Dan Q
This checkin to GC8V98F NANOBLITZ Under a Tenor reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Don’t want to be a grass, but I don’t think that’s legal tinder. End of this road for me, need to loop a different direction now to stay on schedule for my planned arrival at the 2022-02-20 52 -1 geohashpoint!
This checkin to GC8RN35 NANOBLITZ A Log reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Found, but only thanks to the hint! My GPSr had me on the wrong side of the road. In case anybody else is similarly affected, I found the cache about 11m away from where I expected to, at N 52 23.698, W 002 10.330. TFTC!
This checkin to GC8RN2T NANOBLITZ C&D Nutkins reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Gave up before this one drove me completely… nuts. No luck in any of the many obvious hiding spots; I think it must’ve wandered off.
This checkin to GC8R5ZK NANOBLITZ Pulling a Female reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
The recent winds had blown this little lady clear of her hiding place and into the tree next door. Thankfully I was able to retrieve her by her tether and return her to where (it looks like) she belonged. Log starting to take on water but not in need of maintenance yet, but possibly worth replacing the seal on the container later in the year. TFTC!
This checkin to GC8R613 NANOBLITZ Sound FX reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
I had to give up on the trail to Deansford Lane: too muddy for my boots! Instead heading East, I found this delightfully noisy cache! Bit of a stretch to reach but managed in the end, and honestly spent longer retrieving the log than hunting for the cache. Genius, FP awarded.
This checkin to GC8R5XX NANOBLITZ Me Robbin Box reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
A bit muddy down this path, but luckily the cache and its hiding place remain above the water level. And hey, it’s stopped raining! Nice. TFTC.
This checkin to GC8R5WH NANOBLITZ Like a Rat up a Pipe reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
First place I looked, but I still squeaked with delight to see the cache container! There were many options for my stop-and-cache plan on today’s journey, but I’m already glad I chose here: these caches are awesome, and that’s coming from somebody who normally hates nanos. FP awarded.
This checkin to GC8R5V9 NANOBLITZ Power Point reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
On a geohashing expedition, between the 2022-02-19 52 -2 and 2022-02-20 52 -1 hashpoints, I decided to pull over and do a little geocaching. This first find was very easy – coordinates were spot on, and the container’s unusual design stood out to me. I love a good “concealed in plain sight” cache. TFTC.
This checkin to geohash 2022-02-19 52 -2 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.
Just off footpath near Kinnersley, Herefordshire.
I’ve a rare opportunity today to expand my Minesweeper grid by reaching a hashpoint in 52 -2. Also, to engage in my established tradition of “getting outside and exploring” on 19 February (in memory of my father, the most “get outside and explore” person I ever knew, who died ten years ago today while, you guessed it, getting outside and exploring).
I’ve booked some accommodation nearby with a view to seeing some of the Wye valley while I’m here.
It’s become traditional that I mark the anniversary of my father’s death with an outdoors adventure: he was a huge fan of getting outside and exploring the world (and, indeed, died during a training exercise for a planned expedition to the North Pole). Sometimes (e.g. 2014-02-19 51 -0, 2021-02-19 51 -1) this coincides with a geohashing expedition; today was one of those days.
I’d originally hoped to spend a long weekend on this, the tenth anniversary of his death, trying to clear two or three of my three unfinished corners of the minesweeper grid centred on my home graticule. This would have involved a possible quick day trip to this graticule followed by a camping expedition along the South coast to try to pick up the remaining two. However, it was clearly not to be: for a start, all of the weekend’s hashpoints on the South coast graticules turned out to be at sea! But even if that weren’t the case, I was hardly likely to go camping on the coast during the “red warning” of Storm Eunice! So I revised my plans and changed my expedition to find this hashpoint (still gaining one more part of my grid), then stay over in the graticule before possibly heading East for one or two more over the coming day(s).
I drove up to the village of Kinnersley and parked at (52.253611, -3.0975) in the car park of the Church of St James. From there, I walked up the footpath to the North, through three fields, until I reached the edge of the orchards near which I’d surveyed the hashpoint to be. The fields were incredibly muddy following the recent heavy rain. It soon became apparent that the hashpoint was on the near-side of the hedgerow and thankfully not in the orchard itself, so I walked along the edge of the hedge until I reached it at 15:45:07.
Returning to my car, I drove on to my accommodation, took a walk around the village, then pressed on in the morning to the 2022-02-20 52 -1 hashpoint!
My GPSr kept a tracklog of my entire two-day expedition:
I shot video of most of this expedition but don’t have time to edit it, so here are stills from the video instead:
Don’t have time to read? Just start playing:
Am I too late to get onto the “making Wordle clones” bandwagon? Probably; there are quite a few now, including:
But you know what hasn’t been seen before today? A Wordle clone where you have to guess a creature from the Dungeons & Dragons (5e) Monster Manual by putting numeric values into a character sheet (STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA):
What are you waiting for: go give DNDle a try (I pronounce it “dindle”, but you can pronounce it however you like). A new monster appears at 10:00 UTC each day.
And because it’s me, of course it’s open source and works offline.
import statements and bundles a single JS file for the browser.
(This is yet another post about Automattic. Seee more posts about my experience of working at Automattic.)
Off the back of my recent post about privileges I enjoy as a result of my location and first language, even at my highly-multinational employer, and inspired by my colleague Atanas‘ data-mining into where Automatticians are located, I decided to do another treemap, this time about which countries Automatticians call home:
To get a better picture of that, let’s plot a couple of cartograms. This animation cycles between showing countries at (a) their actual (landmass) size and (b) approximately proportional to the number of Automatticians based in each country:
Another way to consider the data would be be comparing (a) the population of each country to (b) the number of Automatticians there. Let’s try that:
There’s definitely something to learn from these maps about the cultural impact of our employee diversity, but I can’t say more about that right now… primarily because I’m not smart enough, but also at least in part because I’ve watched the map animations for too long and made myself seasick.
A few quick notes on methodology, for the nerds out there who’ll want to argue with me:
There’s a bird feeder in my garden. I’ve had it for about a decade now – Ruth got it for me, I think, as a thirtieth birthday present – and it’s still going strong and mostly-intact, despite having been uprooted on several occasions to move house.
I like that I can see it from my desk.
This month, though, it lost a piece, when one of its seed cages was stolen in a daring daylight heist by a duo of squirrels who climbed up the (“climb-proof”) pole, hung upside-down from the hooks, and unscrewed the mechanism that held the feeder in place.
Not content to merely pour out and devour the contents, the miscreants made off with the entire feeder cage. It hasn’t been seen since. I’ve scoured the lawn, checked behind the bushes, peered around bins and fence posts… it’s nowhere to be found. It’s driving me a little crazy that it’s vanished so-thoroughly.
I can only assume that the squirrels, having observed that the feeder would routinely be refilled once empty, decided that it’d be much more-convenient for them if it the feeder were closer to their home:
“Hey, Coco!”
“Yeah, Peanut?”
“Every time we steal the nuts in this cage, more nuts appear…”
“Yeah, it’s a magic cage. Everysquirrel knows that, Peanut!”
“…but we have to come all the way down here to eat them…”
“It’s a bit of a drag, isn’t it?”
“…so I’ve been thinking, Coco: wouldn’t it be easier if the cage was… in our tree?”
I like to imagine that the squirrels who live in whatever-tree the feeder’s now hidden in are in the process of developing some kind of cargo cult around it. Once a week, squirrels sit and pray at the foot of the cage, hoping to appease the magical god who refills it. Over time, only the elders will remember seeing the feeder ever being full, and admonish their increasingly-sceptical youngers ones to maintain their disciplined worship. In decades to come, squirrel archaeologists will rediscover the relics of this ancient (in squirrel-years) religion and wonder what inspired it.
Or maybe they dumped the feeder behind the shed. I’d better go check.
I know what it means, but my inner child still sniggers every time I see Animista‘s effect “kenburns-bottom“.
This checkin to geohash 2022-02-08 51 -1 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.
Edge of a field, Kingston Bagpuize.
(Bagpuize is pronounced /ˈbæɡpjuːz/, by the way: bag-pyooz.)
This looks eminently achievable: it’s about half an hour’s cycle from my house: in fact one of my favourite evening cycle routes normally takes me to the nearby junction of the A415 and Appleton Road before I go the other direction along it, up the hill to Appleton then on to Cumnor. I’ve never been this way down Appleton Road.
At a glance, it looks like the hashpoint is alongside the road, over a dyke. Street level photography makes it look like it’ll be possible to jump over, and the hashpoint is probably on the “public highway” side of the tree line rather than in the field itself.
The challenge will be timing. My Tuesdays are hectic as I juggle work in the mornings and evenings with childcare in the afternoons. If I can get far enough ahead of my work (e.g. starting early on Tuesday) I can probably justify the cycle as part of my lunch break. Alternatively, I could come down for a spot of night-hashing after the children are in bed. It’s hard to commit to which time is best, but as I’m likely to be the only hasher there I don’t think I need to refine my plans any more than that at this point!
Made a quick run out here by car, as I was travelling nearby on an errand anyway. Had to be a flying visit because my partner needed the car after me!
Was able to pull into a layby within 60 metres of the hashpoint. It was at the edge of the field, just on the other side of the hedge, but a gap in the hedge allowed me to pop through for a quick selfie.
(only outbound leg shown, as after this I went elsewhere before circling back home)
This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.
Fun little trick in the Sunday New York Times crossword yesterday: the central theme clue was “The better of two sci-fi franchises”, and regardless of whether you put Star Wars or Star Trek, the crossing clues worked
This is a (snippet of an) excellent New York Times crossword puzzle, but the true genius of it in my mind is that 71 down can be answered using iconic Star Wars line “It’s a trap!” only if the player puts Star Trek, rather than Star Wars, as the answer to 70 across (“The better of two sci-fi franchises”). If they answer with Star Wars, they instead must answer “It’s a wrap!”.
Matt goes on to try to make his own which pairs 1954 novel Lord of the Rings against Lord of the Flies, which is pretty good but I’m not convinced he can get away with the crosswise “ulne” as a word (contrast e.g. “rise” in the example above).
Of course, neither are quite as clever as the New York Times‘ puzzle on the eve of the 1996 presidential election whose clue “Lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper(!)” could be answered either “Clinton elected” or “Bob Dole elected” and the words crossing each of “Clinton” or “Bob Dole” would still fit the clues (despite being modified by only a single letter).
If you’re looking to lose some time, here’s some further reading on so-called “Schrödinger puzzles”, and several more crosswords that achieve the same feat.