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.
Tag: geohashing
Geohashing expedition 2024-11-23 52 -8
This checkin to geohash 2024-11-23 52 -8 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.
Location
Field East of Newcastle West
Participants
- Dan Q
- his mother
Plans
On the second full day of our geohashing tour of Western Ireland, we’ll try to drive to somewhere close to this hashpoint (maybe up towards Knockaderry?) and see if we can walk to it (and if it’s accessible when we get there).
Expedition
This part of Ireland’s been under moderate snow cover for several days, but overnight that turned to rain and as it warmed up early in the morning, the snow rapidly melted and poured down into the valleys. The River Arra burst its banks in several places, and our first, second, and third attempts to find places to cross it to get closer to the hashpoint were foiled by floods (too deep and fast-flowing to safely ford) and closed roads.
After seeing several fields of about the altitude of our target also deeply flooded, we opted to give up on this expedition for our own safety! Instead, we went geocaching in Newcastle West and then went up to Foyle where we visited the museum of maritime history and learned about the history of the flying boats that were stationed there in the inter-war years.
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
Geohashing expedition 2024-11-22 53 -8
This checkin to geohash 2024-11-22 53 -8 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.
Location
Field East of Abbey, Ireland.
Participants
- Dan Q
- his mum
Plans
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.
So this week, we’re holidaying on the West coast of Ireland, doing a variety of activities that take our fancy and, hopefully, finding a geohashpoint or two in previously-unexplored graticules!
Looking at the nearby hashpoints, we decided that this was our best bet. An hour and a half’s drive from our accomodation to a village near the hashpoint and we might be able to make the rest of the way on foot.
Expedition
My mother’s never been hashing before, but unlike most people I’ve told about the hobby she didn’t turn her nose up at the idea so she was happy to accompany me on this unusual adventure.
We drove to Abbey, which turns out to be a delightful village, and parked outside the community centre (where my mother was able to use the bathroom).
Then we switched to foot, walking along the banks of the stream and following the road to the East, towards the field where we’d hoped to find the hashpoint.
A quick survey around the outskirts of the area suggested that it was, indeed, in what had once been an active pasture but had been abandoned and disused for many years. The grass and brambles grew high and were caked in snow, but we hopped the gate and pressed on for the final hundred metres.
We made the right choice: the hashpoint was just barely inside the disused old field, and we were able to get to it with only slightly wet feet and without disturbance (except for some kind of nesting bird that was unhappy to see us, and some kind of medium-sized mammal – possibly a fox – that ran away as we approached).
We reached the hashpoint at 11:24.
Flushed with success at this relatively easy victory, we continued our walk to a nearby dairy to see if they’d sell us some cheese (their farm shop was shut), and then crossed the river and climbed the nearby hill to find the fantastic geocache at Pallas Castle.
Circling around from the hilltop to return to the car, we drove back home, completing our expedition (hashpoint, cache, and all) in a little under 7 hours.
Tracklog
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.
Geohashing expedition 2024-11-14 51 -1
This checkin to geohash 2024-11-14 51 -1 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.
Location
Field East of Ducklington, West Oxfordshire
Participants
Plans
Not certain, but might be able to make this one!
Expedition
The dog and I drove out to Ducklington, parking near the church, and walked out to these fields. Unfortunately the hashpoint turns out to be 33+ metres into a field full of sheep. That _might’ve_ been the kind of trespassing I’d have been willing to consider, were it not for the combination of the amount of pedestrian traffic (a whole platoon of birdwatchers, armed with extra-long camera lenses, and every dog walker under the sun!) and the fact that I had the dog with me (who’d have to have waited unhappily outside the field: not taking her _into_ a field of sheep, even by only 33 metres).
Instead, then, we took a pleasant walk around Ducklington and found the GC656RM “Church Micro 8564…Ducklington” geocache, so it wasn’t entirely a wasted trip. The dog’s come home and zonked out in her basket after a decent walk, anwyay!
Tracklog
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! 🤞
Enumerating Domains
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.
Geohashing expedition 2024-11-10 51 -1
This checkin to geohash 2024-11-10 51 -1 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.
Location
Barnard Gate, where the A40 cycleway briefly diverges from the main road.
Participants
Plans
After brunch, I reckon I can get to and from this hashpoint… Tron-style!
Expedition
I planned a slightly circuitous route to this hashpoint in order to make a Tron achievement possible. I got my bike lightcycle out of the garage, checked the brakes and tyres, and set off in the opposite direction of the hashpoint! My thinking was I could cut up Tar Lakes Road to Cogges Farm, join the A40 cyclepath at Witney, follow it all the way to Barnard Gate, and – after passing through the hamlet and hopefully the hashpoint – turn _back_ along the opposite side of A40 (for the section that doesn’t have a cyclepath) and then cut through South Leigh to get back home.
My first hazard came just three minutes out of my door, where a motorist failed to give way to me at Stanton Harcourt Roundabout, entering the junction even though I was already half-way across it from the other direction. They had to slam on their brakes to avoid smashing into the side of me, and I’ll admit I may have sworn at them at least a little as they pulled guiltily away.
The Tar Lakes road remains a delightful route from Stanton Harcourt to Witney, which I’ve enjoyed cycling many times. It was a little busier than usual, perhaps because it’s Sunday and folks were off to and from the fishing lakes along its path to do some angling or to walk their dogs, but it was still a fast and easy journey. Reaching Cogges, I turned back towards the hashpoint and joined the A40 cyclepath which, I hoped, would bring me right through it.
Approaching the hashpoint, I was concerned to see that the road was closed ahead, but a sign reassured me that it was still open to pedestrians, so I dismounted my bike. This also provided an excuse for me to slow down and pay attention to my GPSr as I counted down the metres. I got within the circle of uncertainty at ~3m away, as I leaned over the dyke that separates Pear Tree Cottage’s garden from the byway.
I snapped the regulation silly grin selfie at 14:44.
Photo taken, I then had to continue to push my bike all the way through the roadworks: the fastest way home would have been to turn around, at this point, but I didn’t want to be robbed of my shot at the Tron achievement, so I pressed on.
At the far end of Barnard Gate I determined that cycling back along the A40 without the benefit of a cyclepath was perhaps a little too dangerous (especially after my scare earlier), so I adapted my route to instead head East towards Eynsham, crossing the main road at the Evenlode pub to get onto Old Witney Road, through Eynsham, and back onto the road home.
Returning home, I made sure to cut the corner short as I turned into my driveway so I didn’t cross the path I’d taken as I’d initially exited, an hour earlier. A successful trip, and a fresh achievement!
Tracklog
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.
Video
Also available via YouTube.
Photos
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!
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.
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
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.
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!
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
- Dan Q and his dog
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.
Photos
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.
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.
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
Photos
