Dan Q
This checkin to GC49AEB #1 Billy Wynt - Cattle Grid reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Woke earlier than my friends who’d been to a wedding last night, and used that as an excuse for a quick walk up the hill. Easy find: second place I looked! TFTC. Greetings from Oxfordshire!
Brought Demmy out on the school run for her first “walk”, this morning.
This checkin to GC9822Z Church Micro 13932...Oxford - Baptist reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Having nabbed one of the coveted parking spaces to run an errand in Summertown, I nipped over here to find this cache, too. Coordinates were spot on but I couldn’t see the cache, so I took the advice of a previous log and plunged my hand into what I thought was a likely hiding place and came out with the cache in hand. TFTC.
Ruth wrote an excellent post this month entitled Wonder Syndrome. It attempts to reframe imposter syndrome (which is strongly, perhaps disproportionately, present in tech fields) as a positive indicator that there’s still more to learn:
Being aware of the boundaries of our knowledge doesn’t make us imposters, it makes us explorers. I’m going to start calling mine “Wonder Syndrome”, and allowing myself to be awed by how much I still have to learn, and then focusing in and carrying on with what I’m doing because although I may not reach the stars, I’ve come a long way up the mountain. I can learn these things, I can solve these problems, and I will.
This really resonated with me, and not just because I’ve totally bought into the Automattic creed, which literally opens with the assertion that “I will never stop learning”. (Other parts of the creed feel like they parallel Ruth’s post, too…)
I just spent a week at a Three Rings DCamp (a “hackathon”, kinda), and for the umpteenth time had the experience of feeling like everybody thinks I know everything, while on the inside I still feel like I’m still guessing a third of the time (and on StackOverflow for another third!).
The same’s true at work: people ask me questions about things that I suppose, objectively, are my “specialist subjects” – web standards, application security, progressive enhancement, VAT for some reason – and even where I’m able to help, I often get that nagging feeling like there must be somebody better than me they could have gone to?
You might assume that I love Ruth’s post principally because it plays to my vanity. The post describes two kinds of knowledgeable developers, who are differentiated primarily by their attitude to learning. One is satisfied with the niche they’ve carved out for themselves and the status that comes with it and are content to rest on their laurels; the other is driven to keep pushing and learning more and always hungry for the next opportunity to grow. And the latter category… Ruth’s named after me.
Bnd while I love the post, my gut feeling to being named after such an ideal actually makes me slightly uncomfortable. The specific sentence that gets me is (emphasis mine):
Dans have no interest in being better than other people, they just want to know more than they did yesterday.
I wish that was me, but I’m actually moderately-strongly motivated by a desire to feel like I’m the smartest person in the room! I’m getting this urge under control (I’m pretty sure I was intolerable as a child and have been improving by instalments since then!). Firstly, because it’s an antisocial pattern to foster, but also because it limits my ability to learn new things to have to go through the awkward, mistake-filled “I’m a complete amateur at this!” phase. But even as I work on this I still get that niggling urge, more often than I’d like, to “show off”.
Of course, it could well be that what I’m doing right now is catastrophising. I’m taking a nice thing somebody’s said about me, picking the one part of it that I find hardest to feel represents me, and deciding that I must be a fraud. Soo… imposter syndrome, I guess. Damn.
Or to put it a better way: Wonder Syndrome. I guess this is another area for self-improvement.
(I’m definitely adopting Wonder Syndrome into my vocabulary, as an exercise in mitigating imposter syndrome. If you’ve not read Ruth’s post in full, you should go and do that next.)
This checkin to GC8QB2K INWT #11: Myddelton Lodge reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
This cache is closest to where we’re staying, and was the third (and final, because our littlest party member had had enough for now) of our expedition. Nice container and a lovely spot. TFTC.
This checkin to GC8QB2N INWT #12: Cleverest Crow? reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Continuing our reverse-order explore of some of these caches closest to our accommodation for the week. Little 5-year-old John found this one and came proudly out from its hiding place with it in hand. TFTC.
Logbook very wet, hard to sign.
This checkin to GC8QB3G INWT #13: Scalewra Settlement reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Some fellow volunteers from a nonprofit I help run and I are staying at nearby Myddelton Lodge and came out to find a couple of local caches on our lunch break. This was the first, and my new-to-geocaching colleague Paul was first to put his hands on the cache. Nice one. TFTC.
Log very wet, almost impossible to sign.
This checkin to GC7RECF The Faces of Ilkley..... reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Thanks for the excuse to go snooping around the architecture of this church while waiting for my friend’s train to arrive!
This checkin to GC7D4FG Canker Well - Magic Waters No More reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
I’m staying not far outside Ilkley this week doing voluntary work, and needed to come down into town to pick up a teammate from the station (and charge the batteries on the car!). Took the opportunity while waiting for the latter to come find this cache. SL, TFTC!
This checkin to GC88YX7 Return of the Obelisk (Virtual Reward 2.0) reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Today I’m driving most of the way up the M1, and I’ve parked nearby mid-journey to recharge: both the car’s battery and mine, with some lunch and a walk around the local geocaches.
As I climbed the hill to this virtual I initially thought I might have trouble seeing the obelisk through the dense foliage, but I was quickly proven wrong as it rose up and above the trees. Blackbirds jostled for space atop it: apparently the status of being “king of the castle” counts for something, even though it’s clearly impossible for them to nest up there!
Thanks for bringing me here, and TFTC!
This checkin to GC9G9YR Countdown to Extinction reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Stopped nearby to charge the car during a long journey up the M1, and came to find a couple of local caches while I waited. This one was a quick and easy find, but to retrieve it I first needed to manufacture an appropriately-shaped tool! Fortunately a nearby tree had conveniently dropped something that could be made to serve. TFTC, SL.
Taking a photo of our kids isn’t too hard: their fascination with screens means you just have to switch to “selfie mode” and they lock-on to the camera like some kind of narcissist homing pigeon. Failing that, it’s easy enough to distract them with something that gets them to stay still for a few seconds and not just come out as a blur.
But compared to the generation that came before us, we have it really easy. When I was younger than our youngest is , I was obsessed with pressing buttons. So pronounced was my fascination that we had countless photos, as a child, of my face pressed so close to the lens that it’s impossible for the camera to focus, because I’d rushed over at the last second to try to be the one to push the shutter release button. I guess I just wanted to “help”?
In theory, exploiting this enthusiasm should have worked out well: my parents figured that if they just put me behind the camera, I could be persuaded to take a good picture of others. Unfortunately, I’d already fixated on another aspect of the photography experience: the photographer’s stance.
When people were taking picture of me, I’d clearly noticed that, in order to bring themselves down to my height (which was especially important given that I’d imminently try to be as close to the photographer as possible!) I’d usually see people crouching to take photos. And I must have internalised this, because I started doing it too.
Unfortunately, because I was shorter than most of my subjects, this resulted in some terrible framing, for example slicing off the tops of their heads or worse. And because this was a pre-digital age, there was no way to be sure exactly how badly I’d mucked-up the shot until days or weeks later when the film would be developed.
In an effort to counteract this framing issue, my dad (who was always keen for his young assistant to snap pictures of him alongside whatever article of public transport history he was most-interested in that day) at some point started crouching himself in photos. Presumably it proved easier to just duck when I did rather than to try to persuade me not to crouch in the first place.
As you look forward in time through these old family photos, though, you can spot the moment at which I learned to use a viewfinder, because people’s heads start to feature close to the middle of pictures.
Unfortunately, because I was still shorter than my subjects (especially if I was also crouching!), framing photos such that the subject’s face was in the middle of the frame resulted in a lot of sky in the pictures. Also, as you’ve doubtless seem above, I was completely incapable of levelling the horizon.
I’d like to think I’ve gotten better since, but based on the photo above… maybe the problem has been me, all along!
For lunch today I taste-tested five different plant-based vegan “cheeses” from Honestly Tasty. Let’s see if they’re any good.
This blog post is available as a video (here or on YouTube), for those who like that sort of thing. The content’s slightly different, but you do get to see my face when I eat the one that doesn’t agree with me.
I’ve been vegetarian or mostly-vegetarian to some degree or another for a little over ten years (for those who have trouble keeping up: I currently eat meat only on weekends, and not including beef or lamb), principally for the environmental benefits of a reduced-meat lifestyle. But if I’m really committed to reducing the environmental impact of my diet, the next “big” thing I still consume is dairy products.
My milk consumption is very low nowadays, but – like many people who might aspire towards dropping dairy – it’s quitting cheese that poses the biggest challenge. I’m not even the biggest fan of cheese, and I don’t know how I’d do without it: there’s just, it seems, no satisfactory substitute.
It’s possible, though, that my thinking on this is outdated. Especially in recent years, we’re getting better and better at making convincing (or, at least, tasty!) plant-based substitutes to animal based foods. And so, inspired by a conversation with some friends, I thought I’d try a handful of new-generation plant-based cheeses and see how I got on. I ordered a variety pack from Honestly Tasty (who’ll give you 20% off your first order if you subscribe your favourite throwaway email address to their newsletter) and gave it a go.
It’s supposed to taste like Brie, I guess, but it’s not convincing. The texture of the rind is surprisingly good, but the inside is somewhat homogeneous and flat. They’ve tried to use
mustard powder to provide Brie’s pepperiness and acetic acid for its subtle sourness, but it feels like there might be too much of the former (or perhaps I’m just a little oversensitive
to mustard) and too little of the latter. It’s okay, but I wouldn’t buy it again.
This was surprisingly flavoursome and really quite enjoyable. It spreads with about the consistency of pâté and has a sharp tang that really stands out. You wouldn’t mistake it for
cheese, but you might mistake it for a cheese spread: there’s a real “cheddary” flavour buried in there.
This is supposed to be modelled after Gorgonzola, and it might as well be because I don’t like either it or the cheese it’s based on. I might loathe Blue slightly less than
most blue cheeses, but that doesn’t mean I’d willingly subject myself to this again in a hurry. It’s matured with real Penicillium Roqueforti, apparently, along with seaweed, and it
tastes like both of these things are true. So yeah: I hated this one, but you shouldn’t take that as a condemnation of its quality as a cheese substitute because I’d still rather eat it
than the cheese that it’s based on. Try for yourself, I guess.
This was probably my favourite of the bunch. It’s reminiscent of garlic & herb Boursin, and feels like somebody in the
kitchen where they cooked it up said to themselves, “how about we do the Ched Spread, but with less onion and a whole load of herbs mixed-through”. It seems that it must be easier to
make convincingly-cheesy soft cheeses than hard cheeses, but I’m not complaining: this would be great on toast.
If you’d served me this and told me it was a baked Camembert… I wouldn’t be fooled. But I wouldn’t be disappointed either. It moves a lot like Camembert and it tastes… somewhat like it.
But whether or not that’s “enough” for you, it’s perfectly delicious and I’d be more than happy to eat it or serve it to others.
Honestly Tasty’s Ched Spread, Herbi, and Shamembert are perfectly acceptable (vegan!) substitutes for cheese. Even where they don’t accurately reflect the cheese they attempt to model, they’re still pretty good if you take them on their own merits: instead of comparing them to their counterparts, consider each as if it were a cheese spread or soft cheese in its own right and enjoy accordingly. I’d buy them again.
Their Bree failed to capture the essence of a good ripe Brie and its flavour profile wasn’t for me something to enjoy outside of its attempts at emulation. And their “Veganzola” Blue cheese… was pretty grim, but then that’s what I think of Gorgonzola too, so maybe it’s perfect and I just haven’t the palate for it.
This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.
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[Nilay:] It is fashionable to run around saying the web is dead and that apps shape the world, but in my mind, the web’s pretty healthy for at least two things: news and shopping.
[Matt:] I think that’s your bubble, if I’m totally honest. That’s what’s cool about the web: We can live in a bubble and that can seem like the whole thing. One thing I would explicitly try to do in 2022 is make the web weirder.
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The Verge interviewed Matt Mullenweg, and – as both an Automattician and a fan of the Web as a place for fun and weirdness – I really appreciated the direction the interview went in. I maintain that open web standards and platforms (as opposed to closed social media silos) are inspirational and innovative.
Emilie Reed‘s Anything a Maze lives on itch.io, and (outside of selfhosting) that’s clearly the best place for it: you couldn’t tell that story the same way on Medium; even less-so on Facebook or Twitter.
This checkin to GC98HTF Walk by the Firehouse #2.0 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
The geokid asked to go find a cache this morning while his big sister went off to a playdate. We opted to tackle this one, which I’d failed to find a long while ago when it was missing. This time we had no such difficulty, and the geokid put his hands right on it! Nice, TFTC.
