Is it still called stress if you refuse to deal with it?

New memory personal bests this week. A deck of cards in 63.48 seconds, and 176 cards in 10 minutes, wouldv'e been 196 cards if I didn't miss the 8 of spades. Darn.

Liking uni as always. Can feel the tightness in my back and chest from the gym. Hopefully do more amino acid composition this evening after sports assignment. Erm...nothing much else new, Money trouble hindering me but I'll survive, eventually.

Hoping to improve on all my scores since UK 2008 Open. Especially speed numbers and 10 minute cards, two of my best disciplines I screwed up. After Wales I hope to start a new system, 1000 characters, 100 actions, 1000 objects. The reason for the only 100 actions is to make the final scene only 8 digits instead of 9. When memoriseing a row of 40 it's easier to make everything fit and you don't back track over past digits. I have 10 scenes per house and loadsa houses so it's easier for me. Also, if you have too many actions they become indistinct, my actions are general and allow me flexibility. The binding part of the scene aloows me creativity and induces just the right amount of effort without straining my concentration or time. Got enought chracters, just need to organise them.

I'm off home to print of some binary and random digits. A few decks of cards and something to eat. Since my job means less to me now than when I started I think my only option is to not waste time. Memory, gym, nutrition is my life.

I say life, I mean my passions.

I say passions I mean devout hobbies.

Yeah, that'll do.

New Personal Bests

In the last week I've done like 6-7 hours practice and reached a new personal best in speed cards and speed numbers. I did 240 numbers in 5 mins with one mistake which brought me down to 220 digits which is still a best for me. Then yesterday I did a deck o cards in 67.66 seconds. which was kinda a suprise cos I kept shaking my head through it saying "oh I'll never remember that, oh dear oh dear" But I did so crisis averted.

Also I want to tell you about the magical wonderland of manchester, an aladdins cave of treasures, a place of fantasy and amazement to all those who seek to find it. It's called Costco. Absolutely brilliant. First time we went there we spent £133 on stuff. Decks of cards (bicycle), lounge pants, make up brushes, trainers, socks, mixed herbs and the stupidist purchase ever a flippin 12 pack of chewing gum. I dunno what I was thinking, I think I got carried away. At least they'll last, Unlike most people who buy them, I don't need them. Mwah ha ha.

Erm, I really like nutrition. I wanna write a book on like the philisophical aspects of it and the place of such a lifestyle subject in the context of the world. But like I have no original thoughts, and my philosophical witterings are dry and unprofound. I decided to write a nutrition poem instead. With an actual rhythm and all the other poetical devices.

PS I think cous cous is my favourite carbohydrate based food. I dunno yet. There's a lot of life, time, and places out there. Wish me luck.

Detoxing My Blog

To appeal to a broader audience I have cleaned up my blog. Before it was rated 12A now it is rated PG.

Yesterday I accidentally soaked 5 cups of lentils in water overnight not realising that half a cup is one portion. Now I got the lentil population of a small village to consume by tomorrow.

I'm working on my juggling, cos appearantly every German does it, Gunther, Boris, Gaby to name a few...if not all. I like juggling with clubs better though, I like things that rotate. I Practice my memory untile I've used up my immediate store of loci which is about 300 locations in about 20 buildings, mostly houses. Seeing as though Welsh Memory thing is all on one day I need to come up with twice as many loci, I can't recylce them later on in the comp, too much interference.

I'm gonna put a Findus Lasagne in the oven now, then later do some immunology work for my presentation. Oh my days.

Bread Facination.

I've been like baking bread rather than buying it. It takes ages longer and doesn't last as well but it tastes better...tenfold. I grind up seeds and that and add a bit too much bran then make rolls rather than a bread. Sliced bread is for little baby girls.

My car is looking an feeling pretty fine. New exhaust, new other stuff and a full valet.

Tonight I'm gonna make chicken in a white sauce with veg potatoes and brown bread. Got work at 7 in da morn tomorrow, then memory training and writing my nutrition CV all day, after the gym of course, back and triceps then abs.

Yesterday I memorised 160 digits perfectly in 5 mins when I haven't practiced for 3 months and that was with my new system. I need to do the world memory championships next year for deffo.

Steve Coogan was semi amazing, HAlf of it was hilarious the other half was filling material, cos Steve had to get changed innit. Alan Partridge is a legend.

Steptoe and Son: Upstairs Downstairs Upstairs Downstairs

There's So Much On My Plate It's A Platter.

I realised my MOT ran out last May. I've been driving without MOT for half a year. For shame.

My Car tax runs out in 11 days, They won't issue it without a valid MOT certificate, and I'll deffo fail it if I don't get me exhaust fixed, when I say fixed I mean actually get an exhaust. It fell off.

Mum's stuck in Kenyo for another two weeks. I said I'd get the coach down to London to pick her up then fly up with her. The invalid.

Got to finish a business proposal for tomorrow, which I don't mind, I kinda like it, but I think in long terms and I had this ludacris vision of me having this idea that does well, like i get backing from Dragon's Den or something and I have to split it with others jus cos I "happened" to be in the same group. When I came up with the idea, the logo the ethos and vibe of the company, totally original, totally workable, with the propensity to grow. I don't like sharing my ideas unless I get accredited with them, I'll share a slice of pie, or a mars bar but not my ideas. My sense of self and originality are all I hold dear. Also, my logo is very poetic, I came up with like 10 to 12 different levels my logo could work on. If you're interested to find out lemme know, i'll gladly share my very bad philisophical message of my logo.

Erm, I'ma gonna get super tonk before my birthday. Creatine, Protein and Iron in both senes of the word. Wanna be flexible aswell. Doubt I'll be able to ever touch my toes again, I can still do the splits though.

Can't wait for breakfast tomorrow. If I shall ever awaken from the fast of the night.

PS. Isn't biofocus the coolest brand name you've ever heard? So much association.

I'm 10.3% Fat.

Whilst going to Abbey to sort out my finances I wandered into Boots to check my body fat, BMI, weight and height. My BMI is 24.2 and my fat percentage is 10.3. So hopefully come the Welsh Memory Championship I'll be fit as a fiddle. The way those machines guesstomate body fat and fat free mss is a process called bioelectrical impedance.

Had a day off uni today, didn't do much, I started reading Watchmen the comic book, I can see how comic books can be addictive. Gonna read it some more now. Can't wait for the film, the way Abdul Jalal describes it it's gonna be the shit.

I wanna make some of my in-famous lamb keema tonight washed down with copious amounts of yogurt sauce. The ingredients to my yogurt sauce are: cumin seeds, coriander powder, garam masala, chilli powder, mint sause and a few drops of lemon. It's the only thing I can think of that nobody makes better than me. In my modest opinion.

Gonna go watch some Extras then Read some Watchmen, Which is in my opinion far better then the prequel the Watchtower.

Also, when I do my hybrid Dominic-Bell-Hoque system I like catergories, that way if I lose my place I can narrow it down during recall. Can't think of a memorable action for Alan Partridge as of yet...It'll come to me don't worry.

Adieu.

New Year For Nutrition

Started my second year of nutrition. I think I'm gonna like it if I stay focused and don't la de da around.

Memory is kind of on a backburner at the moment. I do little tidbits in my mind when I have no materials, because memory is like pure creativity I'd rather do it spontaneously when the mood strikes me than actuall plan a session.

Erm, what else? Not much, gonna see Steve Coogan in concert at the end of October. £70 pound quid of my hard earned uni grant, never mind it should be good. Ah-Haaaaa!

I watched Outpost last night, I thought it was kinda good concept but they could have done sooo much more with it. Also, watched Doomsday which is awesome, wish the lead was a man though, bit more believeable. The throw back to whitehorses and knights and castles is a bit jokes.

Next lecture is health communication and promotion, I hope it's based on psychology and consumer profiles type of thing. That way the way you would market a product to someone would be similar to the way you could teach them something specific..

Greece is the Word..

I'm going to Greece on Friday, need to get all my holiday ting tongs ready. Sun lotion, mosquito bite stick, pepper spray etc.

Watched I Am Legend this afternoon. Tis a really good film, bit of politics in there aswell.

When I originally started this blog I intended it to be exclusively about memory. But, as always my plans never go according to plan, but ironically I still call them plans. I should really call them intentions but intentions sound a bit dilly dally and dithery so I settled on humourously and facetiously calling them plans.

Anyways, I intend to learn a list of (not right now next week sometime) popular names and come up with a symbol or object that represents them. Then when I remember a name I just need to pick out a distinguishing character trait and hook them together. I'm gonna contemplate buying a book of names and workin my way through it. But that's a bit hardcore for me at the moment so just a mnemonic for popular names will suffice. oh, actually I'll do it with some more factfinders, that makes more sense rather than a big ass book of names.

And, erm...yeah, As for spoken numbers I'm gonna try and see if I can hold 2 scenes in mind whilst on my jouney that way I'm incorporating the link system aswell. I'm gonna try my damnedest to get 100 numbers in spoken format. Because that's the one everyone always dreads, I thought that would be the one to focus on. If this discipline is done well with confidence then numbers and binary are easy.

I'm gonna read and research more about cold reading now, don't miss me too much. Piece out.

I Don't Like Mondays (Tell Me Why?)

I haven't really done much today, even though I woke up at 6:15. Went to work and did nothing for hours then just kinda reset the tables at the end of me shift. 5.87 times 4.5 hours = £25 something pounds, not too bad but I wanted to do something productive this afternoon. The only thing I did that was productive today was to talk to myself for about 15 minutes on the philosophy of memory.

I wanna learn German like proper style.

My iPod even though it's got over 10 000 tracks is kinda dull to me now. I concentrated on downloading videos of talks and lectures and audio books for science stuff rather than music. So like I lost my taste for music. Was so desperate for music I downloaded Alphabeat. I only liked one song, will get sick of that aswell soon. Everytime I reach a plateau of music I end up reverting to oldies esp Billy Joel. Or classical.

Hopefully tonight figure a mnemonic system for random words. I got a few ideas knocking around but hopefully cement them today in the medium of a narrow ruled note book. I prefer to handwrite my notes even though i never keep them, probably just feel more in tune with material that way. Also, in Mind Performance Hacks there's a Hack for pre-deleting cruft. Essentially you just write a termination date on everything new you do, computer files, written notes, etc. I find it a bit awkward at first cos none of my past notes have the deletion date on them, but hopefully soon everything will and my life will be clearer than the reading glasses of a person with detrimentally severe OCD.

Apologies for my comical jab at people with OCD. If you don't like my humour read this blog three times whilst clapping your hands and humming.

Dionnes Heart and Mind of a Warrior.

Basically, Dionnes rejected my modest goals that I set for her. I put her down on my Excel document which I programmed to total all the results from each discipline, as 2250 points. Quite modest for a first championship. And she's all up in my face sayin she ain't ever gonna come dat low homie bread. I was like well then pull your finger out. I am glad she enjoys memory, at least one person that's close to me enjoys the same boring activities I do.

If she can harness all that Caribbean emotion then she'll do very well, but honestly, I think she's not introvert enough, I don't think she has the padantic nature of constantly analysising and reajusting tiny almost insignificant details to mnemonics to make them work. But if she listens to me and I force her to do things properly, learning from my mistakes, things will go very smoothly, in Welsh Memory Championship and the Nationals next year.

Also, she said be at hers for 8pm but I'm gonna be there at 9pm. I'm such a scallywag.

My Competitiveness in Memory

At work at the Crowne Plaza, everytime I get shouted at by the chef or supervisor I tend to go into my own world. I came up with a kind of original system, not put it into practice yet. Essentially, with a restaurant you got the tables arranged from 1 to 35, so they provide the pegs for information. Just convert them into people or objects and you got 35 locations. And the way I plan to use it is to see the last object with the new one thereby using the link system aswell which consolidates it a bit more. Cos like you got a visual link of the last two objects...I hope that makes sense.

I tend to get quite motivated at work cos I work relatively hard and my mind wonders for an escape. Even though I really should be concentrating on nutrition I tend to focus on memory as that is the bedrock of my nutrition. But any hu, I get really riled up and say things in my head, mainly revolving on memorising rubbish when I get home...Instead, recently I've been moping around watching the intros to already seen movies on my computer. But I decided I'm gonna kick the cerebral asses of James, James and Katie next year. They're sincerely delightful people but they are my nemesis in the context of memory.

To do this I zeroed in on their weak points, making sure I have the best system and am quite confident with it and also tried to emulate their strong points.

After looking tirelessly at the millenium standards, world rankings and so on I came up with a goal of (I don't think it's too ostintacious) of:
5 mins random words: 50 to 60
5 mins binary, 400 to 450
5 mins names and faces, 40 to 60 points
!0 minute cards, 156 to 182
15 minute numbers, 400 to 450
Speed numbers, 220
Abstract images, 120 to 150
Historical dates, 40 to 50
Spoken numbers, 100
Speed cards, 75 secs.

All the above are based on my best times and what I feel I could achieve with tweakings to my system.

Right, I'm gonna listen to 3-4 more Billy Joel Tracks then go downstairs to my study and memorise, nay, systomise.

What I just wrote made no sense, I know that.

Knowledge. I want som'more.

Upon reading others peoples blogs I realised I was being a tad too formal with my layout with the grammar and diction I was using, so I intend to idiosycranise it up a bit. But surely if it is my own blog should I draw inspiration from others, who inturn draw upon someone elses until there is no originality left just bad copies of once mildly useful ideas? I'm new to all this blog stuff. And sporadically philosophical.

Anyways, I was just thinking that although memory isn't my be all and end all I do want to excel in it. I find it fascinating, rewarding, fulfilling and just obscure enough to be mildly entertaining to the unaquainted. But it isn't my only passion, I like; piano, health and fitness, psychology, popular science, and above all nutrition. But I wanna be known as a sceptical nutritionist, medical and psychologically grounded, not one concerned with spirituality, chakra points, reflexology and that malarky.

I hope to somehow combine all my "knowledge" (if knowledge exists...oooh) into some kind of book. I place that thought on the distant horizon, alongside a guiness world record for something and Grandmastership of memory and Men's Health cover model and also a PhD. But that's all in the future. I need to wait for my balls to drop first.

PS. My balls have well and truely dropped I was being idiosyncratic. Aren't I ironic.

The Start Of Something Special

I do memory training yeah. i tend to do more system based practice than actual remembering numbers and that practice. I want to find out the best technique for me and develope and practice that rather devote my time to a substandard type of system.

At first when I started memory I used the Dominic system, then that kind of developed into Andi Bell's person action object, then I tried to use Ben Pridmores advanced major system which failed miserably. So for the moment I'm just using person action object.

For long strings of digits I use person action object person object, which works quite well for me. I try and fit in everyone I have somekind of attachment to or who is really memorable, not some average nobody with average charisma like Zach Efron, Justin Timberlake, Daniel Radcliffe etc

The object is not really associated to the person of that number the object is based on the major system. The reason I chose this way is because I didn't want to be disloyal to the major system and also because it never changes unlike my characters I use it as a way of remembering long term info.

For example, 70 is CaSe, 28 is kNiFe, 99 is BaBy etc.

When committing stuff to perminant memory I use exclusively the major system.

This is great.

It's 5:10am Greenwich mean time and I've just created a blog to chronicle my severely average thoughts.

I don't have the patience or energy this moment to write anything of significant interest so I shall just give you a list of words and hopefully they'll convey my mind set.

Raddish.
Flavour.
Constantinople.
Nipple.
Cream.
Aspergillus Flavus
Cemetery.
Fish.
Distortion.

That is all.