Tag: geohashing
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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.
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A pint of Guinness alongside a can, on a tiled bathroom shelf.
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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.
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Under a blue-white sky, a rounded hill towers over a fertile green valley dotted with little white houses, as seen from between the trees of an ancient forest.
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Geohashing expedition 2024-11-24 52 -7
On our first full day in Ireland, my mother and I found our way to a hashpoint in a virgin graticule, by stomping our way through an overgrown abandoned pasture.
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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.
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A woman wearing a grey bobble hat and a blue coat walks away down a forest track.
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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.
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Bacon and egg sandwich on granary bread, with two bites taken out of it.
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Geohashing expedition 2024-11-23 52 -8
My mother and I's second attempt at a geohashing expedition in Ireland didn't go so well, being blocked by flooding that washed-out the roads between us and the hashpoint, so we did some geocaching and visited a museum instead.
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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
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Abstract map of the Republic of Ireland, represented as coloured graticules (square degrees of latitude and longitude) and highlighted based on whether they have seen successful geohashing expeditions. The Dublin, Carlow and Waterford graticules were so-'unlocked' by 'JRK', and the Loughrea graticule was unlocked by Dan Q, which is further highlighted by a 'celebrating face' emoji.
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Geohashing expedition 2024-11-22 53 -8
On our first full day in Ireland, my mother and I found our way to a hashpoint in a virgin graticule, by stomping our way through an overgrown abandoned pasture.
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Off to Ireland to hunt for geohashpoints. Wish us luck!
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Dan and his mother standing in an Oxford street, carrying luggage.
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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?
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Somewhat recognisable map of Western Europe, broken up into square degrees of latitude Ave longitude and colour coded based on the number of geohashing expeditions recorded for each. Four contiguous squares on the West coast of Ireland are marked and annotated by hand with the word 'Target!'
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.
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Geohashing expedition 2024-11-14 51 -1
The dog and I got within 33 metres of a geohashpoint today, but couldn't quite make it to the zero point.
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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!
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Map showing my location on Witney and a pin 2.5km away in a field outside Ducklington. Geohashpoint for tomorrow.
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! 🤞
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I've just enumerated my personal domain names. There's a lot fewer of them than there used to be!1
Anyway: here's the list -
- danq.me and a variety of aliases (danq.uk, danq.dev, danq.link, danq.blog, scatmania.org); there's also like a billion subdomains in use of course, like things.danq.me and find.danq.me
- freedeedpoll.org.uk, which I really ought to update at some point but which still clearly helps many people
- dndle.app, a D&D-inspired Wordle-clone which I still get bug reports and pull requests for so clearly somebody's using it
- geohashing.site, the central hub of Geohashing activity worldwide
- egxchange.org, which hosts the most environmentally-friendly cryptocurrency wallet you'll ever see
- abnib.co.uk, a community of friends (also with about a billion subdomains)
- q-t-a.uk, my family website, which exists mostly to facilitate addressing for a stack of internal/selfhosted services
- rockmonkey.org.uk, which doesn't do much nowadays
- fleeblewidget.co.uk, my partner's blog, but I look after the domain registration
- textplain.blog, my plain-text blog
- levellers.blog, the blog of my D&D group
- theimprobable.blog, which I look after on behalf of my partner's brother after using it to GPS-track his adventures
I think that's all of them, but it's hard to be sure...
Footnotes
1 Maybe I've finally shaken off my habit of buying a domain name for everything. Or maybe it's just that I've embraced subdomains for more stuff. Probably the latter.
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Geohashing expedition 2024-11-10 51 -1
I finally got my Tron achievement by riding my bike^H^H^H^H lightcycle to a hashpoint in Barnard Gate and back... without crossing my own track!
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Geohashing expedition 2024-10-22 51 -1
My sabbatical might give me more time for geohashing, so long as the numbers come up right. So let's take an expedition up Harcourt Hill with the dog (plus video)...