Josh Notes

Because memory techniques are such a niche topic and I will be blogging about it a lot, I decided to move my posts about memory to a new domain name.

I created a few simple PHP scripts to help me with my memory training. I posted them on Github so that anyone can download them and modify them for their own use.

I'm in London and got a chance to see the 2010 UK Open International Memory Championships. It was a great event.

My latest (and still evolving) way for generating mnemonic images is attached.

I got busy and had to put aside memory training since my last post. Stopping for a little while was a good thing, because it provided a little time for my previous mnemonic system to fade a bit.

At the moment I'm still working on generating my ~3000 mnemonic images.

One difficulty I've been having is finding images for numbers that ended in the letter "r". This might only be a problem in American English, but the letter "r" is so strong it can affect the previous vowel. The troubling number combinations are:

I'm slowly making progress on building mnemonic images for numbers 000 to 999 and new images for 00 to 99.

I'm attempting to use Ben Pridmore's system, with modifications to the vowels for 000 to 999.

I'm trying to distinguish numbers 00 to 99 by using the regular Major System, but having their words begin with vowels, w, or y to distinguish them from the three digit images. Here are some two-digit numbers as examples:

Some thoughts on memorizing music with mnemonic techniques:

I haven't tried any of these methods yet -- they are just ideas at the moment.

One idea is to create images for each of the solfège syllables using chromatic variants: do, di, ra, re, ri

Images could be based on using the sounds of the syllables at the beginning of the image words.  For example:

I'm more than halfway done with reassigning images to numbers 00 to 999, and put the system to the test while memorizing some driving directions today.

I'm still stuck on one problem: how to break up large numbers into chunks of three digits, when some of the chunks begin with 0 or 00?  I want each image to be made up of the same number of digits, otherwise I think it might be difficult to easily calculate something like "the digit in position #52 is a 6".

Today I found out that there is something called a Grand Master of Memory. Becoming a Grand Master of Memory requires the following memorization feats:

I've created a couple of quick pages that generate 5000 random numbers for practicing memory techniques. Here they are in two easily-printable versions: