super Genius" documentary airs. Of course, that leaves me a little short of something to actually write about, but I'm well overdue for another outpouring of unusual fiction, so brace yourselves for another burst.

Funny money

At some point on my travels today (been up to Matlock, pitching our teaching-memory-skills-in-the-schools scheme) I've acquired a 1949 shilling coin passed off as a 10p piece. Quite nice condition, too, apart from a little scratch on one side that makes it look like George VI had a duelling scar on his cheek. They're being sold for two or three pounds on eBay, although whether anyone's buying them at that price is another matter, but I think I'll keep it, just in case I ever end up travelling back in time and need some money to finance my inaugural world memory championship several decades early.

I would love to know how this coin ended up coming to me in change - shillings haven't been legal tender for about 15 years now, so surely it can't have been passed around by mistake all this time? Maybe it's magic.

And speaking of taking the King's shilling, it's a great shame that Russell T Davies is leaving Doctor Who, but if he really had to go, Steven Moffat (who of course wrote Press Gang many years ago, thus making sense of that really quite brilliant "King's shilling" segue back there) is probably the best choice for a replacement. Hopefully it'll still be good and will still feature David Tennant in 2010 and beyond!

What did you do in the war, Daddy?

I had a dream last night that my father (still alive) had published his memoirs, and that they consisted mainly of entertaining anecdotes about his time as a soldier fighting in the Vietnam War. I worry about my brain, sometimes.

Discipline

I'm feeling quite optimistic about abstract images now. With any luck, and any practice, I'm aiming to get a reasonably high, Gunther-worrying kind of score maybe not at the Derby competition this weekend, but at the German, UK and World championships.

I'm not sure, all in all, how I'll get on at the Derby championship (assuming I'm able to compete rather than having to arbitrate, which still isn't certain). I'm not going to get much more chance to practice this next week - lots of documentary filming, a trip to Matlock to talk about schools memory demos, probably an unnecessary trip to Cambridge to return some clocks I've ended up with, maybe if I find a spare moment even some job-hunting. But I think I'm in half-decent form, and it'll be good practice to spend a whole weekend memorising - it's the long-lasting concentration I really need to work on. Assuming I get to compete, that is.

Censorship

I've moaned before about E4 cutting funny lines out of Friends, but tonight's episode really takes the biscuit. They cut out the exchange between Chandler and Phoebe's new fireman boyfriend in which Chandler quips that he and Joey could play with matches and bump up the fireman's total of people rescued from burning buildings to a round 100 when he boasts that it's currently 98. "Fire safety isn't a joke, son," says the fireman, sternly, in reply. I mean, really, does E4 think we live in the kind of society when kids are going to hear that dialogue and immediately commit acts of arson? Channel 4 need to either start showing Friends (and for that matter the Simpsons) in that good old nine o'clock on Fridays slot, uncut, or just leave them alone before the watershed. They're in cahoots with the DVD people, is what it is, forcing us to buy the DVDs in order to get the complete episodes.

You might have noticed, I've got nothing interesting to write about tonight.

Reality TV

I get to spend the second half of next week being filmed again, for this ITV Genius-related programme. This leaves me struggling to find something to blog about - you might have noticed I've been uncharacteristically quiet on the subject, because this one had the sense to get me to sign a contract beforehand promising not to say bad things about it. That's where The Mentalists went wrong, obviously - I didn't sign anything there until late in the day, and then there wasn't a 'no bad-mouthing us on your blog' clause.

So, since I'm not capable of writing about being filmed without moaning at length about the process (it's all part of not wanting to sound like some kind of big-headed TV star more than actually not liking it), my blogs might be a bit on the skimpy side, if they exist at all - there are a couple of people staying with me on Friday and Saturday for the memory competition, so possibly I won't write anything.

Sorry about that. Perhaps I'll email people privately and bad-mouth the documentary. There's not anything in the contract about that, is there? ... Damn. They thought of everything.

Interesting demographic

Well, it seems that four out of five commenters who expressed a preference agreed with me that contact lenses are a horrible, horrible idea. I'm pretty sure this is well above the national average, even though the sample size is roughly equivalent to the number of people they generally survey for those polls of what 'the public' thinks about things.

So what does this show us? That people who read Zoomy's Thing are generally squeamish sissies who go around arranging flowers and holding hands more than is socially acceptable when they should be doing manly things like sticking things in their eyes? Or that my readers are intelligent types who appreciate that wearing glasses is the best way to show the world how clever you are? Or that the majority of people who follow my blog are scared of incurring my violent and sardonic wrath if they venture a different opinion to mine?

Ewwwwww. Seriously, ewwwwww.

The official reason I don't wear contact lenses is that my astigmatism means I'd have to wear fiddly and expensive toric lenses and I'm not made of money. The actual reason is that I'm horrifically squeamish about touching my eyes. The very idea makes me shudder. However, while I was having my eyes tested last week, the optician persuaded me to try the free five-day trial they've got going at the moment, so I went in today for a fitting. If you have 'fittings' with contact lenses, and you probably don't.

The contact-lenses-optician examined my eyes in detail, got a pair of lenses and said "Okay, now I'll put them in for you." But despite my best efforts, every time she attempted to poke the little things into my eyes, I found myself jerking my head away violently. I thought I deserved congratulations for not hitting her with the eye-testing machinery and squealing "Get away from my eyes!", but she didn't seem terribly impressed. So they resorted to plan B, which was getting someone to show me how to put them in myself.

After a lot of time and difficulty, I got the things in and (after even more time and unpleasantness) out again, but by that point I'd decided that there wasn't any need to carry on with the rest of the trial. I mean, ewww, touching my eyes! Ewww! I'll stick with my glasses, thank you very much. Astigmatism, you see. Toric lenses. Cost a fortune and you have to get the top part pointing up and the bottom part down, and who has time for that in a morning?

Do I sound like the worst kind of nerd if I say......

There is literally nothing in the world more satisfying than doing an hour cards practice, recalling carefully for two hours and filling in the final blank space on the recall paper just as the stopwatch shows 1:59:59! I was very happy with myself, not just for spending the morning doing an hour cards practice for the first time in yonks, but for doing it well and perfectly time-managed like that. Although of course in a competition I'd need to go a bit faster, because there are more distractions caused by other competitors finishing their recall earlier.

Anyway, I was attempting 33 packs and although I haven't checked them, I hopefully got about 30 right. It did go well. I don't normally do long practice sessions on weekdays, seeing as people might be phoning me about jobs, but since I hadn't been able to make myself do anything this weekend, I unplugged the phone and got on with it. Nobody called me, anyway. It's becoming increasingly clear that nobody wants to employ me, ever again.

Still, ne'mind, eh? Here's a link to Mahmut in Australia's blog - he asked me to give him a plug, so please go over there, check him out and wish him luck at the Australian Championship in September!

Nothing

I've done nothing all day, so I'm going to blog about nothing tonight. Tomorrow, I will do things and then write about them.

Boooooo

I was sort of hoping that Reading would avoid relegation, if only because I don't particularly like Fulham or Birmingham, but never mind. At least Man Utd, who I marginally prefer to Chelsea, won the title.

Anyway, I'm still unemployed and out of practice at memory, so I'm sure I've got more important things to do than watch football now that the season's almost over. I'll just have to find another excuse for not doing anything.

Doctor Doctor

Let's talk about Doctor Who again. Well, I haven't done anything else today, so we might as well. And what with last weekend's excitement, I only got to watch last Saturday's episode yesterday, so I've had two in two days and I thought I'd share my thoughts on them.

"The Poison Sky", the second part of the Sontaran story, was a real rip-roaring, thrilling episode, with no end of action and entertainment. I looked at the clock half an hour in to it and thought "Cripes, we've had at least two movies' worth of things happening so far and it doesn't even feel rushed!" Great writing, and mostly great acting too. It's always fun to see Rupert Holliday Evans, and I hope he shows up again, he works well with the Doctor.

It was also a very good episode for a New Doctor Who Drinking Game - it ticked all the boxes for the plot cliches that keep on showing up. We had modern technology in the form of GPS systems and cars turning against humans; the entire world coming under attack at once with maps displaying affected areas and British and American news reporters commenting on it; the companion's mother being at odds with the Doctor's approach to solving the problem; the Doctor being briefly separated from the Tardis and lamenting that he was going to have to live like a normal person now; a whiny American genius bad guy... but despite all this, it was fantastically fun to watch. The Sontarans were great, so were Martha and Donna and the Doctor, and the plot made some kind of sense too. Only the final resolution was a bit flawed - okay, hindsight is always 20-20, but I bet the Sontarans were really kicking themselves about the way they didn't bother to go after Rattigan and kill him, even though they knew he had a device that could thwart all their plans.

Some really great moments from the Doctor ("People with guns are usually the bad guys"), and I hope we're going to see the Sontarans and UNIT again.

Tonight's episode, "The Doctor's Daughter", on the other hand, I think suffered from being a single episode. It had the kind of plot that would have worked spread over four 25-minute episodes, using as it did the old sci-fi cliche of a war between two factions that's been going on so long nobody remembers how it started (with a nice and very Doctor Who twist that I genuinely didn't see coming). It would have gone down very nicely in the Tom Baker era, and not just because of the similarities to "The Face Of Evil", but it felt like the pacing had been compromised to fit all the action into 35 minutes (with the final ten minutes being a lengthy epilogue). It felt rushed and disjointed, although it did avoid clunky exposition in setting the scene nicely.

I take issue with a couple of details of this society of people bred for the sole purpose of fighting the war and discovering the holy grail they've been searching for all their lives - firstly, having decided that the Doctor and Donna are threats to their society and of no genetic use to them, why do they lock them in a cell rather than just killing them? And why, having discovered the map to the thing their entire lives revolve around finding, do they decide to go to bed and set out to find it in the morning? I mean, I know a good night's sleep is important, but I'm surprised at the patience they're showing here.

Still, it was a good story, introduced an interesting character (although the silly handsprings-through-the-lasers bit is so not what Doctor Who is all about), making intelligent use of sci-fi staples (great costumes on the Hath too). It was just a bit bland and ordinary.

Still, I'm loving new Doctor Who, even half way through the fourth series. David Tennant needs to stay in the role for the rest of time. Best Doctor ever.

Nobody wants to play with me

Okay, so the situation for the Derby championship is like this. There will be certainly one, possibly two, TV crews filming the event, half a dozen competent arbiters, nice scenic location, admirable organisation of the whole weekend... and, if we're lucky, three competitors.

This is not a good thing, all in all. The whole thing is going to look a bit silly. 66.7% sillier than the UK championship last year, assuming that silliness is inversely proportionate to the number of competitors who turn up for an event. Don't get me wrong, I'm delighted that Gaby is coming from Germany and Dagfinn from Norway, just to take part in the championship, but I would be more delighted if the entire population of Britain didn't have better things to do that weekend. Or if the entire population of Derby wasn't happy to point me out on the street (even the Big Issue salesman in the city centre) but reluctant to try their collective hand at memorising a few numbers.

Okay, we might also have the likes of Nikita from possibly Russia or possibly Stoke-on-Trent, I've never asked, and other-Ben from down south somewhere and Nico from London-I-think-but-I'd-have-to-check-up-on-that and make a half-respectable turnout, but I'm still very worried that I'm going to end up looking extremely silly here.

There's a £100 top prize, remember, people - and I'm not eligible to win it, so you have a decent chance of covering your expenses if you want to come along. But I'm seriously considering taking a full census of exactly who's coming, and if the silliness level is below UK Championship 2007 levels (possibly using a more sophisticated assessment method involving world rankings), I might cancel the event while it's possible to escape with some dignity and my deposit for the room.

Please come to the Derby Memory Championship! Or give me a good excuse why you can't!

Mapped into abstraction

I'm embarking on a campaign of getting to grips with abstract images. The memory competition discipline, you know, I'm not turning into a modern artist. Although that would be cool.

No, what I'm doing is finally putting aside my dislike of the whole event and trying to work out a good system. So I'm going through the quite tedious process of identifying all the different background patterns - I think there are about a hundred of them, although I've never examined them in detail - and associating each one with one of my images. Then I think I'm going to memorise the images by reading them DOWN the columns, rather than across the rows. I don't know if that'll work, but in theory it should make recall easier, because I'll be able to pick one of five options for each image at each point on the journey. I might be able to just go through all the images once, and if that does turn out to be possible, 250 images in 15 minutes should be very easy.

I wonder if that's the system Gunther uses? I'm still going to call it the Ben-Images-System anyway, if it works. BIS for short. Like the extremely cool pop group.

The cake is a lie

As you know (or as you would know if you'd memorised every detail of my life like I expect you to), I disapprove of basically every new computer game developed in the last fifteen years or so. Consequently, I'm a little out of touch with what modern games are like. However, someone made a passing reference to the game "Portal" today, which intrigued me enough to look it up. And, well, I've seen unanimously raving reviews, lots of screenshots and youtube clips, no end of buzz about it, and now I really, really want this game! Enough to abandon my long-held belief that video games reached perfection with the Sega Mega Drive. So, before I spend a lot of money that I really can't afford on a game that the most enthusiastic reviews concede will only take about five hours to complete, I thought I'd ask my loyal blog-readers if you've played it, and if it really is as clever, funny and entertaining as the masses of internet people make it sound?

It really seems worth the £15 it costs in HMV just for that brilliant song at the end...

Non-interview-related post

As I might have mentioned once or twice before, I'm not going to say anything at all about the job interview I went to today, in case I accidentally say something that would prejudice my chance of getting the job. But please keep your fingers crossed for this one, because I still hope I get it.

Instead, let me announce that before going to the interview (it was a late afternoon one) I did a half-hour binary practice in the morning and a half-hour numbers in the afternoon, and despite the fact that my brain was working significantly slower than usual - I didn't quite get to the end of my sixth journey in binary, and I normally come close to completing seven in 30 minutes - I ended up with pretty accurate recall and scores of 3715 and 1222. The latter would be a world record (just barely) if I did it in competition, and the 3715 would be an entirely acceptable and almost certainly winning score in any championship. I'm happy with myself for being able to keep the mental concentration going for two 90-minute sessions, and hopefully I can expand further on that and get really up to peak performance by the time the German championship comes round. I'd really like to win that one this year.

Drat!

Well, I managed to get home, laden with my big heavy rucksack and four bags of miscellaneous othello-related equipment, without losing anything that doesn't belong to me, my hat or my only posession of any monetary value (my laptop), but (and brace yourself for a tale of tragedy here) somewhere along the way the rucksack or the bags slung over my shoulders must have knocked the Blue Peter badge off my lapel! I'm afraid it's really lost and gone forever this time.

I'm going to buy another one on eBay.

CMC '08

That's Cambridge Memory Championship 2008. I don't think anyone's ever called it the CMC before, but I think we should start. Anyway, the day was fun. I got to Trinity College a bit before our optimistically scheduled starting time of 9:00, carrying two tons of memorisation and recall sheets, packs of cards and timers in my big rucksack, plus Adelaide's handmade "The MSO Is Nigh" sign to wave around at anyone who looked like they might be looking for the MSO. It even worked, luring in all our newcomers to the memory competition world (and there were four of them, too) while we waited outside for Imre to bring the keys to the room. We got into the room just fine, which is more than can be said for the go players in the Junior Parlour, since the stratego players yesterday hadn't returned the key. Everything was sorted out in the end, I gather.

Our room, on the other hand, was one of the Wolfson seminar rooms, nicely away from the street in the middle of the campus, and which I thought would be an ideal, quiet location. It nearly was, with just a few minor exceptions, the major one being the lift just outside the room which bleeps very noisily whenever it goes up or down. The room is basically an enormous glass cube - all windows, even half the floor is glass, allowing you to look down at the concrete two storeys below. Not a room for vertigo-sufferers. The room also didn't have an openable window or working air-conditioning system, so at first we decided to move over the corridor into the room allocated to the shogi players, planning to invoke the time-honoured law of first-come-first-served, but found that the electric sockets weren't working and I couldn't plug in my laptop. So we decamped back to the original room and put up with the hot, sweaty, airtight surroundings.

The seminar rooms are oddly positioned on the second floor of a building that otherwise serves as a hall of residence for Trinity students. There are rooms either side of the seminar rooms, kitchens, showers and toilets at the far ends, and people occasionally wandered back and forth during the day, able to look in through the entirely glass wall of the room as they passed by. The competitors didn't mind the goldfish-bowl feeling, except possibly when a young man wearing nothing but a towel strolled by in the middle of one event. There were only occasional noisy distractions, such as when another pair of students dragged a double bass and cello over to the lift and tried to work out how to fit them both inside, with all our competitors watching.

As for the competitors, we had, as I've said, four newcomers, which is excellent. We also had two Jameses and Gaby from Germany lending the beginners the benefit of their experience. Katie Kermode, however, clearly wasn't in need of much experience - she started off with an excellent 68 in the 5-minute words, and followed it up with a new world record in 5-minute names and faces, of a pretty staggering 82! That's about the score I normally get in 15-minute names and faces... Katie also has the honour of being the first British woman to take part in a memory competition since the early days of the world memory championships. Dagfinn from Norway has the honour of being the first Norwegian to come to the Cambridge championship, which I think is something to be proud of, whereas John and Dave have the honour of joining the very select group of British memory people, and I hope to see them all again soon!

I'd planned to go to the Mitre for lunch, but it turned out not to be open when we got there a bit before twelve (the schedule for Cambridge calls for an early lunch, working on the assumption that there will be major delays. Today, there weren't), so we went into the pub next door, which has a strange name like the Duke of Beef, or something along those lines, I can't really remember. The food was very nice, unless you ordered the Kentucky Burger like James Kemp did and expected a chicken burger like the menu promised. Due to a confusion in the kitchens, he got a fish burger with salsa and the usual chicken-accompaniments. He still ate it.

For the spoken numbers, we took drastic precautions - Jenny went and stood in the lift, holding the doors open, to stop it beeping in the middle of the recitation, and Phil and Rosie took up positions down the corridor to try to head off any noisy or nude students who might be heading our way. We just about managed an acceptable background noise level.

Gaby won in the end, with a just-over-one-minute speed cards to finish off with. I also had a go at the speed cards, joining in on the second trial, but got distracted by some noise right at the start, could only manage 34 seconds and got the recall mixed up. But Gaby's 3963 points bumps her up to 32nd on the rating list, knocking James Ponder down a place, which will serve him right for not being able to come today. James Paterson's third-place score, contrary to what he was saying this evening afterwards, does move him up a place or two too.

Thanks to Science House, our kind sponsor, there was prize money for Gaby and Katie, which is always nice for morale-boosting among competitors. I dutifully plugged the website to all the competitors, or at least I suggested that they check out "sciencehouse.com, or is it sciencehouse.org? Just type 'science house' into google and you'll probably find it". During the course of the day I also discovered that I am completely unable to say "seventh place" without it coming out as "seventh plathe".

After the competition we escaped the glass cube and fled back to the pub, where Gaby gave me a wonderful gift of a German Hagar the Horrible comic and Jenny introduced me to raspberry gin fizz, which is delicious and might become my regular drink of choice from now on. And now I'm back in my hotel and have to lug all my cards and timers, plus all the BOF's othello boards and clocks, back to Derby in preparation for the competitions there in the coming month. It keeps me fit, probably.

Yay for othello!

I ended up with an extremely respectable 4½ out of 7 today, which while admittedly not at the dizzy heights of last year's performance, is a definite step in the right direction. I might have left it a bit late to seriously challenge for the BGP (looks like being a close contest between David Beck and Iain Barrass this year), but I'm aiming to continue improving as time goes on.

Also, I've had too much to drink considering I need to be up early tomorrow morning to run a memory competition, and I probably should go to bed.

Cambridge could do with another Cam-bridge

This hotel would be slightly closer to the city centre if you didn't have to go a long way round to get over the river. Still, it does have wireless internet in my room, even though it isn't supposed to - the wi-fi is officially only in the conference rooms.

So, othello tomorrow, memory on Sunday. I've got a big pile of brown envelopes containing more numbers, words, faces, dates and images than anyone could ever hope to memorise in the time allowed - enough for twenty competitors as long as precisely fifteen of them speak English, three speak German and two speak Norwegian. I'm not expecting more than twelve people to turn up, but it'd be nice to have more. Still time to come along, if you're in Cambridge this weekend!

With any luck, talking to people about memory will get me all fired up to practice for Derby, Germany, Bahrain and anywhere else I might get to test my memory later this year. I'm still looking for that elusive motivation.

As for othello, this was the one I did really well in last year. Can I do it again? Probably not. I've been playing better on the internet just lately, but I don't think I'm in what for me qualifies as good form. Still, I'm more optimistic than I have been going into the last couple of tournaments.

Oh, and in the field of real life, I've got another interview on Tuesday, this one in Tamworth, for another cool-sounding job. Wish me luck!

You wouldn't believe all the tedious stuff I've been doing today

Well, you would, but you'd be bored with it. So I'll spare you the tiresome details and just tell you I'm going to bed. And I'll see you (in a manner of speaking) either tomorrow, or when I get back from Cambridge on Monday, depending on internet access over the weekend.

Gah! Too much work!

I'd forgotten just how long it takes to create all the memorisation papers and associated paraphernalia for a memory competition. I thought I could just wrap everything up quickly today and be all ready to lug everything down to Cambridge on Friday, but instead I've been messing around with things all day, keeping on finding new things that needed to be done... it's hard work, I tells ya. Still, now at least there's no danger of getting to the day itself without something vitally important. I've made a checklist and everything.

See you there on Sunday, everyone! Or on Saturday if you're an othello player instead of a memoriser. Or not at all if you're neither. In which case shame on you!

Also, cats are fighting noisily outside. Someone do something about it.

I broke my glasses

But this did lead to an exciting voyage of discovery deep down to the bottom of my Big Box Of Miscellaneous Junk, looking for my spare pair. The following interesting things turned out to be in it:

Two old, broken pairs of glasses
An old, broken pair of prescription sunglasses
Three old Beanos from 2000
A broken bike lock
A Birmingham A-Z that I don't remember buying or ever using
Various medals and nametags from various MSOs
A few handwritten pages of The Adventures Of Jayce And Alex
A Simpsons jigsaw, still wrapped in cellophane, which must have been a birthday or Christmas present
A 2001 Simpsons calendar
My collection of old coins that some relative, possibly Auntie Cath, sent me out of the blue many years ago
A box of 3½" floppy disks, mostly blank, one containing my work and an assortment of computer games from when I was at Holland Training back in 1995/6
My spare pair of glasses

This last is particularly interesting, because a) I didn't expect to find them in the place where I knew I'd left them - my posessions are rarely so well organised - and b) because they were somehow right down at the bottom of the Big Box, underneath all that more ancient stuff, even though I only bought them less than three years ago. Still, I've found them now, and apart from a vague worry that they make me look somewhat nerdier than my other pair and a slight disorientation caused by the fact that my other pair were a little bent out of shape and these ones aren't, everything is good.

Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry

Now I come to look at it, that quote is much too long to use as a blog title. Oh well, never mind. I just wanted to observe that an election is coming and the Labour and Lib Dem candidates have been pestering everyone in the area with newsletters stressing why they're great or why the others are evil incarnate. Without wanting to get all political, I really would rather they didn't waste resources and money on this kind of thing. Judging by the newsletters, their policies are as identical as their surnames (the Labour candidate is Shiraz Khan, the Lib Dem is Farhatullah Khan. Possibly they're brothers.)

I think the Conservatives should take advantage of this similarity - they don't bother to campaign in this ward, as a rule, knowing a lost cause when they see one, but they should go out of their way to appeal to those who aren't necessarily in tune with what the other candidates are supporting. The Derby congestion charge, for instance - I think it would make a refreshing change to have a candidate who says "Yes, Derby residents WILL have to pay lots and lots of money!" That way, those of us without cars will be able to laugh at everyone else!

Hey, I like this idea. I might run for the council myself, and go out of my way to offend and horrify everyone! Bulldoze the Arboretum! Encourage crime and drugs! Turn off the streetlights!

I'm too lazy

Since I'm too lazy to write anything interesting or entertaining tonight, I think I'll just mention that I'm cheering for Stephen Hendry in the snooker. I used to routinely cheer for Steve Davis, but perhaps I'm getting more up-to-date nowadays.

It's still an ambition of mine to become a great snooker player some day. It's sort of on the back burner of my things-to-do list, because a prerequisite of the plan is to become a millionaire and own a house big enough to fit a snooker table in. But I'm sure it'll happen some day. After all, how hard can it be to knock a few balls around?

Lost In Übersetzung

It must be a leftover thing from my very brief university career as a student of foreign languages, but I'm always fascinated by the art of translation, especially when it comes to translating comedy. So I read with interest an article on the BBC News website about translating 'Allo 'Allo into German. Well, the article was maybe about how they've finally sold the series to Germany after twenty years or so, but the translation bit was what really interested me.

'Allo 'Allo is a particularly difficult sitcom to translate, because of the funny conventions it established - the series is set in France, with characters from Britain, France, Germany and Italy, and basically when characters speak with a French accent, it means they're speaking French, whereas if they speak with an English accent, they're speaking English. And then there's Crabtree, who's English and speaks very bad French, which comes out as phrases like "Good moaning!" when he means "Good morning!" and "I have good nose" for "I have good news".

The French translation, I noticed, cheated, and had him say "Au revoir" for "good morning", rather than doing the mispronunciation thing, so I was pleased to hear that the German version has him saying "Guten Magen", which is much more in keeping with the original. But I do wonder what they're going to do with his mispronunciations when the joke involves something happening on screen. Like when a tank crashes into the pissoir while he's using it and he observes "It seems there is no piss for the wicked..."

This is why I admire people like the great Anthea Bell, who practically nobody else has heard of. She translated the Asterix books into English, and those have no end of untranslatable plays-on-words. So she has to come up with new jokes herself that keep the general feel of the ones in the original - and does a really brilliant job of it, too. I'd love to do something like that, as I think I've mentioned before, with Joscha Sauer's "Nichtlustig" comics. A lot of the jokes are simple to translate, some would involve a real stretch of the imagination. Tomorrow, if nothing more exciting happens to me in the meantime, I'll scan and post some examples...

Public Service Announcement

There's just one week to go until the Cambridge Memory Championship!
The competition takes place on Sunday May 4th, at Trinity College,
Cambridge, as part of the Cambridge Mind Sports Olympiad 2008.
Details can be found here: http://msocambridge.org.uk/ as well as
here: http://cambridgememorychampionship.co.uk/

The venue is in the city centre, and easy to find. The only slightly
confusing bit is that the rooms for the competition are in the part
of Trinity College not accessed by the main entrance, but by
Whewell's Court, the entrance on the opposite side of the street.
There will, hopefully, be signposts and people (including me) to
point you in the right direction on the day!

The prize money for Cambridge will be £50 for the winner, £25 for
second place and £10 for the best beginner. Our prizes are made
possible by the kind sponsorship of Science House:
http://sciencehouse.com/

It's not too late to take part, it's possible to just turn up on the
day, but it would be more helpful if you let me know in advance, so
that we know how many people to expect. Friends and family are
welcome to come along, especially if they're willing to lend a hand
with invigilating and marking recall papers!



The Derby Memory Championship is just one month away! It takes place
at the Bramblebrook Community Centre, Stockbrook Street, Derby on
Saturday and Sunday May 24-25. Details can be found here:
http://cambridgememorychampionship.co.uk/derby_index.shtml and free
accommodation on my living room floor is still available for anyone
who wants it (bring a sleeping bag!)

Prizes for Derby are £100 for the winner, £50 for the runner-up and
£25 for the best beginner. People who take part at Cambridge as
beginners will still be classed as 'beginners' at Derby! Again,
prizes are thanks to the generosity of Science House -
http://sciencehouse.com/

I can promise and guarantee a fun day and weekend of memorising for
everyone who comes along to either competition, and I'm looking
forward to seeing you there!

Ben

People will see me and die

Have I been on telly again recently without me knowing it? The number of people hailing me in the street as the memory man had died down a bit, but I've been getting lots of recognition just this last week. Tonight a gang of youngish teenagers in the shopping centre all recognised me, and the following conversation ensued:

Dan: You're that memory guy?
Me: Yep, that's me.
Dan: Ooh, go on then, do me!
Me: Umm... "do you"?
Dan: You know, do a memory thing to amaze me!

I really need to have a performance ready for moments like this. What I should have done, with hindsight, is tell them all what day of the week they were born on - that always goes down well. Or else I should start carrying a pack of cards or a list of FA Cup final results around with me. Actually, that's a really good idea. I will do that.

Stafford ho!

Either thetrainline.com knows something that the rest of the internet doesn't, or it doesn't know something that the rest of the internet does, but it tells me there are very few trains from Derby to Stafford and back tomorrow. Enough that getting there at the right time for the interview and home again isn't a problem, but I'm still suspicious about the whole affair. Last year I noticed that thetrainline seems to have a blind spot when it comes to Mansfield, maybe it's suffering from the same problem with Stafford. You can't trust anything you read on the internet.

Except this blog, of course. You can trust me. There's no need to question anything I write on here, just obey me with blind faith and you won't go far wrong. Oh, and wish me luck for tomorrow, please - I'd really like to get this job.

Bumcivilian

It's just been brought to my attention that the entire series of "Look Around You" is available on YouTube for the world to see. Both series, in fact - the original ten-minute episodes and (although I haven't watched them yet) I think all of the half-hour second series are on there too. Which pleases me no end! Look Around You is possibly the single funniest thing that's been on television for the last decade or so, and it's quite criminal that it isn't better known. It's the kind of comedy that I aspire to write myself and wildly envy when other people do it so well.

But don't take my word for it. Take an hour or so out of your busy schedule and watch the whole bally lot of the things. And when you've finished watching them, notice that the 'related videos' box for the final episode (The Brain) gives you seventeen other Look Around You videos, two random brain-related things and "Maximise the Power of Your Brain - Tony Buzan MIND MAPPING". He really is everywhere!

Go on, check them out. If you like my occasional ventures into mad surrealistic comedy, you'll love these. If you hate my occasional ventures into mad surrealistic comedy, you'll still love these because they do it so much better than I do.

A cry for help

I'm concerned that I'm not going to have enough arbiters for the Derby Memory Championship. I'm also concerned that I'm not going to have enough competitors, but that's a minor problem. The arbiter thing, on the other hand, could be serious. I need to find a couple of helpful people who are willing to spend a weekend handing out, collecting in and marking memorisation and recall papers, generally keeping an eye on competitors in case anyone's cheating, and being quiet for long periods of time. In return, these happy helpers get free accommodation on the floor of my living room, free meals and drinks, my undying gratitude and a favour that can be called in at any time in the future.

If I don't manage to recruit any little helpers, I might have to drop out of the competition myself in order to run it, which would annoy me enormously, because one of my main reasons for organising the championship in the first place is to give me a practice event for the German and World Championships later in the year. So, anyone who's reading this who thinks memory-competition-assistant-arbiter could be a great career move, please get in touch. Undying gratitude, people! You can't put a price on that!

Although if you wanted to put a price on it and demand a tenner or so for your services, I could do that too.

Stafford - like buses

I've got an interview in Stafford on Friday for a really cool job that, for obvious reasons, I'm not going to say any more about. But don't worry, loyal readers, I never learn my lesson permanently, and I'm sure I'll soon be back to the charmingly naive Zoomy you know and love, who imprudently posts his opinions about everyone and everything on the internet for the world to see and cares nothing for the inevitable consequences.

Anyway, shortly after agreeing to this interview (the job's not in Stafford, by the way, it's just down the road in Burton), I had an email from a different agency about a different job in Stafford.

I've never been to Stafford before, nor ever considered any jobs or interviews there. And now all of a sudden the town (or possibly city, I should look into that before I go there) is full of people who might possibly think about employing me! It's a nearly-St-George's-Day miracle!

That's the problem with a to-do list

I did update my CV today and sent it to all the recruitment agencies in the area who haven't got it already, so never let it be said that I've entirely wasted the day in pointless endeavours. However, after doing that, the thought occurred to me that I really need to learn to read Japanese hiragana. It's something I've vaguely intended to do for years and years, after all. So I bumped that up to the top of my things-to-do list, ahead of trivial things like finishing the Cambridge championship preparations, cleaning the flat up, ironing some shirts so I have something to wear for job interviews and don't have to turn up naked, typing up my othello transcripts from London, keeping in touch with various people I'm in danger of losing touch with altogether, confirming the details of the upcoming memory championship sponsorship (there will be prize money, people, I'm just waiting to announce it when the sponsor's website is up and running!), training for memory competitions so I don't make a colossal fool of myself again, writing that book proposal, all that kind of thing.

It's not even as if I made any great strides in the field of learning to read Japanese hiragana. I spent most of my time toying with developing the quickest and most efficient system for memorising them, rather than actually learning them. I have a feeling that I lack self-discipline.

I'm some kind of psychic

I did win two games, as I prophesied (prophesised? prophetted?) yesterday. Lost four, but I think I was playing a lot better than I have been lately, so I choose to see it as being on the road to remembering how to play the stupid game.

Other things worth mentioning - I entertained everyone with my hard-luck stories involving making a ninny of myself on Blue Peter and the like. Some day, I need to acquire some interesting stories about me doing cool and impressive stuff...

Although my former employers didn't appreciate the publicity my blog afforded them, I'm told that Office365.co.uk would really be delighted with anything, good or bad, I might say about them. There's no such thing as bad publicity, so from now on, whenever I want to say anything about my work, I'll pretend I'm working for Office365! This is an arrangement that will work out well for everyone, I'm sure.

The Bath House pub was being run single-handedly by one woman today, and she kept up a cheerful mood throughout. She deserves some kind of prize, except that othello tournaments don't generally have prizes.

David won, and I think Geoff came second, and I didn't come last. I can't remember what happened in any more detail than that. Check out the website when it's updated, if you really want to know.

David also had a fantastic drawn game against someone, I forget who, in which he ended up with no edge discs at all. I've always wanted to see a no-edge win, and this is as close as I've come so far.

Kali is the only person in the history of the Bath House's conference room to know how to work the dumb waiter.

There's a kurnik tournament starting in eight minutes, and I think I'll play in it, even though it's probably a bad idea because my brain's burnt out from all the othelloing today.

London calling

Early start tomorrow to go down to London for the othello. Must remember to bring my clock this time, just in case some disaster means we're short of them again. I'm slightly more confident of winning a game, maybe even two games, this time, I've been playing half-decently on kurnik for the last couple of days.

And once I'm back, really got to get on with the job-hunting! I'll admit I haven't been as pro-active on that front as I really should have been, this past week. I have arranged a guest-speaker gig at a company conference which, in light of recent developments, I'm not going to say another word about, just in case, but that's not a full-time, bill-paying kind of job. And when I say 'arranged' I mean they called me and I said okay, of course. But on Sunday, I'll start pestering all the local companies who are looking for accountants. Won't that be fun?

Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons

I discovered something extremely cool tonight while randomly channel-hopping - Transformers is being shown on the obscure cable channel POP! And not the rubbish recent version of the Transformers cartoon either, the original classic "future" series from 1986! I flicked over just in time for the second half of "Call Of The Primitives" tonight (a good one - unusually wonderful artwork more than making up for slightly incoherent story).

This is absolutely brilliant news for the youth of today. Young people who watch this channel, and there must be someone watching it because they read out a letter afterwards from someone who said Transformers was his favourite, will get to see what giant-robot cartoons should be like, rather than the awful CGI drivel we get in the 21st century! And, since the old series was set in the far-flung future world of 2006, they might not even realise it's old, and think it's something new and exciting! A whole new generation of 'real' Transformers fans is born! Yay!

Othelloing

The London regional is on Saturday, so I'm playing in the late-night tournament on kurnik (which is now called PlayOK, which I think is a much less cool name). And due to ineffective time-management on my part, I'm blogging in between rounds.

Thus far I've lost three and won one, and that one was only because my opponent obligingly threw away a fairly obvious win a couple of moves after I'd thrown the game away with a similar blunder. This doesn't bode well for the weekend, but possibly it will put my brain in othello mode when I go to bed after the tournament, and I'll dream up some new amazing unbeatable winning strategies. That's my master-plan, anyway - leave it to my brilliant subconscious mind, because the conscious part hasn't got a clue.

Gotta go back, back, back to school again

Wow, lots of people I went to school with are on Facebook, it turns out! It makes me all nostalgic. I was tempted to write a blog reminiscing about my youthful exploits, but I decided that nobody would be interested in it, and besides, these would unavoidably involve talking about various people who might be reading the blog and take offence, and I'm being careful about that at the moment, so I'll give it a miss.

What would be cool, though, is getting the school to invite me back to give an assembly talking about my amazing achievements in the field of memorising useless data slightly more quickly than anyone else - I'll be able to claim that it's a direct result of slacking off and never doing any homework, and undermine everything the teachers are trying to impress on the new generation of QEGSers!

(See, now I've ruined any chance of getting invited there, too. When will I learn to keep my big metaphorical mouth shut?)

How To Be Topp

Hey, look what I found! Someone started up a Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School group on Facebook, and it motivated me to dig up this old class photo from 1992, when I was in the fifth year. That's 15-year-old me at the bottom right, looking down at the floor (and not at the boobies of the girl next to me, despite what everyone says when they see the picture). Yes, I had hair once. No, I never had a good hairstyle, unless you count my brief flirtation with spiky hair in the late eighties. But we do need to resurrect the nickname "Priddy the Hedgehog", don't you think?

Also, could someone please give me some money? Enough to go to Niebüll for the weekend and hang out with memory people at the North German Championship? I've been trying to justify to myself spending the money on the trip, but without a job it's hard to convince myself that it's a good idea. Maybe I'll rob a bank.

Leisure time

Well, since I haven't got any plans for tomorrow, I'll use the day productively - find a new job, finish all those memorisation papers for Cambridge, write a book-proposal or two, maybe even clean up my flat. That's the plan, anyway, or at least that's the justification for having done nothing productive all day today. I can do it tomorrow, you see!

Cartoon Classics

I found a video in a charity shop yesterday, one of those wonderful late-eighties "find four random old cartoons, stick them on a tape, put it in a cheap cardboard cover, sell it to kids" collections. I don't imagine this one went down all that well with whoever bought it in the first place, and I'm quite pleased I bought this before some well-meaning person bought it for a small child who would doubtless be a bit perplexed by some of the contents.

It starts with "The Little Dutch Mill", a Max Fleischer Color Classic, which is nice enough and quite watchable, although as usual for the Color Classics, very bland compared to what the Fleischers could do when they weren't being forced to copy whatever Disney were doing that year. But after that we have "Hollywood Steps Out", a cartoon which I'm sure was very popular in the cinemas in 1941, but since it consists of nothing but cartoon depictions of notable American movie and radio stars of the day, it's pretty much incomprehensible in 2008 to all but the most dedicated film buffs. And that's followed by "Jungle Jitters". How any children's video company, even a cheap and uncaring one, could think that "Jungle Jitters" is a good thing to put on a cartoon collection is beyond me - again, I expect it went down well in 1938, but seventy years later the portrayal of jungle natives in it isn't really the kind of thing Warner Bros Cartoons like to acknowledge that they once made. The collection finishes with "It's A Greek Life", which isn't outdated or offensive, but, like a lot of what the Van Beuren studios churned out in the thirties, just isn't much good.

So, all in all, this video is an interesting snapshot of cartoon history, as well as a fascinating relic of the days when videos were new and cool and people could sell any old rubbish to young folk starved of good, official cartoon releases. It's always fun to find one!

Too Much Information

Well, that just takes the biscuit

Okay, go and read this story on the BBC News site, and then (if you're a taxman or otherwise in a position to know) come back and tell me whether I've been labouring for years under a serious misapprehension about VAT on cakes and biscuits.

I could have sworn that jaffa cakes are subject to VAT. Weren't they the focus of the big legal case, many years ago, that established the whole chocolate-biscuits-are-vatable thing? I thought the definitive ruling of that was that VAT should indeed be paid on jaffa cakes, and have told people that many times over the years, whenever anyone asked me for an anecdote concerning both accountancy and cake.

I've never worked for a company that makes biscuits and/or cakes, and so have never had a reason to know this, but even so, I'm feeling like everything I know is a lie.

Eddy Grant?

Eddy Grant sent me a friend request on Facebook today. Either the actual singer Eddy Grant, or someone using his photo and birthday and things on their Facebook account. I'm quite flattered that he wants to be my friend - I do quite like several of his songs, and assuming he's not dead (I have a vague feeling that he might be), it would definitely be cool to meet up with him some time. However, I never accept friend requests from people I don't know who don't send me any kind of message explaining why they want to be friends with me, so I had to turn him down.

I do have other cool people writing to me, though. Someone asked me for a signed photo the other day - and not just any someone, but a real grown-up who's a successful American lawyer!

In other news, I'd just like to record here that I really like russet apples. I bought a bag of them from the market at the weekend, and although they're over-ripe, they still reminded me how much I like the things. I hadn't had one for years, and I really want some more now. Sadly, I'm pretty sure they're out of season, so I'll have to wait till later in the year. By which time I will have forgotten about it again.

Wörter des Tages (Words of the Day)

I've spent a good part of the evening creating the random words papers for the Cambridge competition. 200 words, randomly picked out and translated into German. Well randomly-according-to-strict-rules, anyway - I decided to make sure there was the right kind of split between concrete nouns, abstract nouns, verbs and adjectives (60%, 20%, 10% and 10% respectively is what I decided, although since they're randomly mixed together and nobody is going to get beyond 120 or so in the five minutes, they won't necessarily get that exact mix). So what I did was sort my random-word list into a random order and go down the list eliminating all the words that were too long and obscure or which become much easier or much more difficult to memorise once they're Germanised, making sure to ignore all the verbs after I'd filled the quota, and then sort the resulting 200-word list into a random order again.

Words I was sadly forced to reject include the wonderful 'eisteddfodd' and 'tatterdemalion'. If I was doing a single-language random words test I would have included them with pleasure, but I don't think there's a German equivalent...

I really must work 'tatterdemalion' into everyday conversation more often, though.

And incidentally, to all the Germans reading this who haven't yet decided whether to come to Cambridge, please do! It will be fun, there will be an announcement about prize money very soon (I hope), and the translations will be guaranteed checked by a real German-speaker and not just done by me, so there's nothing to worry about!

Let's be geeky...

...and talk about the new series of Doctor Who! So take this as your warning if you're foreign or otherwise haven't watched it yet, and skip this blog entry. I won't say anything else of consequence, I promise.

It's always great to see the Doctor back in action, and this is a very promising start for series four. It was a fun romp in what I think by now qualifies as the traditional style, boosted by a really excellent performance by Sarah Lancashire as the baddie. She should play villains more often, she was perfect. See, everyone, you CAN play the villain straight and make it work! (I still haven't really forgiven them for the John Simm Master).

Catherine Tate, on the other hand, was inconsistent - understandably, they've obviously decided to play Donna a bit more seriously now she's a regular, but she delivered some supposed-to-be-serious lines in a very over-dramatic way that didn't work at all. I'm a big fan of hers, though, and I'm sure she'll settle into the role over the course of the series. Also, I hope we're not going to be seeing Donna's mum again (or not until the end of the final episode, maybe) - I don't really get Russell T Davies's belief that the Doctor's companion's mother has to play an important part in the adventures. It'd be nice to have the Doctor not tied down to a family on Earth, just for a change of pace. Hopefully, with returns for Rose and Martha in the offing (the Rose cameo was very nicely done, by the way), they'll make a real effort to make Donna into a different kind of companion with a different kind of relationship with the Doctor. And I think it'll work really well if they do.

A few more little nitpicks, because nitpicking is fun - the effects of Donna dangling from the rope were horribly unrealistic-looking in the close-ups. She looked like she was just standing casually and holding a bit of metal on a string - she didn't even have her arms outstretched, for crying out loud! And the ropes tying the reporter to the chair would quite clearly have slid off it if she'd just stood up. And we could have done with a line of dialogue making it clear that the two security guards who the Doctor apparently floored with a million volts of electricity weren't killed.

And the big one, which isn't really a nitpick as such but is worth mentioning - had the Doctor not interfered, the masterplan of the 'villain' would have succeeded in helping a lot of humans lose unwanted body fat, while saving the population of another planet. A line to that effect in the dialogue would have been nice.

Apart from that, this episode had a lot going for it - the Adipose are adorable, and the special effects were brilliant. I still don't like entirely computer-generated monsters, but these ones worked well, and the interaction with reality was a lot more convincing than it has been before. There was tension and excitement and funny bits, a plot that made sense pretty much all the way through, and some nice setup for the future. Really looking forward to the rest!

Also, it's been snowing here all day.

Bless me

Yep, I've got a really rotten cold. Achoo! I'm all sneezy and snotty and sicky and it's no fun at all.

Still, I've got another long weekend to get over it - finished at Saint-Gobain on Friday. Granted, it's an unpaid holiday, and it would probably be better to be earning, but yay. Unless I sneeze myself to death at some point.

Celebrity news

All the many fans of The Mentalists might like to know that it's my grandma's birthday on Sunday. She's 88, and it's surprising how difficult it is to find a birthday card with two fat ladies on it. She's also suffering with bronchitis at the moment, so I'm sure she'd appreciate any get-well-soon comments you might like to leave on the blog.

I've also got a rotten cold today, and could do with some get-well-soons. So, I suppose, could Prince Philip, since he's in hospital with a chest infection. Grandma is pleased to be sharing an ailment with the Duke of Edinburgh (who's a year or so younger than her) although she isn't a big fan of his, being of the opinion that he was a lovely, handsome man until around the age of thirty, when he became a miserable old fart. She feels it's the Queen's fault.

I decided!

It's noisy out there

The light has just about completely faded away (yay for British Summer Time!) and I've had my window open, on account of having filled the room with smoke while cooking tea, and the birds outside are making a heck of a racket! It's times like this that I wished I'd paid attention to my dad's occasional lectures on the subject of birds and what they do, so that I could identify which species is making that screeching noise, and which is doing that sort of beeping. That's the kind of thing it's hard to learn without spending your life sitting in hides wearing a hat with twigs sticking out of it, peering through binoculars at tits and boobies.


As for the book-writing, I think I probably am going to at least put together a proposal for the "How To Improve Your Memory" book that that publisher wanted. In fact, I've already got one I wrote waaaay back in 2003, the first time someone asked me to write a book for them, before I decided to turn them down for various reasons that made sense at the time. Maybe I'll dig that up and see how bad it looks.

In the meantime, I've picked out another publisher to try to tempt with How To Be Clever - this will be number 5, and the scores so far are one outright rejection, one no reply (the one I sent the wrong covering letter to), one 'we'll print a book by you with a similar title if you rewrite it completely' and one 'we're not printing that, but we'll print a memory book by you'.

A poem in which dinner, interrupted by an elephant, illustrates a moral lesson

Young Modestine and Pamela and Fortitude and John
Were dining at the table on a meal of roasted swan
When from without there came a crash that caused the walls to shake
And plaster from the ceiling fell and spoiled the simnel-cake.

"Great heavens!" bellowed Fortitude, and ripped off all his clothes,
"God's genitals! By Christopher!" and other suchlike oaths,
"It seems to me the very world is being torn to bits!
Be quick and make your peace with God or suffer Hell's foul pits!"

"Don't talk such rot," said Pamela, an atheistic lass,
"Like many earthquakes have before, this one will swiftly pass."
But then again from outside echoed such a frightful clang
That Fortitude with panicked loudness rang for Jones, his man.

"The tiger-trap," the butler said, "was baited with a plant,
And not with meat, and so, of course, ensnared an elephant.
The gentle herbivore passed by and stopped to take a bite -
The trap was sprung, down came the cage and now behold its plight!"

"That will be all," said Fortitude. "Wait! Go and fetch my gun!
For now we have the beast caged up, let's have a bit of fun!"
"By cracky, yes!" cried Pamela, "Go, fetch my gun as well!
And though the place does not exist, let's blow the brute to Hell!"

Said Modestine "I don't approve of harming living things
(Except those horrid, nasty swans that hit one with their wings).
I think that what we should do is just let the poor brute free,
For do not all the beasts of Earth deserve such rights as we?"

"By no means does an elephant deserve the rights of man!"
Screamed Fortitude, who took his gun, "For God's almighty plan
Was ever that the man should kill all creatures great and small,
In payment of the debt they've owed since Noah saved them all!"

"I must concur," said Pamela, "though talk of God is daft,
For all religions great or small do naught but make me laugh,
Yet we whom evolution made the lords of all the Earth
Have every right to kill or maim a beast of lesser worth."

But Modestine was adamant and, taking up an axe,
She vowed to free the elephant from both her friends' attacks.
She cleaved in twain the tiger-trap, and out the monster flew -
But tragically it flew straight at the rifle-toting two.

And neither fervent prayers nor screams availed them in the least
As Fortitude and Pamela were crushed beneath the beast.
And as it fled into the hills sans backward glance or halt,
Poor Modestine could only say "I fear this is my fault."

"Indeed," said John, who seldom spoke, "though now we'll have some peace,
With jumbo gone and those two dead, their squabbling will cease.
But had you kept your big mouth shut and let them have their will,
The Christian and godless both would now be living still."

And so the moral of this tale is clearly to be seen:
When choosing guests for dinner, never ask a Modestine.
A difference of religion comes to nothing in the end,
But one who won't shoot elephants should never be your friend.

So many offers...

Why is it that nobody wants to publish How To Be Clever, but everybody wants to publish a different book by me? I had the 'teach yourself' people wanting it completely rewritten in their style (basically changing everything except the title), and I've had another email today saying no, we don't want HTBC, but we'd love a 'How To Improve Your Memory' book from you. The world is full of Improve Your Memory books, for flip's sake! The point of HTBC was that it's something a bit different from the books already on the shelves! Does nobody want that kind of thing except me?

Sigh... I might just write both those unsatisfactory things, rather than keep pestering people to print the good book. It's too much hassle.

As for the day job, I'll be finishing this month-long temp job I'm doing at the moment in a week or so, but the company have another job to offer me, more number-crunching of a fairly basic kind, but it'd be something to do. Different building on the same site, though, so I'd probably have to vacate my little office and share one in the more modern building.

Like the books thing, neither of these jobs are really the kind of thing I'm looking for. The research thing is a more junior kind of position than I've had before, and they're both a lengthy cycle ride from anywhere I might be able to cycle from.

Would someone out there please offer me a good job, and publish my book in the way I want it to be published? Is that too much to ask?

Galactic memory update

Heed my words, puny earthlings! I have travelled many light years to find you -- and to bring you a message from Kurrgo, Master of Planet X!

No, sorry, got confused there, because I've been reading old Fantastic Four comics. I meant to say Heed my words, puny earthlings! I just wanted to spell out for the benefit of those who read my blog but not the memory newsgroup, and yet are still interested in memory competitions, what is happening over the next few months:

Sunday 4 May - Cambridge Memory Championship, Trinity College Cambridge, national standard competition - 5 min words, 5 min binary, 5 min names, 15 min numbers, 10 min cards, 5 min numbers, abstract images, historic dates, spoken numbers (100 & 200), speed cards. This is going to be a bigger event than the last two Cambridge championships, judging by the number of entries and interested people so far - and the location is much, much better too! Entry fee £5, beginners free. http://cambridgememorychampionship.co.uk/ and http://www.msocambridge.org.uk/

Saturday/Sunday May 24/25 - Derby Memory Championship, Derby, international standard - 30 min numbers, 30 min cards, 30 min binary, historic dates, spoken numbers (100, 200, 300), abstract images, 15 min names & faces, 5 min numbers, 15 min words, speed cards. I'm competing in this one myself now, just to keep you informed - thanks to James Paterson for creating the memorisation papers, and Phil
Chambers and other volunteers for running the show on the day. Entry fee £10, beginners free. http://cambridgememorychampionship.co.uk/derby_index.shtml

Friday/Saturday July 25/26 - German Memory Championship, Tuttlingen, international standard - 30 min numbers, 30 min cards, 30 min binary, historic dates, spoken numbers (100, 200, 300), abstract images, 15 min names & faces, 5 min numbers, 15 min words, speed cards. Same great location as last year, I'm sure it'll be a fantastic competition! Entry fee not on the website yet, it's normally around €30, which includes lunch and an evening memory performance event. http://memomasters.de/

Saturday/Sunday August 16/17 - UK Memory Championship, Simpsons-in- the-Strand, London, national standard - 5 min words, 5 min binary, 5 min names, 15 min numbers, 10 min cards, 5 min numbers, abstract images, historic dates, spoken numbers (100 & 200), speed cards. A national standard, but over two mornings rather than a whole day like usual. So plenty of time for sightseeing in London! Entry fee £20, or
£40 including a gala dinner. http://worldmemorychampionship.com/competition_calendar.asp

And I hope to see lots of you there! The Derby championship will be filmed by ITV as part of the latest documentary on the subject, so this is your chance to star in my next TV appearance!

"Ironman" Ivan Stewart's Super Off Road

This morning, I did a half-hour cards practice (attempting 18 packs, got 15 right, the others were silly little memorising mistakes that I'm not too worried about), went to the supermarket and got my hair cut. The problem I have with memory is keeping the mental state going for a whole day, or a whole three-day period like you have to do at the world championships. Because my mind was seriously wandering by the end of the recall period, and I couldn't get into any other practice I tried to do this afternoon.

So instead, I spent my time playing "Ironman" Ivan Stewart's Super Off Road. This was an extremely cool arcade game, back in the good old days when arcade games were fun to play. It was one of those games in a cabinet with a pedal and a steering wheel - three pedals and three steering wheels, in fact, so you could race against two friends. They don't make games like it any more - the whole of the racetrack fills the screen and you drive a tiny little car, viewed from above, around the track. Those were cool. The first cool one was Super Sprint, and Super Off Road was basically just a clone of that, only with cooler tracks with bumps and puddles, and with "Ironman" Ivan Stewart's endorsement.

"Ironman" was apparently a real person, an off-road racing driver, and the title screen lists all the races he'd won. There weren't all that many of them, actually, and they were in the seventies for the most part, so why they thought kids might be attracted to the game by the name Ivan Stewart, I can't imagine. Possibly he was cooler in America, where people might have heard of him. "Ironman" drove the computer-controlled white car in the game, and when the red, yellow and blue cars weren't being controlled by players, they were driven by "Madman" Sam Powell, "Hurricane" Earl Stratton and "Jammin'" John Morgan. I don't know if these were real people too - if they were, I can't imagine they were too happy with the way that Ivan Stewart's car always won the races. Jammin' John generally came second, and a fun alternative way to play the game is not to try to win, but to try to hold up "Ironman"'s car so that someone else wins. I like to think that would teach him a lesson for being so full of himself. Assuming that he was in any way full of himself - I know nothing about the man at all.

Also cool about the game was the way you could enter your country of origin at the start of the game (as long as you were from the USA, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Italy or Australia) and get your own national anthem played when you won a race. Admittedly the anthem that plays for Britain only bears a slight resemblance to God Save The Queen, but still, it was very, very unusual for an American game of that generation to consider the possibility that non-Americans might play it. Especially an American game based on the appeal of a strictly American minor celebrity.

You can play the NES version of the game on your computer here, at the wonderful Virtual NES site, where you can also play lots and lots of other classic games, one or two of which are some good (the Master System was so much better, apart from the absence of Super Mario Bros). Or if like me the NES version just makes you long for the better graphics of the arcade version, the MAME roms are out there too. Now I just have to get an original cabinet with steering wheels and everything.

When I'm a millionaire, I'm going to own an arcade filled to busting with all the classic games of the good old days, and everyone will be welcome to come along and have fun. And they'll cost 10p a play.

What, already?

Wow, weekends come around fast when it's a three-day week. Right, so, this weekend I'm going to do all those things I was going to do last weekend, and probably some other things too. I'm going to be industrious and hard-working.

Speaking of hard-working, my boss said today that he's very happy with the work I've been doing this last month. That makes one of us, at least, because personally I don't think I've been all that much use. Still, it's his opinion that counts. And it is nice to be appreciated - a lot of bosses don't bother to say anything unless they think you're rubbish.

Ow ow ow!

Remember I said that I skinned my elbows? At some point during Saturday's unhealthiness? Well, now I've got scabs on them, just where I lean my elbows on tables, and it hurts. I can only assume that while I was drinking I was leaning with my elbows too excessively, or something. Or else I took a cheese grater to them, thinking it would be funny. But seriously, ow. I need someone to kiss my elbows better. It's not possible to kiss your own elbow, you know. This is proof of God's non-existence.

Joyce Grenfell met Elvis Presley, you know

See, I was going to do some memory training or something tonight, but my boiler's broken and the landlord came round this evening to poke at it and by the time he'd gone, there was only time to sit around watching an hour-long documentary about Joyce Grenfell that I might possibly have seen before but I can't quite remember.

And I'd had a very productive and successful day at work too, and felt all motivated to keep the hard work going in the evening, especially after an email from a local freemason offering to help out at the Derby Memory Championship. Perhaps I can get the brotherhood on my side and have them funny-handshake 'memory sports' into a government-funded mega-million-pound enterprise!