memory 3: schemes to enhance your memory

I thought Higbee's book only got really interesting in Chapter 9 and further. He discusses the following techniques:
- link and story mnemonic: create links between the topics you need to remember, either by creating a link between to successive items (link) or making a story.
- loci mnemonic: relate everything to remember to the map of your home
- peg
- phonetic mnemonic: see below

I knew the loci system alraedy and I don't like it, I am too lazy to make up whole stories. The link system is very powerful: in an example we are supposed to remember the word paper-tire-doctor-rose-ball. He teaches us that we should use visual images, preferably absurd ones. And it works: I read this Chapter four or five days ago and remember the list without a problem.

When I read this I thought it would be cute to associate each number to an object, only to see that this is the essence of the peg and the photonic system. But his peg system isn't good for me because the object rimes with the words in English. Since I have three languages to deal with Higbee's mapping doesn't work for me.

But I really got hooked to the photonic system: each number is linked to a set of consonents; the vowels are only used to make words. His system is (slightly adapted):
# menominic other consonents
0 z zero z,s
1 t t,d
2 n two downstrokes
3 m three downstrokes
4 r vier, four, quatro
5 l lijf, vijl
6 j yes j, sj, ch, y, soft g, dutch g
7 k kever k, q, hard c, hard g
8 f shape f f,v
9 p shape p p,b

This takes some time to learn, but I think it pays of. I wanted to remember the amount 364, 84,
which I transalted to the (absurd) word majoor-vier, or major-four in English. I might forget the number, but forgetting this absurd word is hard. Interestingly, the scheme has some resilience for some language changes, which is very important to me. I am thinking of writing Python scripts that would find candidate words for me. Or maybe it should be in JavaScript.

BTW, I thought Higbee was cheating a bit. He said twice that people do not easily remember what is the n'th letter of the alphabet, but with some training you get very far:

A-H = 1-8 (any who played chess knows that)
IJ = 9, 10
KLM = 11,12,13
NOP = 14,15,16 (with N starts the second half alphabet)
QRST= 17,18,19,20 (Q = queer = prime; T = twenty)
UVW = 21, 22, 23
XYX = 24, 25, 26

That's not so tough. I tend to get lost in the second half of the alphabet, but the associations for Q and T will resolve that. So it's not too difficult, but it wouldn't sell Higbee's phonetic system so well