Well my day, week, and year (which has been off to a slightly ropey start) got a whole heap better today when I received a postcard from August (@august@chaos.social) & Sappho (@kruemmelspalter@chaos.social), sent from 39c3 on a CCC postcard… with a CCC stamp (thanks, Deutsche Post)!
Super cool, and exactly the mood boost I needed today.
A couple of weeks ago I blogged about setting up a PO Box and adding postal mail to the ways you can contact me. I went for a “pay as you go” PO Box because I didn’t know if anybody would actually use it, but I’ve already received two delightful postcards and I couldn’t be more thrilled.
The first postcard came from Florence, whom I’d met on a forum where I’d helped them repair a troublesome RSS feed1.
The second postcard was from Rhys, whose guestbook I dropped a comment into after spotting that his 50 Before I’m 50 list contained a wish to learn a “genuinely cool magic trick”, for which I had a suggestion2.
The PO Box worked very well: I’m using UK Postbox principally because of their “pay as you go” rate (with a free tier in case you don’t receive any mail at all, which I figured was a risk) but I was later pleased to discover they’re a nice company in other ways, too. They scan the outside/one side of my mail as it arrives and I can optionally pay to scan the whole thing and/or to bundle and forward it on to me3.
I’ve started a new page to collect all the cards, including a (hopefully pretty-accessible) CSS-powered interactive “flipper” so you can turn them over, and I’m hopeful that I might attract a few more as time goes on. Getting physical mail from “Internet friends” helps make the digital world feel a little bit smaller, and I love it.
(If you’d like to send me a postcard too, I’d be so very grateful!)
1 Florence’s RSS feed was missing a <![CDATA[ ... ]]> block around some
embedded HTML, which was causing the HTML to be evaluated “as if” it were XML, which – not being XHTML – it failed to do.
2 My suggestion was a variation of Derek Dingle’s Too Many Cards that I’ve been performing all over the place: it’s an immensely satisfying trick to perform, requiring a challenging but achievable set of sleights and suitable to do without preparation and using a borrowed deck, which is pretty much the gold standard in card magic.
3 I’ve opted to have it forwarded: I’m wondering if I can combine all the postcards I get into a single poster frame or something: maybe a double-sided one so the whole thing can be flipped to show the text, not just the fronts?
Last month I was on em’s personal site, where I discovered their contact page lists not only the usual methods (email addresses, socials, contact forms etc.) but also a postal address1: how cool is that‽ I could have written in their guestbook… but obviously I took the option to send a postcard instead!
Now I’ve set up a PO Box of my own, and I’ve love it if you feel up to saying “hi” via a postcard2. As a bonus, it’s more-likely to get through than anything that has to face-off against my spam filter!
So, if you want to send me a letter or postcard (no parcels, nothing that needs a signature), my address is:
Dan Q
Unit 159610
PO Box 7169
Poole
BH15 9EL
United Kingdom
The usual other contact methods still work, of course.
1 The postal address em uses is a PO Box, for solid safety/anonymity reasons, and/or perhaps to facilitate house moves.
2 I’ve only ever received unsolicited postal mail from Internet acquaintances once, I think – a hashcard from a fellow geohasher called Fippe – and it nowadays sits proudly on my wall.
As an intermittent geohasher, I was saddened when the xkcd forum hack lead to the loss of the Geohashing Wiki, so I worked to bring it back from the dead. This was great, and I’ve enjoyed making use of it in the few expeditions I’ve found time for since then. But I did it mostly for me; I wanted the wiki back. If other people felt the benefit, that was a nice side-effect.
But today my heart was filled with joy when today I received a postcard – a hashcard, no less – from fellow hasher Fippe, whose expedition to Lüneburg last week brought him past the famous town hall shown in the postcard, as evidenced by his photo from the site.
A delightful bonus to my day.
The postcards pictured below, among others, were given to me by my grandmother, pre-stamped, when I started university in September 1999, to encourage me to let me know how I was getting along. Originally privately posted to my gran, I posted pictures on them online elsewhere in 2006, having recovered them from her house after her death. The place they were posted is long-gone, so on 25 May 2019 I retroactively posted them here, back-dated to their original authorship.
Transcription:
Gran,
Hi! I didn’t know that you didn’t have my address down here in Wales until my mum sent me an e-mail and told me, so I thought I’d send you a card and tell you what it is, so that when the money runs out and I end up in the eating-cold-baked-beans-straight-from-the-tin stage, I can phone you and you can send a food parcel… Only kidding. Course is great; freedom is better; ladies are gorgeous. Lovely place here.
All my love, Dan
Transcription:
Gran,
No money. No time. Suicidally depressed. Knife-wound isn’t healing…
Only joking! Having a great time, really! All the fun of the fair! Aberystwyth remains typically rainy, but spirits are high and beer prices are low, so that doesn’t matter!
Having a Christmas Dinner with the Computer Society on Wednesday, and coming back to Preston on Saturday (18th Dec). Been a busy week, between Final Deadlines, Getting Stood Up, Living A Party Life and Sleeping. Think I’ll have a long lie-in, tomorrow, and Honey Loops for breakfast! Yeh!
Fond regards; Dan
