The geohound and I walked over from Catbrook this morning “the long way” – over the hill and woods, finding a couple of caches along the way – to this cache.
From both the cache type and my GPSr’s map data I fully expected to find a post box here alongside the (decrepit) red phone box, but it’s nowhere to be seen! Has it perhaps been
removed?
The dog and I spent a little while looking for the promised postbox, without success.
In any case, the hint reassured me that I was in the right place and my geosense told me where to look. A disappointingly tiny cache container (where a larger one could have probably
been placed) was soon found, caked in mud, and replaced as-found.
The geopup and I absolutely chose the right time to come up here on this wintery morning. The sun’s ascent over the valley whenever we escape the cover of the woods is absolutely
spectacular.
Happy New Year! The geopup and I, on holiday from West Oxfordshire and staying nearby, came out for a morning walk in the ice and snow today.
Our little Frenchie’s tiny legs made the work of climbing the stiles on this path a little challenging, but with persistence we were treated to a wonderful view of the sun broaching the
horizon over the valley at the North end of School Wood.
Soon the cairn was in sight, and what a brilliant spot for a cache! Signed log, and dropped a travel bug that’s come
all the way from Texas to continue its journey. FP awarded for bringing us out this way.
Over the Christmas break I dug out my old HTC Vive VR gear, which I got way back in the Spring of 2016. Graphics card technology having come a long
way1,
it was now relatively simple to set up a fully-working “holodeck” in our living room with only a slight risk to the baubles on the Christmas tree.
For our younger child, this was his first experience of “roomscale VR”, which I maintain is the most magical thing about this specific kind of augmented
reality. Six degrees of freedom for your head and each of your hands provides the critical level of immersion, for me.
And you know what: this ten-year-old hardware of mine still holds up and is still awesome!2
The kids and I have spent a few days dipping in and out of classics like theBlu, Beat Saber, Job Simulator, Vacation Simulator, Raw Data,
and (in my case3)
Half-Life: Alyx.
It doesn’t feel too heavy, but this first edition Vive sure is a big beast, isn’t it?
I’m moderately excited by the upcoming Steam Frame with its skinny headset, balanced weight, high-bandwidth
wireless connectivity, foveated streaming, and built-in PC for basic gaming… but what’s with those controllers? Using AA batteries instead of a built-in rechargeable one feels like a
step backwards, and the lack of a thumb “trackpad” seems a little limiting too. I’ll be waiting to see the reviews, thanks.
When I looked back at my blog to double-check that my Vive really is a decade old, I was reminded that I got it in the same month at Three
Rings‘ 2016 hackathon, then called “DevCamp”, near Tintern4.
This amused me, because I’m returning to Tintern this year, too, although on family holiday rather than Three Rings business. Maybe I’ll visit on a third occasion in
another decade’s time, following another round of VR gaming?
Footnotes
1 The then-high-end graphics card I used to use to drive this rig got replaced
many years ago… and then that replacement card in turn got replaced recently, at which point it became a hand-me-down for our media centre PC in the living room.
2 I’ve had the Vive hooked-up in the office since our house move in 2020, but there’s rarely been space for roomscale play there: just an occasional bit of Elite: Dangerous at my desk…
which is still a good application of VR, but not remotely the same thing as being able to stand up and move around!
3 I figure Alyx be a little scary/intense for the kids, but I could be
wrong. I think the biggest demonstration of how immersive the game can be in VR is the moment when you see how somebody can watch it played on the big screen and be fine but as soon
as they’re in the headset and a combine zombie has you pinned-down in a railway carriage and it’s suddenly way too much!
4 Where, while doing a little geocaching, I messed-up a bonus cache’s coordinate
calculation, realised my mistake, brute-forced the possible answers, narrowed it down to two… and then picked the wrong one and fell off a cliff.
Back at the Rollright Stones fire New Year’s Day, per family tradition. This year the younger child counted 74, the elder 59. The curse that prevents
you counting the same number twice continues!
