If you’re not already helping collect benches, you should give it a look. You can install the site to your mobile device as a progressive web app and start snapping benches.
Amusing announcement from the captain of my plane out of Tenerife South this afternoon. In place of the usual recommendation to keep your seatbelt fastened while seated in case of
turbulence, he advised that there was a “risk of potholes”.
I’m sure the analogy makes sense to the Brits aboard, but I hope it translated well for the Spanish speakers on this plane!
My partner Ruth and I are staying at the Meliá hotel down in the city, from which amazingly I was able to get a WiFi connection despite the
considerable distance!
As others have observed, the hint is misleading for this cache. Substitute the word “right” in place of the word “left” and the hint makes more sense!
Ruth and I made several attempts today without success: a muggle was sat nearby in such a way that access to the GZ was obstructed. We took a
walk to the nearby Anglican church – whose architecture, if you ignore the volcanic rock, is uncannily like that of Anglican churches in the UK – but then we returned the muggle had
very much set up camp and was going nowhere. We attempted to find a way to the cache from the opposite side without luck, and eventually had to give up. 😔
After solving the riddle yesterday, my partner Ruth and I came up from the seafront to find this cache today. What a delightful spot to hide
the cache, and what a wonderful puzzle (and spot of local literary history) with which to bring us here.
SL, FP awarded. Greetings from Oxfordshire, UK. TFTC!
In January 2024 I participated in Bloganuary, a “write a blog post every day for a month” challenge organised by Automattic. I wasn’t
100% impressed by the prompts made available and was – as an employee of Automattic – shuffling towards trying to help make them better in a future year. To be part of the solution!
There’s definitely something in this ‘winter sun’ thing that seems to help me stay sane in the cold dark months. This morning, I’m blogging from a
hotel balcony in Peurtro de la Cruz, Tenerife.
Of course, two significant things changed since then:
As part of a sweeping range of redundancies, I was let go from my position at Automattic2,
and
Automattic ceased running Bloganuary: I’m guessing that the folks responsible for making it happen were among the many that Automattic decided to axe, or else their shifting
priorities – reflected by their waves of layoffs – are no longer compatible with providing that service to bloggers.
Ah well, I figured. I’d just do my own thing. I can write something for every day in January 2026, can’t I?
Generating a chart...
If this message doesn't go away, the JavaScript that makes this magic work probably isn't doing its job right: please tell Dan so he can fix it.
In general, I suppose I’ve been blogging more-frequently lately. Why is that? I guess it’s been a realisation that a blog post doesn’t always have to be polished to perfection.
I still write long-form posts which require research and planning, like setting up a network of Windows 3.x VMs just to get screenshots of what
programming then looked like or making that podcast episode with the music in it… but I’m also feeling more-free to just
express myself in the moment. To share things I see that look interesting or funny or
pretty, or just whatever I’m thinking. I’ve been using “kinds” to categorise my posts so it’s easy for people to avoid my more-inane stuff if
they like, but that’s a secondary consideration because ultimately… I blog for me.
Anyway… all of which is to say that I’ve been writing more and I’ve been loving it. The best way to read more of what I’m writing, if you’d like to, remains: by subscribing via RSS.
1 I’d anticipated having a lack of Internet access, but in fact 4G was widespread
throughout both islands and overall I managed to post something on every day except three in January 2025.
2 Based on friends I’ve spoken to, there seem to have been a lot more folks let go since;
the company seems to be shrinking quite a lot, which might go some way to explaining my second observation too.
My partner Ruth and I were disappointed not to be able to hike any of the trails up here today – they’re all closed – but enjoyed finding both
the nearby Virtual and this Earthcache geocaches. The evidence of lava flows (that remain to this day!) are really quite impressive.
If I’m on holiday and a hotel offers me eggs benedict for breakfast, I’ll almost always order it. But I’d never make it at home.
I tell myself that this is because hollandaise sauce is notoriously easy to mess up. That I don’t want to go through the learning process only to make something inferior to what I eat
as a holiday treat.
But maybe it’s just that my brain wants to keep eggs benedict as a signifier that I’m on holiday. That I can unplug from the world, stop thinking about work, and enjoy a
leisurely breakfast with some creamy eggs and a long black coffee.
Maybe eggs benedict just has to remain “holiday food”, for me.
RSS readers rock. Having a single place you connect for a low-bandwidth bundle of everything you might want to read means it doesn’t matter how slow the WiFi is on your aeroplane, you
can get all the text content in one tap.
(I’m using Capy Reader to connect to FreshRSS, by the way.)
