Dan Q
This checkin to GL3JA7CW Barking up the Wrong Tree reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
I was just on an Easter Egg hunt up in the woods, when pacifist_049 (who was hiding my egg) gave me the clue that my egg was hidden “near Barking Up The Wrong Tree”, so obviously the best way to find my hidden egg ws to pull out my GPSr and first find this wonderful, devious little cache. TFTC.
This checkin to GL3J9DE3 Coast Path Caper reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Came up here for a walk and, while on the way, thought I’d check if the cache (which I failed to find after it’s recent muggling) had been replaced. It had! I checked in the “obvious place”, which I’m guessing is where it used to live, and then a brief search later, found it. TFTC.
This afternoon, like last year, we took the opportunity to spend Easter Sunday hiding one another’s Easter eggs in the woods and then running around looking for them.
For some reason, this year Rory didn’t want me to be responsible for hiding his egg (something to do with his eventually being found up a tree, last year), so I ended up hiding Adam‘s, instead. I didn’t even put much effort into it: just propped it on a branch. This turned out to be a bad hiding place because Adam walked right back past it on his way back from hiding JTA‘s egg.
Paul, meanwhile, hid my egg. He did a pretty good job of it, too, and eventually had to give me a couple of clues. “It’s near Barking Up The Wrong Tree,” he said, knowing perfectly well that this was a geocache that I hadn’t yet hunted for. I pulled out my GPSr and found the cache, and then started looking for my egg in the vicinity.
In a particularly special bit of hiding, Rory managed to hide Matt P‘s egg so well that he himself couldn’t find it again. Eventually we all had to help hunt for Matt’s lost egg. Rory had helpfully taken a photo of the egg in it’s hiding place, but this photo was ultimately useless because it depicted nothing more distinctive than “a wood”, which we were unable to see for all of the trees. I suppose that if we were trying to get to a particular spot and then ascertain that we were in the right place, it would be useful, except for that fact that being in the exact right place would probably have been pretty obvious by the time we were standing on top of an Easter egg.
Finally, Adam basically “tripped over” the hidden egg, and all was well.
All in all, it was a fabulous afternoon out, and a great way to work off all the calories of Ruth‘s most-excellent Easter lunch (and just in time to be able to scoff down cakes and chocolate later in the afternoon).
In other news:
It may come as a surprise to you that the stuff I write about on my blog – whether about technology, dreams, food, film, games, relationships, or my life in general – isn’t actually always written off-the-cuff. To the contrary, sometimes a post is edited and re-edited over the course of weeks or months before it finally makes it onto the web. When I wrote late last year about some of my controversial ideas about the ethics (or lack thereof) associated with telling children about Santa Claus, I’m sure that it looked like it had been inspired by the run-up to Christmas. In actual fact, I’d begun writing it six months earlier, as summer began, and had routinely visited and revisited it from time to time until I was happy with it, which luckily coincided with the Christmas season.
As an inevitable result of this process, it’s sometimes the case that a blog post is written or partially-written and then waits forever to be finished. These forever-unready, never-published articles are destined to sit forever in my drafts folder, gathering virtual dust. These aren’t the posts which were completed but left unpublished – the ones where it’s only upon finishing writing that it became self-evident that this was not for general consumption – no, the posts I’m talking about are those which honestly had a chance but just didn’t quite make it to completion.
Well, today is their day! I’ve decided to call an amnesty on my incomplete blog posts, at long last giving them a chance to see the light of day. If you’ve heard mention of declaring inbox bankruptcy, this is a similar concept: I’m sick of seeing some of these blog articles which will never be ready cluttering up my drafts folder: it’s time to make some space! Let the spring cleaning begin:
After JTA and I’s monster plan for a great April Fools’ joke got rained-off this year (maybe another year), I just had to go ahead with two smaller April Fools’ gags this year.
The Photocopier Prank
A nice simple joke at the expense of the people in the office building I work in (and far less complex than last year’s prank against the same): I found a document online, printed it out, and stuck it to the photocopiers.
It instructs users that the photocopier has been upgraded with voice controls, so you can just “tell it” to copy, collate, staple etc. and it’ll follow your instructions. The document goes on to explain that it’s in “learning mode” right now and it might not get everything right while it learns your voice, so be patient and take the time to repeat yourself slowly and carefully.
I haven’t got eyes on the copier, so I’ve no idea how many – if any – people it caught.
The Abnib Announce/Joke Of The Week Prank
For the last few years, I’ve run two a text-message based mailing lists (I’ve got unlimited texts as part of my mobile contract, so it’s as-good-as free for me to do this). The first, Abnib Announce, lets people in Aber know about Troma Night, Geek Night, and similar events. The second, Joke of the Week, goes to a far wider audience and shares, every Friday, the best (by a loose and arguable definition of the word) of the jokes I’ve heard over the previous seven days.
This morning I sent out the following message to both lists:
Abnib Announce/Joke of the Week Update:
Bad news, everyone. My network has been in touch to say that running these regular bulk SMS lists is a violation of their Fair Use agreement, so I can’t run them from my “free texts” package any more. The good news is they’ve offered an alternative. These lists will now become subscription-based SMS services. This will cost you no more than 15p per message received, and a maximum of £1 per week (so £2 per week if you’re on both lists). I’m supposed to ask for your permission before subscribing your number, but I know you’ll all agree anyway. If for some reason you DON’T want to continue receiving Joke of the Week or Abnib Announce at 15p per message, please text me back BEFORE the first message, this afternoon. Ta!
I’ve had a handful of great responses, so far, including:
Man, I love this day of the year.
It’s been a bit of a day for nostalgia. It started even before I woke up, when I was dreaming about an argument that could have marked the end of Claire and I’s relationship, if it weren’t for the fact that it didn’t even slighly represent the actual circumstances of our seperation (I’ll spare you all the details). I was woken by a phone call from a company with whom I used to deal. Later, I caught up with an old friend via instant messanger, in what was probably my only delibrate act of nostalgia of the day. Finally, while working this evening on a techy project that’s been part of my life for about the last eight years, the random number generator in my MP3 playing software decided all of its own accord that what I’d really like to listen to is the same music I was listening to when I first started on the project.
Did I not get the memo that this is National Nostalgia Day, or something? Is everything conspiring around me, or is this all a coincidence?
The thing I’ve learned about nostalgia is that it’s generally best left as it is: a collection of figments in your mind. Some are accurate, some mis-remembered, and all are seen through glasses tinted with the colour of hindsight. And that’s great: that’s exactly how your brain is supposed to experience times past. If you’re an optimist, like me, it’s easy to pick out your favourite memories and pretend that your life gone by was all as great as your happiest moments. If you’re a pessimist, well: you probably do the same thing, but compare those great memories to how awful things are right now (and you’re wrong, but I can’t just tell you that and give you a more rational worldview, just as your cynicism won’t “fix” me, either).
That’s inevitable, of course: think back to the moment in your life at which you felt the most content that you ever have – at least that comes right to your mind. Unless your time on the planet has been a continuous curve of improvement, with no ups-and-downs, then there’s something remarkable about that moment: it’s not right now. Well duh, of course it isn’t. The most elementary mathematics would indicate that of all of the experiences in your life, there has to be some kind of regression toward the mean going on: what you’re experiencing now should, on average, be representative of your life so far even before you factor in the Von Restoroff effect and other cognitive biases.
But I digress. My point was this: I would love to be able to finish what I’m working on and go play a game of Chez Geek in the Ship & Castle with folks like Bryn and Kit and Liz and Strokey Adam, just like I did over six and a half years ago. But that’s not my life nowadays. And while I can get all doe-eyed about how awesome the Ship & Castle used to be before they gutted it and made it look like a trendy wine bar (apologies to those of you for whom this is the news being broken of its demise), or I can pine for the days that those friends – now long-gone – used to all live a stone’s throw away from me, but that’s not the full story. I don’t miss being even poorer than I am now, I don’t miss having to juggle my academic life with holding down a job, and a certainly don’t miss being quite so arrogant as I was back then (for those of you who’ve only recently met me; think of me now, only more so).
Nostalgia is like alcohol: it’s great in moderation, but if you get too much of it, or you become dependent upon it, then you’re liable to get stuck and not be able to move on. And I think that’s the message I should be taking away from this morning’s dream.
(and now, in a somewhat ironic and roundabout way, I’d better stop writing so I can go and play board games with the current Aber crew, as part of a tradition that started with Chez Geek in the Ship & Castle, all those years ago…)
This checkin to GC255Y6 Theta reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
I, too, had thought on ocassion about putting a cache here, but changed my mind after seeing what the weather can be like. Took a look today, no luck. Sbhaq n zntarg, ohg ab pnpur.
This checkin to GL3G29YC Cardiff Rivers #4 Taff-Ely-Rhymney - City Hall reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Found with fleeblewidget and restlessboy. Nice little hide! No picture in the cache, though (or did I misunderstand the description).
This checkin to GL3G28QA A Tight Squeeze reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Found with restlessboy and fleeblewidget after an extended search: not in the most obvious place! Met thebuttonmushroom and hunted with her, after which she gave us a hint on “Cardiff’s Bouncy Bridge, which we’d taken a quick look for and failed to find earlier in the day.” Nice container! TFTC.
This checkin to GC1RGNM Cardiff,s "bouncy" bridge reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Despite a hint from thebuttonmushroom, STILL didn’t manage to find this elusive cache. Rainy and full of muggles, so gave up. A hint on the page would have been nice!
This checkin to GL3FWMQ0 Sidetracked - Wallingford reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
The eleventh and final cache for the day for fleeblewidget and I. By now the rain had really started to fall and it had begun to get dark, so our search was a little more frantic than usual. Found the cache with little difficulty, but the log is pretty much soaked and part of the… “mechanism used to hide the cache”… is damaged and it may not last much longer: urgently needs maintenance.
TFTC; looking at the locomotives in the nearby engine yard was the perfect way to end today’s expedition.
This checkin to GL3FWM7G CAT1 - Bridge2Bridge - The Pool reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
On our way back from the excellent “PC-001 Costly Culvert”, it began to rain, and we considered just going straight home… but then we noticed a few more caches on the way and we couldn’t resist hunting for one or two more before we called it a day. This cache was the tenth of the day for fleeblewidget and I, and we needed the hint before we worked out where we were looking. A very imaginative cache, I’m very impressed!
Don’t be put off by the civil engineers building… whatever it is they’re building… at the moment, they’re not in the way and they’re not really paying attention to people looking for geocaches.
Also; this cache probably ought to have the “public restrooms nearby” attribute, as there’s a toilet right next to it!
This checkin to GL3FWKWW PC-001 Costly Culvert reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
The ninth cache of the day for fleeblewidget and I, this wonderfully well-concealed cache wasn’t even on the same side of the road as we started looking on, thanks to GPS signals scattering off the trees. Great cache.
This checkin to GL3FWKGT PC-002 Veiled reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Excellent cache, here! fleeblewidget and I walked right past it, walked back again, waited for some muggles to pass, and then looked right at it and around it before we found what we were looking for. Despite having already done several of Malpas Wanderer’s other caches, we were pleased and surprised to find yet another ingenious bit of cache-placing. Quite hard to put the log back again afterwards, though!
This checkin to GL3FWK5T PC-003 You Can Do It reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
fleeblewidget and I took a damp walk through the field after we lost the path on our way to this, our seventh cache of the day. We spent quite a while looking in exactly the wrong places before we had another go at getting a GPS fix and, then… bang – we were right on top of it. Don’t think the crows in the nearby rookery were pleased to see us: they kept cawing and flying in circles over our heads like tiny vultures. Lovely little roads, around here; I’ve walked one or two of them before, but never on such a nice day.