Dan Q
This checkin to GC9XDZ7 het kinderbadje reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
At the end of a work trip to Amsterdam, came out this morning to find a few geocaches before catching the train back home. Thanks for the history lesson! SL, TFTC.
This checkin to GC9MY4J IJtunnel reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
My work team and I have been meeting in Amsterdam, but this is our “afternoon off” so we’re going to the maritime museum. I’m not convinced that the person I found was particularly beautiful, but I appreciated the hint anyway! Dragged one of my teammates along. Greetings from Oxfordshire, UK (and around the world!).
This checkin to GCADM5E Rembrandt park #2 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
On my way out for pizza with my work colleagues, a quick and easy find in the first place I looked. SL, TFTC!
This checkin to GCA7Q4A Elephant Parade reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Big thanks to the cache owner for their note, letting me know that the cache location is still accessible. Somehow I’d not seen the obvious route. Followed a family of ducks and soon found the cache location. So excited I could jump for joy.
FP awarded in part for the lovely cache but mostly for the attentive CO who posted a note so promptly. TFTC!
This checkin to GCA1JJ5 Gemaal Mercatorstraat reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
My work colleagues from around the world have gathered for a meeting at a hotel near here. I woke a little early this morning and so I decided to come out and try to find a couple of geocaches before our team meeting starts.
After failing to find nearby GCA7Q4A “Elephant Parade” owing to construction work, I was hopeful of a find here. The coordinates put me exactly on top of a likely hiding place, and with a little exploration (and some pretending to tie my shoes!) I had the cache in my hand. SL, TFTC.
Listened for water pumping but couldn’t hear any over the traffic noise, I’m afraid! Greetings from Oxfordshire, UK.
This checkin to GCA7Q4A Elephant Parade reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Finding the elephant and the numbers was easy.
But some construction is happening at the GZ and I couldn’t see a safe/permitted way to get close. 😢
This checkin to GCADMXH Rembrandt park #3 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
I’ve recently changed team at work, so my new team and I have gotten together – from the UK, France, Poland, India and South Africa – here in Amsterdam to meet up in person and do some work “together” for a change: normally we work entirely distributed. After our day of work we did an escape room together, then on our way to dinner I dragged them out of their way a bit to find this geocache.
Quick easy find, TFTC! Greetings from Oxfordshire, UK (and from many other corners of the world, courtesy of Team Desire from Automattic!).
This checkin to GC7B9CP Platform 9 3/4 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Even on a Monday morning the muggles are lining up to hold the trolley. Not me. As an actual magician, I’ve no need for such frivolities. Instead, as I’m passing anyway on my way to a train to an entirely different magical land (The Netherlands), I just snapped a selfie with the sign visible in the background. Easy peasy. TFTC.
This checkin to GC1TK6P Narrow Minded reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
QEF while out hunting for some breakfast this morning between trains on my journey from Oxford to Amsterdam for a work meetup. Lovely thematic cache container in a great spot. FP awarded. TFTC.
Hey, this is my 100th post of 2024!1
1 This being my 100th post relies on you using non-pedant counting, that is: allowing “checkins” like this to count as fully-fledged blog posts. There’s more thought given to this question in my blog post about Kev Quirk’s #100DaysToOffload challenge, but the short answer seems to be that the challenge’s creator would count this as my 100th post of the year, so perhaps you should too. If you don’t, though, then I’ve so-far published 74 posts this year and – thanks to Bloganuary and a general renewed focus on blogging I’m probably still on-track to make 100. And if I remember to do so I’ll post a footnote for you pedants when I do.
This checkin to GCAP4K8 Village Hall Series 1573 - Standlake reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
FTF! Can’t remember the last time I got one of those; it’s been a while. I woke up this morning thinking about an errand I need to run today that would take me near Standlake when I saw the notification that new cache had appeared.
Spurred into action, I opted to do my chore first thing… and find this geocache while on the way there. Parked up at the village hall and quickly found the sign and all the requisite numbers. Spent a little while looking at the wrong host before spotting the other likely candidate, after which the cache was in hand.
Didn’t bring tweezers in my haste to leave the house, and I trimmed my nails just the other day, so retrieving the log book was a bit of a challenge. Eventually I was successful; log signed and retrieved. So nice to see an empty logbook for once! I’m usually beaten to these things by (CO) muddy legs or Go Catch!
This checkin to GC2W6AF Babel Fish reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
The younger child and I had an initially fruitless search in, under and around the nearby bridge before we had the sense to insert our babel fishes, after which the hint item became clear to us. A short search later the cache was in hand. SL, TNLN, TFTC!
This checkin to GC51F07 Knapwell one and a half reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
The second of two caches found on a morning walk from the nearby Cambridge Belfry Hotel, where some fellow volunteers and I met yesterday for a meeting. This cache looked so close, but being on the other side of the A428 meant that my route to get from one to the other side of the trunk road necessitated a long and circuitous route around half a dozen (ill-maintained) pegasus crossings around the perimeter of two large roundabouts! Thankfully traffic was quiet at this point if a Saturday morning.
Cache itself was worth the effort though. Feels like it’s increasingly rare to find a large, appropriately-camouflaged, well looked-after cache in a nice location, so FP awarded. TFTC!
This checkin to GC10ZT3 Off Yer Trolley! (Cambourne) reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Even early on a Saturday morning, after a volunteering event the previous day at the hotel across the road, this highly-exposed GZ made me feel vulnerable! It’s not as though anybody were actually watching me as I stood around nonchalantly at the GZ waiting for an opportunity to make a search: a couple of shop workers setting up, maybe, and a handful of drivers going past… but what got me was that every time I looked up from my rummaging I spotted, in the corner of my eye, a police officer standing to attention just on the other side of the car park, staring intently in my direction!
The copper in question, of course, was nothing more than a cardboard cut-out designed to spook shoplifters, but man that’s a chilling thing to spot in your peripheral vision when you’re rooting around in the bushes for a concealed container in a quiet car park!
Signed the log and took a selfie with my law enforcement friend (attached) before getting back to my day. TFTC!
This checkin to GC8TNPE Incy Wincy reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
The elder child and I are staying nearby and couldn’t resist coming to a nearby cache with so many FPs. The name gave us a bit of a clue what we would be looking for but nothing could have prepared us for for this imaginative and unusual container! FP awarded. Attached is very non-spoiler photo of us with our very own Incy Wincies. Greetings from Oxfordshire!
I thought it might be fun to try to map the limits of my geocaching/geohashing. That is, to draw the smallest possible convex polygon that surrounds all of the geocaches I’ve found and geohashpoints I’ve successfully visited.
Mathematically, such a shape is a convex hull – the smallest polygon encircling a set of points without concavity. Here’s how I made it:
1. Extract all the longitude/latitude pairs for every successful geocaching find and geohashpoint expedition. I keep them in my blog database, so I was able to use some SQL to fetch them:
SELECT DISTINCT coord_lon.meta_value lon, coord_lat.meta_value lat FROM wp_posts LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta expedition_result ON wp_posts.ID = expedition_result.post_id AND expedition_result.meta_key = 'checkin_type' LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta coord_lat ON wp_posts.ID = coord_lat.post_id AND coord_lat.meta_key = 'checkin_latitude' LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta coord_lon ON wp_posts.ID = coord_lon.post_id AND coord_lon.meta_key = 'checkin_longitude' LEFT JOIN wp_term_relationships ON wp_posts.ID = wp_term_relationships.object_id LEFT JOIN wp_term_taxonomy ON wp_term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = wp_term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id LEFT JOIN wp_terms ON wp_term_taxonomy.term_id = wp_terms.term_id WHERE wp_posts.post_type = 'post' AND wp_posts.post_status = 'publish' AND wp_term_taxonomy.taxonomy = 'kind' AND wp_terms.slug = 'checkin' AND expedition_result.meta_value IN ('Found it', 'found', 'coordinates reached', 'Attended');
2. Next, I determine the convex hull of these points. There are an interesting variety of algorithms for this so I adapted the Monotone Chain approach (there are convenient implementations in many languages). The algorithm seems pretty efficient, although that doesn’t matter much to me because I’m caching the results for a fortnight.
3. Finally, I push the hull coordinates into Geoapify, who provide mapping services to me. My full source code is available.
An up-to-date (well, no-more than two weeks outdated) version of the map appears on my geo* stats page. I don’t often get to go caching/hashing outside the bounds already-depicted, but I’m excited to try to find opportunities to push the boundaries outwards as I continue to explore the world!
(I could, I suppose, try to draw a second larger area of places I’ve visited: the difference between the smaller and larger areas would represent all of the opportunities I’d missed to find a hashpoint!)