Step 2: brave the fierce weather surrounding Storm Bert and head out into rural Ireland in search of a geohashpoint. But first, the crucial step 1: a big ol’ bacon and egg sarnie for breakfast. | Continue reading
Sean McP justifies why balance bikes are better than stabilisers (training wheels) for kids to learn to cycle, and I ponder the possibility of popping the pedals off our youngest's first bike, perhaps later this year. | Continue reading
This checkin to GC4MDNM Foynes Forest Find reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. My mother and I are out in the West of Ireland in search of geohashpoints. Today’s attempt to find the 2024-11-22 52 -8 hashpoint was blocked by the river Arra breaking i … | Continue reading
This checkin to GC9DV9V GST 65 - Centre of tree reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Recent winds have blown down trees here but thankfully not this one. My mum stretched to reach the hiding place and soon had the cache in hand. | Continue reading
This checkin to GC9DV9P GST 64 - Lift me up buttercup reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. We almost gave up trying to find the hint object before spotting something that once had the colour of a buttercup but has since enjoyed some extra camouflage! … | Continue reading
This checkin to GC9DV9H GST 63 - Greenway sign reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. We’re moderately confident we know what we’d be looking for and where, but we didn’t find it here. 😕 | Continue reading
This checkin to GC9DV9F GST 62 - Ashgrove reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Another speedy find for my nimble-fingered mother. Lid missing from cache and log very wet; barely signable and at risk of disintegration. TFTC. | Continue reading
This checkin to GC9DV9E GST 61 - Cow shit reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. My mother kindly volunteered to be the one to put her fingers up a cow’s bottom… I mean… to find and retreive the cache at this location! TFTC! | Continue reading
This checkin to GC9DV6A GST 60 - Squeezed into fence reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Very quick find. Spent some time trying to retreive the cache container before deciding that it’s probably supposed to live in its hiding place and instead we j … | Continue reading
This checkin to GC9DV69 GST 58 - Bison behind the block reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Second place we looked. Nice easy find. Liking these slightly bigger tubes! TFTC. | Continue reading
This checkin to GCAP5TV GST 59 - Wired PET reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Gave up after a short search. No sign of this one that we could see. | Continue reading
This checkin to GC9DV67 GST 57 - Greenway sign reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Instant find! Exactly where I first looked. Log slightly damp but still usable. TFTC. | Continue reading
This checkin to GC9DV66 GST 56 - Pet tube in tree reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. After a brief search on the wrong side of the path, we eventually spotted the correct host and – after a running leap, pictured – soon had the cache in hand. TFTC! | Continue reading
This checkin to GC9DV65 GST 55 - Bridge reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. QEF for my mum and I on our walk. Not well hidden – was visible from the path. Replaced as found. TFTC. | Continue reading
This checkin to GC9DV63 GST 54 - Train Signal reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Found after a short search. We tried playing with the signal but it’s rusted solid. SL, TFTC. Greetings from Oxfordshire and Lancashire, UK! | Continue reading
This checkin to GC9DV5M GST 53 - Newcastle West Station reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. We were heading to the 2024-11-22 52 -8 geohashpoint as part of a geohashing holiday but floods breaking the banks of the River Arra blocked our way so we pa … | Continue reading
My mother and I's second attempt at a geohashing expedition in Ireland didn't go so well, being blocked by flooding that washed-out the roads between us and the hashpoint, so we did some geocaching and visited a museum instead. | Continue reading
I'm on the map! No matter what else my mother and I achieve this week, my name will forever be recorded as the unlocker of the Loughrea graticule in Ireland. | Continue reading
This checkin to GC2BY40 Pallas Castle reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. My mother and I are visiting the area in search of virgin graticules for geohashing purposes. This morning we set out for the 2024-11-22 53 -8 geohashpoint and found it down i … | Continue reading
On our first full day in Ireland, my mother and I found our way to a hashpoint in a virgin graticule, by stomping our way through an overgrown abandoned pasture. | Continue reading
Off to Ireland to hunt for geohashpoints. Wish us luck! | Continue reading
When my mother proposed that we take a holiday together somewhere, and that I could choose the destination, I started by looking at the Geohashing Expeditions Map. Where, I wondered, could I find a cluster of mostly-land graticules (“square” degree of latitude and longitude) in w … | Continue reading
You probably know the story of George Stephenson's Rocket beating its competitors and going to to influence steam locomotive design for generations. But did you know that one of its competitors... was a horse in a carriage? | Continue reading
On the way to school this morning, the 10-year-old lagged behind to build a small snowman. When we came back to it, the dog insisted that it was not trustworthy and wasn't keen on going anywhere near the strange new construction. | Continue reading
Snuffles in the Snow. This morning’s freak snowfall in Oxfordshire is a source of some confusion on this pupper’s morning walk. | Continue reading
I was sceptical when the forecast said there’d be sleet and snow this morning, but sure enough, it’s just barely beginning to settle on the skylight of my attic bathroom. 🫢 | Continue reading
A thought came to me this morning: if a US President-Elect dies before their inauguration, does their running mate automatically get the Presidency? Finding the answer led me through a warren of interconnected Constitutional Amendments. | Continue reading
This checkin to GC34G3G Coventry - Hertford Street reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. The rest of the family and I are visiting for my youngest’s birthday to do a handful of fun activities. Geocaching didn’t make the list, but that wasn’t gonna sto … | Continue reading
Miika used a marquee tag to add a cable car to a web page, and I think I couldn't be more impressed. | Continue reading
There's a short story that I tried on-and-off to write, but I've now given up on it. The concepts it makes light of all feel a bit too close-to-home, as conspiracy theorists increasingly migrate from the 'harmless nutjob' to the 'dangerous political leader' category. | Continue reading
My past self, receiving a copy of Transport Tycoon for his 14th birthday, would have his mind blown if he could see the kind of insanely-complex super-stations that are possible in (the open-source successor to) the game 30 years on... | Continue reading
This checkin to GC656RM Church Micro 8564...Ducklington reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. The dog and I came out to Ducklington today for a spot of geohashing, in search of the 2024-11-14 51 -1 geohashpoint. After a walk around the fields to the E … | Continue reading
The dog and I got within 33 metres of a geohashpoint today, but couldn't quite make it to the zero point. | Continue reading
Maybe it’s just that my sabbatical is making me pay more attention then usual, but it feels like I’m getting very lucky with nearby geohashpoints lately. Tomorrow’s hashpoint in my gratitude might be achievable! This is a good omen, perhaps, for next week. Next week my mother and … | Continue reading
Kids' ability to pick up new words from context is amazing. Kids' confidence even when they've misunderstood how a word is used is hilarious. 😊 This evening, our 7-year-old was boasting about how well-behaved his class was while their regular teacher had to attend an all- … | Continue reading
Waiting patiently at the school gates on a distinctly Autumnal morning, our pupper’s squat stature means she’s about knee-deep in the season’s golden leaves. | Continue reading
I’ve just enumerated my personal domain names. There’s a lot fewer of them than there used to be! Anyway: here’s the list – danq.me and a variety of aliases (danq.uk, danq.dev, danq.link, danq.blog, scatmania.org); there’s also like a billion subdomains in use of course, like thi … | Continue reading
I finally got my Tron achievement by riding my bike^H^H^H^H lightcycle to a hashpoint in Barnard Gate and back... without crossing my own track! | Continue reading
Future Arimaa grand masters at practice, this Sunday morning boardgaming session. | Continue reading
In spite of their signage, Costa weren’t happy to take my old jockstrap for recycling. | Continue reading
My old colleague Adam's started blogging again, but his blog doesn't have an RSS feed. Which means it's time for some more XPath Scraping in FreshRSS, and an excuse for me to explain the testing and debugging process I use when making XPath Scraping rulesets! | Continue reading
After a morning of optimising a nonprofit’s reverse proxy configuration, I feel like I’ve earned my lunch! Four cheese, mushroom and jalapeño quesapizzas, mmm… | Continue reading
Caleb Hearth wrote an inspiring piece about CSS's new OKLCH functions, and now I want nothing more than to (re-?)implement something using this colour model! | Continue reading
All! The! Warning! Lights! By the time a car needs to pahinate the error messages it wants to display, something has definitely gone wrong. 😬 | Continue reading
Wait, it isn't supposed to be pronounced "clan via Pokemon Go garage city of cocoa"? I've been saying it wrong my whole life! 😅 | Continue reading
Things my children have gotten out of bed to say to me tonight: - I don't want to go to school tomorrow - I can't find [name of toy] - I want [name of toy I lent to my sibling] back - if I'm ill, I don't have to go to school tomorrow, right? - I can't sleep - I might be ill: I do … | Continue reading
As the kids grow older… someday our final soft play session – something we used to do all the time, and now do only rarely – will be in the past. But for now, at least, it remains a chaotic way to tire them out on a morning! | Continue reading
Two weeks into my extended break from work and on my way home from Spain, I've discovered something magical about a sabbatical: it frees me from my compulsion to think about next week's work, at the weekend. | Continue reading