User:Basil

Me

I'm Basil, and I just found out about Geohashing in the last week or so (as of Nov 1, 2013). It looks like it might be fun! We'll see how it goes.

I live in graticule 47, -121, in centicule 58. Since most of 47, -121 is wilderness, I suspect I'll do a lot of geohashing in my western neighbor, 47, -122. I'm pushing 60 and not in good shape, and I'm on a very limited income. All in all, I doubt I'll make many geohashes, but you never know...

I'm involved in the Society for Creative Anachronism, live in the Kingdom of An Tir, in the Barony of Madrone, and go to events many weekends during the summer. I'm hoping a geohash lands up in the middle of an event!

Expeditions

I wanted to go to the Nov 3rd meetup in 47, -122, said I was going to, but got sick at the last minute. Same thing the second following weekend. I know there's a "chicken out" achievement; is there a "sicken out" one?

So, when the Nov 24 47, -122 looked good, I decided not to say anything until the last minute, so I wouldn't jinx myself. And it worked! I made it to the | Nov 24 meetup. Got to meet Thomcat and OtherJack. Nice and easy first geohash. But after I got home, I soon had a wretched case of the sniffles. So apparently the jinx had its revenge.

I would have tried for the 47, -122 on Nov 25, but I slept in and didn't know about it until past noon. That's a problem because I had a 3:30 PM doctor appointment, and I didn't think I could make a 50-55 minute each way trip and make the appointment. Darn! So much for consecutive geohashes. Well, maybe some other time....

Well, been a long, long time. Made the Aug 24, 2016 47, -121. Have some pix, that I hope I can get online.

Equipage

So here's the stuff I own, I can use for geohashing.

• Car: 1986 Toyota Celica. It's small and not in great condition, but it gets me places.
• Android: made by HTC. I got this through FreeCycle, and I don't have a "phone plan" to go with it - - - and at $80+/month, I'm not going to. However, it runs "Share My GPS Coordinates" and "Geohashdroid", can connect to Wifi, and takes pictures, so it'll do. I usually refer to this as "the gizmo".
• A very small, poor, almost toy-like camera. It doesn't take pictures quite clear enough to show whatever coordinates the Android is showing.
• This, that, and the other. The usual collection of stuff.

Changes as of Aug 24, 2016: Car---now a 1991 Toyota Camry. Needs work, but it'll do for now. I have a bottom-of-the-line "phone plan" for "the gizmo".

As you can see, I'm not doing to well when it comes to proving I've been somewhere. I'm working on that. One work-around is that "Share My GPS Coordinates" has a tie-in to email, so it's possible to make and email, and say "send later," and send to myself when I've got Wifi access again. I'm not sure that's much of a proof, though. Another is that the gizmo "GPS tags" pictures; however, I can't seem to upload pictures to this site with any sort of "metadata" at all. Something must be done! What, I don't know.

Achievements

Basil earned the Land geohash achievement by reaching the (47, -122) geohash on 2013-11-24.

Basil earned the Meet-up achievement by meeting Thomcat and OtherJack at the (47, -122) geohash on 2013-11-24.