Monthly Archives: August 2011

Geocaching

Ten Years of Geocaching

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It’s now been over ten years since I started Geocaching, the worldwide game that started when the US government turned off selective availability on the worldwide GPS system giving the accuracy that we now rely on for satellite navigation systems in our cars, and that allowed Dave Ulmer to hide a plastic bucket, and Mike Teague to find it purely from the location details Dave posted on the sci.geo.satellite-nav newsgroup back in May 2000.

We got started back on Spring Bank Holiday in May 2001, finding GC171 – View from Coombe Hill which amazingly is still there a decade later – you can see proof of that in this collage of pictures from the camera in the cache. Many of our early finds are now gone, although another cache that is over a decade old now is our own GCBE3 – The Queens Oak which has been hidden in four different spots over the years around St James’ in Finchampstead – it’s had to move a couple of times due to maintenance work on the church grounds exposing the hiding place, and once because of safety concerns over a wall. It’s also been totally replaced with a new container following an incidence of cache trashing.

We’re certainly not high scoring cachers if you look at our stats – although it’s worth remembering that back when we were caching frequently the caches were a lot further apart – my nearest hundred caches covered about half the country, now I have one hundred caches within a few miles. Over the years we’ve tended to cache on holidays mostly, and to be honest after delving into cacher politics for a bit with approving caches, and being one of the founders of the Geocaching Association of Great Britain I’ve largely kept a low profile.

What is interesting though is looking at how the game has changed over ten years. Back at the beginning you needed what could be regarded as a pretty specialist bit of kit to play the game, now with millions of people across the country having a GPS enabled smartphone almost anybody can join in easily.

I’m also somewhat amused now at one of the biggest early rows, which related to a local cacher around here, a chap called Robin Lovelock. He owns a company producing GPS software and hid a lot of geocaches in the local area, but alongside the usual trinkets put a copy of his software and a business card in each cache. This caused uproar on the cache forums because it was commercialising the game, and because of the cache density – one person said to me that he didn’t want the game to be such that you were tripping over a cache on every corner. What is amusing now is firstly that Groundspeak are quite happily running a commercial business based around the game and were back then, but more importantly the cache density in our area is now way in advance of the number that Robin placed back then – indeed from St James’ there is a circuit of over twenty caches that can be completed in a couple of hours.

Beth with the UK Project A.P.E. Geocache Another change is the size of the caches.

I started to notice things were changing a couple of years back when people finding our Queens Oak cache started commenting on how big the box was. From my point of view, when I hid it most caches were ammo cans, and the tupperware container we used was a pretty average size. Certainly it wasn’t the biggest – that honour goes to the UK Project A.P.E. Cache, GC12AD – Mission 10b: Meridian Snake. As a side story, this cache I actually ended up making two trips to in order to be first to find. The first trip was about an hour after the location had been published, at which point I discovered that Groundspeak had screwed up the coordinates, having returned home, moaned online and had the correct coordinates I then drove back down and was first to find the next morning. The picture here shows Beth with the cache container – I guess you can see why I was surprised at people describing our little tupperware tub as big.

To be honest having a cache this big doesn’t exactly make the game difficult – you could see this one across the field from where it was, which is kind of why it didn’t last that long. Having the smaller caches does make the game more challenging, even if it does mean that the space for swaps is somewhat less.

Going along with the size change there are now more micro-caches, even in rural areas, which didn’t seem to be done when we started. Our micro-cache was placed in an urban area, but recently I’ve found micro-caches hidden in false rocks, magnetically attached to the top of a direction sign, and even a magnetic key container attached to the underside of a rural post box.

What hasn’t changed though is that it is still a relatively unknown activity – certainly with the recent geocache bomb scare it was pretty clear that nobody in the local police organisation knew anything about the game, and that is despite regular TV spots over the past ten years, including one featuring a somewhat younger Richard and Beth!

There is still a regular influx of new people starting the game, promotion from GPS manufacturers, and word of mouth promotion. I suspect we’ll be doing more caches as the children get older. Lucy has already come on a couple of cache hunts with me, and seemed to enjoy the treasure hunt, and with 1.3 million caches worldwide we’re not going to run out of things to find any time soon.

Cars

Driving Economically

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Last week Beth’s car was in the garage having some work done on it for the day, so as a courtesy car we were given an 11 plate Ford Fiesta with the 1.25l Zetec engine. In some ways this was a bit of a flashback for both of us as ten years ago we had two of the earlier version of the car with the same engine. Needless to say it reminded me why I prefer having a diesel engine in a car as I really missed the low rev torque you get with a diesel compared to a petrol.

Having said that, there was one thing that was really annoying.

I spotted it as soon as I drove up to the end of our road. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a warning light come up on the dashboard, but when I stopped at the junction it was gone, it came up again a short time later and was again gone when I stopped. Eventually I spotted it was a green upward pointing arrow – the gear shift indicator that is now standard on all of Ford’s ECOnetic models. The official paperwork suggests that the gear shift indicator senses the way the vehicle is being driven, taking account of road gradient, vehicle load and individual driving style and identifies the most suitable gear change point. However in this case whatever the road was doing the most suitable gear change point consistently came up at 2000rpm.

Having established what the mystery light was it was then interesting to see when illuminated. Much like an automatic gearbox it has no idea of the road ahead so would come on with some crazy suggestions such as just before a hill, or coming up to a corner, but what was particularly interesting was that for a 40mph road if you follow the gear change indicator and stay within the speed limit the engine was noticeably labouring, but stay down a gear the light was almost permanently on. You could lower your speed a little to get rid of the light which would certainly reduce consumption, but given that everybody else is doing 40mph what will that do? Increasing revs to stop the engine labouring would work too, but then you’d be speeding.

Indicating when to change gear to highlight fuel consumption is laudable, but producing more efficient cars isn’t just about sticking a light on the dashboard. You also have to ensure that the cars encourage rather than discourage that behaviour. Improving fuel consumption is certainly about changing up earlier, but it is also about minimising gear changes, i.e. you want the car to be able to cruise without having to change up and down a lot. For UK roads this means that the car needs to be able to be at comfortable mid-range revs at 30mph especially, similarly at 40mph. With the Fiesta – and this was a problem with ours even ten years ago, thanks to the gearing, 40mph sits just at the point where you’re changing up.

Before everybody leaps in and points out the reason, I’m well aware that the Fiesta is developed for the European market, where everybody else has speed limits in kilometres not miles, which means that road speeds are all a bit different, so it’s quite likely this won’t be a problem across the channel, or even across the Irish Sea, but equally they have to especially make cars for the UK market with right-hand drive. Gearing a car differently for UK roads is probably too expensive, and since the UK won an exemption to the requirement to go metric for roads switching to kilometres here is unlikely to happen, but surely it’s not a problem to at the very least change the programming on the indicator so it doesn’t keep flashing up at 40mph?

General, Health Issues 2011

Diet and Lifestyle Changes

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This post is one of a series about the ongoing health issues I have had recently beginning in February 2011.

Once the GP and Ear Nose and Throat specialist had established that there wasn’t really anything significant wrong, the general advice was that I needed to ride out the infections, but would benefit from some lifestyle changes.

Of course this is the same sort of general healthy living advice that I suspect most people get when they visit their GP – certainly a colleague at work said he gets much the same every visit to his GP, however like most people I wasn’t eating as healthily as I could, and certainly wasn’t getting enough exercise.

I’d already changed some things as a result of the effects of the post nasal drip. For two or three months I’d been getting morning nausea, which really wasn’t helped by having milk on cereal in the morning. For part of the time I’d just cut out the cereal, but that left me feeling decidedly hungry by lunchtime. Since the previous belief that too many eggs were bad for you had been changed recently I decided to try poached eggs for breakfast – Sam had already developed a bit of a liking for eggs for breakfast too, so it wasn’t too much of a problem to change. The change was also beneficial in cutting my sugar intake, as the muesli I was having had rather a lot of sugar I discovered when I was advised to cut down.

So why cut down on sugar? If you take a look at this WebMD list of immune system busters and boosters third on the list is sugar intake – apparently it can have a dramatic effect on the immune system and it’s ability to fight infection, indeed Sinus Survival, one of a number of deal with your sinus problem guides that are available recommends cutting refined sugar and dairy products totally when you are suffering from a sinus infection.

I’ve had not too much problem cutting out sugar as I’ve never been a great one for snacks, however when the birthday cakes come out at work I have to keep temptation under control. Having said that wanting to end months of being ill is a good way to keep it at bay!

Dairy wise again I’ve pretty well cut it out, but then I never had much dairy anyway, aside from milk on breakfast cereal I’ve just had to stop having cheese. Beth has also cut down on sugar and dairy, although going dairy free was something she was thinking about anyway having had a friend who had children who were lactose intolerant, and had gone dairy free as a family for convenience, and then ended up feeling better for it. In the case of sinus problems the reason for doing so is that dairy products are believed to cause an increase in mucus production, so by cutting it out it reduces the mucus.

The other recommendation from the GP was to start taking some multivitamins, so I’ve joined Beth and the children in taking my vitamins every morning – initially an immune building mix but subsequently myself and Beth are both having the same standard multivitamin.

Alongside this we’ve increased our fruit intake – so we’re certainly eating more than our five a day I’m sure. But the big change on my part is that I’m making time for a walk, often at lunchtime, but with a longer walk at weekends.

Although I work in a town centre, I’m lucky that five minutes drive up the road are the RMA Sandhurst training grounds. Although I have tried walking up there, in the limited time available in a lunchtime it means you end up spending 20-30 minutes walking alongside traffic choked roads, and only get a limited time out in the public parts of the training grounds. Driving up gives time for a 2-3km walk in the hour for lunch. There are plenty of paths to explore, and even a couple of geocaches that I’ve picked up. If I want a shorter walk, heading from the office up to the Camberley Obelisk is about 1km there and back, even if the Obelisk itself is in a bit of a sorry state nowadays and the view is mostly obscured by trees. (Saddleback Hill in the RMA Sandhurst training grounds gives a much better view.)

I’ve also done longer walks in and around Arborfield and Finchampstead. There is a nice circuit from St James’ down through the village and across to Fleet Hill and back, and there would be an equally nice circuit from home around to Arborfield village if it wasn’t for the fact that one key path from Langley Common Road to the village appears to end at a dead end at somebodies back fence! I’ve also picked up quite a few of the local geocaches over towards Farley Hill.

Certainly the diet changes and exercise are making me feel better, but until the hayfever season is over, it remains to be seen whether I’ll finally beat the sinus problems!

Current Affairs

Sorry Kelvin MacKenzie, Politics is at the Heart of This

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I should learn not to watch anything with Kelvin MacKenzie on it, I often think he could generate an antagonistic argument out of a shopping list, but given a subject such as the ongoing riots across the UK he is in his element.

Like a number of people over the past few days he was spouting the “it’s not about politics” line, before making what in actual fact is a political statement wrapping the whole thing up as criminality and thuggery “pure and simple”.

I’m sorry to say Kelvin MacKenzie but at the heart of that is a political question.

Hundreds and hundreds of people don’t just become criminal overnight – currently the arrest count has surpassed seven hundred people, so many all the police cells in the capital are full.

Hundreds and hundreds of people don’t just lose respect for their community and their neighbourhood overnight, it builds up over time.

Hundreds and hundreds of people don’t get to the point where they see looting shops and having running battles with the police as a fun night out.

It’s also not overnight that millions of people learn to ignore the behaviour of a small group of society as long as it doesn’t bother us.

There isn’t a simple answer to any of this, any given reason can be easily battered down on it’s own.

Poverty and deprived estates? Certainly could be part of the problem but there are deprived estates in almost every town and city, and most were quiet.

Cuts and austerity measures? Again could be part of the issue, but other places have the same issues and didn’t riot.

Poor Police/Community relations? This certainly seemed to be the spark in Tottenham, but not necessarily with the copycat outbreaks.

Bored kids, poor parenting? Again, this has been cited as an element, but most kids get bored during the summer holidays, many kids have difficult home lives, but the majority don’t go off looting.

Gang culture? An expert on the radio this morning highlighted that all of the outbreaks of violence in London correlated with nearby areas where gangs were a problem, even Enfield he said when challenged by the presenter. But are gang problems and the riots both symptoms of something else rather than one the cause of the other.

In many ways, what we have this week, in these places, is a perfect storm of a number of problems and situations, none of which on it’s own is enough, but together they combine.

Far from not being a political problem, this is a significant political problem, one which our politicians both local and national are going to have to take hold of. Making the rioters feel the full force of the law may in the short term deal with these people, but until the multitude of underlying causes are explored and addressed what really is going to change?

Current Affairs

This is Not Them – This is Us

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Everybody I know is shocked by the pictures filling our TV screens and on the front pages of our newspapers this morning. The airwaves are filled with harrowing stories of people losing everything as the mob burned their home, shopkeepers barricading themselves in their shops to try and protect their livelihoods, and kids and young people looting thousands of pounds worth of merchandise from the trashed stores.

There is also a lot of labelling going on, people calling them a variety of terms, but does the labelling allow us to hide the sad and much more difficult reality? This isn’t some foreign invader destroying our community, these are our own people. These are people brought up in the same country, educated in the same school system, they haven’t just arrived, they’ve been here for many years.

So what has changed now? The big thing seems to be organisation. Talk to anybody who lives in any sort of large, particularly deprived estate across the country and there are numerous reports week after week of kids hanging around causing trouble, bins set on fire, minor vandalism. There are the occasional big stories, for example kids in Finchampstead burning the community centre, cases where people have been pushed too far by so called anti-social behaviour, but it largely goes unreported and local. Now, with the realisation that the Police in this country keep control by consensus – as a retired Policeman on the radio this morning said with 30,000 officers the Met can’t stop 7,000,000 people from doing anything if they decide they want to loot their local trainer or mobile phone store – the trouble has spread beyond the estates, to places where it’s impossible to ignore and put down to a troubled area. Rather than torching bins they’re torching landmark stores that have served their communities for decades, buildings that survived the blitz, but were torched by people who are free because of the sacrifices the blitz generation made.

We can wail and howl about these criminals, but these criminals are people we as a country have created. However we deal with the immediate problem, Britain needs to take a long hard look at what we’ve been doing for decades to breed hundreds and hundreds of young people across the country who see it as acceptable to do this to their own community.

Above all we need to remember that it’s not “them”, much as we do not like it, this is “us”, these are British people burning and looting British communities.