User:Sermoa

43 / f / 51,-1

I live in Winchester. I am most likely to be found geohashing in the Southampton, Swindon, Weymouth or London West graticules. I holiday in Köln, Germany once or twice a year, so i'll always be on the look out for the opportunity to geohash in Germany whilst i'm there!

About me

me and my google pin

• Real name: aimee.
• I like to spell my name in lower case.
• I use linux and mac osx and i will very likely use google chrome OS whenever it is available. windows can die.
• I now have an Android phone. Google is totally rocking my world at the moment!
• I've been typing on dvorak keyboard layout since around 2005.
• I'm a bit of a typography geek. Let's just say i can tell the difference between Helvetica and Arial. One i love and one i hate. But not as much as i hate Comic Sans, which seems to pop up almost everywhere i go!
• I'm a web programmer by profession and hobby.
• I am currently writing an application called Active Geohasher which will allow you to subscribe to graticules and be notified of their locations by daily email.
• I made my own google pin which i take to most geohashes.
• I love geohashing because it encourages me to visit places that i would not otherwise get to see. the fact that it's entirely random does not seem to matter to me!
• I have grown to love mediawiki through using this wiki!
• contact details
• follow me on twitter
• Talk to me! click here to start a new topic on my talk page

Map of geohashes

a map of Sermoa's xkcd geohashes

I have been on 14 geohashes in 4 graticules and met 11 other geohashers.

Sermoa achieved level 3 of the Minesweeper Geohash achievement by visiting coordinates in Swindon, United Kingdom and 3 of the surrounding graticules.

	-2	-1	-0
52	-	-	-
51	-	4	1
50	1	8	-

Table of geohashes

#	Date	Location	Comments	Achievements
001	2009-05-30	Kensington Road, Gosport	My first ever geohash, all by myself.
002	2009-06-28	Hedge End recreation ground	I met Macronencer for the first time. Music, juggling and rubik's cube solving.	Drag-along achievement (Laura)
003	2009-07-27	Duttons Road, Romsey	A nice evening out with Macronencer including a pub meal.
004	2009-08-08	Portland Beach, Weymouth	A lovely sunny Saturday meetup. My first geohash outside of the Southampton graticule.
005	2009-08-15	Bierley, Isle of Wight	A great day out on the Isle of Wight with Macronencer and DavidMiller. We were treated to some beautiful scenery.	Drag-along achievement (DavidMiller)
006	2009-08-30	Barton Farm, Winchester	The geohash landed at the car park of my place of work, giving me a Cubicle geohash achievement! Cause for a party at my office! :D It was also my first geohash in my home graticule.
007	2009-09-10	Litchfield, Hampshire	This was a Midnight Geohash meticulously planned by Macronencer who took me and Mapaholic. It was fun creeping through the tiny village late at night.
008	2009-09-13	Hilsea, Portsmouth	A fun geohash near Hilsea train station. The first geohash where i met another geohasher unexpectedly. Juggling, fire staff, cake, and a bit of public attention too!
009	2009-09-20	Poole, Dorset	I finally got to meet Mahahahaneapneap and 04housemat! We didn't spend long at the geohash point but we went on to Poole Park for juggling and a picnic!
010	2009-09-27	Eastleigh	A fun and slightly challenging geohash near the railway station, including meeting Davidc, Dee and JonRead :)
011	2009-09-29	Ashmansworth, Hampshire	A successful speed racer geohash with Macronencer. Funny video evidence to go with it!
012	2009-10-02	Highmoor Cross, near Reading	International meetup with visitors Thepiguy and Srs0. A nice walk, coordinates reached, fun trip out, and pub afterwards. My first geohash in 51,-0 - but only just! - it was just over the longitude border at -0.999! Still, it gave me level 3 minesweeper! :)
013	2009-10-03	Winchester, Hampshire	A great saturday meetup with Thepiguy, Srs0, Mapaholic and DavidMiller and family. A field geohash, with an excellent ambassador Farmer Nicholas. Followed by a retro geohash to the Barton Farm cubicle geohash and an abduction of Pi and Steven to come home and eat pizza and ice cream!
014	2009-10-13	Chandlers Ford, Hampshire	A quick geohash with Macronencer in a dark narrow track road near Chandlers Ford Asda after work.

Extrapolating

At this rate, by May 2011 i'll be able to geohash in every graticule in the world!

People i have met whilst geohashing

Includes people i already knew and dragged/tricked along, plus new people i have met thanks to the adventures of geohashing!

• 

  Macronencer

• 

  Laura

• 

  DavidMiller

• 

  Mapaholic

• 

  Maoi-taoi

• 

  Mahahahaneapneap and 04housemat

• 

  Dee, JonRead and davidc

• 

  Thepiguy and Srs0

• 

  DavidMiller's family and ambassador Farmer Nicholas!

Monica

Monica is my hashscot. Monica is short for mononucleosis, also known as the kissing disease. This makes sense when you know that monica is a giant microbe of the kissing disease!

• 

  Monica the kissing disease

• 

  Monica's natural habitat at home

• 

  Monica at Hedge End

• 

  Monica at Portland beach

• 

  Monica enjoying Bierley on the Isle of Wight

• 

  At Barton Farm, Winchester with Macronencer's Chuck.

• 

  Monica being overwhelmed by the huge playing field at Hilsea, Portsmouth

• 

  Monica at Fernside Avenue in Poole, Dorset

• 

  Monica and Chuck trying not to get too dirty at Eastleigh

• 

  Monica with Chuck and Murray at a geohash in Highmore Cross, near Reading

• 

  Monica and Murray in a field between Winchester and Sparsholt

Helping visitors to the geohashing wiki

The poster used at 2009-09-27 50 -1 which generated a response. I am still in the process of refining the format.

I am very keen to make the geohashing wiki as easy as possible for members of the public to use to interact with us weird and wonderful geohashers! I like to leave a poster at the geohash where possible, and on 2009-09-27 50 -1 i experimented with a more detailed poster, in combination with a callout box on the wiki expedition page inviting people to comment on the talk page. I added instructions for the easiest way to leave a comment, explaining that you don't have to be registered on the wiki. The result was, we got a message from some kids who had seen us putting up the poster!

Encouraged by this success, davidc made a template which i have now added to my other expedition pages where i left markers. I would encourage other people to do the same, because it is great to have feedback from general members of the public!

• Use {{Advert}} at the top of your expedition page.
• Create the Talk page for the expedition and use {{AdvertTalk}} to provide instructions.
• Generate a short URL for the expedition page using bit.ly or tinyurl.com.
• Customise the short URL to avoid any ambiguity of numbers that could be mistaken for letters.
• Create a QR (Quick Response) code of the short URL for mobile devices at qrcode.kaywa.com.
• Add the short URL and the QR code to a poster which you leave at the geohash.

The QR code is for mobile devices to scan. It's best to use the short URL because then the QR code is smaller and easier to scan. It's also good to use the small size setting, especially if you're putting it on a lamp-post. If it's too big, it will curve too much and the devices won't be able to scan it. I made this mistake once.

It would be really good to have a mobile version of the geohashing wiki. When you visit Wikipedia on a mobile there is a special version optimized for small screens. Ours is not like this - it's much harder to read. Maybe all we need is a different stylesheet. I'll look into it.

More?

• Sermoa/Achievement ribbons
• Sermoa/Checklists
• Sermoa/Sandbox

xkcd love

Macronencer once asked me when i first got into xkcd and this is the answer: Xkcd first caught my attention with Online Communities and i think i started reading regularly from Compiling onwards. So i have been loving xkcd since around about mid-2007.