Personal | Youseph Tanha

The Memory Palace

Memories, remembering, and how thought and the recall of thought works for people is something I often find myself thinking about a lot. I think this is because at one point in my life I needed to be on antidepressants and they really messed up my short-term memory. So, I find myself thinking about how people remember things and recall things.

The first time I started thinking about how the brain and thoughts work was early on in school. I was told by my music teacher that the human mind can only handle seven independent things/thoughts at one time. If you add an eighth in the mix, one of the other seven will no longer be available to you.

The way this applies to music and my drumming, he told me, was that when you are drumming you are using all four of your limbs behind the drum kit. Your arms and legs. Each one is doing something independent of the other. That is four things your mind is tracking. You are also keeping time in your head and anticipating what is coming next. That is six things. The seventh thing I find myself doing while I am playing music is just either looking around and being observant of the other musicians. Sometimes I’m thinking about random things such as what I am going to make for dinner or what is on the agenda for work tomorrow. That’s my seven things at once. The brain can’t handle anymore than that. This point gets proven over and over again with me during band practice whenever anyone hits a note that is not correct, or plays something different. This by default makes me drop whatever extra thing I am thinking at the time to focus on the change in the music. Sometimes I won’t be as lucky and forget what I was thinking. Sometimes one of my legs or arms will quit working and the drum beat I will be playing will sound wrong. So a lot of discipline goes into being focused and prepared for something unexpected when I am playing music with my band.

In the past I have talked about how much I like, and use, the Getting Things Done (GTD) work methodology developed by David Allen. It’s great for keeping tasks and projects, both work and personal, organised in a way that allows you to get things completed quickly and efficiently. But the thing that makes GTD so great is the fact that it frees up your mind to allow you to have ideas. Unlike remembering things, having ideas is something the mind is great at doing.

“Your mind is for having ideas, not for holding them.” – David Allen

By being able to put your tasks down in a system that you trust allows you to focus on your next action rather than spending your time worried about the overall project. It really is a life changing way to work and get things done. If you have not looked into before, I highly recommend that you do so.

The latest thing I have been learning about almost contradicts GTD in a way. The Memory Palace is an ancient way of remembering anything. By having a house for all your thoughts that are triggered by distinct locations within the house of your minds eye you can recall any kind of information. See the videos below to better understand what I am talking about.

Sherlock Homes

When I was still in high school I read all of the Sherlock Homes Adventures by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Something about the way Sherlock Homes could solve problems and see things others couldn’t always interested me. I say this about my brothers a lot but, I love how Sherlock’s thinks, how his mind works. I wish my mind fired as fast as theirs.

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who first appeared in publication in 1887. He is the creation of Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A brilliant London-based detective, Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess, and is renowned for his skillful use of “deductive reasoning” while using abductive reasoning and astute observation to solve difficult cases.

Not long after I finished reading all the Homes books I found The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes tv series on the A&E Network. My mom and brother would sit with me and watch it. I don’t know why, but not long after I moved to Juneau I started poking around the internet looking for the DVD’s of this great show. I was able to find a few disks on Amazon.com, but never the complete series. Then a couple of years ago I found myself walking through the DVD section of Costco when I spotted Sherlock Home: The Complete Granada Television Series. I picked it up, No questions asked.

The actor who plays the master detective in this series is Jeremy Brett, who many consider to be the definitive screen version of Sherlock Homes. His story is quite sad actually if you read up on him. His acting though, is masterful.

I would love to hear what you think of Sherlock Holmes and how you feel Jeremy Brett’s version stacks up with Robert Downey, Jr’s version.

Betta Care

Over the last few weeks since my wife gave me a Betta for Valentines day, I have learned a lot about Betta fish care and I thought I would share with you what I have learned. Turns out that a Betta Fish can require more time and care than you might think.

Bettas come from tropical areas in Asia. Like Thailand and Malaysia. Two male bettas should never be placed in the same tank unless you have a divider. The male Bettas tend to have the large colorful fins whereas the females will have smaller fins.

If two male Bettas share one aquarium they may very well fight to the death. In the wild however, bettas do not fight to the death. They will fight till there is a winner for the territory. The loser will go off and hide, or jump to another area to find safety (which is why bettas should always be in covered tanks, but still have access to air). In small tanks, there is no where to hide, thus leading to deaths.

Like lots of other people I have been told through friends and pet store employee’s that Betta fish like and flourish in small aquariums or fish bowls. It turns out that this could not be further from the truth! Bettas, especially those kept in smaller bowls need to have 25% of their water changes twice a week along with full bowl changes weekly. This was my biggest reason for getting a larger aquarium with an adjustable flow water filter. You want a slow flow filter so that the water current produced by the filter does not over power your Betta.

When you first get your Aquarium you want to clean it out, along with anything else you plan to put into it (rocks, plants, or ornaments) with warm to hot water. There seems to be some debate on the internet about how you should go about cleaning aquariums and the items you put into it, but I have found warm to hot water does the job for my single male Betta.

Feeding Bettas can also start a debate online it seems. I would like to share with you what I have found that works. Bettas have a lot of personality and they will beg for food. I feed my Betta fish twice a day. Two pellets of Betta fish food. Once or twice a week I will substitue the pellet food with bloodworms. You can get bloodworms at your pet store. Just thaw them out in something like a shot glass with water. I use tweezers to pick out two bloodworms (one at a time) and feed them to my Betta. It seems Betta fish like a variety of food and my Betta enjoys his bloodworm meals.

I hope you find this information useful. Have you discovered any tips or tricks to take care of your Betta? Please leave a comment and let me know!

A Good Cigar

I enjoy a good cigar. There is nothing like it. I thought I would share with you a couple of my favorite cigars that I always have in my humidor.

Arturo Fuente creates a cigar known as the Hemingway Classic. It’s a mild to medium strength cigar in a medium brown colored wrapper. My brother, Abe turned me on to this guy and I have always had one close by ever since. It is probably my favorite cigar that I smoke. The box these cigars comes in too is really quite nice as well and I think could be repurposed into a great many things.

Romeo y Juliet is another brand I really enjoy and discovered early on when I first picked up cigar smoking. I was actually attracted to the logo first. It just worked out that I liked the cigar too. The 1875, or the Reserve are both great options under the Remeo y Juliet brand. The 1875 is the more mild of the two and I tend to smoke them more than because of that. Just depends on my mood.

Because I smoke cigars I get asked how I like to cut my cigars and what do I use to light them with. I don’t think this matters. I don’t think the cigars you choose to smoke matters either. Just smoke what you enjoy and cut and light them the way you want. But, to answer the question I use a punch to cut my cigars and a Zippo lighter to light them.

Betta Max

For Valentines Day this year my wife got me a beautiful blue and purple male Betta fish that we have named Betta Max. (Hey I’m a geek. Can you tell?) I have been talking about getting a Betta for months now, but I never went through with it because I just could not decide on a tank for one. That did not stop me from doing research for one online to learn more about care and feeding for a Betta. The one Hannah picked out for me is a Delta Tail Male Betta fish. I had to look up what kind of Betta that was.

Betta Delta Tail- Male Also known as Siamese Fighting Fish, Combattant (Canada), Trey kroem phloek (Cambodia), or C lia thia (Vietnam). The Male Betta is well known for its jewel-bright colors and spectacular finnage. Unlike most fish, they breathe from the water’s surface with their labyrinth organ instead of through their gills. Delta Tails have a distinctly triangular-shaped tail with crisp edges and sharp angles. The tail of a Delta is symmetrical, and although the angle is generally wide they are generally 130ø or less in tail span. Anything more than 130ø but less than 170ø is considered a Super Delta Tail Betta. Bettas will “flare” their fins when disturbed or threatened. The male Betta will attack another Betta and have been known to attack similar-looking fish. It is recommended that only one male Betta is housed in an aquarium with plants and very little current.

Hannah really could not have picked out a better gift.

Together the two of us went to the local pet store where I picked out a tank and Hannah picked out some red Gravel, a plant, and an Easter Island looking statue.

Today I added a d20 to the tank. Hannah says I am projecting on Betta Max. I just feel like he wants to be able to play games from his tank. Who am I to stop him?