I know I've been talking about Doctor Who a lot lately, but it was that good. The fiftieth anniversary special was amazing! Rather than taking the view that an anniversary special just means showing pictures of all the Doctors in some kind of dramatic exciting fight that doesn't make any sense if you think about it for half a second, they did that bit in just one throwaway scene near the end and spent most of the 75-minute episode doing genuinely clever things with the concept of time travel - something that the 21st-century series generally hasn't done at all well so far. This story, though, was intricate in its construction, with lots of little moments that get a big thumbs-up from me, and the three Doctors and Clara were wonderfully characterised!
I'm happy now. Just keep making Doctor Who, please!
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Saturday, November 23, 2013
An Unearthly Child
I thought it would be fun to watch an episode of Doctor Who every Saturday, fifty years after it was first shown, and also share with my blog-readers what I think about it. The days of the week go out of sync next March, because 1964 was a leap year and 2014 isn't, but I'll probably have got bored with the idea by then anyway, so we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
For now, though, it's Saturday November 23, 1963. We're sitting around at home watching Grandstand (interrupted regularly by news updates about President Kennedy's assassination yesterday) and we've never even heard of Daleks. Last week's Radio Times (people who write about TV shows in those days never remember that every single television-owner in Britain bought the Radio Times back then - it was the one and only place to see the BBC TV listings) told us that "Saturday's serial begins when two teachers (Jacqueline Hill and William Russell) probe the mystery surrounding one of their pupils (Carol Ann Ford) - and meet the strange Dr. Who" and shows a picture of the three of them.
This week's RT has a much bigger feature, spelling Carole Ann Ford's name right and telling us a lot more about the intriguing-sounding new series. It looks like fun, doesn't it? There was a trailer for the new series last Saturday evening, and another last night, but since they no longer exist in the BBC archives, I'm going to assume we missed seeing them. It involved William Hartnell talking to the camera and saying basically the same thing that's in this article...
Okay, it's 5:15, we're settled down in front of the black-and-white TV with a cup of tea and a sandwich, and we're lucky enough to be in one of the houses in Britain not being affected by the widespread power cuts. It's cold outside, there are only two TV channels, so we might as well watch this new thing on the BBC!
It's running late - another news update from America - but then when it starts, we get the opening titles...
Spooky. A line of white light twists and distorts, to the accompaniment of eerie music and hissing noises, then turns into flying white patterns of light rushing at the viewer, and the words DOCTOR OHO appear on the screen - turning into DOCTOR WHO a split second later when it becomes clear that the writing was reversed and overlaid on top of itself in order to look more spooky. That part doesn't really work, but the rest of the opening sequence is completely awesome and like nothing we've seen before on television here in the year 1963!
The music keeps on playing as we see a policeman wandering around a foggy night-time street and shining his torch on an old wooden gate with "I.M.Foreman, Scrap Merchant, 76 Totters Lane" painted on it. Dixon of Dock Green is on the BBC in an hour and a half - are they showing that early by mistake? No, the policeman wanders off after checking that the gate is locked, and then it opens all by itself, leading the camera into a junkyard filled with miscellaneous scrap. Among it is a police box - a normal sight on the streets of London, although it's a bit strange to see one inside a yard like this. The title "An Unearthly Child" appears as the theme music finally stops, followed by the name of the writer, Anthony Coburn. We zoom in on the police box's phone hatch, then we blur-dissolve to the noticeboard of Coal Hill School.
Strange and mysterious beginning, but it's effective! Makes you wonder what's going on...
The school bell's ringing, sixties teenagers are larking about on their way home, and teacher Barbara Wright comes into the chemistry lab to talk to her colleague Ian Chesterton. His first question "Not gone yet?" is a bit strange, since the bell for the end of school rang less than 30 seconds ago, but never mind. They chat about Susan Foreman's strangeness - she's an uncanny genius fifteen-year-old, but secretive about her home life, and Barbara is worried about her, especially since her home address is just a junkyard with no house attached. Ian vaguely remembers that Susan lives with her grandfather, who's a doctor, and they resolve to play detective and check it out.
Back to the English classroom, where Susan is listening to loud music on a transistor radio. Beatlemania hasn't hit the BBC yet, obviously, it's very late-fifties stuff and not what genuine teenagers are listening to these days at all. Susan is rather unearthly-looking, with short hair in an unfashionable style and a rather strange appearance. She's also not played by a very convincing actor, unfortunately. Ian and Barbara are both good, in a BBC-drama kind of way, and likeable too. They go on their way, leaving Susan to read a book about the French Revolution and exclaim that the writer's got it wrong!
The book is a cheap and hasty TV prop, with a paper dustcover containing no words except "THE FRENCH REVOLUTION" on the cover. Did they forget to make one until filming had already started? The rest of the sets are very good - detailed and well-made classrooms! If I was the director (who otherwise does an excellent job here), I wouldn't have chosen a close-up on the book as my transition to the next scene...
In Ian's car in the dark, the two teachers wait outside the junkyard gate and reminisce about Susan's strangenesses as they try to pretend to themselves that they're motivated by anything other than curiosity. Susan doesn't know how many shillings there are in a pound, and when the other pupils laugh at her, she recalls that the decimal system hasn't started yet. [Doctor Who's first and possibly best ever prediction of the future - the change to decimal currency was planned in 1963, but wasn't definitely going to happen and a timescale for it hadn't been set yet. Retrospectively, it's understandable that Susan got mixed up, she's less than a decade too early for it, although since we later learn that she's been on Earth, in Britain, for five months, it's surprising that she hasn't seen money yet.]
The cutaways to Susan show her in the classroom sets, with Barbara's and Ian's voices off-screen - it's a strange way to do it by 2013 standards, and looks weird, but if we click back into the 1963 mindset when most television was broadcast live or (like Doctor Who) recorded 'as live' with multiple cameras and two or three sets squeezed next to each other in the same studio, it doesn't look weird at all. Susan's also bored with Ian's chemistry experiments, finding them too obvious or incomprehensible because they only calculate in three dimensions rather than five...
Susan goes in through the junkyard gate, and the teachers follow her. Ian drops and loses his torch in the dark, and isn't carrying any matches (most 1963 people did!), but they still manage to find the police box. It's vibrating strangely, although Ian walks all around it and can't see any power cable. But then they go and hide as a mysterious old man comes along. He starts to open the police box, and Susan's voice greets him (There you are, Grandfather!) from inside, surprising Ian and Barbara enough that they make a noise attracting the old man's attention.
We finally get to see the title character of this new series! His name goes unmentioned in this episode, although the Radio Times article variously called him 'Dr. Who' (the character's name on the credits) or 'the Doctor'. His first line of dialogue is rather stagey, but then he becomes really quite captivating as he infuriates Ian and Barbara by denying everything and refusing to let them see inside the police box. He chuckles to himself, peppers his speech with "Hmm?" and completely takes charge of the situation even though Ian is bigger, younger and very assertive. His long white hair is very strange-looking for 1963, he's got a woolly hat on, plus a black coat and colourful scarf. The conversation goes round in circles, until the teachers are on the point of being forced to just go away and fetch a policeman, but then the police box door opens, Susan calls out to her grandfather from the inside, and Barbara and Ian force their way in.
And now we get the real science-fiction part at last! The brightly-lit room they stumble into is much, much bigger than the police box! Strange walls with big recessed circles in them, a variety of large and peculiar ornaments, and a hexagonal control panel in the middle of the room. Very strikingly designed and fascinating to see! The ever-practical Barbara is concerned with asking Susan whether she's okay, while Ian is bewildered - he walked all around the police box, after all! The Doctor strips off his coat and scarf, ignoring the teachers' questions and generally scoffing at their ignorance. He's wearing an old-fashioned shirt and tie under a black jacket. He and Susan explain that they're all standing in a 'ship', the TARDIS, that can go anywhere in space or time. And they wonder what they're going to do with these interlopers from 1963...
He explains that he's from a different planet and time, and that he and Susan are exiles, all alone, but that they'll get back home one day. And while Susan begs him to let her teachers just go, he insists that they'll tell everyone what they've seen, and the time travellers will have to be on their way. The Doctor laughs to himself merrily as he locks Ian and Barbara in the TARDIS, sneakily electrifies the controls so Ian gets a shock when he touches them, and finally when they're distracted by Susan works the controls.
The room starts to shake, there's an eerie wheezing noise, we see London receding into the distance, and then an extended version of the spooky light patterns from the opening titles. Ian and Barbara fall down unconscious and we get close-ups of Susan and the Doctor, intercut with swirly light effects and creepy noises. This kind of thing is terrifying to a 1963 audience!
The television screen in the TARDIS now shows a barren, rocky landscape. The police box is now standing incongrously among the rocks and bare trees, and a human shadow is seen approaching it...
Next episode, says the caption, "The Cave Of Skulls"! The title music plays, the credits scroll, and the scene gradually fades to black. 1963 audiences probably noticed the unusual fact that the producer is a woman, Verity Lambert, and the director is an Indian immigrant, Waris Hussein.
It really is a great start to a series! It's a fascinating story, and it leaves us wanting to know what's going to happen next. I would certainly be tuning in next week if I was watching in 1963, intrigued by the setup in this first episode and the promises in the Radio Times that this strange quartet will be travelling all around the universe in the weeks to come...
For now, though, it's Saturday November 23, 1963. We're sitting around at home watching Grandstand (interrupted regularly by news updates about President Kennedy's assassination yesterday) and we've never even heard of Daleks. Last week's Radio Times (people who write about TV shows in those days never remember that every single television-owner in Britain bought the Radio Times back then - it was the one and only place to see the BBC TV listings) told us that "Saturday's serial begins when two teachers (Jacqueline Hill and William Russell) probe the mystery surrounding one of their pupils (Carol Ann Ford) - and meet the strange Dr. Who" and shows a picture of the three of them.
This week's RT has a much bigger feature, spelling Carole Ann Ford's name right and telling us a lot more about the intriguing-sounding new series. It looks like fun, doesn't it? There was a trailer for the new series last Saturday evening, and another last night, but since they no longer exist in the BBC archives, I'm going to assume we missed seeing them. It involved William Hartnell talking to the camera and saying basically the same thing that's in this article...
Okay, it's 5:15, we're settled down in front of the black-and-white TV with a cup of tea and a sandwich, and we're lucky enough to be in one of the houses in Britain not being affected by the widespread power cuts. It's cold outside, there are only two TV channels, so we might as well watch this new thing on the BBC!
It's running late - another news update from America - but then when it starts, we get the opening titles...
Spooky. A line of white light twists and distorts, to the accompaniment of eerie music and hissing noises, then turns into flying white patterns of light rushing at the viewer, and the words DOCTOR OHO appear on the screen - turning into DOCTOR WHO a split second later when it becomes clear that the writing was reversed and overlaid on top of itself in order to look more spooky. That part doesn't really work, but the rest of the opening sequence is completely awesome and like nothing we've seen before on television here in the year 1963!
The music keeps on playing as we see a policeman wandering around a foggy night-time street and shining his torch on an old wooden gate with "I.M.Foreman, Scrap Merchant, 76 Totters Lane" painted on it. Dixon of Dock Green is on the BBC in an hour and a half - are they showing that early by mistake? No, the policeman wanders off after checking that the gate is locked, and then it opens all by itself, leading the camera into a junkyard filled with miscellaneous scrap. Among it is a police box - a normal sight on the streets of London, although it's a bit strange to see one inside a yard like this. The title "An Unearthly Child" appears as the theme music finally stops, followed by the name of the writer, Anthony Coburn. We zoom in on the police box's phone hatch, then we blur-dissolve to the noticeboard of Coal Hill School.
Strange and mysterious beginning, but it's effective! Makes you wonder what's going on...
The school bell's ringing, sixties teenagers are larking about on their way home, and teacher Barbara Wright comes into the chemistry lab to talk to her colleague Ian Chesterton. His first question "Not gone yet?" is a bit strange, since the bell for the end of school rang less than 30 seconds ago, but never mind. They chat about Susan Foreman's strangeness - she's an uncanny genius fifteen-year-old, but secretive about her home life, and Barbara is worried about her, especially since her home address is just a junkyard with no house attached. Ian vaguely remembers that Susan lives with her grandfather, who's a doctor, and they resolve to play detective and check it out.
Back to the English classroom, where Susan is listening to loud music on a transistor radio. Beatlemania hasn't hit the BBC yet, obviously, it's very late-fifties stuff and not what genuine teenagers are listening to these days at all. Susan is rather unearthly-looking, with short hair in an unfashionable style and a rather strange appearance. She's also not played by a very convincing actor, unfortunately. Ian and Barbara are both good, in a BBC-drama kind of way, and likeable too. They go on their way, leaving Susan to read a book about the French Revolution and exclaim that the writer's got it wrong!
The book is a cheap and hasty TV prop, with a paper dustcover containing no words except "THE FRENCH REVOLUTION" on the cover. Did they forget to make one until filming had already started? The rest of the sets are very good - detailed and well-made classrooms! If I was the director (who otherwise does an excellent job here), I wouldn't have chosen a close-up on the book as my transition to the next scene...
In Ian's car in the dark, the two teachers wait outside the junkyard gate and reminisce about Susan's strangenesses as they try to pretend to themselves that they're motivated by anything other than curiosity. Susan doesn't know how many shillings there are in a pound, and when the other pupils laugh at her, she recalls that the decimal system hasn't started yet. [Doctor Who's first and possibly best ever prediction of the future - the change to decimal currency was planned in 1963, but wasn't definitely going to happen and a timescale for it hadn't been set yet. Retrospectively, it's understandable that Susan got mixed up, she's less than a decade too early for it, although since we later learn that she's been on Earth, in Britain, for five months, it's surprising that she hasn't seen money yet.]
The cutaways to Susan show her in the classroom sets, with Barbara's and Ian's voices off-screen - it's a strange way to do it by 2013 standards, and looks weird, but if we click back into the 1963 mindset when most television was broadcast live or (like Doctor Who) recorded 'as live' with multiple cameras and two or three sets squeezed next to each other in the same studio, it doesn't look weird at all. Susan's also bored with Ian's chemistry experiments, finding them too obvious or incomprehensible because they only calculate in three dimensions rather than five...
Susan goes in through the junkyard gate, and the teachers follow her. Ian drops and loses his torch in the dark, and isn't carrying any matches (most 1963 people did!), but they still manage to find the police box. It's vibrating strangely, although Ian walks all around it and can't see any power cable. But then they go and hide as a mysterious old man comes along. He starts to open the police box, and Susan's voice greets him (There you are, Grandfather!) from inside, surprising Ian and Barbara enough that they make a noise attracting the old man's attention.
We finally get to see the title character of this new series! His name goes unmentioned in this episode, although the Radio Times article variously called him 'Dr. Who' (the character's name on the credits) or 'the Doctor'. His first line of dialogue is rather stagey, but then he becomes really quite captivating as he infuriates Ian and Barbara by denying everything and refusing to let them see inside the police box. He chuckles to himself, peppers his speech with "Hmm?" and completely takes charge of the situation even though Ian is bigger, younger and very assertive. His long white hair is very strange-looking for 1963, he's got a woolly hat on, plus a black coat and colourful scarf. The conversation goes round in circles, until the teachers are on the point of being forced to just go away and fetch a policeman, but then the police box door opens, Susan calls out to her grandfather from the inside, and Barbara and Ian force their way in.
And now we get the real science-fiction part at last! The brightly-lit room they stumble into is much, much bigger than the police box! Strange walls with big recessed circles in them, a variety of large and peculiar ornaments, and a hexagonal control panel in the middle of the room. Very strikingly designed and fascinating to see! The ever-practical Barbara is concerned with asking Susan whether she's okay, while Ian is bewildered - he walked all around the police box, after all! The Doctor strips off his coat and scarf, ignoring the teachers' questions and generally scoffing at their ignorance. He's wearing an old-fashioned shirt and tie under a black jacket. He and Susan explain that they're all standing in a 'ship', the TARDIS, that can go anywhere in space or time. And they wonder what they're going to do with these interlopers from 1963...
He explains that he's from a different planet and time, and that he and Susan are exiles, all alone, but that they'll get back home one day. And while Susan begs him to let her teachers just go, he insists that they'll tell everyone what they've seen, and the time travellers will have to be on their way. The Doctor laughs to himself merrily as he locks Ian and Barbara in the TARDIS, sneakily electrifies the controls so Ian gets a shock when he touches them, and finally when they're distracted by Susan works the controls.
The room starts to shake, there's an eerie wheezing noise, we see London receding into the distance, and then an extended version of the spooky light patterns from the opening titles. Ian and Barbara fall down unconscious and we get close-ups of Susan and the Doctor, intercut with swirly light effects and creepy noises. This kind of thing is terrifying to a 1963 audience!
The television screen in the TARDIS now shows a barren, rocky landscape. The police box is now standing incongrously among the rocks and bare trees, and a human shadow is seen approaching it...
Next episode, says the caption, "The Cave Of Skulls"! The title music plays, the credits scroll, and the scene gradually fades to black. 1963 audiences probably noticed the unusual fact that the producer is a woman, Verity Lambert, and the director is an Indian immigrant, Waris Hussein.
It really is a great start to a series! It's a fascinating story, and it leaves us wanting to know what's going to happen next. I would certainly be tuning in next week if I was watching in 1963, intrigued by the setup in this first episode and the promises in the Radio Times that this strange quartet will be travelling all around the universe in the weeks to come...
Mit Schirm, Charme und Melone
Okay, it was three weeks ago, but here's my account of my German TV adventure!
Although in some ways planned in advance, the trip to Germany was a last-minute kind of thing - the qualifying contest between Simon and Johannes was filmed on Tuesday night, and it was the vote of the studio audience at that show that decided which three disciplines would go through to the grand final. Since I'd booked Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off work anyway, I would've felt silly going back and explaining that I wasn't on German TV after all. Luckily, though, the memory challenge was spectacular enough to qualify, and I was off to Cologne.
Arriving at Düsseldorf on Thursday morning, I shared a car with the UK's Strongest Man, Eddie Hall, plus his wife and baby son Maximus the Muscle Baby. Well, I just made up the subtitle, but isn't Maximus the best possible name for a strongman to call his son? We were conveyed to Cologne and set up in the Hopper Hotel on the very memorably-named Dagobertstrasse (Donald Duck's Uncle Scrooge is called Uncle Dagobert in German; I have no idea why. But that's the only thing anyone in Germany would ever associate the name with, although the street was presumably named after some mediaeval saint.) And then it was off to the TV studios for our first rehearsal.
The challenge had been trimmed down a little from the original plans - the qualifying contest between Simon and Johannes gave them a maximum three minutes to memorise 50 digits, 100 heads-or-tails coins (that is, binary digits in a clever disguise) and 40 words. The grand final added 32 cards (7 to ace, like in the popular German game Skat) for a great all-round test of memorising. But then they realised that it took way too long to recite all those heads and tails, so the coins were removed from the final. Which is a shame, I was looking forward to that part, and binary is perhaps the only remaining discipline where I've still got the edge over Simon.
Generally speaking, the European masters were separated from the German winners in rehearsals - it was supposed to be a big surprise for them when they saw their opponent on the live show. Since Simon and I know each other quite well, the TV people didn't bother to keep us apart, and let us do the rehearsals together - unlike in the first show, when they sat down and looked at computer screens, this time it would be more visual, with the cards, numbers and words appearing on separate screens that the competitors walked between, with a big red buzzer to press at the end (the first one to finish presses the buzzer to make the screens go blank for both competitors). The studio looked very cool - quite a bit bigger than the ones I've been in at BBC Television Centre in the past.
After a practice run with the speed memory challenge, which was held up by a technical problem or two, we had dinner in the studio canteen and then faced the important decision of what to wear on the show. The Germans got to wear their normal clothes, but the European challengers were dressed up in something a bit more spectacular. The costume woman had already hit on a way to make me look extremely British and colourful - a kilt. I thought she was joking, but she really didn't seem to see anything wrong with that idea - and to be fair, everyone in England has been making comments about lederhosen, which sounds just as absurd to Germans in the Rhineland as a kilt does to English people. Anyway, it was good to have something to say 'no' to - the TV people, spearheaded by the wonderful Uschi, were constantly asking me if their various ideas were okay and whether I was unhappy with anything. For future reference, I'm basically fine with everything in the world, always. Except wearing a kilt on TV.
So they eventually were persuaded to go with the second choice - a suit and tie, bowler hat and umbrella. I looked surprisingly awesome in this get-up! My beard's quite long at the moment, and I looked like some kind of absent-minded professor. I need to dress up like that more often. I would have much preferred the outfit they put Eddie Hall in, though - a studded leather gladiator-style skirt (what is it with the Germans trying to make the English wear skirts?), leather thongs around his wrists, bright red cape and nothing else.
We all dressed up in full costume for the big dress rehearsal on Friday evening, including my big entrance - the giant screen splits in half to reveal me standing on a pedestal and looking awesome, to the accompaniment of dramatic music. In the rehearsal, actually, it looked much better - I looked serious and sinister until the last moment, then smiled just as it cut to the pre-filmed sequence of me going about my everyday life (standing next to the Robin Hood statue in Nottingham, that kind of thing). On the show itself, they stopped the music a beat earlier, so I missed the smile.
I attempted to talk in German with the host, which was made a bit more difficult by having a translator in my ear, five seconds delayed, telling me what he was saying and generally meaning that I couldn't follow either of them. I tend to find it difficult to understand what Germans are saying to me; replying in German is a lot easier for some reason. Hopefully I made some kind of sense. So we did another practice run of the challenge, which worked better this time, although I still wasn't much good at the memorising, and then went out into the pouring rain (it was nice and warm compared to the weather here in England, but rained most of the time I was there) for a meal with Simon and Johannes (who was there as Simon's guest - mine, arriving on Saturday, was Boris, who'd been Simon's guest at the first show but now had to pretend to support the evil foreigner). They attempted to talk in German, but I didn't understand a word, so we switched back to English
Saturday gave me a chance to look around the shops of Cologne (the Friday was a bank holiday in Germany, and they closed down everything, just like they do on Sundays - Germany is a different world) before the big show in the evening. I had to be at the studio two hours before the show started, which was a bit excessive considering the memory part was the second from last and didn't happen until two and a half hours into the show and I'm ready to go with a light coating of makeup - since I was wearing a hat, I didn't even have to have powder plastered on my bald head to stop it reflecting the studio lights and blinding everyone! But the TV people, wonderfully, had set me up with an empty, silent conference room to compose my thoughts in - I even had the choice between that and hanging out in the green room with various other international competitors, so I only went up to the quiet room once the show had started and Boris had joined the audience.
I'd had a talk with the commentator, explaining how my memory techniques work (basically, exactly the same as Simon had already told him), and told him the journey I'd be using today was around Toton, Nottinghamshire. He wrote it down as "Toten", and I'm fairly sure he told the watching German audience that I was picturing myself in the village of the dead.
Despite all the 'mental preparation time', I was strangely nervous about the show - much more than I ever am about a memory championship. You'd think that by now I'd be used to never doing any good on TV shows, but obviously not. Since I'd gone too quickly with the numbers in rehearsals, in an attempt to catch up with the speed Simon was going at, I made a point of going more slowly and carefully this time. But then we had to re-start, because Simon had the same numbers as he'd had in the first programme, which was a little bit disorienting. German mind-games. So I quickly racked my brain for a journey that I hadn't used in practice too recently, settled on the Queensgate Centre in Peterborough, and started again.
Simon hit the buzzer while I was still half-way through my second reading of the words (we'd both decided to go through each list twice, rather than risking a single sighting), so I wasn't clear on a lot of them. But more importantly, I couldn't for the life of me remember what the first pair of cards was. So, having won the coin toss, I made Simon go first, in an attempt to give myself some more thinking time and remember it. Didn't work. And in any case, Simon was so perfect in his recall of everything that he would have won whatever I did.
So while the winners sat with their trophies in big gold armchairs, awaiting the viewer phone vote as to which performance was the most spectacular (it was the running-up-a-wall-and-backflipping-over-a-high-jump-bar, which admittedly looked a bit cooler than the memory show), I got to watch the last of the show in a room with the other losers. And a very fun experience it was for everyone, too! It's just a shame they didn't let me keep the bowler hat...
Although in some ways planned in advance, the trip to Germany was a last-minute kind of thing - the qualifying contest between Simon and Johannes was filmed on Tuesday night, and it was the vote of the studio audience at that show that decided which three disciplines would go through to the grand final. Since I'd booked Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off work anyway, I would've felt silly going back and explaining that I wasn't on German TV after all. Luckily, though, the memory challenge was spectacular enough to qualify, and I was off to Cologne.
Arriving at Düsseldorf on Thursday morning, I shared a car with the UK's Strongest Man, Eddie Hall, plus his wife and baby son Maximus the Muscle Baby. Well, I just made up the subtitle, but isn't Maximus the best possible name for a strongman to call his son? We were conveyed to Cologne and set up in the Hopper Hotel on the very memorably-named Dagobertstrasse (Donald Duck's Uncle Scrooge is called Uncle Dagobert in German; I have no idea why. But that's the only thing anyone in Germany would ever associate the name with, although the street was presumably named after some mediaeval saint.) And then it was off to the TV studios for our first rehearsal.
The challenge had been trimmed down a little from the original plans - the qualifying contest between Simon and Johannes gave them a maximum three minutes to memorise 50 digits, 100 heads-or-tails coins (that is, binary digits in a clever disguise) and 40 words. The grand final added 32 cards (7 to ace, like in the popular German game Skat) for a great all-round test of memorising. But then they realised that it took way too long to recite all those heads and tails, so the coins were removed from the final. Which is a shame, I was looking forward to that part, and binary is perhaps the only remaining discipline where I've still got the edge over Simon.
Generally speaking, the European masters were separated from the German winners in rehearsals - it was supposed to be a big surprise for them when they saw their opponent on the live show. Since Simon and I know each other quite well, the TV people didn't bother to keep us apart, and let us do the rehearsals together - unlike in the first show, when they sat down and looked at computer screens, this time it would be more visual, with the cards, numbers and words appearing on separate screens that the competitors walked between, with a big red buzzer to press at the end (the first one to finish presses the buzzer to make the screens go blank for both competitors). The studio looked very cool - quite a bit bigger than the ones I've been in at BBC Television Centre in the past.
After a practice run with the speed memory challenge, which was held up by a technical problem or two, we had dinner in the studio canteen and then faced the important decision of what to wear on the show. The Germans got to wear their normal clothes, but the European challengers were dressed up in something a bit more spectacular. The costume woman had already hit on a way to make me look extremely British and colourful - a kilt. I thought she was joking, but she really didn't seem to see anything wrong with that idea - and to be fair, everyone in England has been making comments about lederhosen, which sounds just as absurd to Germans in the Rhineland as a kilt does to English people. Anyway, it was good to have something to say 'no' to - the TV people, spearheaded by the wonderful Uschi, were constantly asking me if their various ideas were okay and whether I was unhappy with anything. For future reference, I'm basically fine with everything in the world, always. Except wearing a kilt on TV.
So they eventually were persuaded to go with the second choice - a suit and tie, bowler hat and umbrella. I looked surprisingly awesome in this get-up! My beard's quite long at the moment, and I looked like some kind of absent-minded professor. I need to dress up like that more often. I would have much preferred the outfit they put Eddie Hall in, though - a studded leather gladiator-style skirt (what is it with the Germans trying to make the English wear skirts?), leather thongs around his wrists, bright red cape and nothing else.
We all dressed up in full costume for the big dress rehearsal on Friday evening, including my big entrance - the giant screen splits in half to reveal me standing on a pedestal and looking awesome, to the accompaniment of dramatic music. In the rehearsal, actually, it looked much better - I looked serious and sinister until the last moment, then smiled just as it cut to the pre-filmed sequence of me going about my everyday life (standing next to the Robin Hood statue in Nottingham, that kind of thing). On the show itself, they stopped the music a beat earlier, so I missed the smile.
I attempted to talk in German with the host, which was made a bit more difficult by having a translator in my ear, five seconds delayed, telling me what he was saying and generally meaning that I couldn't follow either of them. I tend to find it difficult to understand what Germans are saying to me; replying in German is a lot easier for some reason. Hopefully I made some kind of sense. So we did another practice run of the challenge, which worked better this time, although I still wasn't much good at the memorising, and then went out into the pouring rain (it was nice and warm compared to the weather here in England, but rained most of the time I was there) for a meal with Simon and Johannes (who was there as Simon's guest - mine, arriving on Saturday, was Boris, who'd been Simon's guest at the first show but now had to pretend to support the evil foreigner). They attempted to talk in German, but I didn't understand a word, so we switched back to English
Saturday gave me a chance to look around the shops of Cologne (the Friday was a bank holiday in Germany, and they closed down everything, just like they do on Sundays - Germany is a different world) before the big show in the evening. I had to be at the studio two hours before the show started, which was a bit excessive considering the memory part was the second from last and didn't happen until two and a half hours into the show and I'm ready to go with a light coating of makeup - since I was wearing a hat, I didn't even have to have powder plastered on my bald head to stop it reflecting the studio lights and blinding everyone! But the TV people, wonderfully, had set me up with an empty, silent conference room to compose my thoughts in - I even had the choice between that and hanging out in the green room with various other international competitors, so I only went up to the quiet room once the show had started and Boris had joined the audience.
I'd had a talk with the commentator, explaining how my memory techniques work (basically, exactly the same as Simon had already told him), and told him the journey I'd be using today was around Toton, Nottinghamshire. He wrote it down as "Toten", and I'm fairly sure he told the watching German audience that I was picturing myself in the village of the dead.
Despite all the 'mental preparation time', I was strangely nervous about the show - much more than I ever am about a memory championship. You'd think that by now I'd be used to never doing any good on TV shows, but obviously not. Since I'd gone too quickly with the numbers in rehearsals, in an attempt to catch up with the speed Simon was going at, I made a point of going more slowly and carefully this time. But then we had to re-start, because Simon had the same numbers as he'd had in the first programme, which was a little bit disorienting. German mind-games. So I quickly racked my brain for a journey that I hadn't used in practice too recently, settled on the Queensgate Centre in Peterborough, and started again.
Simon hit the buzzer while I was still half-way through my second reading of the words (we'd both decided to go through each list twice, rather than risking a single sighting), so I wasn't clear on a lot of them. But more importantly, I couldn't for the life of me remember what the first pair of cards was. So, having won the coin toss, I made Simon go first, in an attempt to give myself some more thinking time and remember it. Didn't work. And in any case, Simon was so perfect in his recall of everything that he would have won whatever I did.
So while the winners sat with their trophies in big gold armchairs, awaiting the viewer phone vote as to which performance was the most spectacular (it was the running-up-a-wall-and-backflipping-over-a-high-jump-bar, which admittedly looked a bit cooler than the memory show), I got to watch the last of the show in a room with the other losers. And a very fun experience it was for everyone, too! It's just a shame they didn't let me keep the bowler hat...
Saturday, November 16, 2013
I'm back
Sorry I haven't blogged for such a long time. I've got a half-written account of my fun exploits in Germany to finish, and I'll post it for the world to see soon, I'm sure. Just to share my thoughts with the world on an array of other topics...
Doctor Who! Oh, wow, the Children in Need special was the best thing ever! I'm sure everyone who cares has seen it already, but I still won't spoil it - go and watch it on YouTube and not the BBC website, which spoils the surprise with the still-frame it uses to represent the episode! And now I'm quite giddy with excitement for the anniversary episode next week - I seriously don't remember ever being properly excited about a TV programme before, but I am. Very.
Davis Cup! I'm always a fan. It was always going to come down to the doubles, though, after Tipsarevic pulled out, so not playing Djokovic has to be a mistake. This is also the reason why Britain don't have a chance against the USA next year - a one-man team against a side with the world's best doubles players is doomed to failure.
Memory! I did an hour cards practice this morning, which is more than I've managed in a very long time. Successfully forced myself to keep at it all through the three hours, which is the important thing. Couldn't bring myself to sit down and do a binary practice this afternoon, but tomorrow, I hope...
Doctor Who! Oh, wow, the Children in Need special was the best thing ever! I'm sure everyone who cares has seen it already, but I still won't spoil it - go and watch it on YouTube and not the BBC website, which spoils the surprise with the still-frame it uses to represent the episode! And now I'm quite giddy with excitement for the anniversary episode next week - I seriously don't remember ever being properly excited about a TV programme before, but I am. Very.
Davis Cup! I'm always a fan. It was always going to come down to the doubles, though, after Tipsarevic pulled out, so not playing Djokovic has to be a mistake. This is also the reason why Britain don't have a chance against the USA next year - a one-man team against a side with the world's best doubles players is doomed to failure.
Memory! I did an hour cards practice this morning, which is more than I've managed in a very long time. Successfully forced myself to keep at it all through the three hours, which is the important thing. Couldn't bring myself to sit down and do a binary practice this afternoon, but tomorrow, I hope...
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Make the connection
People occasionally invite me to connect on LinkedIn, which if you're sensible enough not to have heard of it is a sort of social network for businesspeople to connect with each other. I don't really think of it as my kind of thing, but last week I got an invitation that made me think "Oh, Eleanor at Boots remembers me? That's nice. I should probably set up an account on this thing, I do keep getting these invites, after all..."
So I did, and now I've got requests piling up from acquaintances around the world, but it leaves me with a dilemma - what do I put as my occupation? Am I using this to connect with memory people or accountants? Or both? Or, more likely, neither? My accounting job title at the moment is 'assistant controller', which is quite groovy, so I don't mind using that, but how do I describe my occasional sideline in memorising things for public amusement? I normally say 'memory man', which to my mind sounds so over-the-top and big-headed that I'm sure everybody will know I'm not serious, but if I'm setting up some kind of official profile, maybe people will take it seriously and think I'm both over-the-top and big-headed and not the modest, self-deprecating, he's-really-awesome-but-doesn't-like-to-talk-about-it big-headed image I try to project to the world. It's a quandary.
So I did, and now I've got requests piling up from acquaintances around the world, but it leaves me with a dilemma - what do I put as my occupation? Am I using this to connect with memory people or accountants? Or both? Or, more likely, neither? My accounting job title at the moment is 'assistant controller', which is quite groovy, so I don't mind using that, but how do I describe my occasional sideline in memorising things for public amusement? I normally say 'memory man', which to my mind sounds so over-the-top and big-headed that I'm sure everybody will know I'm not serious, but if I'm setting up some kind of official profile, maybe people will take it seriously and think I'm both over-the-top and big-headed and not the modest, self-deprecating, he's-really-awesome-but-doesn't-like-to-talk-about-it big-headed image I try to project to the world. It's a quandary.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
A bit more vworp
The Enemy Of The World really is a wonderful example of Doctor Who in the late sixties, and I heartily recommend it to everyone! Go and watch it if you haven't already, and then come back and read the rest of this post, because it's rather spoilerrific (as the trendy young nerds on the internet say).
You see, great though it is to have the serial available on iTunes (so great, indeed, that I betrayed my modern-technology-hating principles and downloaded iTunes), the rush to release it seems to have led to the episode descriptions being written by someone who knows the plot (maybe they read the novelisation back in the days when that was the only way to experience old Doctor Who stories) but hasn't actually watched the episodes themselves. These are the summaries of the episodes that you'll see if you buy the iTunes version:
Episode 1
The TARDIS lands on a barren beach, where it is immediately fired upon by a hovercraft. Rescued by helicopter pilot Astrid, the Doctor (Patrick Troughton) discovers that he has arrived on Earth the year 2017 A.D. and that he is the exact double of a would-be dictator called Salamander.
Episode 2
The Doctor has arrived on earth in the year 2017 A.D. Rescued from certain death by helicopter pilot Astrid, the Doctor is informed by Astrid's boss, Kent, that the world is on the verge of domination by a charismatic scientist/politician named Salamander. The fact that the Doctor is a dead ringer for Salamander leads to several even more perplexing plot elements: who among Kerr's staff can be trusted not to betray their comrades to Salamander's minions, and is Salamander truly the despotic villain that he is made out to be?
Episode 3
The Doctor impersonates his lookalike, would-be dictator Salamander. He does this to penetrate a research station controlled by Salamander's minions, the better to find out if the villain truly is a villain - and if so, who his most fervent (and dangerous) followers may be. This has a trickle-down effect on the Doctor's travelling companions, Jamie and Victoria.
Episode 4
Giles Kent is revealed to be a traitor, in league with would-be 21st century dictator Salamander. Meanwhile, the Doctor - who happens to bear a striking resemblance to Salamander - has infiltrated the dictator's research station. Alas, the station is blown up, with the Doctor apparently still inside. Conspicuous by their absence throughout the proceedings are the Doctor's companions, Jamie and Victoria.
Episode 5
Traitorous scientist Kent has blown up the research station infiltrated by the Doctor. Not long afterwards, 21st century dictator Salamander, who bears a startling resemblance to the Doctor, makes an appearance. But is Salamander really the Doctor - or is it the other way around?
Episode 6
Having been thwarted in his plans to rule the world, Salamander tries to make a quick getaway by posing as the Doctor. Manning the controls of the TARDIS, Salamander tries to escape - but will he be successful?
The first episode summary is more or less accurate - the TARDIS isn't fired upon by a hovercraft, the Doctor and his companions leave the TARDIS to play on the beach, they're spotted by three men in a hovercraft who themselves fire on the Doctor and co and chase after them on foot. The year isn't specified either, but Astrid's helicopter licence expires at the end of 2018, and the story was written in 1967, so it was probably intended to be set fifty years in the future.
The perplexing plot element "who among Kerr's staff can be trusted not to betray their comrades to Salamander's minions" certainly is perplexing - even if you read 'Kent' for 'Kerr' (the actor who played him was Bill Kerr), this question doesn't really come up in the course of the episode, or anywhere else in the story.
Then it really gets a bit strange with the descriptions of episodes 3 to 6. They omit almost everything that happens in those episodes, and summarise the final bit of the storyline as if it's spread across the final four. In the actual show, the Doctor prepares to infiltrate the research station at the end of episode 4 and doesn't actually get in there until episode 5. The revelation about Kent (which isn't that he's in league with Salamander - he wants to kill him, as he's been saying all through the serial - but that the two of them worked together on Salamander's evil plan, years ago) happens at the start of episode 6, then it's revealed that the person Kent thinks is Salamander at that moment is in fact the Doctor, THEN, near the end of the final episode, the station is blown up, and in the brief final scene Salamander tries to get away in the TARDIS.
So on the plus side, if you're watching it on iTunes after reading the episode summaries, major parts of the plot will be a complete surprise to you. But on the other hand, you'll be expecting some things to happen an hour or more before they actually do...
You see, great though it is to have the serial available on iTunes (so great, indeed, that I betrayed my modern-technology-hating principles and downloaded iTunes), the rush to release it seems to have led to the episode descriptions being written by someone who knows the plot (maybe they read the novelisation back in the days when that was the only way to experience old Doctor Who stories) but hasn't actually watched the episodes themselves. These are the summaries of the episodes that you'll see if you buy the iTunes version:
Episode 1
The TARDIS lands on a barren beach, where it is immediately fired upon by a hovercraft. Rescued by helicopter pilot Astrid, the Doctor (Patrick Troughton) discovers that he has arrived on Earth the year 2017 A.D. and that he is the exact double of a would-be dictator called Salamander.
Episode 2
The Doctor has arrived on earth in the year 2017 A.D. Rescued from certain death by helicopter pilot Astrid, the Doctor is informed by Astrid's boss, Kent, that the world is on the verge of domination by a charismatic scientist/politician named Salamander. The fact that the Doctor is a dead ringer for Salamander leads to several even more perplexing plot elements: who among Kerr's staff can be trusted not to betray their comrades to Salamander's minions, and is Salamander truly the despotic villain that he is made out to be?
Episode 3
The Doctor impersonates his lookalike, would-be dictator Salamander. He does this to penetrate a research station controlled by Salamander's minions, the better to find out if the villain truly is a villain - and if so, who his most fervent (and dangerous) followers may be. This has a trickle-down effect on the Doctor's travelling companions, Jamie and Victoria.
Episode 4
Giles Kent is revealed to be a traitor, in league with would-be 21st century dictator Salamander. Meanwhile, the Doctor - who happens to bear a striking resemblance to Salamander - has infiltrated the dictator's research station. Alas, the station is blown up, with the Doctor apparently still inside. Conspicuous by their absence throughout the proceedings are the Doctor's companions, Jamie and Victoria.
Episode 5
Traitorous scientist Kent has blown up the research station infiltrated by the Doctor. Not long afterwards, 21st century dictator Salamander, who bears a startling resemblance to the Doctor, makes an appearance. But is Salamander really the Doctor - or is it the other way around?
Episode 6
Having been thwarted in his plans to rule the world, Salamander tries to make a quick getaway by posing as the Doctor. Manning the controls of the TARDIS, Salamander tries to escape - but will he be successful?
The first episode summary is more or less accurate - the TARDIS isn't fired upon by a hovercraft, the Doctor and his companions leave the TARDIS to play on the beach, they're spotted by three men in a hovercraft who themselves fire on the Doctor and co and chase after them on foot. The year isn't specified either, but Astrid's helicopter licence expires at the end of 2018, and the story was written in 1967, so it was probably intended to be set fifty years in the future.
The perplexing plot element "who among Kerr's staff can be trusted not to betray their comrades to Salamander's minions" certainly is perplexing - even if you read 'Kent' for 'Kerr' (the actor who played him was Bill Kerr), this question doesn't really come up in the course of the episode, or anywhere else in the story.
Then it really gets a bit strange with the descriptions of episodes 3 to 6. They omit almost everything that happens in those episodes, and summarise the final bit of the storyline as if it's spread across the final four. In the actual show, the Doctor prepares to infiltrate the research station at the end of episode 4 and doesn't actually get in there until episode 5. The revelation about Kent (which isn't that he's in league with Salamander - he wants to kill him, as he's been saying all through the serial - but that the two of them worked together on Salamander's evil plan, years ago) happens at the start of episode 6, then it's revealed that the person Kent thinks is Salamander at that moment is in fact the Doctor, THEN, near the end of the final episode, the station is blown up, and in the brief final scene Salamander tries to get away in the TARDIS.
So on the plus side, if you're watching it on iTunes after reading the episode summaries, major parts of the plot will be a complete surprise to you. But on the other hand, you'll be expecting some things to happen an hour or more before they actually do...
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Vworp vworp
Doctor Whooooo! Two whole stories (nearly) from the Patrick Troughton era found in Nigeria! That's my evenings occupied for the next week or so.
Sunday, October 06, 2013
Wrasslin'
I quite like a bit of American wrestling now and then, and lately I've been enjoying following the latest WWE goings-on. So I thought we needed a blog post urging my followers to check it out, too!
Wrestling might not be what you think it is, you see - nowadays, they really only pay token lip-service to the idea that viewers are supposed to believe it's "real", and the modern WWE is determinedly suitable for children; the wrestlers don't say naughty words any more, they don't excessively attack each other with pointy things, they don't end a fight covered with blood, they supposedly don't even use steroids any more after a death by heart failure and a particularly nasty murder-suicide a few years ago. Although looking at some of the wrestlers, it's a little hard to believe they got that big by nothing other than hard work and exercise...
Still, all that means that what we're left with is essentially acting by people who by and large aren't actors. There's nothing more fun to watch than that! The wrestling itself is secondary to the 'storylines', but a lot of the matches are still entertaining - not the main events, usually, but the lesser match-ups with the more agile and acrobatic performers. There actually are some really talented and athletic people working for the WWE at the moment.
There are two main weekly shows on Sky Sports, regular Pay Per View events (most of them are only PPVs in America, and on normal Sky Sports channels over here - Sky know that nobody will buy a wrestling PPV unless it's one of the handful of really big ones every year), and I particularly recommend WWE Superstars, on Sky 1 at the weekends, which features a couple of wrestling matches between some of the more entertaining non-main-event stars and the highlights of the storyline from the past week's main shows.
Here's a primer for what's happening at the moment - John Cena, the main hero (wrestlers are heroes or villains - the 'hardcore fans' on internet websites use the terms 'babyface/face' and 'heel', but I prefer to think in terms of goodies and baddies), is having surgery and taking a few months off. In the WWE Universe, that basically means he ceases to exist and people never talk about him. That's a problem, obviously, since John Cena toys sell much better than any others, so they need an exciting storyline to keep the fans interested and buying merchandise while he's gone. In Cena's absence, the evil people who run the WWE have become extra-evil and instituted a reign of terror! Vince McMahon, who genuinely owns at least part of the WWE, is always evil, and a lot of fun - people complain about him on the internet, but I've always thought he was cool. He gamely lets himself be beaten up by heroic wrestlers whenever a storyline requires him to get his comeuppance for his evil deeds. But the main focus is his evil daughter Stephanie, and her newly-turned-evil husband Triple H (retired wrestler who in real life ensured he got the best storylines by marrying the boss's daughter). The latter is particularly brilliant at the moment, playing a corporate villain who's unspeakably nasty to the goodies while insisting that everything he does is for the best.
Heroic Daniel Bryan is the best wrestler in the world (this needs a little suspension of disbelief), but is continually being cheated out of the WWE Championship belt by the bosses, because he's short, ugly and has a silly beard. The bosses prefer Randy Orton, who's big and handsome and extremely evil. The Shield, three unstoppable evil villains, are the bosses' henchmen who beat up anyone who opposes them. The Big Show, a loveable giant, is being forced to do the bosses' bidding because he needs the money. Heroic Cody Rhodes has been fired because the McMahon family don't like the Rhodes family - this isn't the kind of 'fired' that stops him being paid to perform on WWE shows, obviously, and also means that his brother and father, who aren't officially employed either, show up a lot. Ten lesser heroes came to Daniel Bryan's aid recently while he was getting the latest of his beatings by The Shield and Orton, and so the battle-lines are drawn.
In other storylines, CM Punk is fighting with his loony former manager Paul Heyman, who in an attempt to get back at Punk has first employed no-hoper Curtis Axel and then the big unstoppable monster Ryback. They remain entirely unconnected to the evil-bosses story, but it's still fun to watch. The Wyatt Family, a group of hillbilly weirdos, one of whom wears a sheep mask for no obvious reason, are also lurking in the background and threatening people.
There are other title belts that don't matter as much as the WWE Championship - Alberto del Rio, who doesn't seem to have any kind of personality or storyline, is the World Heavyweight Champion, Curtis Axel is the Intercontinental Champion, one of The Shield is the US Champion and the other two are the Tag Team Champions, and there's a women's championship too, although all the women in the WWE are models who look good in a bikini but can't act or wrestle. The only one with any kind of personality is AJ Lee, the champion, who just doesn't like any of the others. Other wrestling organisations have women who actually can wrestle - a few years ago, the WWE hired one of them, the massive and frightening Kharma, gave her a big slow build-up of ominous videos, and then just as she was about to make her big debut, she got pregnant in real life and had to leave. This seems to have convinced the WWE that hiring women is more trouble that it's worth, and they haven't really tried to employ any real wrestlers since then.
The fun characters to watch out for: Damien Sandow, "intellectual saviour of the masses" who thinks he's better than you, is wonderful - he talks a good fight, is contemptuous about all his rivals, gets beaten up a lot and currently holds a contract entitling him to challenge for the World Heavyweight Championship at any time but is apparently scared to use it. Goldust, brother of Cody Rhodes, wears an amazing costume, complete with gold and black face-paint that he wears even when dressed in a business suit, and wrestles energetically even though he's in his forties and hadn't been a regular on the WWE for many years before his latest comeback. (There need to be more wrestlers of distinctive appearance like that - as a casual fan, I struggle to distinguish Randy Orton from CM Punk, and Ryback is basically just a slightly smaller version of The Big Show). Kofi Kingston, though he hasn't got any personality beyond being basically a nice guy, is acrobatic and brilliant in the wrestling ring. R-Truth, the rapping wrestler, has the best entrance music and gets the crowd fired up, though there's not much to him beyond that. Paul Heyman is absolutely hilarious - being a manager, he's an actor rather than a wrestler, and makes the whole thing a lot more fun. The Big Show is always fun to watch; genuinely somewhere close to seven feet tall and hugely muscular, he's a great stage presence, and he can act the part too, and even do some cool wrestling moves! (This puts him light-years ahead of the WWE's other main giant, The Great Khali, who can't speak English and can barely move - he's only used in comedy skits nowadays). El Torito, sidekick of Los Matadores, the bullfighter-themed wrestlers who made their debuts this week (well, actually they're two wrestlers who've been around for years, wearing different costumes), is amazing - a tiny little man in a bull costume, he bounces around the ropes better than anyone, and I'm hoping they do something cool with him in the future. 3MB, the Three Man Band, are my favourite baddies - three dim-witted villains who just hang out together because they like each other's company and help each other cheat in singles matches, they all have the perfect 'evil' look about them, especially Drew McIntyre. The Shield also have that great bad-guy look, or at least Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns do (Dean Ambrose always looks too cherubic, even dressed in their trademark black bad-guy costumes). Finally, Dolph Ziggler deserves to be cheered on - he's been with the WWE for years, paying his dues by playing two terrible characters before he became Dolph (his 'thing' is being a show-off), and never quite seems to get the good storylines despite being good-looking, athletic and a lot of fun to watch in the ring.
So check it out - I'm sure you'll like it, even if (like many of my readers) you're an intellectual memory-man who thinks violence is horrid! The "Battleground" PPV is on Sky Sports in the early hours of the morning, or else there's always plenty of other WWE programmes that'll tell you what happens...
Wrestling might not be what you think it is, you see - nowadays, they really only pay token lip-service to the idea that viewers are supposed to believe it's "real", and the modern WWE is determinedly suitable for children; the wrestlers don't say naughty words any more, they don't excessively attack each other with pointy things, they don't end a fight covered with blood, they supposedly don't even use steroids any more after a death by heart failure and a particularly nasty murder-suicide a few years ago. Although looking at some of the wrestlers, it's a little hard to believe they got that big by nothing other than hard work and exercise...
Still, all that means that what we're left with is essentially acting by people who by and large aren't actors. There's nothing more fun to watch than that! The wrestling itself is secondary to the 'storylines', but a lot of the matches are still entertaining - not the main events, usually, but the lesser match-ups with the more agile and acrobatic performers. There actually are some really talented and athletic people working for the WWE at the moment.
There are two main weekly shows on Sky Sports, regular Pay Per View events (most of them are only PPVs in America, and on normal Sky Sports channels over here - Sky know that nobody will buy a wrestling PPV unless it's one of the handful of really big ones every year), and I particularly recommend WWE Superstars, on Sky 1 at the weekends, which features a couple of wrestling matches between some of the more entertaining non-main-event stars and the highlights of the storyline from the past week's main shows.
Here's a primer for what's happening at the moment - John Cena, the main hero (wrestlers are heroes or villains - the 'hardcore fans' on internet websites use the terms 'babyface/face' and 'heel', but I prefer to think in terms of goodies and baddies), is having surgery and taking a few months off. In the WWE Universe, that basically means he ceases to exist and people never talk about him. That's a problem, obviously, since John Cena toys sell much better than any others, so they need an exciting storyline to keep the fans interested and buying merchandise while he's gone. In Cena's absence, the evil people who run the WWE have become extra-evil and instituted a reign of terror! Vince McMahon, who genuinely owns at least part of the WWE, is always evil, and a lot of fun - people complain about him on the internet, but I've always thought he was cool. He gamely lets himself be beaten up by heroic wrestlers whenever a storyline requires him to get his comeuppance for his evil deeds. But the main focus is his evil daughter Stephanie, and her newly-turned-evil husband Triple H (retired wrestler who in real life ensured he got the best storylines by marrying the boss's daughter). The latter is particularly brilliant at the moment, playing a corporate villain who's unspeakably nasty to the goodies while insisting that everything he does is for the best.
Heroic Daniel Bryan is the best wrestler in the world (this needs a little suspension of disbelief), but is continually being cheated out of the WWE Championship belt by the bosses, because he's short, ugly and has a silly beard. The bosses prefer Randy Orton, who's big and handsome and extremely evil. The Shield, three unstoppable evil villains, are the bosses' henchmen who beat up anyone who opposes them. The Big Show, a loveable giant, is being forced to do the bosses' bidding because he needs the money. Heroic Cody Rhodes has been fired because the McMahon family don't like the Rhodes family - this isn't the kind of 'fired' that stops him being paid to perform on WWE shows, obviously, and also means that his brother and father, who aren't officially employed either, show up a lot. Ten lesser heroes came to Daniel Bryan's aid recently while he was getting the latest of his beatings by The Shield and Orton, and so the battle-lines are drawn.
In other storylines, CM Punk is fighting with his loony former manager Paul Heyman, who in an attempt to get back at Punk has first employed no-hoper Curtis Axel and then the big unstoppable monster Ryback. They remain entirely unconnected to the evil-bosses story, but it's still fun to watch. The Wyatt Family, a group of hillbilly weirdos, one of whom wears a sheep mask for no obvious reason, are also lurking in the background and threatening people.
There are other title belts that don't matter as much as the WWE Championship - Alberto del Rio, who doesn't seem to have any kind of personality or storyline, is the World Heavyweight Champion, Curtis Axel is the Intercontinental Champion, one of The Shield is the US Champion and the other two are the Tag Team Champions, and there's a women's championship too, although all the women in the WWE are models who look good in a bikini but can't act or wrestle. The only one with any kind of personality is AJ Lee, the champion, who just doesn't like any of the others. Other wrestling organisations have women who actually can wrestle - a few years ago, the WWE hired one of them, the massive and frightening Kharma, gave her a big slow build-up of ominous videos, and then just as she was about to make her big debut, she got pregnant in real life and had to leave. This seems to have convinced the WWE that hiring women is more trouble that it's worth, and they haven't really tried to employ any real wrestlers since then.
The fun characters to watch out for: Damien Sandow, "intellectual saviour of the masses" who thinks he's better than you, is wonderful - he talks a good fight, is contemptuous about all his rivals, gets beaten up a lot and currently holds a contract entitling him to challenge for the World Heavyweight Championship at any time but is apparently scared to use it. Goldust, brother of Cody Rhodes, wears an amazing costume, complete with gold and black face-paint that he wears even when dressed in a business suit, and wrestles energetically even though he's in his forties and hadn't been a regular on the WWE for many years before his latest comeback. (There need to be more wrestlers of distinctive appearance like that - as a casual fan, I struggle to distinguish Randy Orton from CM Punk, and Ryback is basically just a slightly smaller version of The Big Show). Kofi Kingston, though he hasn't got any personality beyond being basically a nice guy, is acrobatic and brilliant in the wrestling ring. R-Truth, the rapping wrestler, has the best entrance music and gets the crowd fired up, though there's not much to him beyond that. Paul Heyman is absolutely hilarious - being a manager, he's an actor rather than a wrestler, and makes the whole thing a lot more fun. The Big Show is always fun to watch; genuinely somewhere close to seven feet tall and hugely muscular, he's a great stage presence, and he can act the part too, and even do some cool wrestling moves! (This puts him light-years ahead of the WWE's other main giant, The Great Khali, who can't speak English and can barely move - he's only used in comedy skits nowadays). El Torito, sidekick of Los Matadores, the bullfighter-themed wrestlers who made their debuts this week (well, actually they're two wrestlers who've been around for years, wearing different costumes), is amazing - a tiny little man in a bull costume, he bounces around the ropes better than anyone, and I'm hoping they do something cool with him in the future. 3MB, the Three Man Band, are my favourite baddies - three dim-witted villains who just hang out together because they like each other's company and help each other cheat in singles matches, they all have the perfect 'evil' look about them, especially Drew McIntyre. The Shield also have that great bad-guy look, or at least Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns do (Dean Ambrose always looks too cherubic, even dressed in their trademark black bad-guy costumes). Finally, Dolph Ziggler deserves to be cheered on - he's been with the WWE for years, paying his dues by playing two terrible characters before he became Dolph (his 'thing' is being a show-off), and never quite seems to get the good storylines despite being good-looking, athletic and a lot of fun to watch in the ring.
So check it out - I'm sure you'll like it, even if (like many of my readers) you're an intellectual memory-man who thinks violence is horrid! The "Battleground" PPV is on Sky Sports in the early hours of the morning, or else there's always plenty of other WWE programmes that'll tell you what happens...
Friday, October 04, 2013
Devil among the tailors
I've spent the last 24 hours not being able to remember the quaint olde-worlde name for that skittles game. I'm recording it on my blog, so if that situation ever arises again, you'll all be able to remind me. Okay?
Thursday, October 03, 2013
Lawrentian
Did you know that D H Lawrence was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire? I find myself in Eastwood today and tomorrow for a training course in the Lawrence Suite of Eastwood Hall hotel. My brother's middle name is also Lawrence, although he was named after our grandfather, who in turn was presumably named after Lawrence of Arabia, because in 1919 T E Lawrence was considered an admirable kind of person to name your son after, and D H Lawrence less so. But I might be wrong. Maybe he and the Lawrence Suite here were both named after someone entirely different called Lawrence. It's still a silly name, anyway. My middle name's George, which was a good name until royalty started calling their offspring it.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
The kind of thing that keeps me awake at nights
As I've probably mentioned before, I'm a sucker for anything muppet-related, and surprisingly passionate about TV shows intended for small children. So it's good to see that Jim Henson's Pajanimals have finally made their way onto Nick Jr!
Pajanimals, the internet tells me, started out as a series of bedtime-themed songs performed by the four eponymous animals, and was then expanded into a series of 11-minute episodes in which they don't just sing a song but get advice on the pre-schooler hot issue of the week from a variety of helpful characters.
The Nick Jr version of the show, like a lot of their output, is dubbed into British English, replacing the original American voices. It's generally agreed among the people who decide these things, apparently, that under-fives shouldn't hear American voices, but it's okay for older children. This can have its pros and cons - characters often end up saying the kind of things that only Americans would say, in English accents, which is just weird and confusing. But on the other hand, the British voicing is often rather better - Maggie and the Ferocious Beast, for example, was improved immeasurably by the British dubbing. Pajanimals, on the other hand, is a bit more uneven - for one thing, the actors can't quite decide if the second 'a' is pronounced as in 'pajamas' or 'animals'. It's the same sound in America, you see. And anyway, when did we stop spelling it 'pyjamas' over here?
But what concerns me the most about the series as shown on Nick Jr is the order that the episodes are shown in. Two episodes are shown a night, which is a bad idea for a start, since each episode ends with our heroes going to sleep, thus a perfect moment for watching parents to send their offspring to bed - two 11-minute episodes in a half-hour programming block is the inflexible rule in America, but British channels are allowed to vary that a little bit even nowadays, so you'd think Nick Jr would just show one episode each bedtime. On another tangent, they're shown at 7pm (both episodes uninterrupted one after the other, followed by an amazingly long commercial break before the next programme starts at 7:30), which was my bedtime when I was Pajanimals-watching age. Have bedtimes got later now that there's such a thing as children's TV channels, or are parents videoing it (or the modern-day equivalent) for their toddlers to watch the next day?
In any case, I was talking about the order of broadcast. The first two episodes shown on Nick Jr were two extremely similar ones - both featuring Squacky as the central character, both involving him overcoming fears of abstract things (the dark in general, and then the possibility of monsters under his bed). It's not unheard-of for American TV shows to do this kind of thing deliberately (see Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood - or rather, don't, because it's rubbish), but I checked the internet to see if that really was the way it was originally broadcast, and Wikipedia says it wasn't.
Wikipedia, though, I hope is wrong, because the order of episodes it gives is almost certainly production order - it starts with all the episodes featuring Bedtime Bunny as the guest star who helps the Pajanimals with their latest problem, then all the episodes featuring Jerry Bear, and so forth. I'm sure a reputable production company like Sixteen South wouldn't show the episodes in that order!
So what I'm going to have to do is devise an authoritative viewing order for Pajanimals, once I've seen all the episodes! Incidentally, I'm not the only weirdo who thinks this way - the Wikipedia article has a wonderful footnote saying: "NOTE: It should be mentioned that the episodes of the full series are apparently broadcast out of chronological order in terms of the Pajanimals' experiences because in "Share Day" in the first season, Sweetpea Sue was nervous about Share Day at school. But in "Off to My School Adventure" in the second season, she and Apollo were about to attend school for the first time.". People care about these things!
Besides, it's fun to think about! Does "Under The Bed" come before or after "Tomorrow Is Brand New", for example? In the former, Squacky's favourite ball rolls under his bed and he can't get it out because he's scared of monsters; in the latter, he loses another ball (not the same one as in the other episode) under the bed, and insists that Apollo retrieve it for him. If "Tomorrow Is Brand New" comes second, it rather undermines the ending of "Under The Bed", in which Squacky eventually gets his own ball and learns that there aren't any monsters down there; but if they're in the other order, it makes Squacky pretty uncaring about Apollo's safety - in "Under The Bed", Apollo offers to get the ball back, but Squacky won't let him go anywhere near the under-bed monsters.
So stay tuned when the series has reached its end (are Nick Jr going to show both American series? I hope so, anyway) and I'll tell you all which order to watch them in! You should be taping them now, incidentally, since DVDs of these things usually have the American voices, and British people shouldn't be exposed to such things.
Pajanimals, the internet tells me, started out as a series of bedtime-themed songs performed by the four eponymous animals, and was then expanded into a series of 11-minute episodes in which they don't just sing a song but get advice on the pre-schooler hot issue of the week from a variety of helpful characters.
The Nick Jr version of the show, like a lot of their output, is dubbed into British English, replacing the original American voices. It's generally agreed among the people who decide these things, apparently, that under-fives shouldn't hear American voices, but it's okay for older children. This can have its pros and cons - characters often end up saying the kind of things that only Americans would say, in English accents, which is just weird and confusing. But on the other hand, the British voicing is often rather better - Maggie and the Ferocious Beast, for example, was improved immeasurably by the British dubbing. Pajanimals, on the other hand, is a bit more uneven - for one thing, the actors can't quite decide if the second 'a' is pronounced as in 'pajamas' or 'animals'. It's the same sound in America, you see. And anyway, when did we stop spelling it 'pyjamas' over here?
But what concerns me the most about the series as shown on Nick Jr is the order that the episodes are shown in. Two episodes are shown a night, which is a bad idea for a start, since each episode ends with our heroes going to sleep, thus a perfect moment for watching parents to send their offspring to bed - two 11-minute episodes in a half-hour programming block is the inflexible rule in America, but British channels are allowed to vary that a little bit even nowadays, so you'd think Nick Jr would just show one episode each bedtime. On another tangent, they're shown at 7pm (both episodes uninterrupted one after the other, followed by an amazingly long commercial break before the next programme starts at 7:30), which was my bedtime when I was Pajanimals-watching age. Have bedtimes got later now that there's such a thing as children's TV channels, or are parents videoing it (or the modern-day equivalent) for their toddlers to watch the next day?
In any case, I was talking about the order of broadcast. The first two episodes shown on Nick Jr were two extremely similar ones - both featuring Squacky as the central character, both involving him overcoming fears of abstract things (the dark in general, and then the possibility of monsters under his bed). It's not unheard-of for American TV shows to do this kind of thing deliberately (see Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood - or rather, don't, because it's rubbish), but I checked the internet to see if that really was the way it was originally broadcast, and Wikipedia says it wasn't.
Wikipedia, though, I hope is wrong, because the order of episodes it gives is almost certainly production order - it starts with all the episodes featuring Bedtime Bunny as the guest star who helps the Pajanimals with their latest problem, then all the episodes featuring Jerry Bear, and so forth. I'm sure a reputable production company like Sixteen South wouldn't show the episodes in that order!
So what I'm going to have to do is devise an authoritative viewing order for Pajanimals, once I've seen all the episodes! Incidentally, I'm not the only weirdo who thinks this way - the Wikipedia article has a wonderful footnote saying: "NOTE: It should be mentioned that the episodes of the full series are apparently broadcast out of chronological order in terms of the Pajanimals' experiences because in "Share Day" in the first season, Sweetpea Sue was nervous about Share Day at school. But in "Off to My School Adventure" in the second season, she and Apollo were about to attend school for the first time.". People care about these things!
Besides, it's fun to think about! Does "Under The Bed" come before or after "Tomorrow Is Brand New", for example? In the former, Squacky's favourite ball rolls under his bed and he can't get it out because he's scared of monsters; in the latter, he loses another ball (not the same one as in the other episode) under the bed, and insists that Apollo retrieve it for him. If "Tomorrow Is Brand New" comes second, it rather undermines the ending of "Under The Bed", in which Squacky eventually gets his own ball and learns that there aren't any monsters down there; but if they're in the other order, it makes Squacky pretty uncaring about Apollo's safety - in "Under The Bed", Apollo offers to get the ball back, but Squacky won't let him go anywhere near the under-bed monsters.
So stay tuned when the series has reached its end (are Nick Jr going to show both American series? I hope so, anyway) and I'll tell you all which order to watch them in! You should be taping them now, incidentally, since DVDs of these things usually have the American voices, and British people shouldn't be exposed to such things.
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Bless me
I've got a terrible cold. I was going to go into work today, but instead I've only ventured as far as the Co-op to buy some lemsip, tissues and a big bar of chocolate, to make me feel better about having a cold. I just wanted to share this with you all.
Friday, September 13, 2013
Dedication's what you need
When I was at primary school, there was a TV show called Record Breakers, which showcased people breaking world records, and had a very catchy theme tune that everyone in Britain still knows. Dedication, dedication, dedication, that's what you need. If you wanna be the best, if you wanna beat the rest, woh-oh-oh, dedication's what you need. And if you slightly change the words to 'defecation', it's hilarious, because defecation means poo.
Actually, that doesn't seem to be quite so funny now I'm not seven years old. Strange. Anyway, the point of all this is that the new 2014 edition of the Guinness Book Of Records came out yesterday. And, having shunned memory-related records for many years in favour of attaching clothes-pegs to your face and being fat, there's a whole two pages of mind-themed records this year!
The whole page is festooned with photos, of me, Naofumi Ogasawara, Simon Reinhard, Melik Duyar, Priyanshi Somani, Johannes Mallow, Boris Konrad, Freddis Reyes Hernandez and some guy I've never heard of called Dr Amit Garg! We all owe a huge debt of thanks to whoever persuaded the Guinness people to include us all in the book - I suspect Melik, he's good at that kind of thing (and the Memoriad gets a lot of plugs), but he hasn't taken the credit for it. There are lots of other fun records too, and not just on those two pages. Go out and buy the book, it's only £10 at W H Smith!
I'm credited with the record for 30-minute cards, a little strangely (hour cards is, to my mind, the cooler marathon cards record). As the book correctly points out, I did it at the Derby Memory Championship, back in 2008, and I see that the other records that made the book were done at things like the German championship - competitions that are only tenuously connected to the World Memory Sports Council. The World Memory Championship goes unmentioned. It's all politics, but who cares? I'm in the book! And that photo of me, taken in 2004, has never looked cooler!
Actually, that doesn't seem to be quite so funny now I'm not seven years old. Strange. Anyway, the point of all this is that the new 2014 edition of the Guinness Book Of Records came out yesterday. And, having shunned memory-related records for many years in favour of attaching clothes-pegs to your face and being fat, there's a whole two pages of mind-themed records this year!
The whole page is festooned with photos, of me, Naofumi Ogasawara, Simon Reinhard, Melik Duyar, Priyanshi Somani, Johannes Mallow, Boris Konrad, Freddis Reyes Hernandez and some guy I've never heard of called Dr Amit Garg! We all owe a huge debt of thanks to whoever persuaded the Guinness people to include us all in the book - I suspect Melik, he's good at that kind of thing (and the Memoriad gets a lot of plugs), but he hasn't taken the credit for it. There are lots of other fun records too, and not just on those two pages. Go out and buy the book, it's only £10 at W H Smith!
I'm credited with the record for 30-minute cards, a little strangely (hour cards is, to my mind, the cooler marathon cards record). As the book correctly points out, I did it at the Derby Memory Championship, back in 2008, and I see that the other records that made the book were done at things like the German championship - competitions that are only tenuously connected to the World Memory Sports Council. The World Memory Championship goes unmentioned. It's all politics, but who cares? I'm in the book! And that photo of me, taken in 2004, has never looked cooler!
Sunday, September 01, 2013
Bah, work tomorrow
Well, Weird Internet Friend #2 is safely on his way back to America, hopefully (I left him in the capable hands of Another Weird Internet Friend yesterday after some London sightseeing), and now I feel like I need a holiday to rest after my holiday. It's been a bit hectic. Also, my washing machine is broken. It's a hard life.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Can people levitate?
I should have mentioned last night that the Kölner Dom is a really beautiful building. I went along to see it this morning, seeing as it's right next to my hotel, and I really was impressed. Also impressive was the man levitating outside it, but the other passers-by didn't really pay much attention to him, so I assume they've seen it all before.
Anyway, I'm at Frankfurt Airport as I write this, on my way home again. It's a busy life, being an international jetsetter. I've missed this, these last few months.
Anyway, I'm at Frankfurt Airport as I write this, on my way home again. It's a busy life, being an international jetsetter. I've missed this, these last few months.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
I always assumed the Dom was dome-shaped
This hotel I'm staying in in Köln really isn't very Handy if you haven't got a mobile phone. To check in, you have to call a phone number, and then they tell you the combination for the miniature safe that your key is in. It's strange, as is the desert theme (it's the Sandmanns Hotel) and peculiar decorations all around the place.
Still, I've had fun on this very brief trip to Germany - I haven't been to this country for much too long, so even if I'm only here for barely 24 hours, it's been fun. The TV people even let me try to speak German a little bit, which people in Germany usually never do. It's no wonder nobody in Britain speaks the language, everyone over here always speaks English to us without giving us a chance to learn it!
So, I get the train back to the airport tomorrow morning, but that at least gives me a chance to watch some cartoons before I leave, and maybe even look in a couple of shops, if I'm quick!
Still, I've had fun on this very brief trip to Germany - I haven't been to this country for much too long, so even if I'm only here for barely 24 hours, it's been fun. The TV people even let me try to speak German a little bit, which people in Germany usually never do. It's no wonder nobody in Britain speaks the language, everyone over here always speaks English to us without giving us a chance to learn it!
So, I get the train back to the airport tomorrow morning, but that at least gives me a chance to watch some cartoons before I leave, and maybe even look in a couple of shops, if I'm quick!
Monday, August 26, 2013
Holidays
Okay, Weird Internet Friend #2 is safely installed here, although he got detained at immigration presumably because they thought he was some kind of weird internet person. Now I can turn my attention to going to Germany and looking forward to the TV spectacular they're putting together in a month or two. I don't think I'm supposed to talk about the details yet, but I assure you it'll be awesome!
I'm flying out tomorrow, and back on Wednesday, so I've just gone through my drawer-of-assorted-rubbish to see how many Euros I've got kicking around. About €22.50, in fact, almost all of it in €2 coins. I need to spend coins rather than notes when I'm on the continent, obviously.
I'm flying out tomorrow, and back on Wednesday, so I've just gone through my drawer-of-assorted-rubbish to see how many Euros I've got kicking around. About €22.50, in fact, almost all of it in €2 coins. I need to spend coins rather than notes when I'm on the continent, obviously.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
We are the champions, my friend
See, there are two "championships" at the UK Memory Championships - one just for British people, and one for foreigners. Or rather, as far as the actual competitors are concerned, there's only one championship, the UK Open, but by virtue of Jonas coming from Sweden, I got the big trophy and (technically) the prestigious title of UK Memory Champion, even though he was about a million times better than me. I'm not going to put it on my business cards.
Actually, day two went rather better than day one - following the same strategy as I'd used in the 30-minute numbers, I aimed for much lower scores than I normally would, and got them all right without much trouble. Twelve packs in 30-minute cards is perfectly acceptable really, 77 historic dates would have been mind-blowingly amazing ten years ago so I shouldn't feel bad about it, and so on. I did make a mess of spoken numbers, which I haven't practiced for a long time - I was only a fraction of a second slower than I would normally be, but that's time enough to lose track of the digits. But then in speed cards I recorded a time of 28.78 seconds in the first trial and was much closer to recalling it correctly than I thought I would be. So I went at about the same speed the second time, and got it right!
The time was officially recorded as 31.34 seconds, although that might not be as accurate as it usually is, since I apparently broke the timer when I put my hands down on it. It turned itself off, and didn't even save the time in its memory like the things are supposed to do. Luckily, David Sedgwick was watching the display screen at the moment it broke, and he assures us that the time he wrote down is correct, "within maybe a couple of hundredths of a second, anyway". I'm sure I didn't hit the thing particularly hard, although I know I do have a tendency to get overexcited and thump my hands down a bit. Luckily, the time could have been out by a minute or so and I would still have finished second overall, so it didn't matter much.
I didn't notice the problem until about a minute after it happened, incidentally - when I put the cards down and hit the timer, I immediately close my eyes and try to remember what the cards are. I don't open them again and peek around the room at the other competitors until I'm certain my mental images are going to stay in my brain and not disappear before the five minutes' memorisation time has finished.
Meanwhile, I hope you caught Jonas on BBC breakfast TV the following day. I didn't - no TV in the hall of residence, although to be fair it does have free wifi, and I could have watched it on my laptop. It didn't occur to me, mainly because I had a terrible hangover yesterday after only two pints of cider in the pub afterwards. It'll be the mental exertion, I haven't done a two-day memory competition for too many months.
Chris Day spent a lot of time talking to a journalist at the competition, which has resulted in the following in-depth analysis of memory techniques in this memory article:
Chris Day, from the World Memory Sports Council, said the techniques are useful to improve memory.
Mr Day said: "We all have potentially an amazing memory."
If that was the guy he was talking to when they saw me going down the stairs and felt that there was more of my backside on display than is decent (my lucky shirt has a large hole in the back, and my shorts are somewhat loose around the waist), then it's probably my fault.
Actually, day two went rather better than day one - following the same strategy as I'd used in the 30-minute numbers, I aimed for much lower scores than I normally would, and got them all right without much trouble. Twelve packs in 30-minute cards is perfectly acceptable really, 77 historic dates would have been mind-blowingly amazing ten years ago so I shouldn't feel bad about it, and so on. I did make a mess of spoken numbers, which I haven't practiced for a long time - I was only a fraction of a second slower than I would normally be, but that's time enough to lose track of the digits. But then in speed cards I recorded a time of 28.78 seconds in the first trial and was much closer to recalling it correctly than I thought I would be. So I went at about the same speed the second time, and got it right!
The time was officially recorded as 31.34 seconds, although that might not be as accurate as it usually is, since I apparently broke the timer when I put my hands down on it. It turned itself off, and didn't even save the time in its memory like the things are supposed to do. Luckily, David Sedgwick was watching the display screen at the moment it broke, and he assures us that the time he wrote down is correct, "within maybe a couple of hundredths of a second, anyway". I'm sure I didn't hit the thing particularly hard, although I know I do have a tendency to get overexcited and thump my hands down a bit. Luckily, the time could have been out by a minute or so and I would still have finished second overall, so it didn't matter much.
I didn't notice the problem until about a minute after it happened, incidentally - when I put the cards down and hit the timer, I immediately close my eyes and try to remember what the cards are. I don't open them again and peek around the room at the other competitors until I'm certain my mental images are going to stay in my brain and not disappear before the five minutes' memorisation time has finished.
Meanwhile, I hope you caught Jonas on BBC breakfast TV the following day. I didn't - no TV in the hall of residence, although to be fair it does have free wifi, and I could have watched it on my laptop. It didn't occur to me, mainly because I had a terrible hangover yesterday after only two pints of cider in the pub afterwards. It'll be the mental exertion, I haven't done a two-day memory competition for too many months.
Chris Day spent a lot of time talking to a journalist at the competition, which has resulted in the following in-depth analysis of memory techniques in this memory article:
Chris Day, from the World Memory Sports Council, said the techniques are useful to improve memory.
Mr Day said: "We all have potentially an amazing memory."
If that was the guy he was talking to when they saw me going down the stairs and felt that there was more of my backside on display than is decent (my lucky shirt has a large hole in the back, and my shorts are somewhat loose around the waist), then it's probably my fault.
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Silence in the library
Upstairs in the Science Museum in London, there's a really cool-looking little library room, with double-decker bookcases (there's a sort of ledge half way up that you walk along to see the higher-up shelves, I don't know what the technical name is) and antique furnishings throughout. Although today and tomorrow it's got some modern tables and chairs and a stonking great computer screen set up, for the UK Memory Championship!
We've got a healthy mix of competitors from around Britain and the world, as usual - thirteen altogether, and that's not including the various other people who came along and had a go at one or more disciplines. Foremost among these were journalists from the Times and the Independent, who both tried their hand at 30-minute binary. Both attempted four rows, 120 digits, but while the Times man got them all correct, the Independent made mistakes on three rows, and so only got a score of 30. Make your own judgements about the relative merits of the two newspapers.
Incidentally, I could swear that I've met the man from the Times before. As my readers will know, I rarely remember faces, but his is familiar enough that I'm sure I've had an interview with him in the past. He talked as if he'd never met any of us, though, so maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe the article in tomorrow's paper will say "I went to the UK Memory Championship and nobody remembered me, even though I remembered them." Or maybe all reporters from the Times look the same (young, posh, floppy-haired...) and I spoke to another one of them.
My scores in everything were awful, as I confidently expected. I'm going to need to be careful not to end up with fewer points than James Paterson, and so avoid being not the best British competitor in a championship for the first time since (I think I'm right in saying this) 2004. It's so long since I did a half-hour discipline, in practice or in competition, I really made a mess of binary, and ended up with a score of 2000 or so, attempting 4500 or thereabouts. Abstract images followed a similar pattern, and I was already exhausted by the time we sat down to speed numbers. 30-minute numbers followed after that, and I decided to manage my expectations hugely, and just attempt 680 digits. I'd written them all down within 15 minutes of the recall time, so perhaps I was over-cautious, but I'm fairly sure that really was as much as I could do - my mind was wandering terribly, which is just what you can expect if you don't train for these events.
Incidentally, we know our scores for abstract images (first discipline after lunch) already, thanks to some unusually speedy and efficient marking from the team of arbiters. Kudos to Phil, Chris, David, Gaby, Nathalie, Dominic, Peter, whoever I've forgotten to list (there's always one) and whoever I don't even know is there (some arbiters always lurk in the back room and never come out to say hello to me). Phil's machine that beeps after a specified number of minutes seems to have died (which is very tragic; it's been coming to these competitions longer than I have), so disciplines were timed on a digital watch, but nothing's gone spectacularly wrong yet. Tony opened the competition with a lengthy speech that was mainly about royal jelly, which makes a change from the usual one and kept us all entertained, someone was buzzing around taking photos, several spectators came to see what was happening, science museum people were looking at us suspiciously, it's all the fun of a memory competition!
Jonas von Essen is clearly going to be the runaway winner, although he's producing the kind of scores that elite competitors do when they haven't got any real opposition. That, more than anything, is motivating me to do some more training and pose him a challenge at the World Championship! I copied his habit of taking his groovy shoes off, since my less groovy ones (which I nonetheless love, since they were bought for me by someone special) got soaked in the rain, and went around barefoot all afternoon. We're the Zola Budds of memory sports!
The British contingent are led by James Paterson, Wales's finest, who got the highest score at names & faces, although not quite as high as Phil announced - he accidentally read out James's competitor number, 170. The score printouts all have the competitor numbers on them, which is just confusing for everyone - I keep reading my name and thinking I only scored 29, which is bad for names and faces, but downright horrible for binary! There's also Ryan S Smith, who loves his middle initial enough that he added it onto his nameplate in red pen (we all get toblerone-shaped paper names to put on our desks, with the appropriate national flag and, of course, that competitor number again), Mike Outram and Phill Ash, all warmed up at the Friendly Championship and dipping their toes into two-day International Standard competition, and Jake O'Gorman, at his first competition and saying I'm the one who inspired him to compete. I always worry that I'm a sad disappointment to such people when they meet me in real life. "Who's this short, fat, bald oaf?" they no doubt say to themselves, "I thought Ben Pridmore would be a huge, mighty specimen of humanity, with a big deep booming voice and magic mind-powers of some kind, possibly involving telekinesis!"
International guests are Jonas; James's Russian student Sergey; Raj who spends so much time in England competing in memory competitions that he hardly counts as Indian any more; Søren from Denmark; Rick from Holland; Joona from Finland who was at the WMC last year but who for some reason I never got round to saying hello to; and a newcomer from Spain who I'm sure introduced himself to me as Javier, but is called Francisco on the scoresheets and nameplate (with different surnames on each). He might be a spy. Or I might just be bad at remembering names.
We've got a healthy mix of competitors from around Britain and the world, as usual - thirteen altogether, and that's not including the various other people who came along and had a go at one or more disciplines. Foremost among these were journalists from the Times and the Independent, who both tried their hand at 30-minute binary. Both attempted four rows, 120 digits, but while the Times man got them all correct, the Independent made mistakes on three rows, and so only got a score of 30. Make your own judgements about the relative merits of the two newspapers.
Incidentally, I could swear that I've met the man from the Times before. As my readers will know, I rarely remember faces, but his is familiar enough that I'm sure I've had an interview with him in the past. He talked as if he'd never met any of us, though, so maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe the article in tomorrow's paper will say "I went to the UK Memory Championship and nobody remembered me, even though I remembered them." Or maybe all reporters from the Times look the same (young, posh, floppy-haired...) and I spoke to another one of them.
My scores in everything were awful, as I confidently expected. I'm going to need to be careful not to end up with fewer points than James Paterson, and so avoid being not the best British competitor in a championship for the first time since (I think I'm right in saying this) 2004. It's so long since I did a half-hour discipline, in practice or in competition, I really made a mess of binary, and ended up with a score of 2000 or so, attempting 4500 or thereabouts. Abstract images followed a similar pattern, and I was already exhausted by the time we sat down to speed numbers. 30-minute numbers followed after that, and I decided to manage my expectations hugely, and just attempt 680 digits. I'd written them all down within 15 minutes of the recall time, so perhaps I was over-cautious, but I'm fairly sure that really was as much as I could do - my mind was wandering terribly, which is just what you can expect if you don't train for these events.
Incidentally, we know our scores for abstract images (first discipline after lunch) already, thanks to some unusually speedy and efficient marking from the team of arbiters. Kudos to Phil, Chris, David, Gaby, Nathalie, Dominic, Peter, whoever I've forgotten to list (there's always one) and whoever I don't even know is there (some arbiters always lurk in the back room and never come out to say hello to me). Phil's machine that beeps after a specified number of minutes seems to have died (which is very tragic; it's been coming to these competitions longer than I have), so disciplines were timed on a digital watch, but nothing's gone spectacularly wrong yet. Tony opened the competition with a lengthy speech that was mainly about royal jelly, which makes a change from the usual one and kept us all entertained, someone was buzzing around taking photos, several spectators came to see what was happening, science museum people were looking at us suspiciously, it's all the fun of a memory competition!
Jonas von Essen is clearly going to be the runaway winner, although he's producing the kind of scores that elite competitors do when they haven't got any real opposition. That, more than anything, is motivating me to do some more training and pose him a challenge at the World Championship! I copied his habit of taking his groovy shoes off, since my less groovy ones (which I nonetheless love, since they were bought for me by someone special) got soaked in the rain, and went around barefoot all afternoon. We're the Zola Budds of memory sports!
The British contingent are led by James Paterson, Wales's finest, who got the highest score at names & faces, although not quite as high as Phil announced - he accidentally read out James's competitor number, 170. The score printouts all have the competitor numbers on them, which is just confusing for everyone - I keep reading my name and thinking I only scored 29, which is bad for names and faces, but downright horrible for binary! There's also Ryan S Smith, who loves his middle initial enough that he added it onto his nameplate in red pen (we all get toblerone-shaped paper names to put on our desks, with the appropriate national flag and, of course, that competitor number again), Mike Outram and Phill Ash, all warmed up at the Friendly Championship and dipping their toes into two-day International Standard competition, and Jake O'Gorman, at his first competition and saying I'm the one who inspired him to compete. I always worry that I'm a sad disappointment to such people when they meet me in real life. "Who's this short, fat, bald oaf?" they no doubt say to themselves, "I thought Ben Pridmore would be a huge, mighty specimen of humanity, with a big deep booming voice and magic mind-powers of some kind, possibly involving telekinesis!"
International guests are Jonas; James's Russian student Sergey; Raj who spends so much time in England competing in memory competitions that he hardly counts as Indian any more; Søren from Denmark; Rick from Holland; Joona from Finland who was at the WMC last year but who for some reason I never got round to saying hello to; and a newcomer from Spain who I'm sure introduced himself to me as Javier, but is called Francisco on the scoresheets and nameplate (with different surnames on each). He might be a spy. Or I might just be bad at remembering names.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
I'm on a train
Another thing I'm on is my way to London, and another is cloud nine, because I'm off work for the next week and a half, and I've been working much too much, for not nearly enough money, these last few months. The job, which I'm still enjoying a lot more than I should, was unfeasibly busy for the last month or so, but things have calmed down now and I can safely take time off without worrying that the world will come to an end. And I'll turn my attention to the important things I've been neglecting, like writing about memory on the internet and maybe even training in the use of those memory techniques I used to know about. It might be a little late to get in full match fitness for the UK Championship tomorrow morning, but you never know what I might accomplish between now and the World Championship in December, if it happens. There'll always be more memory competitions out there, anyway - a fun one in 2014, hopefully, that there'll be more news on soon...
Monday, August 19, 2013
Memorable stories
Last week, looking through my bookcases for something to read on the train to work, I grabbed Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King. And then grabbed my rucksack, since the book's too big to fit in my jacket pocket. But when I came to open the book, I realised I'd never actually read the fourth of the four medium-ish-length stories in it. I must have bought the book to read on a plane journey, and arrived at wherever I was going before I'd finished reading.
Either that, or the story (A Good Marriage) is just magically forgettable - today I found myself trying to remember what it was about, and couldn't think of even the slightest detail. The best I could do was a vague idea that it was about a husband and wife somehow. It's not actually a bad story at all, and I'll probably remember it now I've refreshed my memory, but then again maybe tomorrow I'll be oblivious again. Maybe I did read it on that plane journey, and several times again since then. Maybe I wrote it, and maybe I actually am Stephen King? You can never tell with memory.
Either that, or the story (A Good Marriage) is just magically forgettable - today I found myself trying to remember what it was about, and couldn't think of even the slightest detail. The best I could do was a vague idea that it was about a husband and wife somehow. It's not actually a bad story at all, and I'll probably remember it now I've refreshed my memory, but then again maybe tomorrow I'll be oblivious again. Maybe I did read it on that plane journey, and several times again since then. Maybe I wrote it, and maybe I actually am Stephen King? You can never tell with memory.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Fantasy island, all I ever dreamed of
It's always great to have the football back after a long summer without, isn't it? And this season, in addition to enjoying the games and occasionally having a bet on the weekend's premier league matches (I never win, so this is a very, very occasionally kind of thing that I strictly limit to days when I've got quite a lot of spare money kicking around) I'm doing Fantasy Premier League, in competition with people from work.
Fantasy football has moved on since the days when I last did it. No longer do you just pick a list of names and check the newspaper on Monday to see how many points they've scored, now it's interactive with weekly transfers and the ability to pick what colour your virtual team's virtual socks should be. I worry that I could get addicted to it, and that then it'll be even more embarrassing when I come bottom of the league, as I inevitably will. Anyone else out there in zoomyland got a team?
Fantasy football has moved on since the days when I last did it. No longer do you just pick a list of names and check the newspaper on Monday to see how many points they've scored, now it's interactive with weekly transfers and the ability to pick what colour your virtual team's virtual socks should be. I worry that I could get addicted to it, and that then it'll be even more embarrassing when I come bottom of the league, as I inevitably will. Anyone else out there in zoomyland got a team?
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Take a look at the kids on the street, no they never miss a beat
Even though the whole town of Beeston is in the process of being demolished to make way for the trams, it's actually really cool around here. For example, coming into the town centre today and picking my way through the rubble that used to be The Square, I heard the sound of drums coming from the marquee where they regularly have musical events. Actually, I thought to myself, that's really good drumming - the kind of sound made by someone who actually knows what they're doing, rather than someone who's just waving drumsticks around and hoping for the best. Then an equally good guitar chimed in, so I went over to check out what turned out to be Parasight - a really cool band composed of four teenagers, who you should definitely check out if you get the chance. The guitar playing when they did Sweet Child Of Mine was either a recording that they were miming to or genuinely that awesome, I couldn't quite decide. Someone who I assume was the lead singer's mum was singing along to the songs and handing out cards with the website address on, but only slightly diminishing their coolness; that's how cool they were.
Meanwhile, I need to be cleaning my flat up a bit. Or a lot. On Wednesday night I'm going down to London straight after work for the memory competition at the Science Museum, then staying there for the weekend. On Monday I'm meeting a friend who's flying in from America to stay for the week (I think a few years ago I referred to him in this blog as Weird Internet Friend #2, so that's his name for every subsequent mention on here, I'm afraid), then on Tuesday I'm abandoning him to his own devices and flying to Germany for a sort of pre-filming thing for a TV show that will be really totally and completely awesome if it does come about, later in the year. Back here on Wednesday, and not back to work until the Monday after - it's a busy life.
But it doesn't leave me much time to clear up the filth lying around this place, especially since I can't be bothered. Maybe I should hire a cleaner - there's a card in the post office window that really made me laugh. "Cleaning Work Wanted", it says, and follows it up with "I am from Thailand, where we were brought up to keep our homes clean and tidy." I assume the intention was to stress what a good cleaner she is because of her upbringing, but it really comes across as "you filthy English people don't know how to clean your houses, so let me do it for you." Assuming she'll work for free, since I've still got no money, I'll have to give her a call - I could do with a cleaner who'll also give me a stern lecture on how I wasn't brung up right.
Meanwhile, I need to be cleaning my flat up a bit. Or a lot. On Wednesday night I'm going down to London straight after work for the memory competition at the Science Museum, then staying there for the weekend. On Monday I'm meeting a friend who's flying in from America to stay for the week (I think a few years ago I referred to him in this blog as Weird Internet Friend #2, so that's his name for every subsequent mention on here, I'm afraid), then on Tuesday I'm abandoning him to his own devices and flying to Germany for a sort of pre-filming thing for a TV show that will be really totally and completely awesome if it does come about, later in the year. Back here on Wednesday, and not back to work until the Monday after - it's a busy life.
But it doesn't leave me much time to clear up the filth lying around this place, especially since I can't be bothered. Maybe I should hire a cleaner - there's a card in the post office window that really made me laugh. "Cleaning Work Wanted", it says, and follows it up with "I am from Thailand, where we were brought up to keep our homes clean and tidy." I assume the intention was to stress what a good cleaner she is because of her upbringing, but it really comes across as "you filthy English people don't know how to clean your houses, so let me do it for you." Assuming she'll work for free, since I've still got no money, I'll have to give her a call - I could do with a cleaner who'll also give me a stern lecture on how I wasn't brung up right.
Friday, August 09, 2013
The importance of blogging
Yes, I haven't posted anything here for a month, and I'm terribly sorry about that. But I just checked back in the old posts to see if I've stayed in Rosebery Hall student accommodation before, and it turns out I have, so I'm more convinced than ever of the importance of writing on the internet about everything I do.
I realise I could just keep a diary and not share it with everyone on the internet, but it's more fun this way.
So anyway, I'm going down to London at the end of the month for the UK Memory Championship! Yay! And staying in Rosebery Hall, since it seems to have satisfied me three years ago! I'm currently sort-of in training, in that I haven't done any real training for ages, but I'm doing a nightly Online Memory Challenge, at 8pm British Summer Time, so please come along and join me if you want a chat and a quick test of memory or two!
And I'll start blogging more frequently, just in case I need to refer back to it in future.
I realise I could just keep a diary and not share it with everyone on the internet, but it's more fun this way.
So anyway, I'm going down to London at the end of the month for the UK Memory Championship! Yay! And staying in Rosebery Hall, since it seems to have satisfied me three years ago! I'm currently sort-of in training, in that I haven't done any real training for ages, but I'm doing a nightly Online Memory Challenge, at 8pm British Summer Time, so please come along and join me if you want a chat and a quick test of memory or two!
And I'll start blogging more frequently, just in case I need to refer back to it in future.
Friday, July 12, 2013
Win the ultimate sporting experience
Occasionally I see those competitions on ITV football where the prize is excessively huge - a month-long globe-trotting holiday to see the Champions League, Europa League, FA Cup finals and so forth, luxury hotels and spending money and everything. Well, it seems they do the same in Australia, and one person who won a massive extravagant holiday in England to watch the cricket this summer is Russell Bauer, the 2002 Australian Memory Champion! I've just met up with him while he's in Nottingham to watch the first test, and it's always great to meet another memoriser and find the similarities. I'm working on a theory that all the people with the best memories think David Tennant was awesome in Doctor Who...
Sunday, July 07, 2013
Where the cool kids hang out
If you're interested in memory talk but hadn't heard the latest news, get over to Mnemotechnics.org, where I'm answering any question people want to ask about memory stuff. And also comparing the personality flaws of two different cartoon pterodactyls, even though nobody asked me to.
I will shortly be posting a full and graphic account of the 2003 World Memory Championship in Kuala Lumpur, so keep your eyes peeled!
Incidentally, while I'm on the subject of memory competitions, it's the UK Championship at the Science Museum in London on August 22-23, and if you like memory competitions but are too scared to take part, why not come and help out as an arbiter? Meet and hang out with new and interesting people and have a lot of fun! I recommend it!
I will shortly be posting a full and graphic account of the 2003 World Memory Championship in Kuala Lumpur, so keep your eyes peeled!
Incidentally, while I'm on the subject of memory competitions, it's the UK Championship at the Science Museum in London on August 22-23, and if you like memory competitions but are too scared to take part, why not come and help out as an arbiter? Meet and hang out with new and interesting people and have a lot of fun! I recommend it!
Saturday, June 29, 2013
The solution to everything
You've got to feel a bit sorry for David Ferrer. He's really awesome at tennis, but he doesn't get to be Spain's national hero because Rafael Nadal's that little bit better. And he's playing better than ever at the age of 31, but nobody really notices that because Roger Federer's eight months older and slightly better.
What he needs to do, clearly, is wear a stylish hat. Then he can be the world's best stylish-hat-wearing tennis player!
(Ferrer for the last few years has been consistently the world number 5 in tennis - I see him as a kindred spirit)
What he needs to do, clearly, is wear a stylish hat. Then he can be the world's best stylish-hat-wearing tennis player!
(Ferrer for the last few years has been consistently the world number 5 in tennis - I see him as a kindred spirit)
Thursday, June 27, 2013
I'm not lazy, I've got a good excuse
Writer's block. Of a very psychological kind. See, I agreed to write memory-related things in return for money, and the idea seems to have horrified me so much that I've been completely unable to do anything even slightly like that ever since. But I'm determined to get over it, this weekend. I'll try getting drunk - I've been told that alcohol is the solution to all the world's problems.
Friday, June 14, 2013
It's a fine art
The Quad in Derby is launching a season on the theme of memory, and an exhibition of the works of William Kentridge. And seeing as I've got connections to Derby, memory and (tenuously) art, they asked me along to the opening night to recite the titles of all the artwork on display and try to impress people with the artistic way that people memorise things.
It was a lot of fun, too! And I met a hypnotist who's doing a talk on memory there next month, that I might go along to. Anything to help with the motivation to memorise things!
I'm inclined to blog about tonight in the form of contemporary art, rather than writing, but I'm too lazy. It would be a collage, superimposed on a page ripped out of my collection of Synapsia magazines, and would include a black cat, a joint of ham, a stopwatch and the panel from From Hell of Melville MacNaghten saying "Few too many art-wallahs for my taste".
It was a lot of fun, too! And I met a hypnotist who's doing a talk on memory there next month, that I might go along to. Anything to help with the motivation to memorise things!
I'm inclined to blog about tonight in the form of contemporary art, rather than writing, but I'm too lazy. It would be a collage, superimposed on a page ripped out of my collection of Synapsia magazines, and would include a black cat, a joint of ham, a stopwatch and the panel from From Hell of Melville MacNaghten saying "Few too many art-wallahs for my taste".
Thursday, June 13, 2013
What's my age again?
Someone I know was convinced that it was his 38th birthday the other day, until I pointed out that if he was born in 1976, same as me, that would mean he just turned 37.
Funnily enough, I've also really struggled for the last few months to remember that I'm 36 and not 37. The number 37 has always sort of rattled around my subconscious mind in a disturbing way, but since I'm currently re-reading Thief Of Time, by Terry Pratchett, on the train to work, I can't help suspecting that someone has stolen a year of everyone's lives, or just stuck time back together in the wrong way, so that I'm currently 37 but will turn 36 in October. If so, I think that's probably a great improvement.
Funnily enough, I've also really struggled for the last few months to remember that I'm 36 and not 37. The number 37 has always sort of rattled around my subconscious mind in a disturbing way, but since I'm currently re-reading Thief Of Time, by Terry Pratchett, on the train to work, I can't help suspecting that someone has stolen a year of everyone's lives, or just stuck time back together in the wrong way, so that I'm currently 37 but will turn 36 in October. If so, I think that's probably a great improvement.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Cartoon Time
I haven't talked about cartoons on here for a while, so I thought I should place on record that the best cartoons to come along in the last couple of years are Adventure Time and Regular Show.
Adventure Time has a tendency to make me really laugh out loud at times, and not many TV shows do that. Regular Show is downright brilliant in the scope of its imagination and silliness. Both of them should be watched by all my blog readers!
Adventure Time has a tendency to make me really laugh out loud at times, and not many TV shows do that. Regular Show is downright brilliant in the scope of its imagination and silliness. Both of them should be watched by all my blog readers!
Monday, June 10, 2013
How to pass the time on the train to work
What's a good nickname for a man with a staggeringly 1980s hairstyle, sunglasses whatever the weather and a suede jacket with the sleeves rolled up? He's the boyfriend of Leather Tuscadero, but I don't really want to call him Fonzie...
Sunday, June 09, 2013
Can't they pre-tape it?
Twice in a row, the Channel 4 continuity announcer has stumbled over his witty scripted lines. They need to either hire someone who can read from a piece of paper, or stop trying to be funny and go back to just saying "And now The Simpsons". I vote for the latter.
Yes, there are better things I could be doing on a Sunday afternoon, but I don't care.
Yes, there are better things I could be doing on a Sunday afternoon, but I don't care.
Saturday, June 08, 2013
World rankings
Rafael Nadal and David Ferrer are playing in the French Open final tomorrow. They're currently number 4 and 5 in the world ranking list, but irrespective of the result of tomorrow's game, Ferrer will move up above Nadal in the rankings. That's because tennis world rankings cover the last twelve months, and Nadal's win last year will drop out of the total points, so he can't increase his total score even if he wins, while Ferrer only got to the semi-final last year, so he's guaranteed to increase his total.
Is this a good system? Actually, I think it is pretty good, and any kind of silliness like that is just of academic interest - Nadal will zoom back up to first or second later this year anyway, when he plays in the tournaments he missed through injury in 2012. The really interesting part is that tennis rankings give you a certain number of points in each tournament, depending which round you reach. This I think is less of a good system - if you're a lower-ranking player and you get drawn against the likes of Nadal in the first round, you'll score less points than some other lower-ranking player who gets a lucky draw and gets through to the third or fourth round without playing anyone really good. I'm sure it evens out, but there does seem to be quite a lot of random chance involved.
Or maybe I'm just prejudiced because othello has a cooler system. Your ranking points (there isn't a universally-accepted world ranking, though the one on the French website has gained a lot of support these past few years; the one that British people care about is the British rankings) go up and down depending on the ranking points total of the individual players you win or lose against. Othello doesn't have knockout tournaments, so we couldn't use the tennis-style rankings even if we wanted to, but nothing's stopping tennis from adopting othello-style rankings. Maybe they should.
And othello doesn't claim to have invented that system, I just like to talk in terms of the things I like. Just in case anyone was wondering.
Memory sports, of course, has a different kind of thing altogether. You get a certain amount of points in a competition, and your world ranking score is the highest you've ever achieved in a competition. Even if your best score was donkey's years ago. That's an okay system too, but I'd like to see something based on people's best scores in individual disciplines - perhaps two different ranking lists, in fact - one based on just scores achieved at the world championship, another based on all the disciplines from all the different types of competition. Maybe I'll work these alternatives out and see if there's any way to make my "official world ranking" (another thing about memory competitions is that people freely use the word "official" to describe anything they want) higher than fifth-best in the world!
Is this a good system? Actually, I think it is pretty good, and any kind of silliness like that is just of academic interest - Nadal will zoom back up to first or second later this year anyway, when he plays in the tournaments he missed through injury in 2012. The really interesting part is that tennis rankings give you a certain number of points in each tournament, depending which round you reach. This I think is less of a good system - if you're a lower-ranking player and you get drawn against the likes of Nadal in the first round, you'll score less points than some other lower-ranking player who gets a lucky draw and gets through to the third or fourth round without playing anyone really good. I'm sure it evens out, but there does seem to be quite a lot of random chance involved.
Or maybe I'm just prejudiced because othello has a cooler system. Your ranking points (there isn't a universally-accepted world ranking, though the one on the French website has gained a lot of support these past few years; the one that British people care about is the British rankings) go up and down depending on the ranking points total of the individual players you win or lose against. Othello doesn't have knockout tournaments, so we couldn't use the tennis-style rankings even if we wanted to, but nothing's stopping tennis from adopting othello-style rankings. Maybe they should.
And othello doesn't claim to have invented that system, I just like to talk in terms of the things I like. Just in case anyone was wondering.
Memory sports, of course, has a different kind of thing altogether. You get a certain amount of points in a competition, and your world ranking score is the highest you've ever achieved in a competition. Even if your best score was donkey's years ago. That's an okay system too, but I'd like to see something based on people's best scores in individual disciplines - perhaps two different ranking lists, in fact - one based on just scores achieved at the world championship, another based on all the disciplines from all the different types of competition. Maybe I'll work these alternatives out and see if there's any way to make my "official world ranking" (another thing about memory competitions is that people freely use the word "official" to describe anything they want) higher than fifth-best in the world!
Social commentary
According to my stats page, Dai's number-themed comment on yesterday's blog post was the 3000th comment published on this blog!
I don't think that's enough, really. Throw me some more comments, people! Get a discussion going in that hidden secret little bit that you get to by clicking at the bottom of my ramblings!
I don't think that's enough, really. Throw me some more comments, people! Get a discussion going in that hidden secret little bit that you get to by clicking at the bottom of my ramblings!
Friday, June 07, 2013
11:11
You know that thing people say, that they only ever look at a clock when it's 11:11? All very psychological. Well, the headlines on the Yahoo news summary that you get when you log in to Yahoo mail, whether you want to or not, have:
Teachers: 11 Not Banned Despite 'Misconduct'
Isle Of Man TT Race Crash: 11 Spectators Hurt
Cyber disputes loom large as Obama meets China's Xi
Not that I paid particular attention to them, but the third one made me stop and think "Obama meets China's Eleven"? What, are they playing cricket or something? It took me ages to readjust my brain into reading "Xi" instead of "XI", all because of those rogue elevens just up above. It's all very psychological.
Teachers: 11 Not Banned Despite 'Misconduct'
Isle Of Man TT Race Crash: 11 Spectators Hurt
Cyber disputes loom large as Obama meets China's Xi
Not that I paid particular attention to them, but the third one made me stop and think "Obama meets China's Eleven"? What, are they playing cricket or something? It took me ages to readjust my brain into reading "Xi" instead of "XI", all because of those rogue elevens just up above. It's all very psychological.
Legalities
I like overhearing snatches of conversation from people on the street and then speculating on what they might be talking about. I just cycled past a gang of youths as one of them was saying, authoritatively if perhaps slightly drunkenly, "The only way you could be done for attempted murder is if he actually dies..."
I'm not a legal expert, but I'm pretty sure it's usually the other way round. But even so, have I overheard discussion of an actual murder attempt, or a joke? You can usually tell from the tone of voice, but this one really could have gone either way...
I'm not a legal expert, but I'm pretty sure it's usually the other way round. But even so, have I overheard discussion of an actual murder attempt, or a joke? You can usually tell from the tone of voice, but this one really could have gone either way...
Thursday, June 06, 2013
The story so far
If you want to keep up with what's happening in the big wild world of memory competitions, you really need to be reading Johann Randall Abrina's blog! Just to look at that summary of all the competitions so far this year fills an old-timer like me with a warm glow of satisfaction - when I started out, there were three or four competitions a year, at the very most, in the whole world! Now even a backwater of modern memory like the British Isles has that many itself, and the cool countries are all running their own competitions all over the place too!
I think the 'big' competition before the world championships is still the German Memory Open, buried though it is in such a busy summer calendar, but don't forget the UK Memory Championship a month later (that link isn't a website of its own, just a note that it's going to happen, but it really is definitely going to happen, and worth going to!)
Or take your pick from any other event on the calendar - that's Mnemotechnics.org, which keeps a good and accurate list of what's happening. There will be a World Memory Championship too, most likely, but they're adopting the successful technique from last year of not revealing any details and then having to retract it when they change. So I don't need to warn anyone not to book their plane tickets, unless they're the kind of person who just guesses the date and location of a memory championship, buys a first class ticket and hopes for the best. And if they are, they probably wouldn't listen to me.
I think the 'big' competition before the world championships is still the German Memory Open, buried though it is in such a busy summer calendar, but don't forget the UK Memory Championship a month later (that link isn't a website of its own, just a note that it's going to happen, but it really is definitely going to happen, and worth going to!)
Or take your pick from any other event on the calendar - that's Mnemotechnics.org, which keeps a good and accurate list of what's happening. There will be a World Memory Championship too, most likely, but they're adopting the successful technique from last year of not revealing any details and then having to retract it when they change. So I don't need to warn anyone not to book their plane tickets, unless they're the kind of person who just guesses the date and location of a memory championship, buys a first class ticket and hopes for the best. And if they are, they probably wouldn't listen to me.
Wednesday, June 05, 2013
We haven't moonwalked with horses for a while
The following statements were collected by the police:
GUSTAF BOGGINS, HORSE POLISHER: "So there I were, out on the street, washing me 'orse wi' soap an' water before I gives 'im the polish, when round the corner comes this bloke what weren't wearin' no busters [trousers] and I faints clean away in the gutter."
LORD VALIANT, OWNER OF HORSE: "I went into the street to remind the horse polisher to pay particular attention to the tail area, when I suddenly saw him gasp, point and collapse. I looked in the indicated direction and saw a man looking for all the world like Vocator [legendary figure who wore trousers] before he first donned the garment that made him famous. On closer inspection, I saw that he was whirling his Vocator's Article [trousers] about his head in a mad manner. I hastened back inside, fearing the social ruination that would come from being seen in the proximity of such a man, and so didn't see where he went."
VIC BANDYSHAW, HORSE POLISHER'S SUPERVISOR: "I was just checkin' up on Gustaf on account of that toffee-nosed twerp what owns the horse being so particular about its bum being polished good, when here comes this bloke waving 'is Blandford Forums [trousers] in the air instead of putting 'em on his legs like normal folks do. So I shouts 'Hoy, Parcruxis [foe of Vocator and thus by extension a derisory term for anyone opposed to trousers, although the legendary Parcruxis did in fact wear trousers himself], put yer Blandfords [trousers] back on and stop botherin' my 'orse polisher!' But he didn't pay no attention to me, so I just goes and picks Gustaf up out of the gutter, on account of he's sensitive about these things and he'd gone and fainted, so I didn't see what 'appened to old Parcruxis."
DAME DORIS GURDY, GENTLEWOMAN: "I happened to glance out of my window, and what should I see but a pair of overlegs [trousers] being brandished in a most alarming manner. I would have watched further, but I noticed Lord Valiant in the vicinity and hurried away to telephone all our social acquaintances. Now he won't be able to enter a room in decent society without being greeted with 'Good morning, Doctor Overlegs [trousers]!' That's the end of him, socially speaking! So no, I didn't pay any more attention to Mister Lacking-In-Noncontrivances [trousers, but only when the word is used, as in this case, in a negative construction; otherwise it means baked beans] and can't tell you any more."
"BROWN HAROLD", HORSE: "Neigh, whinney, neigh-neigh, hrrumph [trousers], whinney, neiiiiiiiigh."
GUSTAF BOGGINS, HORSE POLISHER: "So there I were, out on the street, washing me 'orse wi' soap an' water before I gives 'im the polish, when round the corner comes this bloke what weren't wearin' no busters [trousers] and I faints clean away in the gutter."
LORD VALIANT, OWNER OF HORSE: "I went into the street to remind the horse polisher to pay particular attention to the tail area, when I suddenly saw him gasp, point and collapse. I looked in the indicated direction and saw a man looking for all the world like Vocator [legendary figure who wore trousers] before he first donned the garment that made him famous. On closer inspection, I saw that he was whirling his Vocator's Article [trousers] about his head in a mad manner. I hastened back inside, fearing the social ruination that would come from being seen in the proximity of such a man, and so didn't see where he went."
VIC BANDYSHAW, HORSE POLISHER'S SUPERVISOR: "I was just checkin' up on Gustaf on account of that toffee-nosed twerp what owns the horse being so particular about its bum being polished good, when here comes this bloke waving 'is Blandford Forums [trousers] in the air instead of putting 'em on his legs like normal folks do. So I shouts 'Hoy, Parcruxis [foe of Vocator and thus by extension a derisory term for anyone opposed to trousers, although the legendary Parcruxis did in fact wear trousers himself], put yer Blandfords [trousers] back on and stop botherin' my 'orse polisher!' But he didn't pay no attention to me, so I just goes and picks Gustaf up out of the gutter, on account of he's sensitive about these things and he'd gone and fainted, so I didn't see what 'appened to old Parcruxis."
DAME DORIS GURDY, GENTLEWOMAN: "I happened to glance out of my window, and what should I see but a pair of overlegs [trousers] being brandished in a most alarming manner. I would have watched further, but I noticed Lord Valiant in the vicinity and hurried away to telephone all our social acquaintances. Now he won't be able to enter a room in decent society without being greeted with 'Good morning, Doctor Overlegs [trousers]!' That's the end of him, socially speaking! So no, I didn't pay any more attention to Mister Lacking-In-Noncontrivances [trousers, but only when the word is used, as in this case, in a negative construction; otherwise it means baked beans] and can't tell you any more."
"BROWN HAROLD", HORSE: "Neigh, whinney, neigh-neigh, hrrumph [trousers], whinney, neiiiiiiiigh."
Tuesday, June 04, 2013
Spare change?
Okay, here's the thing. For people who haven't been following my life in full detail (which I suppose I can forgive, since I haven't been blogging about it very much, so you would have had to be using some kind of spy satellites and phone-tapping), I've been only sporadically working for the last two years, rather beyond the limits of the time I intended to take off full-time good-money-earning accountancy-cum-financial-analysis, and for want of being able to land a permanent job in that field, I'm currently working in a lower-level admin job. Which, to my surprise, I'm really completely loving and want to do forever, if not for the teensy problem that it doesn't quite pay enough money to cover the costs of the various debts I've racked up.
So, basically, I find myself needing an influx of cash, to pay life's unavoidable bills and not end up out on the streets. So if anyone could throw a little into my begging bowl, which is a Paypal account using my email address, which is zoom_zoom_ben and it's at yahoo.co.uk, I'd really really appreciate it. Any money received will be considered a loan, to be paid back with interest and gratitude as and when my ship comes in. Regular readers will know that my ship does come in, fairly regularly, every now and then, whenever people see fit to give me money for being good at remembering things. And that there really are people out there who still pay big salaries for people who are good with Excel spreadsheets (though I think their numbers are diminishing - big bosses know how to turn on a computer nowadays, which is bad news for the financial analysts of the world).
I do have one memory gig coming up next week, at an art exhibition. Maybe that's a good way to shmooze with modern art people, who always like to pay me to do things. I really need to make more of an effort to make money in these last dying seconds of my fifteen minutes of fame.
Anyway, in summary - money, please? Paypal? zoom_zoom_ben? yahoo.co.uk? Cheques also accepted? Undying gratitude will be forthcoming?
So, basically, I find myself needing an influx of cash, to pay life's unavoidable bills and not end up out on the streets. So if anyone could throw a little into my begging bowl, which is a Paypal account using my email address, which is zoom_zoom_ben and it's at yahoo.co.uk, I'd really really appreciate it. Any money received will be considered a loan, to be paid back with interest and gratitude as and when my ship comes in. Regular readers will know that my ship does come in, fairly regularly, every now and then, whenever people see fit to give me money for being good at remembering things. And that there really are people out there who still pay big salaries for people who are good with Excel spreadsheets (though I think their numbers are diminishing - big bosses know how to turn on a computer nowadays, which is bad news for the financial analysts of the world).
I do have one memory gig coming up next week, at an art exhibition. Maybe that's a good way to shmooze with modern art people, who always like to pay me to do things. I really need to make more of an effort to make money in these last dying seconds of my fifteen minutes of fame.
Anyway, in summary - money, please? Paypal? zoom_zoom_ben? yahoo.co.uk? Cheques also accepted? Undying gratitude will be forthcoming?
Monday, June 03, 2013
What's the point of toes, anyway?
They don't really do anything, even if they're freakishly long like mine, and they really hurt if you somehow open the bathroom door over your big toe in the morning. And since I was in a hurry to get ready for work, I just put my sock on over it, and my shoe basically filled with blood over the course of the day. Really, it's a terrible wound, and it hurts a lot, so I'm quite entitled to whine about it.
Saturday, June 01, 2013
D-d d-d d-d d, Turnabout!
Watching the tennis on Eurosport (which is better than watching it on ITV, even though they show exactly the same footage at exactly the same time, because on my telly at least Eurosport fits slightly more of the picture onto the screen, so you can actually see the score box rather than it being pushed off the left-hand side) always makes me think of Turnabout, the really great daytime quiz show of the early nineties, hosted by Rob Curling, who's now found gainful employment as Eurosport's tennis presenter. During school holidays or other idle time like study leave for GCSEs and A-levels, Turnabout was very much a highlight of the day! There was no Eurosport or anything like that back then, remember, just four channels, and very little to distract you from your revision on any of them. If not for Turnabout, I might even have had to do some work and pass my exams! So we've all got a lot to be thankful to Rob Curling for.
Friday, May 31, 2013
It's not just mobile phones
Really, it's any kind of modern technology. I mean, I hear there's some kind of new X-Box or Playstation or something that's just come out, that allows the government to spy on you, or something (or maybe it's just that it's not compatible with some other kind of X-Box or Playstation, but I hear a lot of people complaining, anyway) that I know not even the most basic thing about. Perhaps I should try to learn about these things, but I think I'll stick with playing Bubble Bobble on my Master System. It's a lot more fun than these modern games, according to my limited understanding of them.
I haven't got a microwave, either.
I haven't got a microwave, either.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
I've got a mobile phone!
Well, it's Dai's, he left it here by mistake, and the battery's flat. I think the main thing preventing me from getting a mobile now, apart from that I've got no money, is that I'd have to learn how to use one. It's a bit embarrassing, really. If I ask anyone for instructions, they'll think I'm some kind of unbelievably ignorant eejit. Which I am, but people don't have to know about it.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Rain, rain, go away
What's with the weather? We had a beautiful, hot, sunny bank holiday weekend, and then it went back to cold and rainy and horrible when we go back to work! How are we supposed to complain about the weather if it does things that we want it to do?
Monday, May 27, 2013
All friends together
The Friendly Memory Championship 2013 was a great and friendly success! For one thing, the weather was lovely and sunny after a pretty miserable, cold and rainy week - it always seems to improve when I hold an event at Attenborough Nature Reserve, I should do it more often and fix the whole British-weather problem overnight.
On Saturday people started arriving in Beeston or Attenborough, and we got together in the evening at the Victoria pub down the road, which I heartily recommended but turned out to be having a bad day, and took absolutely ages to bring us our food - but still, a good time was had by all. Dai Griffiths had brought along newcomer-to-the-memory-world Peter Broomhall, as well as a whole lot of pot noodles (I'm still not sure exactly why), to stay at my place and act as arbiters in the competition, and competitor Ryan Smith was crashing here too - I'm always impressed by how amicably memory people settle the question of who gets my spare bed and who gets my very small and uncomfortable sofa.
So to the competition day on Sunday! We arrived at the nature centre's conference room just a bit after nine, thanks to a lost debit card along the way (don't worry, it turned up in Ryan's bag) and greeted the gang of competitors who'd travelled from all over the world, mostly Scandinavia, to be there. We had Jonas von Essen from Sweden, Ola Kåre Risa from Norway and Søren Damtoft from Denmark, for a complete set of nordic languages represented; Takeru Aoki all the way from Japan, just for this competition (how awesome is that?); and Hein van Heck all the way from, well, Wales, but he's Dutch, so it counts as international.
We also had a whole gang of English competitors, all except Ryan being new to memory competitions this year - Darren Ferguson, Phil Peskett and Mike Outram who made their debuts in Wales, and Robert Frost and Phill Ash appearing for the first time here (Phill's appearance was a bit delayed, he turned up late and joined the fun after lunch, but it still counts). Hopefully we're genuinely starting to build up a crowd of regular British memory competitors now, because I'd been worried we were going to become extinct altogether. Completing the set was Darren's wife Claire, joining the team of arbiters.
I'd been very worried about the arbiting, since Phil Chambers couldn't come and he's usually so instrumental in making things work, but everything ran smoothly all day, thanks to our team. We were still able to keep the Friendly Championship tradition of marking papers and announcing results quickly and accurately, even with the need to triple-check a couple of particularly impressive results. The only glaring error came with the spoken numbers, when I'd managed to save a 400-digit collection with the 100-digit filename, and so played too many numbers before we realised what was wrong. It didn't seem to disturb the leading contenders too much, though...
The first of those particularly impressive results came in the second discipline, 5-minute binary, when Ola produced a phenomenal score of 1016! New world record, which he had obviously been working hard on ever since at the Italian championship this year he beat the existing record only to have it simultaneously beaten at the same time by two even better scores. Our other world record came from Jonas in the spoken numbers, with a completely awesome 318! Scores in spoken numbers are just skyrocketing lately, I don't know why that is.
For both of our Scandinavian superbrains, that was their first world record - breaking the German/Chinese domination of the world record list up a little! Ola's record gave him the lead in the competition which he narrowly held until the spoken numbers, when Jonas moved back ahead and eventually won, with both of them getting a safe but still impressive time of just over 45 seconds in the speed cards. Takeru and Søren fought it out for third, with Takeru ending up on top, Hein came fifth and the battle of the English was won by Phil, with Robert pushing him close all the way.
After the competition and the traditional drink in the pub down the road, a gang of us came back to my place to eat pot noodles and watch The Mentalists, which Dai had brought with him on DVD. During the day I'd been wearing my Memory Man costume, including the black turtleneck, and then changed into my Yellow Submarine T-shirt, so it was funny to see myself modelling both of those on the documentary from six years ago - possibly I need to buy new clothes more often. Still good to see that impressive capturing of the 2007 memory world, though the pot noodles didn't go down too well with our foreign guests. I think you have to be British to appreciate them.
The scores can all be seen here - Jonas's win moves him to fourth place on the world ranking list, displacing me down to fifth, and Ola climbs to number seven! But I'm sure our new team of English superstars-in-the-making will be up in the top ten in no time.
In the evening, Jonas and Ola asked me what my first world record was, and I couldn't really remember. There was the poem world record that didn't really count, in the MSO competition 2001 (it was a much more memorable poem than the rules dictated it should be), and I suppose that had already got me excited enough that when I did break an official record (historic dates, world championship 2003) it got swallowed up in the general excitement of doing so well in the world championship overall. Or maybe it did mean more to me, and I've just forgotten over the last ten years - I do remember taking some pride in listing the world records and seeing my name on the list alongside the real greats. I'm getting old...
On Saturday people started arriving in Beeston or Attenborough, and we got together in the evening at the Victoria pub down the road, which I heartily recommended but turned out to be having a bad day, and took absolutely ages to bring us our food - but still, a good time was had by all. Dai Griffiths had brought along newcomer-to-the-memory-world Peter Broomhall, as well as a whole lot of pot noodles (I'm still not sure exactly why), to stay at my place and act as arbiters in the competition, and competitor Ryan Smith was crashing here too - I'm always impressed by how amicably memory people settle the question of who gets my spare bed and who gets my very small and uncomfortable sofa.
So to the competition day on Sunday! We arrived at the nature centre's conference room just a bit after nine, thanks to a lost debit card along the way (don't worry, it turned up in Ryan's bag) and greeted the gang of competitors who'd travelled from all over the world, mostly Scandinavia, to be there. We had Jonas von Essen from Sweden, Ola Kåre Risa from Norway and Søren Damtoft from Denmark, for a complete set of nordic languages represented; Takeru Aoki all the way from Japan, just for this competition (how awesome is that?); and Hein van Heck all the way from, well, Wales, but he's Dutch, so it counts as international.
We also had a whole gang of English competitors, all except Ryan being new to memory competitions this year - Darren Ferguson, Phil Peskett and Mike Outram who made their debuts in Wales, and Robert Frost and Phill Ash appearing for the first time here (Phill's appearance was a bit delayed, he turned up late and joined the fun after lunch, but it still counts). Hopefully we're genuinely starting to build up a crowd of regular British memory competitors now, because I'd been worried we were going to become extinct altogether. Completing the set was Darren's wife Claire, joining the team of arbiters.
I'd been very worried about the arbiting, since Phil Chambers couldn't come and he's usually so instrumental in making things work, but everything ran smoothly all day, thanks to our team. We were still able to keep the Friendly Championship tradition of marking papers and announcing results quickly and accurately, even with the need to triple-check a couple of particularly impressive results. The only glaring error came with the spoken numbers, when I'd managed to save a 400-digit collection with the 100-digit filename, and so played too many numbers before we realised what was wrong. It didn't seem to disturb the leading contenders too much, though...
The first of those particularly impressive results came in the second discipline, 5-minute binary, when Ola produced a phenomenal score of 1016! New world record, which he had obviously been working hard on ever since at the Italian championship this year he beat the existing record only to have it simultaneously beaten at the same time by two even better scores. Our other world record came from Jonas in the spoken numbers, with a completely awesome 318! Scores in spoken numbers are just skyrocketing lately, I don't know why that is.
For both of our Scandinavian superbrains, that was their first world record - breaking the German/Chinese domination of the world record list up a little! Ola's record gave him the lead in the competition which he narrowly held until the spoken numbers, when Jonas moved back ahead and eventually won, with both of them getting a safe but still impressive time of just over 45 seconds in the speed cards. Takeru and Søren fought it out for third, with Takeru ending up on top, Hein came fifth and the battle of the English was won by Phil, with Robert pushing him close all the way.
After the competition and the traditional drink in the pub down the road, a gang of us came back to my place to eat pot noodles and watch The Mentalists, which Dai had brought with him on DVD. During the day I'd been wearing my Memory Man costume, including the black turtleneck, and then changed into my Yellow Submarine T-shirt, so it was funny to see myself modelling both of those on the documentary from six years ago - possibly I need to buy new clothes more often. Still good to see that impressive capturing of the 2007 memory world, though the pot noodles didn't go down too well with our foreign guests. I think you have to be British to appreciate them.
The scores can all be seen here - Jonas's win moves him to fourth place on the world ranking list, displacing me down to fifth, and Ola climbs to number seven! But I'm sure our new team of English superstars-in-the-making will be up in the top ten in no time.
In the evening, Jonas and Ola asked me what my first world record was, and I couldn't really remember. There was the poem world record that didn't really count, in the MSO competition 2001 (it was a much more memorable poem than the rules dictated it should be), and I suppose that had already got me excited enough that when I did break an official record (historic dates, world championship 2003) it got swallowed up in the general excitement of doing so well in the world championship overall. Or maybe it did mean more to me, and I've just forgotten over the last ten years - I do remember taking some pride in listing the world records and seeing my name on the list alongside the real greats. I'm getting old...
Friday, May 24, 2013
Okay, I think we're all set
All I need to do is clear a few piles of rubbish out of my living room, and I'm ready for people to come round for the weekend's memorising!
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Hold off! Unhand me, grey-beard loon!
I have an increasing number of white hairs in the moustache and goatee bit of my beard that have resisted the all-over whitening of the rest of my facial hair so far. I fondly remember, not ten years ago, pulling out the couple of white hairs in my otherwise uniformly dark brown/black beard, to make sure it looked good on some special occasion. Now I'm pretty sure it'll only be a few more years before I can fulfil my ambition to grow a big bushy Santa beard in time for Christmas. Which is wonderful, but on the other hand TV adverts keep telling me that all men want to cure their baldness and disguise their white hairs, so perhaps I'm just not right in the head.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Not your biggest fan, but maybe your medium-sizedest
I don't recall mentioning it for a while, but I really love Stephen King's books from around the mid-90s to the mid-00s. I don't really get on with his earliest stuff, or the more recent ones, but in that era, he really strikes a chord with me. Situations like this always make me wonder what I would say if I met someone like that - "I really love certain of your works"? "Aside from those books that I don't particularly like, I greatly admire your writings"? Not that the situation's likely to arise, but I think it's important to be prepared for this kind of thing with some sort of snappy phrase.
Actually, I always hope that when I meet someone super-famous and awesome, they'll have heard of me. Never happened yet...
Actually, I always hope that when I meet someone super-famous and awesome, they'll have heard of me. Never happened yet...
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
World Wide
Hello to the person, people or robot in Antigua and/or Barbuda who's given this blog 41 pageviews in the last 24 hours. I do love the stats page, but I wish there was a way to tell which visitors are evil mechanoids and which are people with a genuine interest in vague and largely meaningless drivel about memory competitions. It would just be nice to know just how many people stumble across this page searching for drivel, that's all.
Anyway, while I'm rambling, let me confess that I've very much let the memory training slide for the last couple of months, after being all enthusiastic about it earlier in the year. Maybe the people at the Friendly competition this weekend can encourage me to get back into it? It would probably help if you all jeer at me for not being able to remember things.
Anyway, while I'm rambling, let me confess that I've very much let the memory training slide for the last couple of months, after being all enthusiastic about it earlier in the year. Maybe the people at the Friendly competition this weekend can encourage me to get back into it? It would probably help if you all jeer at me for not being able to remember things.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Friendly factoids
Sunday's competition will be the eighth Friendly/Cambridge Memory Championship! Interestingly, nobody has ever won the competition twice. This goes hand-in-hand with the other interesting fact that nobody who has won the championship has ever come back to it, ever. That's... kind of worrying, isn't it? Do I not applaud the winner enough? Well, Jonas von Essen is hopefully going to buck that trend and come back to defend his title this year, so maybe there'll be a new page in the history books...
Here's a memory memory that occurs to me - At the first Cambridge championship in 2006, one of the names in the Names & Faces discipline was the wonderfully evocative surname “Catchpole”. One of the German competitors remembered it as “Polegrab”, while one of the English memorisers (who didn’t have such a good excuse; it’s not that uncommon a name in England), rendered it as “Grabpole”.
It’s a natural mistake to make - poles, as a rule, don’t move, so if you picture someone ‘catching’ one, it will usually be a mental image of a hand grabbing a stationary pole. And when you come to translate it back from pictures into words, ‘grab pole’ is what will come to mind...
Here's a memory memory that occurs to me - At the first Cambridge championship in 2006, one of the names in the Names & Faces discipline was the wonderfully evocative surname “Catchpole”. One of the German competitors remembered it as “Polegrab”, while one of the English memorisers (who didn’t have such a good excuse; it’s not that uncommon a name in England), rendered it as “Grabpole”.
It’s a natural mistake to make - poles, as a rule, don’t move, so if you picture someone ‘catching’ one, it will usually be a mental image of a hand grabbing a stationary pole. And when you come to translate it back from pictures into words, ‘grab pole’ is what will come to mind...
Sunday, May 19, 2013
A Ba Ni Bi
I don't watch the Eurovision Song Contest. And I mean that in the way that some people say they don't smoke, because they only have three or four cigarettes a day, ten at most. As usual this year, I saw that it was on, decided I wasn't going to bother watching it, sort of left it on in the background while not actually watching it as such, and saw the whole thing.
The songs were pretty uniformly awful, as usual, but there's always one that I like, and that usually finishes somewhere low down in the top half - this year it was Hungary, with the very catchy "Kedvesem", by ByeAlex. I'd vote for it, if I watched Eurovision.
The songs were pretty uniformly awful, as usual, but there's always one that I like, and that usually finishes somewhere low down in the top half - this year it was Hungary, with the very catchy "Kedvesem", by ByeAlex. I'd vote for it, if I watched Eurovision.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Rusty
See, I'm so unused to regular blogging, I forgot to mention a whole lot of things I was meaning to. So here's a bonus second post tonight!
I think I've given myself repetitive strain injury, flipping discs. My right thumb is sort of sore.
Also, just worked it out - if I hadn't beaten Imre in our game at Cambridge, he would have won the BGP, despite only coming to two of the three regionals, so that is actually quite cool and makes me feel that the great honour is much more deserved!
Tomorrow, I need to finish printing things out for the Friendly Memory Championship next Sunday! Yes, I've been ultra-organised this year, and have split Printing Things Out Weekend into two semi-weekends, to fit around my schedule! If only my organisation skills extended to having the faintest idea who's coming to the competition and who's staying at my flat, I'd be confident that everything will go just swimmingly...
I think I've given myself repetitive strain injury, flipping discs. My right thumb is sort of sore.
Also, just worked it out - if I hadn't beaten Imre in our game at Cambridge, he would have won the BGP, despite only coming to two of the three regionals, so that is actually quite cool and makes me feel that the great honour is much more deserved!
Tomorrow, I need to finish printing things out for the Friendly Memory Championship next Sunday! Yes, I've been ultra-organised this year, and have split Printing Things Out Weekend into two semi-weekends, to fit around my schedule! If only my organisation skills extended to having the faintest idea who's coming to the competition and who's staying at my flat, I'd be confident that everything will go just swimmingly...
Oad-thello
See, it was realising my last proper post was about one othello tournament and that I was going to another today, that made me resolve to get back to blogging more regularly. Oadby, traditional home of the first regional of the year, every March, proudly hosted the last regional in 2013's abridged schedule in the middle of May!
It was basically the same lineup of players as in Cambridge - the shortage of people who want to play in these tournaments is a factor in there only being three regionals this year, but we are firmly planning to be back to five or six for 2014. The difference between Cambridge and Oadby was Steve Rowe instead of David, and instead of Adelaide joining us for lunch, there was Jeremy Das joining us for the afternoon. But we stuck with the same format - a round-robin of 20-minute games and then a double round-robin of 5-minuters.
The results were roughly the same, too, except that I didn't beat Imre, meaning that he won the tournament outright, with Iain second. I was third, which means that I'm officially the winner of the British Grand Prix! This is the thing where you get points based on how well you do in each regional, and the overall winner is the BGP champion. The traditional way to win it is to be the one who attends all the regionals in the year, and I successfully carried out this clever strategy this time round (we only had three, and they happened to all be within cheapish travelling distance) to win my first ever BGP title! I'm so proud. That means that I get the George Greaves Memorial Trophy! It cost a whole twenty pounds, so it's a great honour to have on your metaphorical mantlepiece!
I know how much it cost because I'm the treasurer of the British Othello Federation. I never know how much money has been spent on trophies at memory competitions, and I'm always a bit curious. They range from little glass things of the type that can be bought for a fiver on the market, to really big heavy metal things that look like they genuinely cost a packet.
Anyway, my perfect-attendance prize technically qualifies me for the World Othello Championship in Stockholm in October. I'd really like to go, but I can't really foresee having enough money to do that. Barring a lottery win or a surprisingly lucrative memory-themed job, anyway. It's at times like this that I always regret quitting my job and living a life of idle vacuity for months on end, but I'm sure I'll do it again the next time I've built up enough of a stash of money to afford it...
It was basically the same lineup of players as in Cambridge - the shortage of people who want to play in these tournaments is a factor in there only being three regionals this year, but we are firmly planning to be back to five or six for 2014. The difference between Cambridge and Oadby was Steve Rowe instead of David, and instead of Adelaide joining us for lunch, there was Jeremy Das joining us for the afternoon. But we stuck with the same format - a round-robin of 20-minute games and then a double round-robin of 5-minuters.
The results were roughly the same, too, except that I didn't beat Imre, meaning that he won the tournament outright, with Iain second. I was third, which means that I'm officially the winner of the British Grand Prix! This is the thing where you get points based on how well you do in each regional, and the overall winner is the BGP champion. The traditional way to win it is to be the one who attends all the regionals in the year, and I successfully carried out this clever strategy this time round (we only had three, and they happened to all be within cheapish travelling distance) to win my first ever BGP title! I'm so proud. That means that I get the George Greaves Memorial Trophy! It cost a whole twenty pounds, so it's a great honour to have on your metaphorical mantlepiece!
I know how much it cost because I'm the treasurer of the British Othello Federation. I never know how much money has been spent on trophies at memory competitions, and I'm always a bit curious. They range from little glass things of the type that can be bought for a fiver on the market, to really big heavy metal things that look like they genuinely cost a packet.
Anyway, my perfect-attendance prize technically qualifies me for the World Othello Championship in Stockholm in October. I'd really like to go, but I can't really foresee having enough money to do that. Barring a lottery win or a surprisingly lucrative memory-themed job, anyway. It's at times like this that I always regret quitting my job and living a life of idle vacuity for months on end, but I'm sure I'll do it again the next time I've built up enough of a stash of money to afford it...
Friday, May 17, 2013
Resolution
You know what? I'm going to start blogging on a daily basis again. And every post will be crackling with wit and effervescent with interesting stuff. Starting tomorrow!
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