Friday 12 November 2010

Born to Retire

Feeling hungry is awful...I have that rumbling, paste like feeling in my stomach. The type where, if you know about anatomy, feels like the chime has dried and left concentrated acidic puddle of once flowing digestive juices. The mucus, I feel, has been sacrified for what little nutrition it has and left a vacuum, an ever consuming one, in it's place. My own body, my live storehouse of nutrients has turned against me and eaten away at me from the inside. My stomach bloats with the anticipation of sustinance, the idiomotor movements which I'm all to eager to exibit have ajusted my posture giving a, as I just mentioned a bloaty appearance.

Intentionally, I have left the above absent of further revision.

It may have to be carbs. As in, what I'll tuck into now.

Thursday 4 November 2010

Must everything have a title? Have a label? Have a pigeon hole in which to localise it's reach?...Yes.

Upon realisation that my grammar was in dire need of some kind of originality rivival, I set aside a significant portion of my thought to develop an actual writing style. Bare in mind this post on this blog is just an exercise, I do hope it is not taken seriously.

So to follow on from my first words, yes, I have been taking grammar and writing style quite seriously recently. I have created a protocol for various things involving how to structure a scientific writing paragraph, how to analyse a scientific paper - although this doesn't strictly fall into the scope of grammar and writing it is a creatively critical process which helps eliminate bad prose and diction and enforces a firm an followable writing style.

I feel, as recently as just now, that a diary shouldn't necessary be planned, merely memories held in ones mind and dictated at leisure onto the page when pertinant or appropriate...Also, a bqad habit I have is to delay a revision of my work (as pretentious as it sounds, everytime I write something I christen it a "work"), so it may sound a tad off in parts, it's not some kind of cryptic writing style, if you the audience hasn't understood it, it, is my fault. Also sorry for that run on sentence.

Whilst on the subject of Memory, I am working on my 3 digits decimal and 2 digits pao system as we speak. I've tried to dedicate more time towards how to acquire knowledge faster hoping that if I can combine the two I'll be some kind of mega-guru...But I don't take myself that seriously to care for that much now.

I wish I saved all my Facebook status's throughout the years, but a status lasts a mere glimpse, the mind that creates them lasts forever, til death do us party.

I saw a mock-poignant quote today, which I wish I could say i came up with: "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.".

To conclude, I hope I don't come across as a gentleman with his head up his own arse. But if my face smells like shit and shit comes out my mouth and my trousers are by my ankles, I permit you to reach that conclusion.

Or Rivrar x

Sunday 4 October 2009

Sweden Open Memory Championships and Me

So Swedish Memory Championships...Was unexpectedly great. I remember being all hyped up before the competition for about a month thinking I could actually do it this time, actually get all my best scores...but no practice left me devoid of such confidence. I just expected to get around 3800-4000 points total score. Never expected to get 4613 points, I was so delighted, we stayed up at Idriz's office til 2 am waiting for the results.

The venue was great, should have more competitioins with a viewing window. The presence of food throughout the competition was unquestionabley great, probably why I did so well.

So I've jumped from 44th world ranking to 35th world ranking to 25th world ranking, within a month.

The one area which I wasn't so happy with that I shrugged off at the end is that the first disciplin random words, I was deducted 100 points for writing down "refractory" instead of "refrectory". Fair enough, I consoled myself, it will feel even better when I'm in the top 20 next year, knowing such pedantic measures are adhered to.

The Germans were suprisingly cool, we played a few games the first night and talked throughout the championship. Was nice of them to speak English just for me and Dionne haha.

There was this nice feeling at the championships, everyone sharing ideas, no animosity or ill will, I think because everyone is competing with themselves rather than others. Dagfinn, Idriz, Florian, Johannes, Simone, Corinna, Ferdinand, Mattias, Christopher, everyone was entertaining and chilled out, best championships yet. Lots of socialising, probably because we were all in a foreign land.

I get this feeling memory sports will be super popular in 2012 you know because of the Olympics. So I'm aiming to be World champion by then. It's a bit of a long shot but this is probably the one thing I'll ever be good at, not only that I like it.

The thing I'm doing at the moment for the World Memory Championships 2009 is preparing all me locations, but outside location. Up until now I've only ever used indoor locations, perhaps they'll be even better. I'm going through the locations and numbering them so I know exactly where I should be at and number of digits (during hour numbers).

If I screw up on a section it should be okay as only that portion is affected. I'm memorising in groups of 20 locations, 120 numbers, 10 journeys, so I should get 1200 numbers for this discipline. Which allows me the cushion of 10 mistakes for the minimum standard of getting a grandmastership.

Been reseaching a lot of career options lately, something involving: youths, patients, lab work, science writing, presenting, lecturing, consulting...? oh and evolution and nutrigenomics.

Gonna have to get ready for the gym soon, I so was not meant to go to the gym, not in my gene structure at all. Probably chest and triceps today.

Adieu.

Friday 4 September 2009

Ultimate System Something This Way Comes

So I spent 30mins a day for the past week coming up with my new card system. Ben Prid. said he has 2704 image which allows him to remember two cards with one image. Dennis Mul. says 2652 images as you will not get the same cards twice. I agree with the latter, as I will always remember one deck at a time and not intrashuffle the decks.

Of the 2652 images, 1326 are people, 1326 are objects (which I've yet to do as objects are easier than prescribing than people)

Rather than code for the images in wordy system like Bens, I chose to catergorise my system, it's easier for me and also it only includes images I'd like to remember. I don't like following the trend of something, appearantly Ed Cooke and James Ponder are delving into the Ben system. German wise, Dennis Muller and Simon Reinhard have a second level card master system, so I assume this is where the memory sports train is headed if one is to succeed. All aboard!!!

My system is quite nice because I have friends, family, old school teachers and that as images. All the objects I intend to make very personal like the Jerusalem plate my mum bought 18 years ago, which I broke, or the Japanese fisherman antique plate...which I broke.

So once I get this system out the way then it's decimal digits time, then binary time. And hopefully come up with a system for names and faces which is numerically prescribed depending on the features of the person.

I've decided I'd like to be quite good at memory, the only reason I don't go all out on compotitions or practice is that I know there is a better sytem for me...hopefully this is it.

Training for the Swedish championship is slow. I might do some binary and decimals after I written this.

I intend to use this new system for Wales and the UK Open 2010. Hopefully, it'll be smoothed out by the WMC 2010.

Also, cheers James Paterson for reading my blog.

Monday 24 August 2009

Has it Really Been 5 Months Since I Wrote on this Thing?

Sorry for my absence. Two people have admitted to reading my blog and I can't let down my two newest, bestest, empathetic friends.

The UK Open Memory Championship was good. Did 4 personal bests and ended up with a score of 4093. My Silver Trophy looks amazing by the way. Gonna aim for 4400 to 4500 for the upcoming Swedish Championship next month.

I like totally screwed up my 10 minute cards which I think is my best disciplin during practising, I consistantly get 3-4 decks with perfect recall, I blame it on the recall sheets so I took it upon myself, after advice from Idriz, to provide my own recall sheets for cards.

The comedy is at a complete standstill at the moment, I still got the jokes I'm just not in the jokey jokey mindset. I don't really like going to comedy clubs, they're not funny apart from the compare and they're always drawn out long winded events. If I were to do comedy it would have to be original (obviously), quick, deep comedy if that makes sense, and include jokes only 10% of the audience would get at a time, that way they talk about it afterwards.

I'd have to include memory and maybe something else but I don't know what, I'll work on a random skill and include that.

Oh yeah, alos the Japanese equivalent to BBC came round two weeks ago. They were cool, they gave me a perfectly wrapped Baby G watch, pen and deck of cards.

As soon as they arrived they asked me to memorise a list of words, fair enough, but like I don't like words. I memorised 50 and made 3 mistakes...oops. They came with me to the gym, watched me whilst I dilated my biceps then came back to my house to finish filming and conclude with an interview.

Erm, what else is new? Throwing cards has slowed down because they got all bent and I don't wanna open a new deck.

Sorry if my writing style is hard to follow, my diction and grammar is based on conversational and informal talking styles rather than textbook literature, hence the reason why it doesn't read that smoothly. I'm gonna try and read The 48 Laws of Power and something else before I go back to university.

Also, in the last month I put on 2 kilos and look bigger, but I need to strip off some of this fat, esp from my spare tyre.

Owf Veederzeyan.

Tuesday 31 March 2009

Dalai Lama Skating on a Bowl of Noodles

So I'm back from the Welsh Memory championship. Leading up to it back in October November, I was really excited about competing, still am, but then I changed my system and tried to consistently get my personal bests. Then in December it tailed off and only got practising a week before the competition. I had a month of deadlines and coursewerk leading up to the championship, and the last one had to be in the Friday before so i was a bit rushed.

When we got to the Welsh thing, I had a bit of trouble sleeping that night, I was so excited, there's nothing better than hearing your scores even if there not that great, cos they kind of mean nothing, it's just exciting. So we got to the venue, we shared a taxi with Katie Kermode, and let on to the arbiters n competitors and set up shop.

Random words are of course better with practice but it's about the luck of the draw most times. It's suppose to be 85% nouns and image based words and 15% abstract. They were quite easy to be honest, bring, ugly, chair, flower, tree etc but I wanted to be 100% they were correct during recall, I got 49 words. All went good, new world record for Katie with 109 in 5 mins.

Then binary reared it's ugly head, Ben did 840, quite impressive, I did 351 after I asked for mine to be remarked, I had pefect recall of what I remembered but I didn't observe it all that great a lot of switched 0 and 1's

Historical dates I always wing it last minute. "Someone gets married in Charlotte Church" was a memorable one. oh and Policeman arrests himself". 15 minute numbers failed a bit, I missed loci during recall then rewrote the same digits about 4 -5 times before running out of time. Damn.

10 minute cards went well...ish. I got 3 decks in 10 minutes, but the 4th deck I did I got up to 31 cards into, but messed up on the recall.

Then lunch came thank God. Went to a qaint little pub looking place for a Welsh feast. The meat was rationed but the vegetables were help yourself. We spent over an hour in there, I thought we were gonna be late for the start back.

Erm...in the afternoon, images were not great, 5 minute numbers were not great, spoken numbers were not great, speed cards were not great. I'm being a bit too harsh on myself, but I could have done better in all the events. I put it down to not being used to the competion and being a bit too frowny and tense. I had a face like an orphan most of the time.

It all rounded off nicely, Ben, Katie then Me and James in fourth.

Then we all went round to Dai's for liquid refreshment, James was giving us a lift behind Phil, but We were supposed to be behind Warren and Dai but they went through a light and left us. So we finally met up that night, had a drink, had a musical undertone, bit of curry, and headed off back to Travelodge, shared a taxi with Connor.

All in all, it was great, enjoed it. I am gonna make no hesitation in starting my 3 digit system for the UK open championships. Also, stuff which I never practice, dates, images, names, words, I'm gonna make an effort to be at least half decent.

I could make the whole Welsh memory championships sound a bit more interesting but I need to do my stand up comedy routine for next Monday, so take care of your shelves.

Friday 13 February 2009

Memory Training? That's a joke.

So anyway, I got really committed to memory training in September til November but ever since my birthday when I started going tpo the gym I've been very lazy. But hopefully I'm back on track now.

I have a limited number of decent loci. I tend to use very sentimental loci and get used to erasing them constantly rather than seeking new loci which I know is detrimental especially to a mental athlete. Even though I tend to use houses, I use restaurants and gyms and workplaces for the longer disciplines. Because the Welsh Memory championships is all on one day I haven't got the luxury of the loci being refreshed overnight. So I worked out I need a supplimentary 200 locations if I aim to acheive my personal bests in each discipline.

I'm quite confident with cards, but with numbers I get a bit jittery and it's usually 50/50 on whether I get over 200 digits in 5 minutes. Names and words and images and that I'll practice for a week in advance. I'll hopefully get a decent score but nothing to write home about.

The reason I've been a bit disloyal to my memory training is because I found a new outlet for my creative and idiosyncratic perspective. At least I think I am I'm probably just average, but anyway I've started writing stand up comedy. Memory wise I think it brilliant. Using all the associative powers that a memory trainer has and the ability to mental recite jokes is awesome.

So that's what I've been doing instead of memory training. It's a blend of memory, timing, psychology and confidence which I hope to do quite well in.

I'm a bit nervous over the Welsh championships. I don't want to screw up. I wanna get my personal bests, and hopefully make it into the top world 30. I don't want to let down Dai, I'm his hero. j/k

NB Peace.