[lutusp]

> Do you all know of any good tips for remembering names?

The secret to remembering people's names is to actually care about them. This is why I can never remember people's names. :)

Imagine you've been told that your favorite programming language has some new useful features, recent examples in multiple languages include lambdas and list comprehensions. Guess how long it will take for the new feature's names and syntax to be permanently branded onto your brain cells -- ten milliseconds?

People who actually care about other people have the same reaction to meeting someone new who they might like or find useful as a professional contact -- that person's name is instantly and permanently branded onto their brain cells.

But if you've spent your professional life in abstract pursuits -- mathematics, science, programming -- it's very hard to make a transition to giving people's names enough importance to remember them. But guess what? People from the humanities have the opposite problem -- they can't remember an equation or a scientific fact for more than a few seconds.

A professor of ichthyology once said, "Every time I remember the name of a student, I forget the name of a fish."