Notes – Dan Q

Irish Signs

I’ve only been driving in Ireland for several days, so less than 100% of the iconography of the signage makes sense to me instantly, for now. But this one’s a complete mystery to me.

Is this warning joggers than tiny cars might bounce off their heads? Or is it exhorting distant swerving motorists to put on their right indicator to tell people which way to run to avoid being hit by them? Or maybe it’s advising that down this road is a football pitch for giants and they’ll play “headers” with you in your car if you’re not careful? I honestly haven’t a clue.

Guinness in the Bath

It’s been a long day of driving around Ireland, scrambling through forests, navigating to a hashpoint, exploring a medieval castle, dodging the rain, finding a series of geocaches, getting lost up a hill in the dark, and generally having a kickass time with one of my very favourite people on this earth: my mum.

And now it’s time for a long soak in a hot bath with a pint of the black stuff and my RSS reader for company. A perfect finish.

Note #25196

Gorgeous view of Slievenamon towering over Kilsheelan, Co. Tipperary, Ireland, as seen from Gurteen Wood, where my mother and I are just on our way back from our successful expedition to the 2024-11-24 52 -7 geohashpoint.

Note #25194

With Storm Bert raining off our plans for geohashing in Co. Limerick, my mother and I are off into a forest in Co. Tipperary in search of a hashpoint over this way. It’s still pretty wet though.

Note #25192

Step 2: brave the fierce weather surrounding Storm Bert and head out into rural Ireland in search of a geohashpoint.

But first, the crucial step 1: a big ol’ bacon and egg sarnie for breakfast.

Loughrea Unlocked

I’m on the map! No matter what else my mother and I achieve this week, my name will forever be recorded as the unlocker of the Loughrea graticule in Ireland: https://geohashing.site/geohashing/Ireland

Note #25113

Off to Ireland to hunt for geohashpoints. Wish us luck!

Geohashing Ireland

When my mother proposed that we take a holiday together somewhere, and that I could choose the destination, I started by looking at the Geohashing Expeditions Map.

Where, I wondered, could I find a cluster of mostly-land graticules (“square” degree of latitude and longitude) in which nobody had ever logged a successful expedition?

I’ve been geohashing for ten years now and I’ve never yet scored a “Graticule Unlocked” achievement for being the first to reach any hashpoint in a given graticule.

Over the next week, if the fluctuations of the Dow Jones and the variable Irish weather allow, I’ll be changing that.

The Dog and The Snowman

On the way to school this morning, the 10-year-old lagged behind to build a small snowman.

On the way back, the dog saw the snowman, which wasn’t there when she’d passed earlier. She wanted to make it clear that she Did. Not. Trust. it. She stood back and growled at it for a while, and then, eventually, was persuaded to come closer.

Leaning as far as her little legs could manage, she stretched to carefully sniff it while keeping her distance. She still wasn’t entirely happy and ran most of the way to the end of the path to get away from the mysterious cold heap.

(This same dog earlier this year spent quarter of an hour barking at our wheelbarrow when, unusually, it was left in the middle of the lawn, rather than beside the shed. She doesn’t like change!)

Snow Cause for Confusion

Snuffles in the Snow. This morning’s freak snowfall in Oxfordshire is a source of some confusion on this pupper’s morning walk.

Note #25084

I was sceptical when the forecast said there’d be sleet and snow this morning, but sure enough, it’s just barely beginning to settle on the skylight of my attic bathroom. 🫢

Harswell Steel

My past self, receiving a copy of Transport Tycoon for his 14th birthday, would have his mind blown if he could see the kind of insanely-complex super-stations that are possible in (the open-source successor to) the game 30 years on.

Of course, this kind of thing – multiple simultaneously shared in-and-out routes on a bidirectional station – wasn’t (sensibly) possible before the introduction of path-based signalling in OpenTTD 0.7.0. And modern path-based signals in the game are even smarter.

But still, 14-year-old me had a dream. And nowadays that dream is real.

Geohash Luck

Maybe it’s just that my sabbatical is making me pay more attention then usual, but it feels like I’m getting very lucky with nearby geohashpoints lately. Tomorrow’s hashpoint in my graticule might be achievable!

This is a good omen, perhaps, for next week. Next week my mother and I are going to hop over to the West coast of Ireland where there are several contiguous mostly-land graticules that have never seen a successful expedition. We could be the first! 🤞

Dominated

Kids’ ability to pick up new words from context is amazing.

Kids’ confidence even when they’ve misunderstood how a word is used is hilarious. 😊

This evening, our 7-year-old was boasting about how well-behaved his class was while their regular teacher had to attend an all-day meeting, vs how much it impressed the temporary teacher they had.

His words: “Today we had a supply teacher and we totally DOMINATED her!”

Autumnal

Waiting patiently at the school gates on a distinctly Autumnal morning, our pupper’s squat stature means she’s about knee-deep in the season’s golden leaves.