User:JBQ

JBQ is Jean-Baptiste M. Quéru, French-born and -trained Software Engineer who has been living in the US since the late 90s, and whose home graticule is San Francisco.

Geohash attempts

Successful

• 2010-01-10 37 -121 (San Jose) - on 101-N at the southern end of San Jose.

• 2010-01-16 38 -122 (Santa Rosa) - On sand dunes right by the beach in Point Reyes National Seashore.

Official achievements

JBQ earned the Land geohash achievement by reaching the (37, -121) geohash on 2010-01-10.

JBQ earned the Speed racer achievement by passing through the (37, -121) geohash on 2010-01-10 at 65 mph.

JBQ earned the No Batteries Geohash Achievement by reaching the (37, -121) geohash on 2010-01-10.

JBQ earned the Earliest geohasher achievement by arriving first at the (37, -121) geohash on 2010-01-10.

JBQ earned the Land geohash achievement by reaching the (38, -122) geohash on 2010-01-16.

JBQ earned the GeoTrash Geohash Achievement by cleaning up the (38, -122) geohash on 2010-01-16.

JBQ earned the Earliest geohasher achievement by arriving first at the (38, -122) geohash on 2010-01-16.

JBQ achieved level 1 of the Minesweeper Geohash achievement by visiting coordinates in San Jose, California and 1 of the surrounding graticules.

JBQ achieved level 1 of the Minesweeper Geohash achievement by visiting coordinates in Santa Rosa, California and 1 of the surrounding graticules.

Honorable mentions

During the night from Dec 23rd to Dec 24th 2009, JBQ was on flight UA 914 from IAD to CDG.

Let's assume that the flight followed exactly the great circle between those two airports, using the coordinates from the Wikipedia pages of those airports, and computing the great circle with this great circle calculator. Sometime during the night, most probably between 3 and 4am, the flight crossed coordinates 52.16065, -15.9622, within 150m (500ft) of the hash for the day in some unremarkable graticule in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean somewhere south of Iceland.

150m is less than 5 arc-seconds away, i.e. that point would be well within the parameters for an air geohash achievement. On top of that, this would also qualify for a virgin graticule achievement. Unfortunately there is no proof at all, and in fact there isn't even any evidence that the plane followed that exact great circle, so even a curse of unawareness is out of the question. Oh well.

Blah, if outside air temperatures were acceptable while flying (the rules aren't clear), this'd also have qualified for a frozen geohash achievement and even for the cold geohash record. Similarly, it's unclear whether flying over a water geohash qualifies as a water geohash.

This'd even be good for a border geohash (this was in international waters), a police geohash (This required to go through TSA), and a public transportation achivement (the huge majority of the trip was by plane). On the other hand, to be honest, this'd have been an easy geohash since there was no conscious effort to actually reach those coordinates.

On the flight back (UA 915 from CDG to IAD on Jan 3rd 2010), the closest approach to a geohash was 700m (2300ft) using the same theory, not close enough to qualify for an air geohash. Neither of the flights between SFO and IAD during that trip turned up anything worth mentioning.

Lessons learned

• Grab GPS traces when flying
• Combining tripod + fisheye works well in cars
• Carry stuff in a backback, not on shoulder bags
• Take trash bags for geotrashing
• Leather jackets look and feel great, but aren't good for hiking

Centihashes

Centihashing expeditions are exactly like Geohashing expeditions, except that it works modulo a tenth of a degree instead of working modulo an entire degree, i.e. using centicules instead of graticules.

JBQ is been exploring the concept in his home graticule, which contains 60% water, trying to see if it can provide an interesting alternative to plain geohashing in a way that provides enough points for morning or evening weekday expeditions. More about centihashing...

The following table represents the centicules in JBQ's home graticule, with 'W' being a centicule that is overwhelmingly water such that reaching a land centihash might be very hard or impossible, 'w' a centicule that is mostly water such that reaching a centihash might require quite some effort, and digits being the number of times that JBQ reached a centihash in that centicule.

	-122.9	-122.8	-122.7	-122.6	-122.5	-122.4	-122.3	-122.2	-122.1	-122.0
37.9	W	W	0	0	0	w	W	0	0	0
37.8	W	W	W	W	w	w	0	0	0	0
37.7	W	W	W	W	W	0	W	0	0	0
37.6	W	W	W	W	W	0	W	W	0	0
37.5	W	W	W	W	w	0	0	w	W	0
37.4	W	W	W	W	W	0	0	0	0	w
37.3	W	W	W	W	W	w	0	0	0	0
37.2	W	W	W	W	W	w	0	0	0	0
37.1	W	W	W	W	W	W	w	0	0	0
37.0	W	W	W	W	W	W	W	w	0	0

See also

JBQ's home page
JBQ's blog
JBQ's tweets