Category: Personal
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Small-World Serendipity
We travelled 7,000km across the ocean only to find, by complete coincidence, that the Caribbean’s biggest cymruphile is the captain of a boat we chartered when we fancied a morning of reef-snorkelling and turtle-spotting.
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Wrote note for GC71F0E UFO Light (Alien Alphabet)
This checkin to GC71F0E UFO Light (Alien Alphabet) reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Cache page no longer shows image, and backup link doesn't work either. Needs CO attention.
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After driving 300 (vertical) metres up a terrifyingly winding road, we find ourself at 'Top if the World', one of Tobago's highest points. Being able to look down the steep sides of this long-extinct volcano to the sea on both sides is quite spectacular, and the Caribbean and Atlantic horizons seem so far away that you can almost believe you're seeing the Earth curve.
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Tropical cliff view to a bright blue ocean far below.
My camera fails to do this view justice.
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The Nylon Pool is a sandbar in the Buccoo Reef, off the coast of Tobago. Despite the distance from the shore, it's only about waist-deep. Truly mind-boggling.
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Dan stands waist-deep in seawater; land is visible in the far distance.
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Came half way around the world to find a surprising boat with a non-English name I understand.
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Small six-seater day boat named 'Cariad', afloat. The letter I is dotted with a heart symbol.
("Cariad" is Welsh for "love")
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Dark Patterns Detective
A fun website that aims to educate the visitor on the dangers of dark patterns is let down only slightly, in an ironic fashion, when it links to its author on LinkedIn, a website plagued with dark patterns.
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Did not find GC3PJYY Paradise
This checkin to GC3PJYY Paradise reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Found the location and the hint object, but a thorough search did not reveal the cache. I think it might be missing, and the previous log (erroneously tagged as if it were found but clearly indicating in the text …
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James Acaster's Classic Scrapes
James Acaster's Classic Scrapes - which I received during our Christmas Eve book exchange - was an enjoyable, occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, series of anecdotes with thematic links connecting them. It's perhaps not for everybody, but it was a great gift for me!
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A couple of hours into our ferry journey, we just got our first glimpse of the island of Tobago, where we'll be staying for the next few days.
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Across the sea, a rugged island begins to emerge over the horizon, through distant clouds.
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Just visited the Logos Hope, an ocean-going, volunteer-staffed floating book fair (run by a Christian charity, but it's not-TOO-religiousy inside, if that's not your jam) that's coincidentally docked for a fortnight right next door to my hotel on Trinidad!
What a strange concept. Fun diversion though.
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White and blue passenger ship docked alongside a building whose roof reads 'Welcome to Port of Spain'.
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My 12:55 flight is, according to this departure board, delayed to... 12:55!?
Either it's running a full 24 hours late, or this board is untrustworthy.
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Airport departures board, showing (among other flights) the 12:55 to Port of Spain is 'Delayed to 12:55'.
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Except to children, I don't really give Christmas presents to (or expect to receive them from) others any more.
But that didn't stop my buying myself a gift of a particularly fun Lego set to build over the festive period (with a little help from the eldest child!).
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Lego model of a Tallneck from videogame Horizon: Zero Dawn/Forbidden West, with minifigure of protagonist Aloy standing atop its head.
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I'm pretty impressed with running WordPress on Caddy so far.
It took a little jiggerypokery to configure it with an equivalent of the Nginx configuration I use for DanQ.me. But off the back of it I get the capability for HTTP/3, 103 Early Hints, and built-in "batteries included" infrastructure for things like certificate renewal and log rotation.
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Browser network debugger showing danq.me being served over protocol 'h3' (HTTP/3) and an 'Early Hints Headers' section loading a WOFF2 font and a JavaScript file.
(why yes, I am celebrating my birthday by doing selfhosting server configuration, why do you ask? 😅)
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Entitled by Kate Manne
Entitled is a bleak and sometimes uncomfortable pop-sci dive into the issue of male entitlement. Covering a variety of different areas in which our patriarchal society somehow continues to disenfranchise women in particular and injure everybody by proxy, it provides neither a 'quick fix' nor even an optimistic outlook for the future, but it provides valuable focus areas for the continued fight for a better future.
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Did not find GC8KR7D Motorway Mayhem (another one)
This checkin to GC8KR7D Motorway Mayhem (another one) reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. The geohound and I braved an explore of this litter-filled GZ but couldn't spot a cache among the copious detritus before the whiny little thing started fighting to get back to the warm of the car …