Tag: volunteering
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British Columbia, Time Zones, and Postgres
In March 8, 2026, British Columbia moved their clocks to a year-round Pacific Daylight Savings Time, and doubtless broke a lot of software. Every time I work on better timezone support for Three Rings, this is the kind of story that terrifies me!
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Bringing Three Rings volunteers together: doing remote-first in person, and what to eat in a crisis
JTA wrote a LinkedIn post about Three Rings, its remote-first culture, doing things in person, and crisis management, and it's brilliant.
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Wood-Fired
This year's 3Camp venue had a wood-fired pizza oven, so I signed-up for a shift of cooking for my fellow volunteers and thoroughly enjoyed making and baking a monumental amount of dough.
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There was no mixing bowl in the house large enough to make enough pizza dough to feed all of the Three Rings volunteers present at this year's 3Camp, so I just had to pour out all the ingredients onto the surface and work from there.
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Dan, a white man with a ponytail of blue hair and a goatee beard, uses his hands to gather a huge pile of flour on a marble worksurface in a spacious kitchen.
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Found GCARTJB Stop, Look... er... Listen?
I'm volunteering at the building right next door to this bridge, this week, working on software that helps charities... among them, Samaritans! So finding this thematic cache was a must-do for the younger geokid and I on our lunch break today. A quick and easy find thanks to the clear telegraphing in the description, aided by our direction of approach. It's a wonderful large bridge, and we got to watch a train zoom along the tracks beneath us as we crossed.
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Some days, developing Three Rings is about being hunched over a keyboard alone in the middle of the night, swearing at Rubygem incompatibilities.
But just ocassionally it's about getting together in beautiful places with some of the most dedicated geeks I know... to swear about Rubygem incompatibilities.
Either way, a walk in the garden can lead to the insight that gets you to the solution.
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A beautiful country house with a huge garden.
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Not even thanks to Daylight Saving but just because I felt energised and excited, I got up to watch the sunrise this morning... before starting work on a new Three Rings feature!
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The sunrise as seen through the gates of a vineyard's courtyard.
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Kicking off 3Camp 2026, our annual volunteering event, with the traditional "receive and sort a ludicrous amount of groceries" activity.
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A large group of people stand around a pile of shopping in the centre of a nicely decorated kitchen.
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The Last Post for the Nightline Association. How does that make you feel?
Fellow Nightline enthusiast James Buller has written a stirring piece about his decades of volunteering for and around Nightlines, and - as usual - underplays the importance and significance of his work. Here's my take.
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👋 Farewell, NLA
Highlights of yesterday's Goodbye Nightline Association party in Manchester: 👨💻🤝✍️🤞. Low points: 😢.
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Found GC5C8N2 Church Micro 6331...Manchester - St Ann's
I'm in Manchester for the day for a social gathering related to a variety of the volunteering activities I've been involved with over the last, OMG-I'm-so-old, 26 years or so. After my train arrived I meandered via OK04B5 (nice to see the OC community alive and well here in Manchester!) to find myself some lunch, then dropped by this cache on my way to our event venue.
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Found OK04B5 The Beacon of Hope
I'm in Manchester for a volunteering-adjacent social event and, not often seeing OpenCaches pop up on my radar, visited this spot on my way from the station to the venue. So beautiful to see Manchester acknowledge its part in queer history, and a beautiful memorial to everybody who has died as a result of the AIDS pandemic. TFTC!
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Oxford Station. Catching a train to Manchester for a get-together in memory of the Nightline Association, which will sadly be closing this year (although individual Nightlines will doubtless soldier on just as they did before the Association).
Carrying a big ol' bag of Three Rings swag to give to basically anybody who expresses even the slightest interest. 😅
Three Rings has been supporting Nightlines since before the Nightline Association and nowadays underpins voluntary work by hundreds of other charities including helplines like Samaritans and Childline. Feeling sad that the Nightline Association is going away and looking for a new and rewarding way to volunteer? Come chat to me!
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Dan, with blue hair and wearing a black t-shirt, stands on a sunny train platform holding aloft a medium-sized tote bag.
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Never underestimate the power of people who are motivated by the good they can do in the world.
Today I was in awe of this team of unpaid volunteers who, having already given up their bank holiday weekend, worked through dinner and into the night to ensure the continued uptime of a piece software that enables the listening service of emotional support and suicide helplines.
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In a conference room, Dan stands in front of a group of people working on laptops.
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Found GCA2025 Where's 25? - Locationless Cache
Happy 25th birthday, geocaching.
I'm spending the weekend volunteering for a nonprofit I founded (it's almost as old as geocaching, at 23). We're staying in a hotel at N 52° 36.184' W 001° 53.869'. I've also gotten out to find a couple of local geocaches.