I have been interested in memory techniques since reading a book by Harry Lorayne when I was a child. It got me thinking about geeky things like memorising a pack of cards and I came up with a good idea - and tried to sell a book to popular psychology publishers.
That did not work out!
When I learned how to use the internet, I discovered forums to do with memory techniques; and I contributed to them over many years. E.g. I had a way to express any two letters as a visual image. I believed that it made learning a paragraph of writing easier to do. So I was linking to my systems on Yahoo Groups; and telling people about my alphabet pairs method, etc.
I tried to get people to look at my memory course. I had lessons like how to memorise the black and red cards of a pack of cards quickly. At the time, I thought I was novel in representing many cards in one imagined image but, later, I came to believe that a lot of good memory technique ideas are very old and get re-invented.
One of my memory techniques was to do with memorising letter pairs - and that turned out to be useful for blindfold solve Rubik's cube enthusiasts! I sent my system to someone who broke a rubik's cube blind solve record.
I contributed to the design of a memory records database. That memory-competitor-biography-meets-sports results hyperlinking web site suggestion by me in a Yahoo Memory Sports forum evolved into a memory statistics web site. Eventually, that statistics site got adopted at: World Memory Statistics.
I also worked on using ASP.NET to make a real-time tournament web site. However, it used a wonky javascript timer and, before I resolved that, a gifted man called Simon Orton made a site for memory tournaments that was beautiful.
However, the easy-to-apply javascript flashcard code I wrote is still in use all these years later. The principle of not being able to see the answer on a page or screen in front of you when you test your memory is fundamental to good learning!
Generally, I met some cool people online. I kept writing memory articles and overwriting them with new improved versions - and this site now is, in my opinion, really polished!
I would advise you to be critical when you read the promises of a memory web site or when you see a video of someone doing the impossible. Memorising a pack of cards in less than a couple of minutes? Yes, that is real and learnable! But some of the materials in books and online do not stand up to close scrutiny - and you should probably be eclectic in what you pick up and what you discard (no pun intended).
I also think that mnemonics are a lot of hard work to learn if they are not acquired through playing games. I hope that the images of this course could one day be built into computer games so that they can be learned while having fun.
I hope you enjoy reading this site and its mnemonic images: Memory Bloke!! [Memory Bloke has a page on Facebook and is a way to message me]
