Geocaching for Fitness.

I have recently taken up geocaching as a new hobby. For those of you who don't know what that is, to paraphrase the "There's cache in them there hills!" podcast, geocaching is using a multi-billion dollar satellite system to find a piece of tupperware in the woods. Although there is much more to the activity, that sums it up in a nutshell. For more information go to geocaching.com.

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The main reason I enjoy geocaching is because it gives me a reason to get out of the house more often, enjoy nature, and see new places. When I started I figured that geocaching would be an activity that would help me to get some exercise. The truth of the matter is that geocaching is what you make of it.

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Geocaching involves looking at maps and using a GPS regularly, and getting excercise really is all in the planning. A park and grab which is a mainstay of urban caching is the least likely to ensure you get any excercise as it entails parking as close to a geocache as possible and may not involve getting out of your vehicle at all. The geocacher also has to be stealthy when retrieving a cache and so pulling up, quickly signing the log, and replacing the cache becomes the ideal way of geocaching in an urban setting, especially on busy days where there are a lot of people. So obviously riding around in a vehicle all day requires little to no effort. The way to maximize an urban geocaching day is to park and walk the town.

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Trails are really the way to go, although it is unlikely that one can make this a daily habit and still find new geocaches. Once you have found the first three along a trail, the distance can become too great to handle in a 3 - 5 hour outing. However one can try to push themselves further and reach the fourth or fifth geocache in the same amount of time. The plus to geocaching along trails is that you can also bike in addition to hiking many trails to add some variety to the experience.

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My current geocaching habit consists of finding 1-3 geocaches during an outing. I like to find geocaches that have a hike involved, but to rely solely on geocaching as a form of exercise just isn't going to get many people in shape. I have found that hiding geocaches is just as fun and makes for a nice way to get some exercise as well. Scouting for a good location to hide a geocache takes time and quite a bit of effort. So the combination of scouting, and finding geocaches could be more productive toward a healthy life, and rewarding in many ways.

A New Camera.

Well, it has been a while since I last posted. I realize that I can only do so many things before something has to give, and unfortunately the Blog was dropped to the 'way-back burner'. I have been keeping people posted on my website about my camera, but I haven't said anything about it here. A while ago I got the wild hair to buy a Nikon P6000 after pouring through several PDFS of the owners manual for each camera I had my eye on. Forget all the reviews, all the specs you can find on websites about each camera you're looking at, the guy behind the counter doesn't know what he's talking about, he's just trying to sell you a camera. Look at the Owners Manuals! You'll thank me later. My big thing about this camera is that it worked well with the equipment I already had.

I have a PClix that only works with Nikon IR sensors, at least as far as I know. The PClix, which I have covered before is an intervalometer that allows me to take photos at set intervals. Well, the P6000 has an IR sensor that would allow me to use the PClix with it. The camera was more compact and had fewer moving parts to worry about than my aging Nikon D50. So I bought it at $360.

Man it was a thing of beauty, expensive, but cheaper than getting a D200, which was the other option. This camera had metal frame and shot great timelapse footage, barring a few issues that I'll label camera quirks. The P6000 also shoots video, has its own timelapse feature (the PClix allows many more options) and shoots Raw and Jpeg.

The problem is, two and a half to three months later, it fell 6 feet to it's demise.

I was setting up to do a timelapse of my fiance and I working a puzzle together. My method was to attach the camera to tripod, the tripod to the wall. I did so with a screw-in hook that I tethered with a piece of string wrapped around the hook and the leg of the tripod several times. That method worked well with my much heavier Nikon D50 before. The issue was that the lens on the Nikon D50 was slowly jarring itself into nothing but a blur with each photo it took.



So once I had set up my p6000 to do a new shoot, I had to step away for a moment to do a couple things elsewhere in the house and when I went back to the room, there my camera lay, a circle where the lens had hit embedded in the wood floor, the lens, completely jammed up, and me. Angry as hell me. I blamed it all on myself. I thought the string had slipped loose, since I didn't tie it in a knot for security's sake and it killed me. I'm hard on myself. It's my way to self improve, although probably not the most healthy way. After several days and a bricked camera later, I investigated further. I found out that the hook actually pulled from the wall. It wasn't my fault after all! I felt somewhat better.

So here's what the old camera looks like now:



I spent $8 on a .pdf download of a p6000 repair manual, so that's why it's splayed out in this box. I still have the intention of fixing it, if I can be allowed to order the lens assembly from Nikon at $80, but I managed to win a bid on a used one on ebay for a $200. I could hardly pass it up. The photo was taken with the new p6000.

A New Game

I have come up with a new game. This game is similar to the Circle Game. The Circle Game engages the willing or most oft unwilling player's sense of sight and peripheral vision. The game I've created tests the sense of sound and centers on trickery of the mind.

I call it Sing n Lose. Well, at least that's what I've got to work with for now. The idea behind this game is to either sing, hum, or just play a song directly for people in earshot to hear and just see if they end up tapping the beat, singing, humming or whistling any bit of it after the song is over.

Now I've been playing this game for years without people knowing about it because I like to think that I've entered their minds and meddled with it, and therefore have the upper hand.

Like Ass Pennies only less gross.

Ass Pennies - watch more funny videos

I admit that the game gets more fun when introducing it to others. I don't personally play in order to hit someone on the arm as one does with the 'Circle Game' or 'Punch Dub', formerly named 'Punch Bug' but one could integrate that in the game if they wish. Some of my co-workers refer to this game as getting 'Gooched' because once a person has fallen victim to another person's attempt at getting them to sing a particular song, the winner owes the loser one uppercut to the Perineum.

Luckily no one capitalizes on the opportunity to do so.

The key to this game is that players must adhere the honor system like in The Contest since getting someone could take several hours for the person to react to the song. If you end up singing the song that someone sang near you a couple days before and it can be directly attributed to that moment. Count yourself gooched.