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From Geohashing
Revision as of 22:47, 4 February 2009 by imported>UnwiseOwl (Sorry Ekorren, this made me laugh to hard not to share.)

Welcome to the Geohashing Community Wiki. Geohashing is a method for finding an effectively random location nearby and visiting it, i.e. a Spontaneous Adventure Generator. Geohashing was brought to you by the xkcd webcomic.

"We are going to a random spot over there in the field. We plan to be there at midnight. We may break into a tree nursery. Want to have a sandwich?" were the words Hermann did not say. "We are going to visit a friend." he replied instead. The policeman did not want to have a sandwich. He would have liked to see Hermann's driving licence, that he didn't have - this got a stop of half an hour with 10 euro penalty (pity that there is no Most Expensive Geohash anymore).
find some more great geohashing quotations here.


What is this?

The Algorithm as shown in xkcd comic #426, published on 21 May 2008.

Every day, the algorithm generates a new set of coordinates for each 1°×1° latitude/longitude zone (known as a graticule) in the world. The coordinates can be anywhere -- in the forest, in a city, on a mountain, or even in the middle of a lake! Everyone in a given region gets the same set of coordinates relative to their graticule.

As such, these coordinates can be used as destinations for adventures, à la Geocaching, or for local meetups. After the fun, why not document your expedition? The rest of us would love to read your story, see your photos, and cheer your success (or commiserate with your failure). You can use this wiki to document the daily coordinates (geohashes) you’ve been to or tried to reach.


Disclaimer: When any coordinates generated by the Geohashing algorithm fall within a dangerous area, are inaccessible, or would require illegal trespass, DO NOT attempt to reach them. Please research each potential location before attempting to access it. You are expected to use proper judgment in all cases and are solely responsible for your own actions. See more guidelines.

Learn about Geohashing

Get involved

Official xkcd meetups

Felix Dance, Mdixon4, Rhonda, Lachie and Stevage meet up at the 28 December 2015 (a Monday) coordinates for Bairnsdale, VIC, Australia.

Based on the title text from the comic that established geohashing, the "official" meetup day was interpreted as being Saturday; that is, the day one would have the best chance of meeting others -- see also Mouseover Day. Additionally it was decided through convention that a good meeting time would be 16:00 local time (4:00 P.M.)¹

However, neither of these are hard rules, and they were formulated at a very different early stage in the sport's history. Nowadays and for quite awhile actually, any date or time can be good (or bad, depending on how many other hashers are near you) for meeting up, especially if prearranged. Note that this only applies to that day’s normal local geohash or globalhash coordinates, if you try to go to an alternate location without telling anyone else, it's highly unlikely you'd meet up with a hasher there (obviously).

¹Or earlier if that would be too close to sunset during the winter, or other quirks of temporal tradition; see your local graticule page for consensus there.


Recent and Upcoming Coordinates

The coordinates for the next Saturday meetups, scheduled for 23 November 2024, will be based on the Dow’s opening price published at 09:30 EST (14:30 UTC) on Friday 22 November. See timeanddate.com to convert this time to your local time zone.

Gallery of Recent Expeditions

The gallery for each day is added to this page automatically, but pictures are selected to the gallery by us. Any geohasher is welcome to add a picture from that day. Just add your image name in the list at the “add yours” link. If the gallery hasn't been started yet, copy the format from the previous day, or read the how-to.


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