Tuesday 16 September 2008

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.

Monday 15 September 2008

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.

Sunday 14 September 2008

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.

Friday 12 September 2008

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.

Tuesday 9 September 2008

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.

Sunday 7 September 2008

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.