User:Sourcerer

Sourcerer's archives for - 2018 - 2017 - 2016 - 2015 - 2014 - 2013 - 2012 - 2011 - 2010    My favourites are highlighted yellow. Interactive Map implemented by NWoodruff.

This geohasher lives in Suffolk. 56,-3 56,-2 53,-2 53,-1 53,-0 53,0 52,-2 52,-1 52,-0 52,0 52,1 51,-2 51,-1 51,-0 51,0 51,1 50,-2 50,-1 50,-0 50,0

70 / m / 52,1 aimlessly.worm.gourmet

Calculators and Links

Calculators: Eupeodes - Peeron - Ekorren's Tool - Geohash Droid (Android) - Probabilities

Links: UK Graticules - Foonetic - Graticule Stats - User Stats - Maps and statistics - My Images - Implementation Notes - Moonrise and set

Hash Map

• There is a more up-to-date interactive version using the Google Maps API.
• Green=Reached, Red=Not reached, Purple=Never set out, Blue=Retro expedition. KML hashpoints download

Expeditions

Jan - Feb - Mar - Apr - May - Jun - Jul - Aug - Sep - Oct - Nov

December

Expedition Links	Details
2015-12-21 52 1 Mon - Map	354/404 In a field east of North Lopham, Norfolk, UK.
2015-12-19 52 0 Sat - Map	353/403 In a field between Thorpe Morieux and Hitcham, Suffolk, UK. Sourcerer earned the Midnight Geohash achievement by reaching the (52, 0) geohash on 2015-12-19 in the middle of the night.
2015-09-27 52 1 Fri - Map	Retro A road hashpoint quite close to home at Lower Oakley, Suffolk, UK.
2014-09-10 52 1 Fri - Map	Retro On Rectory Road between Brome and Brome Street south of Diss, Suffolk, UK.
2015-01-15 52 0 Fri - Map	Retro On the main road north of and through Long Melford, Suffolk, UK.
2015-12-18 52 0 Fri - Map	352/402 In Woodhouse Wood, north east of Stanstead (different spelling - not the airport), Suffolk, UK. Sourcerer earned the Midnight Geohash achievement by reaching the (52, 0) geohash on 2015-12-18 in the middle of the night.
2015-12-17 52 0 Thu - Map	351/401 In a field, south of West Row, south of the Mildenhall air base, Suffolk, UK.
2015-12-17 52 1 Thu - Map	350/400 A road hashpoint on the B1123 west of Halesworth, Suffolk, UK. Sourcerer earned the Midnight Geohash achievement by reaching the (52, 1) geohash on 2015-12-17 in the middle of the night.
2010-09-12 52 1 Wed - Map	Retro In light rough on the Halesworth Golf Course, Suffolk, UK.
2015-08-25 52 1 Wed - Map	Retro In a field between Westleton and Dunwich Heaths close to the Minsmere bird reserve, Suffolk, UK.
2015-12-16 52 1 Wed - Map	50/399 In a field between Westleton and Dunwich Heaths close to the Minsmere bird reserve, Suffolk, UK.
2015-12-16 52 0 Wed - Map	349/398 In a field, a few yards off a public footpath, north of the A14 and west of Bury Saint Edmunds, Suffolk UK. Sourcerer earned the Midnight Geohash achievement by reaching the (52, 0) geohash on 2015-12-16 in the middle of the night.
2015-08-25 52 0 Tue - Map	Retro In a field, a few yards off a public footpath, north of the A14 and west of Bury Saint Edmunds, Suffolk UK.
2015-12-15 52 0 Tue - Map	348/397 A field perimeter point close to the A11, just west of Thetford, Norfolk, UK.
2015-12-15 52 1 Tue - Map	347/396 In a field, a few metres from the Suffolk Coast Path at Benacre, Suffolk, UK. Sourcerer earned the Midnight Geohash achievement by reaching the (52, 1) geohash on 2015-12-15 in the middle of the night.
2015-12-14 52 1 Mon - Map	346/395 A woodland path between Lord Anson's Wood and Perch Lake Plantation. This is south west of North Walsham, Norfolk, UK. Sourcerer earned the Midnight Geohash achievement by reaching the (52, 1) geohash on 2015-12-14 in the middle of the night.
2013-09-22 52 1 Sun - Map	Retro A few paces into a wood east of Coltishall, Norfolk, UK.
2015-12-13 52 1 Sun - Map	345/394 A mystery location west of Costessey, Norwich, Norfolk, UK.
2015-12-12 52 1 Sat - Map	Failure 49/393 A field between Eyke and the A12, Suffolk, UK. Sourcerer earned the kitty blood trail Consolation Prize by getting distracted by friends and Christmas cheer with food and alcohol leading to a CATatonic state at the (52, 1) geohash on 2015-12-12.
2015-12-11 52 1 Fri - Map	344/392 In woodland west of Briningham, Norfolk, UK. A footpath passes quite close, north of the point. Sourcerer earned the OpenStreetMap achievement by contributing to OpenStreetMap based on their expedition to the (52, 1) geohash on 2015-12-11. Sourcerer earned the Midnight Geohash achievement by reaching the (52, 1) geohash on 2015-12-11 in the middle of the night.
2015-12-10 52 1 Thu - Map	343/391 In a wet looking meadow south east of the A140 and Tasburgh, Norfolk, UK. Sourcerer earned the Last man standing achievement by being the the only hasher world-wide to go on a geohashing expedition on 2015-12-10.
2015-12-08 52 1 Tue - Map	342/390 In a front garden, close to the coast in Mundesley, Norfolk, UK. Sourcerer earned the Last man standing achievement by being the the only hasher world-wide to go on a geohashing expedition on 2015-12-08.
2012-01-07 52 1 Tue - Map	Retro Passed 5 metres from this point in Ditchingham, Norfolk, on the way to 2015-12-08 52 1
2015-12-08 51 0 Tue - Map	341/389 On a farm road and public footpath south of the A120, between Great Dunmow and Braintree, Essex, UK. Sourcerer earned the Midnight Geohash achievement by reaching the (52, 1) geohash on 2015-12-08 in the middle of the night. Sourcerer earned the Last man standing achievement by being the the only hasher world-wide to go on a geohashing expedition on 2015-12-08.
2015-12-07 52 0 Mon - Map	Failure 48/388 In the danger area of a golf driving range, Bury Saint Edmunds, Suffolk, UK.
2015-12-06 52 1 Sun - Map	340/387 In a field, south of Bungay, Suffolk, UK. Sourcerer earned the Midnight Geohash achievement by reaching the (52, 1) geohash on 2015-12-06 in the middle of the night.
2015-12-05 52 1 Sat - Map	339/386 In a field, east of Stalham, Norfolk, UK.
2015-12-04 52 1 Fri - Map	338/385 In a field, west of the A140 and south west of Thwaite, Suffolk, UK. Sourcerer earned the Midnight Geohash achievement by reaching the (52, 1) geohash on 2015-12-04 in the middle of the night. Sourcerer earned the OpenStreetMap achievement by contributing to OpenStreetMap based on their expedition to the (52, 1) geohash on 2015-12-04.
2015-12-03 52 1 Thu - Map	337/384 In a copse between Brandeston and Kettleburgh, Suffolk, UK. Sourcerer earned the OpenStreetMap achievement by contributing to OpenStreetMap based on their expedition to the (52, 1) geohash on 2015-12-03. Sourcerer earned the Last man standing achievement by being the the only hasher world-wide to go on a geohashing expedition on 2015-12-03.
2015-12-02 52 1 Wed - Map	336/383 In a field between Heveningham and Peasenhall, close to a public footpath heading south west from the Roman road, Suffolk, UK. Sourcerer earned the Midnight Geohash achievement by reaching the (52, 1) geohash on 2015-12-02 in the middle of the night.
2015-05-05 52 1 Tue - Map	Retro In public parkland, north Ipswich, Suffolk, UK. This is 115 metres from 2015-12-01 52 1.
2015-12-01 52 1 Tue - Map	335/382 In public parkland, north Ipswich, Suffolk, UK. This is 115 metres from 2015-05-05 52 1.

Retro meltdown

The more hashpoints you visit, the more likely it becomes that you will revisit drive-by points while geohashing. In addition more and more hashpoints have a retro point, previously explored, really close. Could there be there a retrohash event horizon where the number of retro visits tends to infinity?

Interesting Hashpoints

• Neil wonders if 2010-09-13_52_1 is in a tiger enclosure. The hashpoint is at Banham Zoo.
• Stealth hashing is fun but not today! Is there a get yourself arrested award?
• 2011-01-17 52 0 - A nudist beach hashpoint. Sadly it was a freezing January night.

About Sourcerer

Sourcerer lives in and likes likes 52,1 but he's seriously considering moving to 52,-1 because there are so many ocean hashpoints locally. 52,-1 is the only UK graticule surrounded by adjacent graticules that are mostly land.

• Graticules attempted - 24
• 87.8% coordinates reached
• First expedition - August 7th 2010
• One hundredth expedition - August 10th 2012
• One hundredth success - February 19th 2013
• One hundred and ninety ninth expedition - February 22nd 2015 Oops.
• Two hundredth success - May 5th 2015
• One hundredth expedition in 52,1 - February 5th 2015
• One hundredth success in 52,1 - February 26th 2015
• Real name: Neil
• Home Location: Suffolk, UK 52,1
• Age: One of the oldest active geohashers. Not everyone has an updated ASG template - see Geohashers_by_age
• OpenStreetMap - New map features get uploaded to OpenStreetMap
• WikiLoc - Good walking routes get uploaded to Wikiloc.

Have all the geohashers been "Nerd Sniped"?

My user name is a play on words based on computer source-code and is a tribute to controlled folly.

I enjoy computer programming and in 1972, wrote an implementation of Conway's Game of Life in BASIC. The virtual creatures were printed on a paper roll by a mechanical teletype. Those were the days!

In 1976 I taught programming to school kids. We used Algol! We filled in coding forms and submitted them to be punched onto cards for the overnight run. The next day we'd get the error message print-outs or occasionally a successful run.

More recently I have used HTML, CSS, DOM, PHP, MySQL, Javascript and Delphi.

Since childhood, I've loved going out at night. I seem to have above average night vision. I love it when it's so dark you can almost count the photons and the night vision is grainy and a bit sparkly. This might explain love of geohashing - stealthy, often unobserved, at night. If possible, to save fuel and the planet, I visit pairs of hashpoints each side of midnight. This is great for wildlife spotting and the roads are empty. I have a spreadsheet to calculate when to set out in order to arrive at the second hashpoint at midnight. I get driving times from Google maps and estimate walking times from the UK Ordnance Survey maps available on-line using Bing maps.

Like golf and most other human activities, geohashing is totally pointless (in fact it is one of the few activities that has got an identifiable point) and it's much more fun than geocaching or golf. Many hashpoints are in the middle of a muddy field. These are a bit worthless but if there's some other attraction or challenge, I'm more likely to make the effort. In 2015 Sourcerer discovered a previously unsuspected competitive streak leading to a serious increase in geohashing activity. For some grand scale folly, see Neil's Big Walk below.

Local Terrain

The terrain in the east of England is almost flat and often quite dry. Google earth has been most useful for planning expeditions. Usually it's easy to identify hashpoints which are on private land or inaccessible for other reasons. After 100 expeditions, my success rate was 86%. In late August and autumn, most of the fields have been harvested but not yet re-planted so they are easily accessible. In the other seasons, it's often wetter and access is less easy. Hard frozen ground in deep winter is really good for geohashing.

Big Walk, Little Walks

Another folly is to walk from Cape St Vincent (Portugal) to Istanbul (Turkey). Starting in 2003, after 183 days walking and 3798 km, Neil had reached Vicenza in the north of Italy. The walk is about 50% complete. Neil is not seriously expecting to complete this walk but that is all part of the folly. He set out with his mother and sister. Both have since died. His mum reached a ripe old age. His sister died of cancer but she walked 2567 km before the cancer overcame her. She reached France. Geohashing is a good way to keep fit enough to continue with the big-walk stages.

Here are the walk details and photo gallery. You can download a [KML file] of Neil's walk for use with Google Earth. These paths are also logged at [WikiLoc].

This is what Google Earth looks like if you download the KML file. It makes more sense when you zoom in.

More Walks

• Beccles Walks
• Bungay Walks
• Tenerife Walks

Respect Zone

Here I pay tribute to awesome contributors to geohashing. If there were Oscars for geohashing, in no particular order, these would be my nominees.

• The low profile people who set up and maintain the wiki.
• Atlanta, Georgia - for breaking all sorts of records.
• Eupeodes - for making a really useful coordinate calculator and acting on suggestions for improvement.
• GeorgDerReisende - for being so active and often hitch hiking.
• NWoodruff - for breaking all sorts of records and writing bots that generate interesting statistics.
• 2011-05-21_52_14 - I wish I'd been able to go there.
• A catch all - because there is much more effort going in, invisible, because it just works.

Other stuff

• Reggae Playlist on Spotify
• Template:Sourcerer/Expedition