Dan Q
This checkin to GC531M9 Walk by the Firehouse #1 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Second attempt (after a long delay) found success. Didn’t even have to get off my bike to sight, retrieve, sign and return this cache! TFTC.
tl;dr? Just want instructions on how to solve Jigidi puzzles really fast with the help of your browser’s dev tools? Skip to that bit.
This approach doesn’t work any more. Want to see one that still does (but isn’t quite so automated)? Here you go!
I enjoy geocaching. I don’t enjoy jigsaw puzzles. So mystery caches that require you to solve an online jigsaw puzzle in order to get the coordinates really don’t do it for me. When I’m geocaching I want to be outdoors exploring, not sitting at my computer gradually dragging pixels around!
Many of these mystery caches use Jigidi to host these jigsaw puzzles. An earlier version of Jigidi was auto-solvable with a userscript, but the service has continued to be developed and evolve and the current version works quite hard to make it hard for simple scripts to solve. For example, it uses a WebSocket connection to telegraph back to the server how pieces are moved around and connected to one another and the server only releases the secret “you’ve solved it” message after it detects that the pieces have been arranged in the appropriate relative configuration.
If there’s one thing I enjoy more than jigsaw puzzles – and as previously established there are about a billion things I enjoy more than jigsaw puzzles – it’s reverse-engineering a computer system to exploit its weaknesses. So I took a dive into Jigidi’s client-side source code. Here’s what it does:
Looking at that process, there’s an obvious weak point – the shuffling (point 3) happens client-side, and before the WebSocket sync begins. We could override the shuffling function to lay the pieces out in a grid, but we’d still have to click each of them in turn to trigger the connection. Or we could skip the shuffling entirely and just leave the pieces in their default positions.
And what are the default positions? It’s a stack with the bottom-right jigsaw piece on the top, the piece to the left of it below it, then the piece to the left of that and son on through the first row… then the rightmost piece from the second-to-bottom row, then the piece to the left of that, and so on.
That’s… a pretty convenient order if you want to solve a jigsaw. All you have to do is drag the top piece to the right to join it to the piece below that. Then move those two to the right to join to the piece below them. And so on through the bottom row before moving back – like a typewriter’s carriage return – to collect the second-to-bottom row and so on.
If you’d like to cheat at Jigidi jigsaws, this approach works as of the time of writing. I used Firefox, but the same basic approach should work with virtually any modern desktop web browser.
game/js/release.js and uncompress it by pressing the
{} button, if necessary.
return this.j ? (V.info('board-data-bytes already exists, no need to send SHUFFLE'), Promise.resolve(this.j)) : new Promise(function (d, e) {
this.j = true (this ensures that the ternary operation we set the breakpoint on will resolve to the true condition, i.e. not shuffle the pieces).
Update 2021-09-22: Abraxas observes that Jigidi have changed
their code, possibly in response to this shortcut. Unfortunately for them, while they continue to perform shuffling on the client-side they’ll always be vulnerable to this kind of
simple exploit. Their new code seems to be named not release.js but given a version number; right now it’s 14.3.1977. You can still expand it in the same way,
and find the shuffling code: right now for me this starts on line 1129:
Put a breakpoint on line 1129. This code gets called twice, so the first time the breakpoint gets hit just hit continue and play on until the second time. The second time it gets hit,
move the breakpoint to line 1130 and press continue. Then use the console to enter the code d = a.G and continue. Only one piece of jigsaw will be shuffled; the rest will
be arranged in a neat stack like before (I’m sure you can work out where the one piece goes when you get to it).
Update 2023-03-09: I’ve not had time nor inclination to re-“break” Jigidi’s shuffler, but on the rare ocassions I’ve needed to solve a Jigidi, I’ve come up with a technique that replaces a jigsaw’s pieces with ones that each show the row and column number they belong to, as well as colour-coding the rows and columns and drawing horizontal and vertical bars to help visual alignment. It makes the process significantly less-painful. It’s still pretty buggy code though and I end up tweaking it each and every time I use it, but it certainly works and makes jigsaws that lack clear visual markers (e.g. large areas the same colour) a lot easier.
This checkin to GC7PEG1 The Cachington Tour reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
I happened to be passing through with a little time to spare so I thought I’d take another run at this one. Unfortunately my first attempt had seen me make my notes on the back of my hand (and I’ve washed them since then!) so I’d have to collect the clues again. At least I already had the one from the church (thanks, CO!), so I parked at the Village Hall and went about (re) collecting the others.
To my surprise, the pub seems have repainted its windows since my last visit: clearly in a specific effort to fool and confuse geocachers! Luckily I knew broadly where I was looking so I wasn’t caught out.
Soon I was on my way to the cache. The hint was definitely needed as I hadn’t expected a container of this design in a location like this one! SL. TFTC, and special thanks to the attentive CO who provided an extra hint for people who, like me, got stuck outside the locked church.
This checkin to GC97N47 SideTracked - Oxford Parkway reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
I needed to divert from my journey from Summertown to Eynsham anyway to stop at the nearby Sainsburys, so I took the opportunity for a quick stroll down to find this cache. Do you think the nearby gate is always left locked-open? That seems surprising! A relatively quick find although some stealth skills were needed. SL, TFTC.
This checkin to GC98N6Q Tar Lakes/South Leigh Loop #14 Final Destination reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
After all the amazing containers and hiding places I’ve seen on this excellent series, this final destination almost felt… mundane, by comparison. Not that that’s a problem, and I was still happy to reach the end, be treated to a great view of the last of the sun disappearing over the horizon, and find a good sized logbook complete with the notes and praises (for the series!) of cachers who’d come before me.
An altogether delightful series that I’ve been really glad to have explored. I’m looking forward to coming back and searching for #9 again sometime soon! TFTCaches!
This checkin to GC98N69 Tar Lakes/South Leigh Loop #13 Black Hawk Down reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Lots of deer in the fields tonight! The sun was beginning to set as I approached this, my penultimate cache for the day, so my bike lights went on again and now stayed on. I felt sure I knew what I’d be looking for, but I was nevertheless delighted by the imaginative cache container.
Leaving this GZ, I made a few wrong turns before eventually working out which path I needed to follow to the finale: for some reason, the correct path doesn’t appear on my (OSM-derived). I’ve kept a tracklog, though, so I’ll try to get the map updated!
This checkin to GC98N5T Tar Lakes/South Leigh Loop #12 Clockwork Orange reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
As I worked my way to this, the third cache in my tour for today, I realised that my local sparrowhawk – who lives up a tree behind my house in Sutton – seemed to be following me. I’d seen him atop a couple of telegraph poles earlier on and I’d heard him screech a few times, and when I looked up I saw that he was still above me. Perhaps he’d decided to come on this expedition too?
One of the things that I love most about this series is the diversity of quirky and unusual cache containers, of which this was no exception. I was also pleased to find a fresh, clean log sheet, and added my name as the first on the list. TFTC, and FP for the surprise!
This checkin to GC98N5E Tar Lakes/South Leigh Loop #11 One Tree Hill reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Deer were prancing around the fields as I came through, and I realised that the hiding place for this cache must be near a place I’d thought about once as a possible hiding place myself, when I first moved to the area and took a walk this way (before I’d looked at the local caches!). While retrieving the cache a dog walker came the other way and, seeing a cyclist on a not-entirely-cycle-friendly path, probing around looking for something, asked about my activity. He’d never heard of geocaching, but he’d heard of hide-and-seek and he’d heard of orienteering, and seemed happy enough to accept that it was some combination of these two.
This checkin to GC98N4Z Tar Lakes/South Leigh Loop #10 Up reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Came out for a cycle tour today to complete the loop: I covered the first half – with the exception of a DNF at #9 – last month, and I was itching to get out and complete the second half. (Having gotten home after this second expedition I see that #9 has been repaired/improved, so I’ll fly by and give that another go sometime soon!)
I was glad to have brought my bike lights: even though it’s a while until sunset it was helpful to find my way in the wooded area that surrounds this cache. Great hiding place for this one: the only cache I’ve come across of a remotely similar design was my own GC7R0HB (which sadly got muggled one too many times and had to be archived a few years ago).
This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.
When Jo Kibble, a 39-year-old civil servant from Greenwich, set out to travel as far as he could from London in one day only using public bus routes it was supposed to be a personal project. But he ended up sparking a Twitter storm, causing a debate about how to build a fairer country along the way.
“I like travelling by public transport and by bus; I think it’s a great way to see the country,” Mr Kibble explains.
..
Mr Kibble figured the furthest he could get in one day would be Morecambe in Lancashire – some 260 miles from Charing Cross, the geographical centre of London.
…
I’m sure that many of you, like me, really enjoyed The Political Travelling Animal‘s Twitter adventure up the country, last week. If you missed it (and you should really go read it if you did): Jo decided to see how far he could get from London within 24 hours via local bus routes only,
and live-tweeted the entire experience for the world to enjoy too. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I particularly enjoyed that fact that he gave a nod to Preston’s unusual and iconic bus
station.
Reading it, though, I found myself reminded of a time, long ago, that I planned (although never took) a similar journey. In 1999 I moved away from my family in Preston to Aberystwyth to go to university.
Before he became a bus my father was a bus industry professional and at a rest stop during the journey to Aberystwyth as he dropped me off, he and I perused the (paper) timetables to explore a hypothesis that the pair of us had come up with.
Our question: Is it possible to travel from Aberystwyth to Preston, in a single day, using local bus routes only?
After much consideration, we determined that yes, it was possible, but better than that: it was possible to do so (at the time) entirely on Arriva buses. This presented an unexploited opportunity: for the price of an “all day” Arriva ticket (£2.20, IIRC), an enterprising and poor student could, in a pinch, find their way back from Aberystwyth to Preston over the course of about 16 hours for only a fraction more than the price of a pint of beer.
This was utterly academic: in the years that followed, I would almost invariably leave Aberystwyth by train. Sometimes I’d do this to go to London: a route for which, I discovered, I could catch the 6am train, hide aboard it as it was vacated at its Birmingham New Street terminus and take a nap, safe in the knowledge that the same rolling stock would subsequently become a train to London Euston! Other times I’d return to Preston; a journey for which not even floods could stop me.
But regardless, for my first full term at university I kept on the corner of the desk in my study room the sum of £2.20, as an “insurance policy”. No matter what happened in this new phase of my life, that small pile of coins could, at a stretch, get me back “home”.
By Christmas 1999 I’d re-purposed the coins to do my laundry (the washing machines in the halls’ laundrette took pound coins and the dryers 20p pieces, so this was a far more-valuable use of spare change in those denominations). By this point I’d settled in and had become confident that Aberystwyth was likely to be my home almost year-around, and indeed I’d go on to live there another decade before saying goodbye for Oxfordshire.
But we answered the question, at least in theory: a hypothetical but symbolic question about the versatility and utility of an interconnected network of local bus routes. And that’s just great.
As I mentioned last year, for several years I’ve collected pretty complete historic location data from GPSr devices I carry with me everywhere, which I collate in a personal μlogger server.
Going back further, I’ve got somewhat-spotty data going back a decade, thanks mostly to the fact that I didn’t get around to opting-out of Google’s location tracking until only a few years ago (this data is now also housed in μlogger). More-recently, I now also get tracklogs from my smartwatch, so I’m managing to collate more personal location data than ever before.
Inspired perhaps at least a little by Aaron Parecki, I thought I’d try to do something cool with it.
What you’re looking at is a heatmap showing my location over the last year or so since I moved to The Green. Between the pandemic and switching a few months prior to a job that I do almost-entirely at home there’s not a lot of travel showing, but there’s some. Points of interest include:
Let’s go back to the 7 years prior, when I lived in Kidlington. This paints a different picture:
This heatmap highlights some of the ways in which my life was quite different. For example:
Let’s go back further:
Before 2011, and before we bought our first house, I spent a couple of years living in Kennington, to the South of Oxford. Looking at this heatmap, you’ll see:
I really love maps, and I love the fact that these heatmaps are capable of painting a picture of me and what my life was like in each of these three distinct chapters of my life over the last decade. I also really love that I’m able to collect and use all of the personal data that makes this possible, because it’s also proven useful in answering questions like “How many times did I visit Preston in 2012?”, “Where was this photo taken?”, or “What was the name of that place we had lunch when we got lost during our holiday in Devon?”.
There’s so much value in personal geodata (that’s why unscrupulous companies will try so hard to steal it from you!), but sometimes all you want to do is use it to draw pretty heatmaps. And that’s cool, too.
I have a μlogger instance with the relevant positional data in. I’ve automated my process, but the essence of it if you’d like to try it yourself is as follows:
First, write some SQL to extract all of the position data you need. I round off the latitude and longitude to 5 decimal places to help “cluster” dots for frequency-summing, and I raise the frequency to the power of 3 to help make a clear gradient in my heatmap by making hotspots exponentially-brighter the more popular they are:
SELECT ROUND(latitude, 5) lat, ROUND(longitude, 5) lng, POWER(COUNT(*), 3) `count` FROM positions WHERE `time` BETWEEN '2020-06-22' AND '2021-08-22' GROUP BY ROUND(latitude, 5), ROUND(longitude, 5)
This data needs converting to JSON. I was using Ruby’s mysql2 gem to
fetch the data, so I only needed a .to_json call to do the conversion – like this:
db = Mysql2::Client.new(host: ENV['DB_HOST'], username: ENV['DB_USERNAME'], password: ENV['DB_PASSWORD'], database: ENV['DB_DATABASE']) db.query(sql).to_a.to_json
Approximately following this guide and leveraging my Mapbox
subscription for the base map, I then just needed to include leaflet.js, heatmap.js, and leaflet-heatmap.js before writing some JavaScript code
like this:
body.innerHTML = '<div id="map"></div>'; let map = L.map('map').setView([51.76, -1.40], 10); // add the base layer to the map L.tileLayer('https://api.mapbox.com/styles/v1/{id}/tiles/{z}/{x}/{y}?access_token={accessToken}', { maxZoom: 18, id: 'itsdanq/ckslkmiid8q7j17ocziio7t46', // this is the style I defined for my map, using Mapbox tileSize: 512, zoomOffset: -1, accessToken: '...' // put your access token here if you need one! }).addTo(map); // fetch the heatmap JSON and render the heatmap fetch('heat.json').then(r=>r.json()).then(json=>{ let heatmapLayer = new HeatmapOverlay({ "radius": parseFloat(document.querySelector('#radius').value), "scaleRadius": true, "useLocalExtrema": true, }); heatmapLayer.setData({ data: json }); heatmapLayer.addTo(map); });
That’s basically all there is to it!
This checkin to GC9EXXX Church Micro 14129...Sutton reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Visited to check on this new cache: especially as the container is a new design I wanted to do an early checkin to ensure it’s bedded in nicely. Glad to say all is well! Also dropped off Paul The Sea Horse, a Travel Bug I found up in Derbyshire who’s still got a couple of years exploring left in him before he completes his ten year mission! Please help him move along if you can.
This checkin to GC9EXXC Shady Seat on The Green reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Doing my rounds, checked in on this new geocache. All looking good.
Dipped TB.
This checkin to GC9EXX4 The Bisected Footpath of Blackditch Fields reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Dropped by to check in on this new cache (always worth checking that a new cache is settling in alright!) and to dip a TB. All is well. Also discovered that through the kissing gate on the opposite side of the road there’s a crop of the plumpest and brightest sloes I’ve seen in years. So if you’re in the vicinity and fancy a lip-curling snack (or you’ve plans to adulterate some gin!) take a look!
This checkin to geohash 2020-08-19 51 -1 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.
Field alongside Cote Ditch, West Oxfordshire.
If I get out early, before I start work, I (Dan Q) might be able to make it to the hashpoint by bike before about 9am. Most of the fields round here have already been harvested and so nobody’s likely to object if I step into this one for a couple of minutes (it looks like there’s a promising looking gate at N 51°43.2′, W 1°29.722′).
I was out and about anwyay, dropping my kids off at rehearsals for a play they’re in later this week, so I figured it’d do no harm to swing by Cote – the settlement nearest the hashpoint – this morning. Cote turns out to be a delightful and quaint little hamlet, and when I passed through everybody and their dog seemed to be out on a morning constitutional and I got a few odd looks from the locals who are, on account of their hamlet’s location, probably unused to “through” traffic and so may well have been wondering who exactly I was visiting!
Round here most of the farms grow wheat, and it’s harvest season. I had to pull aside on one of the narrow roads that criss-cross this part of Oxfordshire to allow a combine harvester – fully the width of the entire road! – to pass in the opposite direction. It was followed closely by a line of impatient drivers crawling along behind the enormous mechanical beast, and I was glad to be going the other way! When I first saw that the hashpoint appeared to be in a field I was optimistic that it might be one that had been recently harvested, like all the ones near my house, or else left fallow, and I’d be able to get close to the hashpoint without causing any disruption.
Unfortunately, the field with the hashpoint was very-much still growing, full of corn for harvesting later in the season, so my expedition ended abruptly at the gate. I took a sad-face photo and attached a “The Internet Was Here” sign to the gate, for good measure (and perhaps as an explanation to the locals who looked at me curiously as I passed!), then continued my journey home.
My GPSr keeps a tracklog:
