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!
This checkin to GC45BDD Mirador La Paz reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
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!
SL, TFTC! And thanks for the great view!
This checkin to GC9PMF7 Crossing the street reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
QEF while on the way down from Taoro Park with Ruth. SL, TFTC!
This checkin to GC1PYFN Parque Taoro reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
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. 😔
This checkin to GC9MCDM The Queen Of Mystery reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
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!
I didn’t participate in January 2025, because I was on sabbatical and – as well as it feeling a little “close” to work! – Bloganuary intersected with a winter-sun trip to Trinidad & Tobago, where – despite a state of emergency being declared – Ruth and I unlocked a geohashing graticule, experienced small-world serendipity, and generally explored beautiful and remote places.1
Of course, two significant things changed since then:
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.
Turns out that yes, I can. 53 posts over 31 consecutive days, so far this year. This year might be my fastest run at 100 Days To Offload yet.
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.
I’ve also been trying to make blogging more social. Over the last year I’ve made an effort to (visibly) “follow” more personal bloggers and correspond with them (including in new – by which I mean old – ways like exchanging postcards!).
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.
But regardless of how and why you’ve come to find this post – thanks for dropping be: drop me a message and say hi and let’s be friends.
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.
This checkin to GC9PVXZ EL CRÁTER DE LA RAMBLETA reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
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.
This checkin to GC9P71A El tEidE reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
My partner Ruth and I are spending a long weekend in Puerto de la Cruz. We loved coming up to see this beautiful, bleak, stark volcanic landscape.
TFTC!
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.)
Time to catch up on some news, blogs, etc.!
Our dog has decided that the perfect place to lie down at our holiday accommodation is… on a staircase whose carpet is the same colour as her!
I’m grateful for her very-visible blep… or I’d have tripped over this camouflaged pupper several times already!
Obviously I wasn’t planning on going to the US anytime soon, but if I did… they might struggle with my visa application when I put every “email address I’ve used for the last 10 years” on, because I actively use a variety of catch-all domains/subdomains.
I’ve probably missed some addresses (e.g. to which I’ve only ever received spam that’s since been deleted), but a conservative estimate of the number of personal email addresses which I’ve sent mail from or to would be… 7,669 email addresses. 🤣
Good morning Lapland!
Attempt #2 to get to Belfast starts… at 3:30am in a Premier Inn in Gatwick. 🥱 Today, perhaps, I’ll catch a plane! 🤞
This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.
…
“For years, starting in the late ‘70s, I was taking pictures of hitchhikers. A hitchhiker is someone you may know for an hour, or a day, or, every so often, a little longer, yet, when you leave them, they’re gone. If I took a picture, I reasoned, I’d have a memory. I kept a small portfolio of photos in the car to help explain why I wanted to take their picture. This helped a lot. It also led me to look for hitchhikers, so that I could get more pictures.
“I almost always had a camera… I finally settled on the Olympus XA – a wonderful little pocket camera. (I’ve taken a picture of the moon rising with this camera.) One time I asked a chap if I could take a photo, and he said, “You took my picture a few years ago.” I showed him the album and he picked himself out. “That’s me,” he said, pointing…”
…
Not that hitch-hiking is remotely as much a thing today as it was 50 years ago, but even if it were then it wouldn’t be so revolutionary to, say, take a photo of everybody you give a ride to. We’re all carrying cameras all the time, and the price of taking a snap is basically nothing.
But for Doug Biggert, who died in 2023, began doing this with an analogue camera as he drove around California from 1973 onwards? That’s quite something. Little wonder he had to explain his project to his passengers (helped, later on, by carrying a copy of the photo album he’d collected so-far that he could show them).
A really interesting gallery with a similarly-compelling story. Also: man – look at the wear-and-tear on his VW Bug!