3 August 2016 (Wednesday) - Before the Night Shift

Another good night’s sleep. I was sure I heard my dog bark twice in the night, but it is unlike him to do single or double barks. Normally he has a woofing fit. Perhaps one of us was dreaming.

After a quick bit of brekkie I took my dog for a walk. "Daddy’s Little Angel ^TM" and "Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction ^TM" were at brat brigade today so me and my dog walked alone. We met one or two other dogs as we went through the park. We saw OrangeHead and her chunky little friend in the distance but managed to avoid them.

The plan for the morning had been to do some gardening, but heavy rain meant that everywhere was soaked. So I contented myself with gathering up dog turds and draining the rain water out of the bucket of brindle chippings I’d inadvertently left to fill up with rain water.

With little else to do for the morning I had a look-see on-line. Yesterday I’d given the power company some meter readings. Today they emailed to say that my accounts were in credit with them. A few months ago they estimated that I would use far more leccie and gas than I have been doing and so *reduced* the monthly direct debits. Maybe they might want to reduce them some more?

I then did some more geo-admin for the geo-day I’m organizing in a couple of weeks’ time, and had a look at the geo-map vaguely wondering about a short walk on Sunday. If anyone is at a loose end on Sunday…

With the weather still less than ideal I caught up with watching some stuff the SkyPlus box had recorded for me. “The Last Ship” and “Dark Matter” passed a little time, then I spent the afternoon in bed.

I burned a pizza for my tea, and I’m off to the night shift now…

2 August 2016 (Tuesday) - Star Trek Beyond

I suppose both me and my dog were somewhat tired after yesterday’s road trip. We both slept like logs last night.

We got up to find heavy rain. Yesterday had definitely been the better day to do our road trip.

Over a spot of brekkie I checked my emails. I’d got the thumbs-down on one of the questions about yesterday’s Earthcache. The task was to go to a certain point and (using my GPS) measure the altitude. It turns out my phone was fifty metres out. After a little to-ing and fro-ing the chap accepted my answers, but I’m left wondering just what else is adrift on my phone.

I then took the bull by the horns and started using my new lap-top in anger. I say “using”; setting up was closer to the truth. To begin with, Microsoft Edge had to go. It seemed to be little more than Internet Explorer, and that was always pants. I started off downloading Google Chrome, but after a few minutes I decided I just couldn’t cope without a drop-down bookmark menu thingy. So I went back to Firefox.  It’s done me well over the years. I then activated my KnowHow cloud account. I can store no end of stuff there. I get the first year for free and then I have to pay for it. I wonder if I can get a similar thing free elsewhere. Mind you I’m not sure I’ll ever use it anyway.

After an hour I’d got to the stage where I had a browser that I liked and cloud storage that I probably would never use, and so decided to have a little break.

I’d spoken with "Daddies Little Angel ^TM" and we’d decided not to meet up today. The rain was against a walk. But seeing how the rain had subsided I took "Furry Face ^TM" round to the park. He gets fractious if he doesn’t go out. (Bit like me really). As we walked we saw that some trees by the river had fallen down overnight. Fudge was fascinated by this; he would have spent all day sniffing at them if I’d let him.

Fortunately, we didn’t meet anyone else as we walked; that always makes for a quicker outing.

Although we’d left home with no rain, the rain had returned as we walked. We were rather damp when we got home.

Once home I put some washing on, hoovered (with the Dyson) and fed the fish. I had intended spending a bit of time in the garden today, but it was a bit too damp for that. So I returned to the lap-top. It didn’t take long to install Paint Shop Pro (the package I use for farting about with photos) and so the lap-top was blog-capable if nothing else.

I then downloaded GSAK and got it registered. I also downloaded Urwigo. In theory the lap-top was now geo-capable too. I shall have to test it, but that can wait until later.

It was then time to transfer the data I wanted from the old lap-top (and leave behind that which I didn’t want). I started off with backing up three years’ worth of photos to the old hard drive I have upstairs (perhaps I might stick that lot onto cloud storage?). Over seven thousand photos took a while to shift.

I then had a rummage on the old lap-top. I discovered loads of stuff, and after a *lot* of farting about I decided to leave the vast majority of the stuff where it was. I’ve copied over that which I use on a regular basis. The rest of it can stay where it is until I need it rather than wasting time and disk space copying it never to use it again.

I was surprised at just how quickly I got the new lap-top to a state where it could take over from the old one.

Having a little time on my hands I then had a rummage through my letter rack. I had a letter from my Internet provider telling me they were pulling the plug on mankybadger dot com.  They apparently did that three weeks ago (!) because as a company they don’t do that sort of thing any more. Oh well; their loss. I suppose the Internet will just have to rough it with mankybadger dot co dot uk. I started farting about with that some time ago. I really should carry on doing something with it.

And flushed with success at how good yesterday’s Jasmer day went I planned another one. Starting with a drive to Welwyn Garden City the next ports of call would be Tring and Stoke Manderville, ending up in Harrow. If any of my geocaching readers fancy a day of lots of travelling about for five smiley faces please drop me a line.

I had a bit of toast for tea, then drove out to the cinema. Bearing in mind hardly anyone was available for the traditional Tuesday gathering I’d posted on Facebook asking if anyone fancied going to see the Star Trek film. Chris said he was up for it. I’m glad he was. Have you tried to buy a cinema ticket recently? The last time I went to the cinema was in 2014 to see the “Paddington” film and Cheryl had organized that. Prior to that I’d been to see the previous Star Trek film (in 2013) and that was with free tickets given to the astro club. Buying tickets is a right faff now. You have to choose where you want to sit. How would I know where I want to sit? Fortunately, Chris organized all that. All I had to do was get there and give him the dosh for my ticket.

I was surprised at just how busy the cinema was. And as for the film…. It was *very* good. There was all sorts of nods to the fans in there. Mind you if you are the sort of trekkie that has Star Trek tattoos and you pay *very* close attention there is one glaring inconsistency with the Star Trek mythos. I won’t give any spoilers but I will say “warp four”.

1 August 2016 (Monday) - Jasmer Day

"er indoors ^TM"'s alarm went off at 4am this morning. She and our overnight house guest (Jimbo) were going to collect Gordon Tracey and set off to the week-long national geo-event in Wales. I couldn't get the time off work to go to that (I'm working mid-week) and had had my sulk some time ago. So instead of sulking today I thought I'd have a geo-event of my own. I decided to have a jasmer day. The Jasmer challenge is to have found a geocache in every month since people first started hiding tupperware in the undergrowth. I was missing a few months, and so I'd planned a little road trip for me and my dog.

I left home a few minutes before 5am and set off to my first target. Bearing in mind the grass can be wet in the early morning I parked up near Cobham and put on wellies. I walked down a lane only to find I'd gone the wrong way. I got within twenty yards of my target then had to got four hundred yards round the long way. But when I got there I had a quick find at 6.30am.

From there I moved on to Winchester Cathedral. There is an amazing bit of modern art there. It's a hi-tech lamp post which changes colours when you send texts to it. I got there, did the secret geo-thing and was back to the car before 8am (so I didn't have to pay for the car park)

My third target was the grave of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (in the New Forest). One of the many things I love about geocaching is the amazing places to which you end up going. It was a shame that Fudge felt the need to tiddle on the gravestone. But we were there and away before 9am.

As we'd parked up I'd noticed the local pub had a sign saying they did breakfasts from 8.30am. I thought that once we'd done the secret geo-thing I'd have a fry-up. I hadn't noticed that they only did brekkie at the weekends. I sulked as we drove out to Dorset.

My fourth target was the furthest from home. I'd never even heard of Hengistbury Head before, but there was a virtual geocache down there. We got to the car park and I had no change. I tried phoning the car park people like the sign said, but after five minutes I gave up and drove a few hundred yards and parked on the road. By now we were both getting a little stir-crazy and so a walk would be good. Our target was a kilometre from where we parked the car, and as we walked "Furry Face ^TM" played with, ran away from, and humped all sorts of other dogs.

The virtual cache was straight forward, and as I was in the area I did the nearby Earthcache too. Hengistbury Head was beautiful; such a shame it is so far away.

The plan had called for us to be arriving at Hengistbury Head at mid-day... we were leaving shortly after 10.30am. I was quite pleased with progress at this point. (But things were to change...)

Our fifth target was Wickham in Hampshire. As we drove I was beginning to feel a tad weary so we pulled in to some services in the general vicinity of Southampton and I dozed for half an hour.

We eventually got to where we'd been advised to park the car. But it was a rather dubious lay-by in the back of beyond. Bearing in mind how unlikely it would be for anyone at all to come close, and bearing in mind it had taken us two hours to get there, we left the car and went for a little walk.

Just as I found the geocache so my dog started heaving. He spewed up a lump of partially digested grass which was about as big as he was. I wish he wouldn't do that. And as we walked back to the car we felt a few spots of rain.

Target six was in the general vicinity of Chichester and had been originally hidden thirteen years ago by the TV personality Chris Packham. It was up a rather serious hill. As we struggled up I seriously began to wonder about saying "sod it" and going home; the hill was *steep* and the drizzle was getting heavier. But we got to do the happy dance at 2pm.

It was at this point that we had the only real hiccup of the day. I'd chosen our targets on their attributes listed on the geo-website. I had a vague idea where they were, but only enough to know what order in which they would best be done. I was utterly dependent on sat-nav to get from one to the next.

My phone's sat-nav threw in the sponge and refused to work. I had a vague idea that we needed to be somewhere near Worthing and so that would involve driving up the A27. I wasted a *lot* of time finding the A27.

Fortunately the sat-nav sprung back into action just before Arundel, and we found our way to Cissbury Ring. I'd been there on a hiking/camping contest with the Boys Brigade in the late 1970s and it had been a disaster then. Today's was marginally better. We soon found our target; the oldest geocache I have ever found (hidden fifteen years ago) but the rain had picked up, and by the time we got back to the car at (4pm) we were both soaked.

The sat nav said it would take an hour and three quarters to get home. It was nearer three hours. Admittedly I did have a sleep in the car park at Clackett Lane services.

Once home I had a rather good bit of curry; scoffed whilst watching "The Monocled Mutineer". I had planned to do so much else this evening. I shall have to set up the new lap-top tomorrow...

In the meantime I took a few photos whilst we were out...