Group Photo

As part of my continued search for pictures of myself on the internet, please see this picture from Canada in May.

Waymarking Santa Barbara

Last year, I spent my free afternoon at this conference in Santa Barbara geocaching. This year, it was time for some waymarking. I was particularly interested in increasing my category count. Yesterday, I told you I was at 73; now it's 95. Here is an assortment of pictures from an afternoon of waymarking. Some are interesting; some are mundane -- like the waymarking categories. Annoyingly, some require me to put my GPS receiver in the picture in order to get credit. Enjoy.
 
 
 
 

Tweet Tweet Tweet

I try to keep on top of various trends in the way people use the Internet and the web. I don't want to be the old guy wondering about this Wikipedia thing all the kids are using.

Partially for this reason, I set up a Twitter account. Twitter is similar to Blogger, but it limits you to 160 characters per post (or "tweet"). In fact, it was founded by one of the creators of Blogger. While it may seem strange to want to use a less-functional version of an existing tool, constraints can force users to be more creative.

I first became aware of Twitter through Slate's John Dickerson, who posts wry comments like, "The discovery of Big Foot's body has forced political insiders to reluctantly cross its name off the list of likely Vice Presidential picks." While I enjoy his work on Slate, some of his tweets are particularly funny.

I don't recommend my Twitter page to non-Twitter users, even if you find me interesting enough to read this blog...there's just not much there. But if you are using Twitter (or if this post intrigues you enough to start), go ahead and start "following" me -- maybe I'll return the favor.

(Technical note: if you use an RSS reader like Google Reader, you can also follow me here.)

LAX Blues

 

Yesterday, my flight got into LAX only 10 minutes late, which seemed to be a good omen. Sadly, when I went to collect my baggage, it did not arrive. After going through two broken baggage status machines, I found one which told me that my baggage was arriving on the next flight, an hour and a half later. This information did not make any sense -- I had checked in early for a direct flight -- why would my bags be on a later flight. I confirmed the location of my luggage with a baggage service agent, who could offer no explanation for what had happened.

With some time to kill before my luggage arrived, I decided to go for a walk. As I mentioned in my previous post, there is a Googie waymark at LAX that I was hoping to find. It was easy to cross the first set of traffic lanes, but for some reason traffic did not seem to want to stop for me on the second set of lanes. As I made it across, I saw that there was in fact a traffic signal and an associated "Don't Walk" sign that I was violated. Also seeing this fact was a cop, who came over and wrote me a jaywalking ticket. Sigh. I don't think I'll be able to pass that off on my expense report.

After returning to baggage claim and collecting my suitcase, I headed back across the easy set of traffic lanes to catch the Avis bus. As the bus was pulling away from the curb, it stopped. It seems the bus had hit a SmarteCarte and wedged it between the bus and curb. The bus driver would have to back up, and he asked me to dislodge the cart. I was happy to do so. Last week, at Dulles, Christina and I had been tricked by a SmarteCarte guy into giving up an unused carte. We saw it, and then he came up and pretended that it had been his. When we backed off, he immediately returned it. Christina stopped me from yelling at him, and a flight attendant stopped by to offer her sympathy.

After the Avis bus backed up, I hopped out, cell phone camera in hand, to dislodge the carte and record the damage for posterity. Unfortunately, the carte would not budge. I hopped back in, the bus driver backed up some more, and some good Samaritans deprived me of my photo op by removing the carte themselves.

After driving by the Googie waymark, I headed out on the 2-hour drive to Santa Barbara. I had missed the conference's opening reception, so I stopped off at El Pollo Loco. The one bright spot of the delay is that it allows me to claim the dinner per diem on my expense report. Since that's $29 and my dinner was $7, in the unlikely event that the jaywalking ticket is $22 or less, I really will be able to put it on my expense report. (In a sense.)

Waymarking Bingo

 

I've been doing more waymarking than geocaching lately. I have a couple of main motivations for this -- one, if I'm in an urban/suburban area, waymarking doesn't require me to dig around suspiciously. Two, if I have a choice of areas, I lean towards the area without ticks.

A secondary motivation, however, is waymarking bingo. For each category of waymarks (e.g., pyramids, sushi restaurants, "you are here" signs) that I log, I get an icon on my user page. Above, you can see rows 19-37 of my user page (the current page is here). As of this morning, I have 73 out of a possible 752 categories.

Some waymarkers have introduced the concept of "waymarking bingo", which they defined as 20 icons in a row, column or diagonal. Very few waymarkers have achieved this. I feel like I've been doing a lot of waymarking, and the best I have done is 4 in a row (row 33). It'll probably be a long time before I get a bingo. You might think row 33 is my most promising row, since I already have 4 in a row. But row 33 contains such tricky categories as Abandoned Air Force Radar Sites, Martello Towers and Holy Wells. There are 13 existing waymarks worldwide in the first category, 14 in the second, and 29 in the third. I don't expect to be in the neighborhood of them any time soon.

I can always wait for someone to create a more convenient waymark in one of these categories or even - gasp - do the research and create one myself. For categories like KFC and 7-11, that's easy...and then I get to put them on my "ignore" list, since I'm not really interested in seeing more than one. For the above categories, that could be a little trickier.

Truthfully, I'm more interested right now in filling out the grid as much as possible than in getting "bingo". It's interesting to hunt down the rarer icons. When I was at LAX last night, I noticed I was near an example of Googie architecture. Since there aren't any examples near home, I decided to find that one. It turned out to be the most expensive waymark find yet, but that's a tale for another post...

Round and Round

 

On my break from a conference in DC today, I walked to a virtual geocache that required me to walk a labyrinth carved into the ground and follow a very specific set of instructions.

Right as you enter the labyrinth, you'll notice the only place where the lines of the labyrinth cross. As you round the labyrinth, keep track of how many times you go past that point on the way to the center. (In other words, if there was a line drawn on the ground from that point to the southwest edge of the labyrinth, how many times would you cross that line on your journey to the center.)

I wasn't sure I followed the instructions correctly, so I took a picture, came home and re-traced my steps. (I had.)

Then I noticed that the cache "owner" -- who is the only one who could prevent me from logging the cache due to a wrong answer -- hasn't logged on in a year. So I didn't really need to do this. So it doesn't go to waste, I share it with you here.

Snorkeling La Jolla Cove

 

Yesterday, Christina, some co-workers and I went to La Jolla Cove to do some snorkeling. I took along the waterproof camera case Christina had gotten me for Christmas last year. It's really a neat device -- a complicated mechanical setup that gives you access to all of the camera's functions, while protecting the camera.

I assumed it would work, but I was a little nervous. I needn't have been -- it survived the snorkeling completely dry. I took a lot of bad pictures, and a couple that turned out well. When we got back, I figured out how to set the camera in "underwater" mode -- I'll have to remember that for next time.

Elfball

 

Since Christina is a very enthusiastic Elfquest fan, we went to the Elfquest panel, where the big news was the forthcoming Elfquest movie. They announced that it was going to be directed by the guy who did the Dodgeball movie. Sensing some potential skepticism from the fan base, they decided to meet it head on, with the above tounge-in-cheek graphic. The director's tales of reading the Elfquest stories as an 11-year-old did a better job of mollifying the crowd, however.

More from Comic-con (with video!)

As mentioned earlier, we got ice cream from the cast of Eureka. Christina talks about this, and more, on her blog.

Below, you can see her question the Eureka panel about what exactly was up with that ice cream...

Richard Hatch

 

I was going to post a longer Comic-con recap, but I don't really have the time or energy, so here's a picture of Richard Hatch, star of Battlestars Galactica past and present. More pictures to follow.

Comic-con

We're having a good time @ Comic-con. We went back to the car after lunch to drop stuff off and ran into the cast of Eureka shooting promo photos in front of an ice cream truck. They gave us ice cream.

Now we're at their panel.

2 California Virtuals

 

After I got off work today, we went down into La Jolla and visited two virtual geocaches. The first centered on this strange monument. The key to it is apparently here; it is a way of circumventing a ban on explicit memorials, I guess.

The second one involved reading an inscription off a bench. We beat a hasty retreat when the guy on the bench started talking to us of aliens and other such things.

In my goal of getting all virtuals (and similar) within 70 miles of home, I briefly got the number down to 121 with a visit to "Jug Bridge" in Frederick earlier this month, but someone posted a new earthcache in Calvert County, so I'm back up to 122.

Peace Pole

We're out here in California. I don't have anything exciting to report, so I thought I'd share pictures of us at a peace pole. Just another random thing I wouldn't have found had it not been for waymarking.

 

 

Obama T-shirt

 

Right before the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, I got an appeal from the Obama campaign for money. Unlike previous appeals, this one promised a t-shirt if I donated $30. I waited and waited, and no t-shirt arrived. After the primaries were over, I e-mailed them about the shirt, but got no response. I really hit the roof on June 26th when I got another request for $30 with the promise of a t-shirt. I e-mailed them again. And waited.

After another couple of weeks without the shirt, I finally posted a blog entry on their site demanding my t-shirt. Of course, that was yesterday, and the t-shirt arrived today. As much as I like to believe they responded to my outcry, it's just a coincidence. Now I almost wish I had sent $30 for that other t-shirt...

Bronze Earthcache Master

I first mentioned earthcaches in the context of my trip to Banff last month. Run by the Geological Society of America, the earthcache program encourages people to visit sites of geological significance and learn something about them. I visited three in the Banff area.

Soon afterwards, I learned about the Earthcache Masters program. By visiting three earthcaches in two states or countries, I could qualify as a "Bronze Earthcache Master". Since all of my finds were in Canada, I needed to visit one some place else. So after Christina and I visited one near Laurel a week or two ago, I sent my information in. Today in the mail I received my very own bronze earthcache master pin.

To reach silver, I need to visit a couple more and involve at least one more state/country. That's the easy part. The hard part is that I would have to place an earthcache myself. That would involve finding an interesting geological feature, writing it up, and perhaps most challengingly, getting permission from the park or wherever it ends up. I haven't decided whether I'm up for that; I guess I'll try visiting the next two first and see how that goes.

Geocaching: Maryland County Map

Well, the It's Not About the Numbers site is improving, so I can post this new Maryland county map. I'm up to 8 counties with the addition of Charles. Also, I've bumped my PG County total into the double digits, and I now have at least two finds in each of the surrounding counties.

I suspect the far reaches of the state -- the Western Panhandle, the parts of the Eastern Shore not right across the bridge -- will require coordination with special trips. In particular, the western counties might be do-able on the way to ski at Wisp next winter.

Geocaching Update: Virtuals and Charles County

Yesterday and today I made progress on two of my geocaching goals. First, I knocked the number of remaining caches in my self-imposed "virtual challenge" down from 125 to 122. Second, I increased my number of Maryland counties with cache finds by 1, to 8 (out of 24*).

 

Friday evening, Christina and I went to the Fairland Regional Park, near Laurel, where a display on stormwater management served as an earthcache. It was fun to walk around. We made an abortive attempt to find a physical cache as well, but found 4 deer instead.

 

Today, I went driving around to do some caching while Christina hung out with my Aunt Sally. My main goal was Charles County, but along the way I decided to visit a virtual cache in Prince George's County. Along the way to that, I found myself driving through DC near another virtual -- a giant chair.

 

After the giant chair, it was time to visit National Harbor, PG County's new billion-dollar waterfront development. A statue of a giant buried in sand had recently been moved from DC. Since the statue was a virtual cache, the cache moved, too.

 

After that, I drove down to Charles County. Pictured is the first cache I found, cleverly disguised as a birdhouse. I found a second for good measure before returning home.

Unfortunately, the site I use to generate all those neat stats is having technical problems, so it may be a while before I post them again. I donated $5 and sent some words of encouragement. I also posted in the geocaching forums inviting others to do the same, so hopefully that will do some good.

*Including Baltimore City as a county, for these purposes.

Geocaching: Virtual Challenge

As previously mentioned, I've been enjoying doing virtual caches lately. As also previously mentioned, no new virtual caches have been allowed since 2005. I decided to combine these observations by trying to do all virtual caches within 70 miles of home. Since nobody can create virtual caches any more, I don't have to worry about new ones popping up faster than I find them.

To throw a wrinkle into the plan, I am also allowing two types of virtual-like caches: earthcaches and webcame caches. Webcam caches are ones where you go to the coordinates and then get somebody in front of a compute to find you on a particular Internet-connected camera. They save that picture, which is your proof of having visited that "cache". I have never tried one of these, but I figure they fall into the spirit of virtual caches.

I did three earthcaches in Canada last month. Unlike virtual caches or webcam caches, people are allowed to create new ones. On the other hand, there are only 26 on my list, so I don't feel like I'm in much danger that they'll be created too quickly for me to handle.

Why 70 miles? Two reasons. One is that I'm about 62 miles from Gettysburg, so that distance is far enough to include a trip up there to get the virtual caches there. The other reason is that right now there are 125 left to do within 70 miles, so it makes a nice number from which to begin my countdown.

I thought I'd post about this goal, so I could give updates in the future. I'll probably get started this weekend. 27 of the 28 closest caches on my list are in DC, so that makes a good way to get a bunch at a time. I've plotted a walk around the western section of the Mall that should get 12. On the other hand, some of the other caches are fairly remote....I'd be surprised if I finished within a year.

Sweden?!

 
I dropped off my Free State Mover #3 geocoin in Banff last month with the mission "to return to the United States, specifically Maryland, specifically inside the Capital Beltway."

I included with the coin a note explaining the mission. I figured it would be easier to get this one back than the ones I had dropped off in England and Austria. So you can imagine my surprise this morning when I discovered the coin had ended up in Sweden. Sigh.

Cache Stats Fever

Since I last posted about my geocaching activities, I've been on somewhat of a tear, by my standards, finding 9 caches in a span of 4 days. I enjoyed finding 2 virtual caches in DC over Memorial Day weekend, so took the Metro into town again and found 7 more last weekend.
One of them involved posing with a statue of John Pershing.

Then, on Monday, I got an alert about a cache placed 0.2 miles from my "home coordinates". It was a very small cache (a "nano"), which I don't find too interesting, but I stopped by on the way home on the chance that I might be "first to find". I was a couple of minutes too late, but I watched someone else find it (which was actually preferable, as I didn't have to find the silly thing hidden in a stop sign).



Yesterday, I was at a conference in Gaithersburg, so between the conference and a reception, I headed out to another virtual cache. This one was based on Coffin Rock, from the Blair Witch Project movie. I dunno, never saw it, but it was an interesting 1/4-mile hike to the rock.

All this is by way of saying I've been pumping up my statistics and am eager to update them. One motivation for finding 7 in a day over the weekend is that it replaced a day last August as my "best day"; I only found 3 then, and it didn't seem particularly great.

 

Instead of maps, this time you're getting a much more compact representation of where I've been caching. Note the additions of Canada and DC with multiple finds each. The number of counties in Maryland is off by 1 because it lists the stop-sign cache as "uncalculated", rather than Prince George's County. I'll have to send an e-mail about that...hmm, it's since cleared up on the site.

 

Looking at the chart of terrain and difficulty ratings made me realize how many of the ones I've been doing have been clustered in the upper left. One reason for doing the stop-sign nano was to get a difficulty higher than 2.5. I may select caches to get specific terrain/difficulty combos in the future.