Randomness

Neil and Christine’s Geocaching Adventure

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Geocache

This weekend Christine and I went Geocaching for the first time. It’s something I’d considered doing ever since I got my iPhone, almost a year ago (seriously, it does not feel like a year already…), but I never got around to it. Anyhow, a colleague at work had mentioned some of her friends had got into it, and several of my blogger friends like Andy and Firda do it, so I looked for caches near where we live and found 5 within a one mile radius.

With it being a bank holiday yesterday, it meant we both had the afternoon free, so I bought the iPhone app (which I’ll review tomorrow) and we set off. The first one we found is shown above – it’s a ‘micro’ cache which is the second-smallest size of cache, and is about the size of a matchbox. Inside every geocache is a piece of paper to write your name and the date to log your visit. Finding the cache took a little longer than expected, although the hint for the cache was spot on when we finally worked it out. This was also perhaps our punishment for choosing the nearest cache rather than going a little bit further to one recommended for newbies.

We continued on to find three further caches – the next two being the fiendish ‘nano’ caches which are the smallest, and usually magnetic. In fact, when I first found it I thought it was the magnet to hold the cache onto something, not the cache itself – it wasn’t until I twisted it that it opened to reveal the log inside. The last one for the day, alongside the canal, was inside a 35mm film canister, and required a little scrambling down a bank to get to.

So, four caches down. There are obviously many more to find – after all, if there are four in a small town like ours, then the must be thousands in the UK alone, nevermind overseas. Of course, we’ll now have to go a bit further to look for them but it’s possible to do a spot of geocaching whilst doing other activities. There’s two on campus at work to find during a lunch break and I might have a look for some in Huddersfield as I’m there on Thursday. Still, we may go out specifically to find geocaches – after all, we’ll probably be walking between them so it’s good exercise.

I’m under the impression that smartphones are making geocaching more accessible; in the past, if you wanted to find a geocache you would have needed to buy a GPS receiver, which for those not interested in outdoor pursuits isn’t so useful when not geocaching. Smartphones have brought GPS to the masses, and phones with always-on internet bring dynamic maps and access to the Geocaching community whilst on the go, so there’s no need to plan geocaching trips ahead of time. The Geocaching web site could do with some improvements – it’s a bit cluttered and the design feels rather dated.

Tomorrow, I’ll do an App of the Week review of the Geocaching iPhone app. I may blog again about my Geocaching exploits later on, as and when I find more.

Flat-warmed

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Lloyds TSB

At the weekend we had a flat-warming party, barely 3 months after the last one in the previous flat. Hopefully it’ll be the last one for a while.

Now that spring is here, Sowerby Bridge is lovely – there are plenty of trees and the view across the valley from our balcony is now very lush and green. There’s also a number of ducklings and goslings on the rivers that run through the town.

On Friday night we went to see Uncaged Monkeys in Manchester – it’s roughly equal parts stand-up comedy and science lecture, and was very good. Speakers included Professor Brian Cox (whose wife I met a few years ago), Dr Ben Goldacre, Dr Simon Singh and a few others. It was at the O2 Apollo theatre near the university campus, and was a sell-out – full of several hundred geeks who were happy to spend their Friday night being lectured about the silliness of homoeopathy, our tiny insignificance in the universe and why we’re fortunate that we’re not male anglerfish.

At the university the exams have started, which means that I’ll be invigilating a couple of them. Five years ago, I was the one sitting them, and whilst invigilation isn’t the most interesting of tasks, I’d rather be doing that then having to do the exams again.

This weekend sees us at a friends’ house in Leeds to watch the Eurovision Song Contest. It’s always good fun to watch as a group, especially when there’s some alcohol involved.

Miscellany

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It’s July, which means that we’re now more than half way through 2010. Still feels like April for some reason, despite the very summery weather we’ve had lately.

I haven’t had chance to blog much so this is a summarised version of things that I would have devoted posts to had I had the time.

Films:

  • About a year ago I wrote about films which I own but haven’t watched. I finally watched Robots last night and it was actually better than I had expected. The computer animation is wonderfully detailed and it’s a lot of fun. I’m starting to wish I’d watched it sooner.
  • On a related note, I have copies of Eragon, Ghostbusters II and the first Twilight film which I own but haven’t seen. All in good time, I suppose.
  • I saw the trailer for The Last Airbender a couple of months ago and it looked good, but the reviews of it suggest it’s totally rubbish, so I’ll give it a miss.

Your Freedom:

  • I was intending to write something about the government’s Your Freedom site, which asks the public for ideas about laws that need changing or repealing. It’s a good idea but badly executed, and Chris Applegate sums it up much better than I can, so read his blog post.
  • But, for the record, I’d like to see the Digital Economy Act repealed.

The Internets:

  • Some time in late April our ADSL modem at home started acting up, and ever since it’s been happily dropping packets left, right and centre. It’s a Netgear DG834GT, which isn’t a bad model but it’s several years old and has been rather over-used. The wireless has gone as well, so I’m using my spare Netgear WGR614 as an access point. Anyhow, we’re finally getting a new modem from Sky and so I’ll actually be able to do things like play World of Warcraft without lagging and download files without them timing out.

Holiday:

  • Things will be quiet around here again as Christine and I are off to the Isle of Man for a week, starting tomorrow. We don’t have a solid itinerary but are planning a trip to see the Laxey Wheel and a train ride up Snae Fell.

Things I like about Belgium

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This post is prompted by remarks by Nigel Farage, an MEP for the UK Independence Party, in which he described Belgium as a “non-country“. I think the criticism levelled at Belgium by Mr Farage is unfair and reeks of a ‘my country is better than your country, so nyah’ attitude, which I feel is unacceptable for a supposedly respectable politician.

As a Brit, I feel it is therefore my duty to do my bit to show Belgium that we don’t all think that your country is insignificant. I personally think that the country has several things that are great about it, and once I have some more cash I plan to make another visit to the small but interesting nation.

1. Brussels

Brussels is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of European Union. I visited in 2002 (back when this blog was barely a month old) and found it to be a great city. It’s well worth a visit and is (usually) less than 2 hours by train from the centre of London.

2. Belgian beer

We Brits are quite good at making beer, and the explosion of micro-breweries over the years has been very welcome. But the Belgians are also worthy contenders and I particularly appreciate their fruit beers such as those by Früli, Timmermans and Liefmans. Leffe is also particularly good, as is the amusingly-named Kwak which comes in an interestingly-shaped glass. Budweiser is also now owned by a Belgian company, but unfortunately that doesn’t stop it tasting a bit like a urine sample.

3. Bruges

I really want to visit Bruges again, as it’s been almost 2 decades since I was there last. It’s a gorgeous city, full of canals and old buildings.

4. Belgian chocolate

While I will always have a soft spot for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, the Belgians have chocolate making down to an art.

5. Belgian waffles

Belgium is the country that introduced the concept of a sweet waffle, perhaps with a Belgian chocolate sauce or some ice cream. I’m genuinely pleased that Wetherspoon’s have started serving these again.

6. French Fries

They’re actually Belgian, not French.

Merry Christmas!

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Just want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

Presents? I got a 4th generation iPod Nano (in blue), a Canon EOS 350D digital camera (passed down from my father), a digital photo keyring, Denon in-ear headphones, socks and a veritable feast of edible treats.

Posts 0 – 4 Comments

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Weirdly, there’s been a small increase in the number of comments on here over the past few days, despite the fact I’ve only managed one post so far this month.

Main reason for the lack of posts has been partly because I’ve been very busy, partly because I’ve had nothing interesting to write about, and partly because my life isn’t that great right now. Those of you who know me better will know the details but I don’t want to say much publicly until the situation calms down. Which it should do soon, I hope.

Me and Hari are fine, by the way.

Been away, going away…

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I’ve been away from this blog for some time – 2 weeks almost – which is mostly due to being busy at work and having very little free time at home. I’ve been playing World of Warcraft a bit more than usual lately, but now have a second level 70 character as a result.

So what’s happened over the past 2 weeks? Well, based on my recent Twitters, here’s what I’ve been up to:

  • Been testing out Firefox 3 RC1 and Thunderbird 3 Alpha 1. Firefox 3 is looking really good now, especially on Macs where the improved performance and native theme make it even more of a joy to use. Thunderbird is obviously an early alpha build but it too is much faster, as it inherits many of the optimisations that were undertaken for Firefox. Unfortunately, it’s not yet very stable, but it is at least usable.
  • Now that I have more than a smidgen of free space on my MacBook, I installed Ubuntu Hardy Heron in Parallels. Unfortunately, despite updating to the latest Parallels release, the Parallels Tools for Linux package doesn’t work with this release of Ubuntu so there’s no adaptive window sizes, cursor integration and clock synchronising. It’s a shame as apparently VMWare Fusion does support the latest Ubuntu release. I haven’t played around with Ubuntu much but it looks good, and including Firefox 3 is a bold but welcome move.
  • Speaking of Twitter, I would recommend the TwitterFox extension if you use Twitter and Firefox, as it’s quite a handy little extension which lets you read and interact with your Twitter friends. It doesn’t have masses of features, but it’s intuitive and it works with Firefox 3 already.
  • Google Reader’s ‘Trends’ feature has an unexpected use as a way of digging out feeds which haven’t updated in a long time. I found one that had gone dead in October 2005 that I was still subscribing to. I also found a few sites which had changed their feed URLs without redirects so I wasn’t receiving updates any more.

This, unfortunately, isn’t the return to regularly scheduled blogging, as on Saturday I’m going away for five nights in camping barn in the Lake District with some friends. It’s really in the back-end of nowhere – it doesn’t even have a connection to the electricity grid so all power comes from a hydro-electric generator, and it’s highly unlikely that there will be any mobile phone reception there either. So until I return on Thursday, you may not hear a peep from me, either on here or on Twitter.

Mildly interesting things that I have learned about recently

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  1. There is a phobia of bridges, known as Gephyrophobia – and there’s a New York Times article about it, via Kottke.
  2. The platforms at St Pancras International Thameslink railway station are labelled ‘A’ and ‘B’, to avoid confusion with the main national and international platforms. This was also used at the recently-closed King’s Cross Thameslink station (which St. Pancras replaced) and at Waterloo East station.
  3. Though all Mac Pros now come with two quad-core Intel processors as standard, you can opt to have just the one processor, saving around £320 (to a total of £1442.99). You can also spend over £17 000 if you want every build option, unlimited server license and all the professional software packages bundled with it.
  4. In the past year, thieves have stolen at least two bridges in Russia for scrap metal.
  5. ‘Akbar’ is Arabic for ‘great’ or ‘greatest’. I’d be tempted to post a picture of Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars and say it is a trap, but I’ll refrain.
  6. Frederick Lorz, an American athlete, cheated in the marathon in the 1904 Summer Olympics by travelling by car for 11 miles. He was first across the finishing line but another athlete, Thomas J Hicks was declared the winner, despite him too cheating as he had run the race under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
  7. In China, ‘Dan’ is a girl’s name.
  8. VLC can use many Winamp skins – see this guide.
  9. ‘Blighty’, a slang word for ‘Great Britain’, derives from the Hindustani Urdu word ‘vilāyatī’, which variously means ‘foreign’ or ‘homeland’. It originates from the days of the British Empire when Britain controlled India.
  10. Inner Mongolia is a region in northern China, ‘Outer Mongolia’ roughly corresponds with the independent nation of Mongolia.
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