I love how this one turned out, with the in-focus poly-what-ya-ma-call-it in the front and the other nice and fuzzy in the back:

Check out more of my photos on Flickr.

It’s been more than two and half months since I posted about this challenge and there’s still one more month to go. So how am I faring?

Well, I haven’t bought any new books since then (not exactly true, I did buy one book, but that was a book I had read already and had no intention of reading now, and it was only £2 so I HAD to get it). I still haven’t gotten through the 20 books I had listed though, and there has even been some additions to those 20. Besides winning 1 book, my mum visited me here in London with a whole stack of interesting books for me to read. So add another 16 books to those original 20.

From the original 20, I’ve only read 3 (see strikethrough). I have started 5 of the others though (see italic).

I haven’t been too slack; I’ve finished 6 of the 16 new books and started on 2 of them:

It’s just so difficult to find the time to read. Lately I’ve been reading a bit before going to bed, but most of the time that means no more than one or two chapters. But only 9 books in 2.5 months? That’s way under my normal reading pace. 

I’ve decided to change the rules of the challenge a bit and drop the whole “till December 31st” part. I’m banning myself from buying any books until I’ve finished the entire To Be Read pile as listed above. Chances are high though that I will get books for Christmas or find some cool books at my parents place, but all those will also be added to the list. 

Anyone else willing to join me in this challenge?

Episode 92: “Kiss a wookie, Kick a droid, Fly the Falcon through an asteroid”

Maybe by now you’ve seen this video already (it’s been flying around the tubes lately), but in case you haven’t… here it is:

[If the video doesn’t load here, watch it on Youtube]

Just a photo I took once, without really expecting much of it. Only later once I home I realized how good it looked.

If only I can remember which building this was…

Lately I’ve been addicted to the game of geocaching. Calling it a “game” though doesn’t seem right; it’s not what you’d typically call a game. I like to consider it more of a current day techy treasure hunt.

Geocaching is a treasure-hunting puzzle-solving type of game, where people hide and look for secret containers (called geocaches) with the help of GPS. Some caches are straightforward: the clue is a GPS location, you go to that location and the cache is hidden somewhere there. Others can be a bit more elaborate, where you first have to solve certain puzzles and riddles before you can find the cache.

The sizes of the caches also vary; in some cases these caches are tiny (see picture below), containing only a strip of paper to write down your name to show that you’ve found the cache. Other times it can be an actual box and people leave items behind for others to find.

The first cache I ever found was in Portobello Road (check out the cache details here) and the result was the above nano cache. It’s a nice and easy geocache to start with, cause the instructions to find it are pretty straightforward. 

Another geocache hunt we did was for the second London Geek Meet. This one was all about spotting Space Invaders, cute little alien tile pictures that are part of a world wide street art project. We were supposed to find 12 Space Invaders and each of these would lead to a clue needed to solve the location of the final hidden cache. In the end we solved all the clues and found the final location, but failed in finding the geocache there. If you ever want to do something a bit fun and different around central London (it starts in Covent Garden), definitely check this hunt out.  

Finally last Sunday we finished a Geocache hunt I’ve been wanting to do for some time. It was based in Regent’s Park and would lead to a geocache hidden at a secret garden within Regent’s Park. A couple of weeks ago when we did the photo shoot with Carlo and Fabiana, I solved the first part of this hunt and calculated where the location was.

I was expecting that it wouldn’t really be a secret location; I’ve been to Regent’s Park often enough and I thought I had seen most of the places. But this truly was a secret garden. Plus it was beautiful. And this was on a very rainy day in the winter; I can only imagine how this must look with luscious green in the summer. Even if you’re not interested in finding the actual geocache, it’s worth doing this hunt alone to find that secret spot (check the details here). 

So far I’ve been doing these geocache hunts with my mobile phone. I don’t have GPS on it; I just use Google Maps for approximate locations and although not very precise, it works well enough. I’m not completely addicted to this yet that I need a GPS unit, but if I ever find a cheap device, I’m definitely getting it. The problem is that most GPS devices are so expensive because they show a map and directions on them. What I’d want though is just a simple gadget that can tell me what the current GPS location is (beeper size, maybe?). Does anyone know if something like that even exists?

All in all, geocaching is a fun little game and a great way to discover new locations. I’ve already found some instructions to caches hidden in the Netherlands, around where my parents live. Let’s see if I can convince my brother and sister to go geocache hunting with me!