Geohashing expedition 2024-10-22 51 -1

This checkin to geohash 2024-10-22 51 -1 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.

Location

Harcourt Hill Bridleway, between Cumnor and North Hinksey

Participants

Plans

I’m on sabbatical from work right now, so I’m hoping to be able to get out to this hashpoint while the kids are at school.

Expedition

After dropping the kids off at school, the geopup/hashhound and I set out for the hashpoint. Coming up the “short side” of the bridleway from Botley would be a shorter walk, but we opted to park in Cumnor and come up the “long side” of Harcourt Hill to avoid Oxford’s traffic (and the inevitable fee for parking on the city’s side of the hill).

Harcourt Hill (like my village of Stanton Harcourt) doubtless gets its name from the Harcourt Family, who supported William the Conqueror during his conquest of Great Britain back in 1066 and were ultimately granted huge swathes of land around this part of the world in recognition of their loyalty. To this day, you find “Harcourt” in a lot of place names in this neck of the woods.

The hashpoint was so easy to find, we almost walked right over it: it’s right in the centre of the footpath/bridleway. Even my dog, who often doesn’t like long walks or muddy paths, didn’t get a chance to complain before we got there. We arrived at 09:35 and took the requisite photos, which can be found below. We also kept a GPS tracklog and vlogged our experience, all of which you can see below.

I’ve not properly hashed in a long while, so it was great to get back out there!

Tracklog

My GPSr kept a tracklog.

Tracklog map showing a route from Stanton Harcourt through to Harcourt Hill (via Cumnor) and back, West of Oxford.

Video

Also available via YouTube.

Photos

A footpath becomes a zebra crossing despite there being no road to cross, just a lawn (probably there USED to be a road).
What’s the point of this crossing? Do rabbits pass very fast through this junction?
A French Bulldog stands derpily on a muddy footpath between fields, under blue-grey skies.
View East from the hashpoint (plus dog).
A footpath vanishes between fields, flanked by wild bushes.
View West from the hashpoint.
A GPS receiver shows "0 metres" to destination.
Right in the middle of the circle of uncertainty.
Dan crouches by his dog to take a selfie.
Silly grin/silly tongue-sticking-out.
× × × × × ×

Digital Dustbusting

tl;dr: I’m tidying up and consolidating my personal hosting; I’ve made a little progress, but I’ve got a way to go – fortunately I’ve got a sabbatical coming up at work!

At the weekend, I kicked-off what will doubtless be a multi-week process of gradually tidying and consolidating some of the disparate digital things I run, around the Internet.

I’ve a long-standing habit of having an idea (e.g. gamebook-making tool Twinebook, lockpicking puzzle game Break Into Us, my Cheating Hangman game, and even FreeDeedPoll.org.uk!), deploying it to one of several servers I run, and then finding it a huge headache when I inevitably need to upgrade or move said server because there’s such an insane diversity of different things that need testing!

Screenshot from Cheating Hangman: I guessed an 'E', but when I guessed an 'O' I was told that there was one (the computer was thinking of 'CLOSE'), but now there isn't because it's switched to a different word that ends with 'E'.
My “cheating hangman” game spun out from my analysis of the hardest words for an optimal player to guess, which was in turn inspired by the late Nick Berry’s examination of optimal strategy.

I can simplify, I figured. So I did.

And in doing so, I rediscovered several old projects I’d neglected or forgotten about. I wonder if anybody’s still using any of them?

Hosting I’ve tidied so far…

  • Cheating Hangman is now hosted by GitHub Pages.
  • DNDle, my Wordle-clone where you have to guess the Dungeons & Dragons 5e monster’s stat block, is now hosted by GitHub Pages. Also, I fixed an issue reported a month ago that meant that I was reporting Giant Scorpions as having a WIS of 19 instead of 9.
  • Abnib, which mostly reminds people of upcoming birthdays and serves as a dumping ground for any Abnib-related shit I produce, is now hosted by GitHub Pages.
  • RockMonkey.org.uk, which doesn’t really do much any more, is now hosted by GitHub Pages.
  • EGXchange, my implementation of a digital wallet for environmentally-friendly cryptocurrency EmmaGoldCoin, which I’ve written about before, is now hosted by GitHub Pages.
  • Sour Grapes, the single-page promo for a (remote) murder mystery party I hosted during a COVID lockdown, is now hosted by GitHub Pages.
  • A convenience-page for giving lost people directions to my house is now hosted by GitHub Pages.
  • Dan Q’s Things is now automatically built on a schedule and hosted by GitHub Pages.
  • Robin’s Improbable Blog, which spun out from 52 Reflect, wasn’t getting enough traffic to justify “proper” hosting so now it sits in a Docker container on my NAS.
  • My μlogger server, which records my location based on pings from my phone, has also moved to my NAS. This has broken Find Dan Q, but I’m not sure if I’ll continue with that in its current form anyway.
  • All of my various domain/subdomain redirects have been consolidated on, or are in the process of moving to, to a tiny Linode/Akamai instance. It’s a super simple plain Nginx server that does virtually nothing except redirect people – this is where I’ll park the domains I register but haven’t found a use for yet, in future.
Screenshot showing EGXchange, saying "everybody has an EGX wallet, log in to yours now".
I was pretty proud of EGXchange.org, but I’ll be first to admit that it’s among the stupider of my throwaway domains.

It turns out GitHub pages is a fine place to host simple, static websites that were open-source already. I’ve been working on improving my understanding of GitHub Actions anyway as part of what I’ve been doing while wearing my work, volunteering, and personal hats, so switching some static build processes like DNDle’s to GitHub Actions was a useful exercise.

Stuff I’m still to tidy…

There’s still a few things I need to tidy up to bring my personal hosting situation under control:

DanQ.me

Screenshot showing this blog post.
You’re looking at it. But later this year, you might be looking at it… elsewhere?

This is the big one, because it’s not just a WordPress blog: it’s also a Gemini, Spartan, and Gopher server (thanks CapsulePress!), a Finger server, a general-purpose host to a stack of complex stuff only some of which is powered by Bloq (my WordPress/PHP integrations): e.g. code to generate the maps that appear on my geopositioned posts, code to integrate with the Fediverse, a whole stack of configuration to make my caching work the way I want, etc.

FreeDeedPoll.org.uk

Right now this is a Ruby/Sinatra application, but I’ve got a (long-running) development branch that will make it run completely in the browser, which will further improve privacy, allow it to run entirely-offline (with a service worker), and provide a basis for new features I’d like to provide down the line. I’m hoping to get to finishing this during my Automattic sabbatical this winter.

Screenshot showing freedeedpoll.org.uk
The website’s basically unchanged for most of a decade and a half, and… umm… it looks it!

A secondary benefit of it becoming browser-based, of course, is that it can be hosted as a static site, which will allow me to move it to GitHub Pages too.

Geohashing.site

When I took over running the world’s geohashing hub from xkcd‘s Randall Munroe (and davean), I flung the site together on whatever hosting I had sitting around at the time, but that’s given me some headaches. The outbound email transfer agent is a pain, for example, and it’s a hard host on which to apply upgrades. So I want to get that moved somewhere better this winter too. It’s actually the last site left running on its current host, so it’ll save me a little money to get it moved, too!

Screenshot from Geohashing.site's homepage.
Geohashing’s one of the strangest communities I’m honoured to be a part of. So it’d be nice to treat their primary website to a little more respect and attention.

My FreshRSS instance

Right now I run this on my NAS, but that turns out to be a pain sometimes because it means that if my home Internet goes down (e.g. thanks to a power cut, which we have from time to time), I lose access to the first and last place I go on the Internet! So I’d quite like to move that to somewhere on the open Internet. Haven’t worked out where yet.

Next steps

It’s felt good so far to consolidate and tidy-up my personal web hosting (and to rediscover some old projects I’d forgotten about). There’s work still to do, but I’m expecting to spend a few months not-doing-my-day-job very soon, so I’m hoping to find the opportunity to finish it then!

× × × × ×

Geohashing expedition 2024-05-09 51 -1

This checkin to geohash 2024-05-09 51 -1 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.

Location

Between Standlake Allotments and the Horns Way footpath.

Participants

Plans

I originally though I’d cycle out here in the evening and see if I could reach the hashpoint, but with the weather so delightful (and the dog clamouring for a walk) I opted to adapt my lunchtime plans to go to Standlake Post Office (rather than the only-slightly-closer Eynsham Post Office) to post a parcel and take the dog for a walk… and check out the hashpoint at the same time!

Expedition

Success! The dog and I parked near the Post Office, and tired firstd walking through the allotments, but they don’t go as far back as I thought they might and we couldn’t really get close to the hashpoint. So we doubled back, with the anticipation of going via the churchyard, when I spotted a convenient footpath sign (for a footpath not marked on my map), so we followed that. Conveniently it turned out to be a shortcut to Horns Way, the alternative route I’d considered to try to get close to the hashpoint. Travelling along it, we found an (also not on the map) back gate into the allotments: we could’ve just come this way, after all! We’d later use this route to get back home.

Approaching the hashpoint, we needed to push through a thicket of trees and jump a ditch, but this delivered us into a delightful meadow. We reached the hashpoint at 13:44, took the requisite silly photo, and set off back. On returning to the footpath (by a decidedly inferior route) we discovered a bench (with a dedication on it) that also wasn’t listed on OpenStreetMap nor on OpenBenches. I took a photo and pushed it to OpenBenches. There should be an achievement for that.

I added the missing footpaths, gate, and bench to OpenStreetMap and we set off back to the Post Office, delivered the parcel, then returned home.

Tracklog

My GPSr kept a tracklog.

Tracklog showing Dan's journey through and around Standlake, then home again.

Photos

Sunny allotments.
Hard to find a way out of the allotments.
Verdant meadow.
Made it into the meadow!
GPS receiver showing 0 metres.
Success!
Dan in a meadow.
Not-so-silly grin.
Dan squints into the sunlight in a grassy field, alongside a dog.
Pretty silly pup.
Memorial bench with inscription "In loving memory of Bill Mitchell 1934-2021"
A new addition to OpenBenches!
× × × × × ×

My Geo*ing Limits

I thought it might be fun to try to map the limits of my geocaching/geohashing. That is, to draw the smallest possible convex polygon that surrounds all of the geocaches I’ve found and geohashpoints I’ve successfully visited.

World map showing the outer extent of the areas in which Dan has geocached/geohashed. A shaded polygon covers the UK (except the far North of Scotland), parts of California, Cape Town, and parts of Italy and Austria.

Mathematically, such a shape is a convex hull – the smallest polygon encircling a set of points without concavity. Here’s how I made it:

1. Extract all the longitude/latitude pairs for every successful geocaching find and geohashpoint expedition. I keep them in my blog database, so I was able to use some SQL to fetch them:

SELECT DISTINCT coord_lon.meta_value lon, coord_lat.meta_value lat
FROM wp_posts
LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta expedition_result ON wp_posts.ID = expedition_result.post_id AND expedition_result.meta_key = 'checkin_type'
LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta coord_lat ON wp_posts.ID = coord_lat.post_id AND coord_lat.meta_key = 'checkin_latitude'
LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta coord_lon ON wp_posts.ID = coord_lon.post_id AND coord_lon.meta_key = 'checkin_longitude'
LEFT JOIN wp_term_relationships ON wp_posts.ID = wp_term_relationships.object_id
LEFT JOIN wp_term_taxonomy ON wp_term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = wp_term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id
LEFT JOIN wp_terms ON wp_term_taxonomy.term_id = wp_terms.term_id
WHERE wp_posts.post_type = 'post' AND wp_posts.post_status = 'publish'
AND wp_term_taxonomy.taxonomy = 'kind'
AND wp_terms.slug = 'checkin'
AND expedition_result.meta_value IN ('Found it', 'found', 'coordinates reached', 'Attended');

2. Next, I determine the convex hull of these points. There are an interesting variety of algorithms for this so I adapted the Monotone Chain approach (there are convenient implementations in many languages). The algorithm seems pretty efficient, although that doesn’t matter much to me because I’m caching the results for a fortnight.

Animation showing an algorithm draw lines from point to point, selecting each point by avoiding counter-clockwise turns.
I watched way too many animations of different convex hull algorithms before selecting this one… pretty-much arbitrarily.

3. Finally, I push the hull coordinates into Geoapify, who provide mapping services to me. My full source code is available.

An up-to-date (well, no-more than two weeks outdated) version of the map appears on my geo* stats page. I don’t often get to go caching/hashing outside the bounds already-depicted, but I’m excited to try to find opportunities to push the boundaries outwards as I continue to explore the world!

(I could, I suppose, try to draw a second larger area of places I’ve visited: the difference between the smaller and larger areas would represent all of the opportunities I’d missed to find a hashpoint!)

× ×

Geohashing expedition 2024-02-10 51 -1

This checkin to geohash 2024-02-10 51 -1 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.

Location

Field between Cumnor and Appleton, West Oxfordshire

Participants

Plans

I haven’t hashed for long enough that my home graticule got marked as inactive. I’ve got a little free time this morning, so let’s fix that!

Expedition

It took two attempts to reach this hashpoint.

The first attempt saw me set off around 09:40, with a plan to drive over the world’s stupidest toll bridge (paying 5p for the privilege), park up in Cumnor somewhere, then work down the Cumnor-Appleton footpath before dipping into the fields (which are likely to be fallow this time of year) to claim the hashpoint. I suggested to take the dog, and the 7-year-old child asked if he could join me too, so the three of us with our eight legs set off.

This winter’s seen heavy rain around these parts, and the stream that runs alongside the footpath had broken its banks and flooded the fields. The water had receded, but the ground remained extremely boggy. That kind of thick, wellie-sucking mud that means that if you stop walking for more than a couple of seconds, you might as well give up and say you live there now because your boot is never coming back.

The kid found the going especially-tough, especially after a particularly-deep puddle splashed over the edge of his wellies, and asked to turn back. The dog was finding it a bit challenging too! So we doubled-back and found a geocache a little way off the path. We’ve generally been disappointed by Cumnor’s geocaches and especially this series, finding them to be ill-maintained or completely absent, but it looks like the cache owner has been working on repairing and replacing them towards the tail end of last year and this one was soon found. I drove the dog and child home (back across the toll bridge), then came back out myself (paying the fivepence toll a third time). So began the second attempt:

Unburdened by short-legged dogs and damp-footed kids, I made better progress. At points, the path was completely flooded-out, but this gave me an excuse to walk along the “tramlines” of the cultivator that must’ve been working in the field last year, which put me on a better course to reach the hashpoint. By 11:06 I was well within the circle of uncertainty and declared the mission a success.

Then I plodged back through the mud, changed my footwear, and drove over the toll bridge a fourth time. The attendant, clearly sick of seeing me driving back and forth, took pity on me and let me off without paying yet another 5p piece, so that was nice.

Tracklog

Map showing a route from Sutton, Stanton Harcourt, over the Swinford Toll Bridge, South into Cumnor, and then out into some fields South of that.Download tracklog.

Photos

A waterlogged path alongside a field.
This “path” seems to be a stream.
Green Wellington boots in deep sticky mud.
Muddy boots
GPSr, held up in a fallow field, reading 209m from destination.
200 metres to go.
GPSr showing 0 metres to destination. A reflection of Dan's face can be seen in its screen.
Zero point!
Dan, smiling, holding up his GPSr, in a field.
Silly grin
A field with furrows and wispy clouds above.
View North from the hashpoint.
An electricity pylon stands along in a green/brown field.
View East from the hashpoint.
A field with furrows with a tree line in the distance.
View South from the hashpoint.
The edge of a field, becoming increasingly waterlogged into the distance.
View West from the hashpoint.
× × × × × × × × × ×

[Bloganuary] The Gift of Time

This post is part of my attempt at Bloganuary 2024. Today’s prompt is:

What is the greatest gift someone could give you?

What topical timing, given that it’ll be my birthday in four days!

Dan, wearing wizard's robes alongside two similarly-dressed children, makes cocktails using a selection of bizarre-looking laboratory equipment.
My birthday is slightly overshadowed by the proximity to it of our eldest child’s birthday, but we can still find enough overlap of interest to do some fun things. Here we are last year, for example, at a magic-themed cocktail-making workshop (with non-alcoholic recipes for the kids, of course).

Of the things I have least but treasure most, perhaps the biggest is time. Between work, volunteering, and childcare, I often find myself rushing to cram-in any of the diversity of “play” activities I engage in.1

I always feel particularly guilty if I step away to do “me things” that put me out of reach, because I know that while I’m off having fun, my absence necessarily means that somebody else has to be the one to break up whatever child squabble is happening right now2. It feels particularly extravagant to, for example, spend a weekend in pursuit of a distant geohash point or two3.

Dan drinking beer from a Wye Valley Brewery pint glass.
A fancy dinner in a hotel bar in the middle of a two-day geohashing expedition across the Midlands, as far from work and home responsibilities as I can manage? Yes please!

So one of the best gifts I ever received was for my birthday the year before last, when Ruth gave me “a weekend off”4, affording me the opportunity to do exactly that. I picked some dates and she, JTA, and the kids vanished, leaving me free to spend a few days hacking my way from Herefordshire to somewhere near Birmingham in what turned out to be the worst floods of the year. It was delightful.5

Most people can’t give me “time”: it doesn’t grow on trees, and I haven’t found a place to order it online. It’s not even always practical to help me reclaim my own time by taking fixed timesinks off my to-do list6. But for those that can, it’s a great gift that I really appreciate.

It’s my birthday on Monday, if anybody wants to volunteer for childminding duties at any point. Just sayin’. 😅

Footnotes

1 It’s even harder when I occasionally try to fit a course around that.

2 Ours can be a particularly squabbly pair, and really know how to push one another’s buttons to escalate a fight!

3 Unless I were to take the kids with me: then if feels fine, but then I’ve got a different problem to deal with! The dog’s enough of a handful when you’re out traipsing through a bog in the rain!

4 Last year, she gave me tango lessons, which also broke me out of my routine and felt like a weekend off, but in a very different way.

5 I think that Ruth feels that her gift to me on my 41st birthday was tacky, perhaps because for her it was a “fallback”: what she came up with after failing to buy a more-conventional gift. But seriously: a scheduled weekend to disconnect from everything else in my life was an especially well-received gift.

6 Not least because I’m such a control freak that some of the biggest timesinks in my life are things I would struggle to delegate or even accept help with!

× ×

[Bloganuary] Playtime

This post is part of my attempt at Bloganuary 2024. Today’s prompt is:

Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?

How do I play? Let me count the ways!

RPGs

I’m involved in no fewer than three different RPG campaigns (DMing the one for The Levellers) right now, plus periodic one-shots. I love a good roleplaying game, especially one that puts character-building and storytelling above rules-lawyering and munchkinery, specifically because that kind of collaborative, imaginative experience feels more like the kind of thing we call “play” when done it’s done by children!

Composite photo showing a young boy rolling a D20 onto a character sheet in front of a tabletop battlemap, and three monitors in a dark room showing a video chat between people and a digital gameboard.
Family D&D and Abnib D&D might have a distinctly different tone, but they’re still both playtime activities.

Videogames

I don’t feel like I get remotely as much videogaming time as I used to, and in theory I’ve become more-selective about exactly what I spend my time on1.

Dan with his thumbs-up in front of the high-score table (with the top-ranking spot about to be filled) of Wonder Boy, on a generic "80s Arcade Classics" arcade cabinet.
I managed to beat Wonder Boy last week, and it “only” took me three and a half decades!

Board Games

Similarly, I don’t feel like I get as much time to grind through my oversized board games collection as I used to2, but that’s improving as the kids get older and can be roped-into a wider diversity of games3.

A girl, sat in front of an Agricola farmyard board, holds up a "sheeple" (small wooden sheep game piece) for the camera.
Our youngest wakes early on weekend mornings and asks to kick off his day with board games. Our eldest, pictured, has grown to the point where she’s working her way through all of the animal-themed games at our local board games cafe.

Escape Rooms

I love a good escape room, and I can’t wait until the kids are old enough for (more of) them too so I’ve an excuse to do more of them. When we’re not playing conventional escape rooms, Ruth and I can sometimes be found playing board game-style boxed “kit” ones (which have very variable quality, in my experience) and we’ve recently tried a little Escape Academy.

Ruth and Dan hold up an Alice In Wonderland themed sign reading "it went like a dream" underneath the sign for escape room company Escape Hunt. Both are wearing silly hats, and Dan is also wearing white rabbit ears.
Ruth and I make a great duo when we remember to communicate early-and-often and to tag-team puzzles by swapping what we’re focussing on when we get stuck.

GNSS Activities

I’m sure everybody knows I do a modest amount of geocaching and geohashing.4

Dan, outdoors in a field on a grey day and with the wind whipping his hair across his face, wearing a high-vis jacket over a warm fleece, holds up a GPS receiver which shows he's zero metres from his destination.
I’m out standing in my field.

They’re not the only satnav-based activities I do at least partially “for fun” though! I contribute to OpenStreetMap, often through the “gamified” experience of the StreetComplete app, and I’m very slowly creeping up the leader board at OpenBenches. Are these “play”? Sure, maybe.

And all of the above is merely the structured kinds of play I engage in. Playing “let’s pretend”-style games with the kids (even when they make it really, really weird) adds a whole extra aspect. Also there’s the increasingly-rare murder mystery parties we sometimes hold: does that count as roleplaying, or some other kind of play?

Guests dressed as a chef, a priest, and a librarian sit around a dining table at a murder mystery party.
A chef, a priest, and a librarian walk into a party… stop me if you’ve heard this one.

Suffice to say, there’s plenty of play in my life, it’s quite varied and diverse, and there is, if anything, not enough of it!

Footnotes

1 I say that, and yet somehow Steam tells me that one of my most-played games this year was Starfield, which was… meh? Apparently compelling enough that I’ve “ascended” twice, but in hindsight I wish I hadn’t bothered.

2 Someday my group and I will finish Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 so we can get started on Season 0 which has sat unplayed on my shelves since I got it… oooh… two or three years ago‽

3 This Christmas, I got each of them their first “legacy” game: Zombie Kids for the younger one, My City for the elder. They both seem pretty good.

4 Geocaching is where you use military satellite networks to find lost tupperware. Geohashing uses the same technology but what you find is a whole lot of nothing. I don’t think I can explain why I find the latter more-compelling.

× × × × × ×

Not the Isle of Man

This week, Ruth and I didn’t go the Isle of Man.

A laptop screen shows Automattic's "Work With Us" web page. Beyond it, in an airport departure lounge (with diners of Wagamama and The Breakfast Club in the background), Dan sits at another laptop, wearing a black "Accessibility Woke Platoon" t-shirt and grey Tumblr hoodie.
We’d intended to actually go to the Isle of Man, even turning up at Gatwick Airport six hours before our flight and working at Pret in order to optimally fit around our workdays.

It’s (approximately) our 0x10th anniversary1, and, struggling to find a mutually-convenient window in our complex work schedules, we’d opted to spend a few days exploring the Isle of Man. Everything was fine, until we were aboard the ‘plane.

Ruth, wearing a green top with white stripes, sits alongside Dan, wearing a black t-shirt and grey hoodie, by the wingside emergency exits in an aeroplane.
As the last few passengers were boarding, putting their bags into overhead lockers, and finding their seats, Ruth observed that out on the tarmac, bags were being removed from the aircraft.

Once everybody was seated and ready to take off, the captain stood up at the front of the ‘plane and announced that it had been cancelled2.

The Isle of Man closes, he told us (we assume he just meant the airport) and while they’d be able to get us there before it did, there wouldn’t be sufficient air traffic control crew to allow them to get back (to, presumably, the cabin crews’ homes in London).

Two passengers - a man and a woman - disembark from an EasyJet plane via wheeled stairs.
To add insult to injury: even though the crew clearly knew that the ‘plane would be cancelled before everybody boarded, they waited until we were all aboard to tell us then made us wait for the airport buses to come back to take us back to the terminal.

Back at the terminal we made our way through border control (showing my passport despite having not left the airport, never mind the country) and tried to arrange a rebooking, only to be told that they could only manage to get us onto a flight that’d be leaving 48 hours later, most of the way through our mini-break, so instead we opted for a refund and gave up.3

Ruth and Dan, looking tired and frustrated, sit at a pub table. Ruth is using her tablet computer.
After dinner at the reliably-good Ye Old Six Bells in Horley, down the road from Gatwick Airport, we grumpily made our way back home.

We resolved to try to do the same kinds of things that we’d hoped to do on the Isle of Man, but closer to home: some sightseeing, some walks, some spending-time-together. You know the drill.

Panoramic photo showing a field containing the remains of a Roman villa in West Oxfordshire, under grey skies. The walls are barely visible in this wide shot.
There’s evidence on the Isle of Man of Roman occupation from about the 1st century BCE through the 5th century CE, so we found a local Roman villa and went for a look around.

A particular highlight of our trip to the North Leigh Roman Villa – one of those “on your doorstep so you never go” places – was when the audio tour advised us to beware of the snails when crossing what was once the villa’s central courtyard.

At first we thought this was an attempt at humour, but it turns out that the Romans brought with them to parts of Britain a variety of large edible snail – helix pomatia – which can still be found in concentration in parts of the country where they were widely farmed.4

Large cream-coloured snail in moderately-long grass, alongside a twenty-pence piece (for scale). The snail is around three times as long as the coin is.
Once you know you’re looking for them, these absolute unit gastropods are easy to spot.

There’s a nice little geocache near the ruin, too, which we were able to find on our way back.

Before you think that I didn’t get anything out of my pointless hours at the airport, though, it turns out I’d brought home a souvenier… a stinking cold! How about that for efficiency: I got all the airport-germs, but none of the actual air travel. By mid-afternoon on Tuesday I was feeling pretty rotten, and it only got worse from then on.

A box of tissues and a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller on the arm of a sofa.
I felt so awful on Wednesday that the most I was able to achieve was to lie on the sofa feeling sorry for myself, between sessions of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

I’m confident that Ruth didn’t mind too much that I spent Wednesday mostly curled up in a sad little ball, because it let her get on with applying to a couple of jobs she’s interested in. Because it turns out there was a third level of disaster to this week: in addition to our ‘plane being cancelled and me getting sick, this week saw Ruth made redundant as her employer sought to dig itself out of a financial hole. A hat trick of bad luck!

Dan, sitting in bed, holding a tissue and looking unwell.
Sniffle. Ugh.

As Ruth began to show symptoms (less-awful than mine, thankfully) of whatever plague had befallen me, we bundled up in bed and made not one but two abortive attempts at watching a film together:

  • Spin Me Round, which looked likely to be a simple comedy that wouldn’t require much effort by my mucus-filled brain, but turned out to be… I’ve no idea what it was supposed to be. It’s not funny. It’s not dramatic. The characters are, for the most part, profoundly uncompelling. There’s the beginnings of what looks like it was supposed to be a romantic angle but it mostly comes across as a creepy abuse of power. We watched about half and gave up.
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, because we figured “how bad can a trashy MCU sequel be anyway; we know what to expect!” But we couldn’t connect to it at all. Characters behave in completely unrealistic ways and the whole thing feels like it was produced by somebody who wanted to be making one of the new Star Wars films, but with more CGI. We watched about half and gave up.

As Thursday drew on and the pain in my head and throat was replaced with an unrelenting cough, I decided I needed some fresh air.

Dan, looking slightly less-unwell, stands holding Demmy, a French Bulldog, in front of a hedge.
The dog needed a walk, too, which is always a viable excuse to get out and about.

So while Ruth collected the shopping, I found my way to the 2023-07-27 51 -1 geohashpoint. And came back wheezing and in need of a lie-down.

I find myself wondering if (despite three jabs and a previous infection) I’ve managed to contract covid again, but I haven’t found the inclination to take a test. What would I do differently if I do have it, now, anyway? I feel like we might be past that point in our lives.

All in all, probably the worst anniversary celebration we’ve ever had, and hopefully the worst we’ll ever have. But a fringe benefit of a willingness to change bases is that we can celebrate our 10th5 anniversary next year, too. Here’s to that.

Footnotes

1 Because we’re that kind of nerds, we count our anniversaries in base 16 (0x10 is 16), or – sometimes – in whatever base is mathematically-pleasing and gives us a nice round number. It could be our 20th anniversary, if you prefer octal.

2 I’ve been on some disastrous aeroplane journeys before, including one just earlier this year which was supposed to take me from Athens to Heathrow, got re-arranged to go to Gatwick, got delayed, ran low on fuel, then instead had to fly to Stansted, wait on the tarmac for a couple of hours, then return to Gatwick (from which I travelled – via Heathrow – home). But this attempt to get to the Isle of Man was somehow, perhaps, even worse.

3 Those who’ve noticed that we were flying EasyJet might rightly give a knowing nod at this point.

4 The warning to take care not to tread on them is sound legal advice: this particular variety of snail is protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981!

5 Next year will be our 10th anniversary… in base 17. Eww, what the hell is base 17 for and why does it both offend and intrigue me so?

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Geohashing expedition 2023-07-27 51 -1

This checkin to geohash 2023-07-27 51 -1 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.

Location

Northern boundary hedge of West Witney Primary School, Witney

Participants

Expedition

I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was supposed to be on the Isle of Man with my partner, celebrating our 0x10th anniversary. But this week’s been a week of disasters: my partner lost her job, our plane to the Isle of Man got cancelled, and then I got sick (most-likely, I got to catch airport germs from people I got to sit next to on an aircraft which was then cancelled before it had a chance to take off). So mostly this week I’ve been sat at home playing video games.

But the dog needed a walk, and my partner needed to go to the supermarket, so I had her drop me and the geopooch off in West Witney to find the hashpoint and then walk to meet them after she’d collected the shopping. I couldn’t find my GPSr, so I used my phone, and it was reporting low accuracy until I rebooted it, by which time I’d walked past the hashpoint and had to double-back, much to the doggo’s confusion.

I reached the hashpoint at 14:16 BST (and probably a few points before than, owing to my navigation failure). I needed to stand very close to the fence to get within the circle of uncertainty, but at least I didn’t have to reach through and into the school grounds.

Tracklog

My smartwatch kept a tracklog:

Map showing Dan's wanderings back and forth around West Witney Primary School before heading East-South-East across the town towards Waitrose.

Photos

Geohashing expedition 2023-03-10 51 -1

This checkin to geohash 2023-03-10 51 -1 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.

Location

North Leigh Common, West Oxfordshire.

Participants

Plans

My evening just freed up, so – weather-permitting – I might brave the sleet and cold and cycle out to this hashpoint this evening.

Expedition

Our dog had surgery at the start of the week and has now recovered enough to want a short walk, so I changed my plan to cycle for one to drive (with the dog) out to somewhere near the hashpoint and take her for a walk to and around it. Amazingly, I might have been faster to cycle: a crash on the A40 had lead to lots of traffic being re-routed along the exact same back roads that was to be my most-direct route, and on the local rat run through South Leigh I got trapped behind a line of folks who weren’t familiar with this particular unlit and twisty road and took the entire derestricted section at an average of 25mph. Ah well.

Out of laziness, I didn’t bring my GPSr or make a tracklog; I just used the Geohashdroid app and took a screenshot when I got there. South Leigh Common is pleasant, but it was dark, and my photos are all a little bit hard to make out! But the stars were beautiful tonight, and the dog loved one of her first outings since her surgery and enjoying running around in the long wet grass and sticking her head into rabbit holes. At 19:00 precisely I got within about a metre and a half of the hashpoint – well within the circle of uncertainty – and turned to head home.

I also took the time while there to update OpenStreetMap by drawing in the boundaries of the common, replacing the nondescript “point” that had marked it before.

Photos

Geohashing expedition 2023-01-02 51 -1

This checkin to geohash 2023-01-02 51 -1 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.

Location

Muswell Hill, Piddington, Oxfordshire

Participants

Expedition

I bundled the dog into the car and drove out to Piddington, a couple of kilometres North of the hashpoint. Cherwell Council advertise a circular walk that seems to circle from the village (which looked like a good place to park) up to Muswell Hill, the summit of which is near the hashpoint.

She and I walked through Piddington, past the church, and up onto the path. A soggy kilometre or so later we quickly discovered that this was going to be more-challenging than I’d anticipated. We quickly got bogged down in a flooded field and needed to double-back. With my socks already soaking wet and the dog in a similar condition, we found a different route that looped around the entire hill and through an alpaca farm (or were they llamas?), then we worked our way up the South face of the hill, over the summit, and down to the hashpoint. We got there at 11:00 UTC, took a quick look around and pulled the closest thing a dog can manage to a silly grin, and then hacked our way back (by road) to Piddington for the drive home and some dry clothes.

Tracklog

Entire expedition

Walking part only

Photo

Dan - a man with a beard, wearing a grey fleece with a white poppy attached - crouches alongside his French Bulldog in a green field under a blue sky with a few wispy clouds.
Multi-species silly grin.

Video

Also available on YouTube.

Geohashing expedition 2022-12-05 51 -1

This checkin to geohash 2022-12-05 51 -1 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.

Location

Bridleway behind Cokethorpe School, West Oxfordshire, UK.

Participants

Expedition

When I saw this hashpoint appear I thought to myself: that’s eminently achievable! I hoped I might be able to slip away from work for a lunchtime cycle to claim it.

But the gods of technology didn’t approve of my plan and turned my workday into a catastrophe of the kind that only a computer can, and the chance of taking a long lunch evaporated quickly. But fortune dealt me a second hand when the weather held off into the evening, and I instead opted for a post-dinner huckle in the dark out to this hashpoint.

I set out around 18:30, South through Stanton Harcourt then North up the adorably-named Ducklington Road. It took some time to sight the somewhat-concealed bridleway around the hill of Cokethorpe School. And then, another challenge – navigating by OpenStreetMap I missed my turning and went straight through a farmyard, and had to carry my bike over a fence at the other end. Turns out the map is wrong and I later found a sign indicating the true course of the bridleway; I’ll get that corrected.

I abandoned my bike for the final 50 metres, trekking through the thick grass of an unmown meadow to the hashpoint and arriving around 19:00. No panoramic photo today it’s too dark – but you get a silly grin.

Pleased with this fast expedition, I diverted on my route home to the Harcourt Arms pub for a pint of their surprisingly-delicious seasonal guest ale, Fairytale of Brew York, which genuinely tastes like stollen. There, I wrote up this expedition report, but I’ll have to get home before I can extract my GPSr‘s tracklog.

Tracklog

Map showing a journey from Sutton, near Stanton Harcourt, along the B4449 then up the A415 past Cokethorpe School, then along a bridleway and into a field (where a chequered flag icon appears), then back to the centre of Stanton Harcourt (where a beer icon appears) before returning to the start point in Sutton.

Download tracklog

Photos

Geohashing expedition 2022-12-02 51 -1

This checkin to geohash 2022-12-02 51 -1 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.

Location

Just off the driveway to Appleton Cricket Club, South-West of Appleton.

Participants

Plans

I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it to this one, but if I can I’ll cycle over there on my lunch break or right after work.

Expedition

The dog was making an attention-seeking nuisance of herself while I was trying to work today, so I wrapped up all the critical things I needed to do so I could take her our for a walk this afternoon to try to wear her out. I’m moderately familiar with Appleton – I have a regular cycle circuit that comes right through it! – but I’ve never been out to the cricket club and sports field, so I pointed the hashing hound in the right direction and let her lead the way.

At first it looked like this was going to be a successful expedition: the needle on my GPSr pointed almost directly ahead as I walked up the lane towards Appleton Sports Field. But as I got closer, I realised to my disappointment that the hashpoint was going to be about 25 metres into the adjacant field, guarded by a trio of bullocks. At 15:00 I declared the expedition a failure. The doggo and I completed an exploration of the lane and had a look around the sports field, spotted a pair of muntjack deer ambling around, and then headed back home.

I’ll be back in Appleton later today to buy a Christmas tree, so I’ll wave at the cattle as I go past, again.

Tracklog

My GPSr kept a tracklog; note that this was an “on the way” stopoff so the start and end point isn’t the same!

Map showing a line heading into Appleton from the South-West, diverting up the lane towards the Sports Field, and then turning back and leaving by the same route. A cross marks the hashpoint, in a field just off to the side of the route.

Photos

Geohashing expedition 2022-10-24 51 -1

This checkin to geohash 2022-10-24 51 -1 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.

Location

Wharf Stream Way, Eynsham. I’ve visited this circular footpath many times to walk the dog or to take the children to swim in the river.

Participants

Plans

I hope to cycle/walk to the GZ about lunchtime? I’ve an opportunity to pass nearby the GZ between other errands this morning!

Expedition

I was excited to see this spot pop up on my radar, because it’s a lovely meadow that I’ve ocassionally walked my dog in, within comfortable cycling distance of my house. As it happened, I had an even easier route here because a drive this morning to drop the kids off at a half-term activity took me “close enough” to be worth stopping and walking from there.

I parked at The Talbot Inn, just West of the Swinford Toll Bridge (a bizzare old bridge that, for weird historical reasons, continues to use human operators to charge 5 pence per car to cross, which surely cannot be cost-effective!). From here, there’s a footpath along the back of the Seimens buildings in the nearby light industrial estate which eventually comes out into the Wharf Stream Way circular walk. It was pretty damp out here today and I quickly regretted my choice of light trousers which would have been fine to drive the kids to their camp and back but wasn’t really a good choice for stomping across the long grass of a damp meadow. Some way across I disturbed some grazing deer, but ultimatey it was following a deer-trodden trail that eventually provided the best route to the GZ.

I reached the GZ at 09:19, took a selfie, and then turned around to go and get to work. I also shot a video covering the whole expedition which is presented, unedited, below.

Tracklog

My GPSr kept a tracklog; note that this was an “on the way” stopoff so the start and end point isn’t the same!

Map showing a journey from Witney to Stanton Harcourt via Wharf Stream Way meadow, East of Eynsham.

Photos

Dan makes a silly grin while holding a GPS receiver in a damp grassy autumn meadow, on a grey and drizzly day.

Video

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Geohashing expedition 2022-02-20 52 -1

This checkin to geohash 2022-02-20 52 -1 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.

Location

Outside a warehouse full of sheet aluminium, Kitts Green Road, Birmingham.

Participants

Plans

I’m hoping to find the 2022-02-19 52 -2 hashpoint one day earlier and one graticule over, and I think I can stretch the range on the electric car enough to be able to return home via this hashpoint too.

Update: managed to change the car after finding the 2022-02-19 52 -2 point, so I can make this. Probably be there about midday, weather-permitting.

Expedition

Following my successful expedition to 2022-02-19 52 -2 (which completed level 6 of my minesweeper grid) I stayed overnight in a delightful converted hayloft near the hashpoint before pressing on the following morning to this hashpoint (via a whole series of delightful geocaches in and around the village of Blakedown).

I didn’t expect much of this hashpoint, but I wanted the excuse to recharge the car before going for another leg of my journey – either a trip up to visit a friend in Lichfield or else a hashing expedition one graticule further East where today’s hashpoint seemed to be in a graveyard! But more on that later.

I parked at the Morrisons car park at (52.757778, -1.752222) at 14:48 and hooked up to the charger there (once I eventually found it). I had some difficulty making it work, but it seemed to get started eventually. Then I began my walk to the hashpoint. This was far from the picturesque walk of yesterday, taking me through a series of housing estates that were nondescript at best, unpleasantly scuzzy at worst. Shooting video as I walked, I was at one point loudly mocked by a group of young men passing in an artificially-loud car, but it was an activity that soon had to end anyway as the rain began to pour down. At around 15:11 my GPSr ran out of battery power (I’d failed to find its charging cable the night before) and there’s a clear gap in my tracklog: fortunately I was also equipped with not one but two backup devices (my phone, of course, and my watch), so I was able to continue heading in the right direction, and when I found a convenience store near (52.739167, -1.998333) I bought some AA batteries (my GPSr can have its rechargeable battery removed and 3 × AA batteries put in its place to allow it to continue) and pressed on to the hashpoint.

As anticipated, the hashpoint was on a road dividing a light industrial park from a housing estate, right outside a plant specialising in bending plate aluminium; I reached it at 15:23:48. I walked back the same route as the rain began to fall more and more heavily: by the time I reached the car it had become torrential. The dubious charging point I’d used had taken £16 from my bank card but provided only enough charge to take the car from 66% to 67% battery, which – combined with the rapidly-worsening weather – made me rethink my plans to visit Lichfield or explore further East and I instead used my remaining distance to take a long (slow, wet, diversion-filled) drive home. Ugh.

Tracklog

My GPSr kept a tracklog of my entire two-day expedition:

Download tracklog.

Photos

I shot video of most of this expedition but don’t have time to edit it, so here are stills from the video instead:

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