Tag Archives: geocaching

Memory Bugs Are Off!

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I launched some memory sticks into the wild, using the Geocaching network as a medium. This weekend they’ve both been dropped into new caches by Geocachers. Thanks people.. keep it going! :o)

One of them has gone about 5 miles, towards Stockport. The other is about 25 miles away in Cheshire. Hurray!

Also my geocaches are getting a fair bit of attention, I’ve had about 4 or 5 visits to them over the weekend. Apparently one of them is a bit spartan, so I need to visit it and reload it with some goodies.

Geocaching Memory Bugs

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I’ve already released USB memory sticks loose into the wild – as it were. I called those BlogCrossing. Each BlogCrossing is a self-contained WordPress blog (like this one) and the idea is that each person that has the memory stick in their possession should make some sort of contribution, in the form of a blog post.

Geocaching!

Geocaching with Caiti and Demelza. We found this Knight travel bug just by the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, I took him to Manchester.

I saw it as the inverse of blogging, rather than being written by an individual and available to the masses this blog is written by many people but can only be read by a single person at one time.

Recently I’ve become more and more enamored with geocaching – via geocaching.com – and I thought combining the traveling memory stick concept with geocaching would work great. For those who don’t know, geocaching is (according to the ever-present Wikipedia):

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called “geocaches” or “caches”) anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook and “treasure,” usually toys or trinkets of little value.

Geocaching websites offer things called Travel Bugs. These are generally metal dog-tags that you can purchase for a small fee. Each one has a unique identification number on it and they can be attached to anything you like. These items can be tracked via geocaching.com.

So the idea is that people take my USB memory sticks from place to place and contribute items of digital media along the way. In the long-run I will create online (and maybe offline) exhibitions of the generated content.

In the short term, I’ve created my own geocaches as starting places for the memory sticks. The memory sticks themselves will be taken away, but the geocaches will remain.

Links to the relevant pages on geocaching.com:

In due course I’ll post any further info about the geocache’d memory sticks here.

Geocaching Manchester

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I laid my first ever geocache yesterday in Platt Fields park, Manchester. Hurray!

Geocaching is a kind of game, where “cachers” hide small containers which contain a logbook and a prize of some description. Anyone can go and hunt the cache – and take the prize – by logging onto the geocaching website (http://geocaching.com/) and obtaining the latitude and longitude of any given cache. Using a GPS device you can then (easily) find the cache. You must always replace anything you take from the cache with something else.

I discovered the concept last summer, but haven’t done a great deal of it. I have found 3 or 4 other caches around Manchester.

The one I laid is in Platt Fields Park and contains a disposable camera. The idea is that everyone who finds it take a photograph of themselves. I will then develop the pictures and them here, and also on the cache’s page on the geocaching website.

Second Life Art

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I’m collaborating on a project with various people on my course to create “David Bowie World” on Second Life. That is a separate post on its own – but its got me to thinking about a few things:

  • Geocaching for Second Life (or a Geocaching-like game)
  • Photobombing for Second Life
  • Travel-bug games for Second Life (passing a “token” around many people) – this is my favourite. It’d be cool to track the bugs path through SL but also track where the people involved are in real life.

Geocaching; Personal Procrastination

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I’m becoming increasing frustrated with my inability to record my music in a efficient manner. Procrastination is a big problem as is occasional lethargy. Also I find it difficult to defer my desires to mess about with my various other projects that are on-going.

Today’s procrastinative displacement activity is giving some much needed attention to this blog.

Photobombing has attracted some comments from various people on the internet and is still smouldering away by itself, which is really encouraging. I really want to get it properly sorted, so its a more cohesive system and accessible to anyone (which unfortunately it is not at the moment). I think that is going to involve quite a lot of re-learning how to program – but should be fun in its own right.

I was particularly pleased yesterday when I stumbled across Imran Ali’s blog and his post about photobombing. Its so good to see/hear/know that people other than myself are attracted to the concept. Imran summated photobombing with this, it isn’t quite correct (I don’t think) but this is probably how photobombing should operate:

I guess it’s basically the inverse of geotagging, rather than tagging a digital map with digital photos, you tag a physical place with real photos :)

A (cool) twist of fate is that he discovered the concept of photobombing via geotagging which is something I’ve been extremely interested with lately.

Speaking of geotagging, I’ve finally got my mobile phone/bluetooth GPS and camera combination to work smoothly, so in future I can ensure all my photographs will be geotagging automatically. But I’ve also discovered the phenomenon of geocaching. What am amazing thing this is. A network of “cachers” maintain thousands of caches throughout the globe. A cache can be any sort of container, and will contain a log book and official geocaching.com paperwork. Sometimes there are gifts inside, or puzzles, riddles, clues to find another geocache – anything! Anyhow, all the cache’s and their GPS co-ordinates are available on the website and anyone who so wishes can go in search of them. Its great fun, I recommend it to all.

I am certainly going to combine my photobombing escapades with geocaching.

Sometimes I wish time went twice as slow, or me twice as fast.