Dan Q

Tag: travel

Three(ish) Weeks In Spain

Ruth, JTA, the kids and I are all back in the UK1 after a three week period during which some or all of us were consistently in Spain. The whole adventure was the kind of masterpiece of epic planning that only Ruth could have pulled off, and it worked spectacularly2.

A fawn-coloured French Bulldog lies comfortably on a blanket on a sofa, with her tongue sticking out in a large sideways blep.
I wasn’t around for the first week of the trip, but continued working from home (with the dog, pictured) as per the usual.

San Sebastián

Through clever permutations of remote-working from overseas (mostly by Ruth) and overlapping/intersecting stretches of annual leave (mostly by JTA and I), we were able to avoid having to send the dog to the dogsitter for a block of more than a single week3, didn’t need to break the bank on our collective leave budgets, and managed to give the kids the longest possible block of continuous immersion in the language and culture of Spain.

A group of children in wetsuits surf on low waves.
The one time I tried surfing, I wasn’t good at it, but I was reassured that was normal for a first day. The kids disproved that theory, becoming pretty reasonable boarders very quickly.

In the first week (when I wasn’t there), the kids got to take a mixture of surfing classes and Spanish language lessons in San Sebastián, among other activities. The Bordeaux wildfires caused some travel chaos for the others getting there, but they made it work in the end.

Tarragona

Later, I flew out to meet up with them and we switched to the opposite coast of Spain, staying in a delightful little villa North of Tarragona. The summer heatwaves that are affecting the continent made the middle of the day especially oppressive, so we did as the locals do and sensibly sheltered indoors during the hottest part of the day… but the kids in particular were glad to be able to take a dip in the pool to cool off.

Under nearly-cloudless skies and surrounded by trees and olive and grape-laden slopes, a stone villa and its outbuildings sit prominently under the bright sun.
The villa was a lovely building in a fabulous spot, nestled among hillside olive groves and vineyards, but the lack of wired Internet access/WiFi plus the signal-blocking stone walls made it more “disconnected” than we’d anticipated4!

As has become my tradition when travelling and on family holidays – because I’m an earlier riser than most, but also because I wanted to make the most of the coolest part of the day – I got out early most days for a whole bunch of geocaching expeditions5. But once others were awake we found plenty of other opportunities to explore the area.

Wide/panoramic view from a pagoda-like tower, where a woman and two children lean over a railing to look at a network of bridge-linked islands in a lake below, dotted with palm and other trees.
Parc Samà‘s breezy towers and water features took some of the heat out of the day, when we visited its attractive botanic gardens.

Having come from, remarkably, a similar level of temperature and humidity in the UK, I was interested to see how much greener everything was here on the Mediterranean coast. The plants here, better-adapted to hot and dry summers than those that we plant on our little island, were clearly more-suited to these kinds of conditions. Is it perhaps time that Britain started ditching her lawns and other year-round thirsty vegetation… instead planting more tropical-adjacent plants to provide shade (and carbon capture!) as the climate continues to shift?

A freshwater turtle pokes its head out of blue-green water near a rocky shore, with small black fish visible swimming in the depths.
This little fella had the right idea about keeping cool.

I enjoyed that we were able to split out time between a diversity of activities. A week-long jaunt can be dominated by a single activity – a skiing holiday, for example – but by the time you’re spending most of a month exploring a country, you want to be able to mix things up a bit, right?

A Roman aquaduct spans a forested valley.
Per local legend (and in common with many similar spans around the world6, which usually share a myth about the devil aiding in its otherwise-impossible construction in exchange for the first soul to cross it and then being tricked when an animal is sent across first), the Ferreres Aquaduct  is also known as Devil’s Bridge, which lead me to observe that of all the architecture I’ve seen with which Hell’s ruler is credited, this might be the best (nice work, Satan!).

Sometimes we kept it slow-paced and relaxing, like reading by the pool while the children invent splashing-based games or playing board games in the shade. Other times we explored history and culture, like our visit to the Ferreres Aqueduct, the Catedral de Tarragona, or the old Roman amphitheatre.

Two children wearing VR headsets and holding parasols, in the ruins of a restored Roman amphitheatre.
An augmented reality tour of the amphitheatre was both engaging and educational for the kids, bringing to life its long and complex history: did you know it started as an amphitheatre, but later was the ground of a church (commemorating Saint Fructuosus, who was executed there), then became a prison, and now… it’s an amphitheatre again: in addition to being a historical monument it’s used to stage concerts and things!

And other times still we even did the typical “British tourist in Spain” things, like a trip to the beach or an expedition out on a catamaran to swim in the sea while the sun set.

Dan, a white man, drips from a swim in the sea as he stands, holding a plastic cup of white wine, on the deck of a catamaran.
I expected the catamaran trip to be a bit tacky, but it was actually lush. (I may have availed myself of the open bar, a bit!)

Obviously the biggest reason for our trip was to catch sight of the total solar eclipse as it passed over the region, and our villa’s garden/vineyard was without a doubt a superlative spot for this. We’d initially been concerned that visibility of the low-in-the-sky/close to sunset eclipse might be obstructed by the hills and that, therefore, we’d need to find another spot from which to spectate, but an early-in-the-week experiment of watching the sunset (with an eye on the clock) reassured us that this wasn’t the case. So – as long as we were lucky with the cloud cover – we should be set.

Dan sits on a sun lounger on a driveway, alongside a covered brick barbeque building. He's alongside two children doing the same, and all are wearing disposable eclipse glasses.
A particular highlight of the entire trip was hanging out as a family in our private vineyard, watching the solar eclipse.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have had great visibility of a total solar eclipse once before, in 1999, but honestly: this one beat it. The perfect location, the reds of the setting sun, the “moon illusion” exaggerating the perceived size of the moon as it approached the sun, the joy of vicariously sharing in the childrens’ wonder… all of these made the whole experience pretty mind-blowing.

The sun completely occluded by the moon.
You’ve seen pictures of eclipses before, but this one is mine. I maintain that even the good/professional photographs are poor substitutes for the real experience, though!

We watched, we awed, and then we saw the still half-obscured sun gradually disappear over the horizon. And then, a round of hugs and cheers and conversation later, we sat up late to enjoy the Perseids begin their nocturnal display.

Over the silhouette of hills, a total solar eclipse is just coming to an end, with a 'diamond ring' effect resulting from the sun's reappearance visible.
Mostly I was looking at the sky (through the safety of my eclipse glasses, of course). But I managed to snap a handful of photographs that, despite the limitations of my phone’s camera, came out pretty well.

PortAventura

After our week in the villa we delivered JTA to the airport to return home. Then Ruth, the kids and I drove on to PortAventura, perhaps our favourite theme park anywhere in the world. Since our last visit, the younger kid has reached a milestone of height that permits him to ride all of the largest rides, and he was excited to take advantage of this newfound privilege.

A man (Dan), a woman (Ruth), and two children sit in a circular boat on a 'river rapids' style ride.
A particularly useful thing about PortAventura compared to some other theme parks is that it’s designed with heatwaves in mind: it’s got lots of natural shade, cooling-off areas, and the right ratio of water rides for when you positively, absolutely need a good soaking.

Both the elder child and I were particularly excited to share with him my favourite non-looping rollercoaster, Shambhala. Shambhala is simply excellent: it’s a highly-vertical smooth ride with a free and open-feeling restraint that, collectively, give amazing “air” and a sensation of “flying” that’s hard to compare to almost any other coaster ride I’ve been on. I could sing its praises aplenty.

A man with a screwdriver repairs the restraint system on a rollercoaster car.
The second we reached the front of the line for our first ride on Dragon Khan… it broke down. But we got to watch it being repaired right in front of us, so that’s cute!

Going to Disneyland Paris and PortAventura in the same summer gives me the confidence to say: PortAventura is the better theme park. The rides, the theming, the food, the queue management, the accommodation, the value-for-money… it’s all better. So if  you’re considering a European theme park trip and you don’t care about getting your photo taken with Goofy or whatever… PortAventura would be my suggestion.

PortAventura’s water park is good too, although it was pretty busy on the day we went. Their 30-metre tall near-vertical waterslide King Khajuna is a little intimidating7, but nothing our thrillseeking little man wasn’t up for.

Barcelona

Finally, we made our way to Barcelona for a “wind-down” couple of days at a hotel we’ve always enjoyed there. Aside for being mistaken for staff while I was using my laptop by the rooftop pool, there’s little of note to say about it: we took it easy, did as little as we could get away with, and generally “unplugged” before our journey back to the UK and a return to normal life (boo!).

Altogether a fabulous trip… and a really interesting experiment in a model that we could replicate if we ever opted for a three week (but drop-in/drop-out/telework) holiday in future. Though… I’d again want (our scheduling queen) Ruth to wrangle the logistics, because it gets complicated when there are so many moving parts!

Footnotes

1 Although not in our house, of course, which is still being repaired following the flood in February; it’s now F-Day plus 191 days… more on that in a future blog post, I’ve no doubt.

2 For a while, she was talking about trying to engineer it into a five-week expedition spanning both this and our trip to France earlier in the summer (to which JTA, the kids and I drove/LeShuttle’d, and to which Ruth flew following a work-related event in Austria: my, what a cosmopolitan life we’re leading this year!). But that’d have been an enormously more-complicated affair and I’m glad we settled on this “simpler” trip in the end!

3 Not that she cares: the dog loves hanging out with her little doggy friends, and is always excited to be taken to our dogsitter‘s, where she also “commutes” for a workday or two most weeks.

4 During out post-holiday ‘retro’ (because of course that’s what we do), the lack of connectivity appeared as both a negative and a positive on some of our lists! Obviously we’re all aware that a little digital disconnection is healthy and valuable, but sometimes it takes being in the middle of nowhere to impose the requisite self-discipline to keep off your devices!

5 Geocaching logs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (my 1000th successful find) – not that Geocaching.com can count that correctly! – 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37.

6 Obviously, the Devil’s Bridge nearest where I used to live and at which Ruth and I spent our first anniversary – back when we had no idea that we’d be able to make our relationship last… what…? 19 years this month!) – will always have a special place in my heart.

7 Reaching the top of King Khajuna’s tower, you can feel it swap in the breeze, and when you get to the slide itself its ‘horizon’ disappears precipitously until you shuffle completely up to it, at which point there’s little choice about your destination! While we queued for our first goes, we witnessed several people reach the top, change their minds, and turn back!

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I don’t work here!

I guess it’s the laptop and the pile of towels that cause the confusion, but people keep asking me questions (usually in Spanish) about where to get towels from and whether they can use the pool at this hotel.

Dan, a white man with a goatee beard and a blue ponytail, sits at a poolside table in a hotel roof terrace, using his laptop alongside a pile of towels.

And I have to keep explaining that nope, I don’t work here, I’m just watching my kids play while I catch up on my RSS reader!

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Dan Q found GC9Q6G6 PORTA DE BARCELONA

This checkin to GC9Q6G6 PORTA DE BARCELONA reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

A quick find exactly where it should be while driving from Tarragona to Barcelona. My family and I were in the area for the eclipse and then for a trip to PortAventura and are heading to Barcelona for a few days before flying home.

My partner and our kids went to the bathroom and snack bar while I jogged up to the bridge. The coordinates put my close but the hint moved me exactly where I needed to be. Strangely, I suddenly needed to tie my laces, and then just as suddenly the cache was in my hand!


On a semi-closed bridge over a six-lane highway, Dan, wearing a purple 'woo' t-shirt, throws a selfie camera a thumbs-up.

Thanks for breaking up this long journey (full of bad traffic!) for us. TFTC, and greetings from Oxfordshire, UK!

Casa Ventola

This week, I’m living in a villa on a vineyard about 9km North of Tarragona, on the East coast of Spain.

Under nearly-cloudless skies and surrounded by trees and olive and grape-laden slopes, a stone villa and its outbuildings sit prominently under the bright sun.
Gotta say, it’s a pretty place to walk the grounds of.

A large part of our choice of location for this trip was, of course, the total solar eclipse that’s expected this evening, whose path of totality just barely passes over this spot before disappearing somewhere over the Mediterranean.

A red and orange sunset with beams reaching up over the hilly horizon of climatically- Mediterranean farmlands.
We tested by watching a couple of sunsets that, at the time of day the eclipse will occur, the sun will still be visible over the horizon.1

26 years ago, almost to the day, I blogged about witnessing the 1999 solar eclipse from Paris, where we were fortunate enough that Europe’s cloudy conditions on that day broke just in time for a midday totality and a proper “diamond ring” occlusion. I’m not confident I’ll ever see an eclipse quite so spectacular again in my lifetime, but I’m hopeful!

Obviously the eclipse is a primary deciding factor in our location this summer, but this family holiday’s about more than just seeing the sun vanish and hoping that it comes back out again.

A freshwater turtle swims close to the rocky shore of a blue-green lake, peeping its head above the water.
For example, we’ve also braved the August heat for a variety of outings around the area, such as to the beautiful botanic gardens of Parc Samà where we met this curious little turtle.

I’ve been out geocaching a lot on the mornings, for example, as is my way when visiting any foreign country! I’ve enjoyed taking advantage of being a naturally earlier-riser than most of my family, coupled with the cooler morning temperatures, to explore the hills and forests of this region. And look: I found my thousandth ever geocache!2

The one downside3 of our accommodation is the lack of connectivity. There’s no wired Internet here, and the hilly location and stone walls make acquiring a reasonable cellular signal… challenging.

Dan, a white man with a short 'goatee' beard and a blue ponytail, sits in the drivers' seat of a left-hand drive car with a laptop perched between his belly and the steering wheel, giving a sarcastic grin to the camera.
To look into a Three Rings issue this morning, I first needed to drive down the hill and around the valley a short way to get line-of-sight to a cellular tower, in order to get more than one bar of 5G signal and tether myself a reasonable Internet connection!

Anyway: it’s beautiful and bright (and scorchingly hot!) out here, and I’ve got my fingers crossed for clear skies in eight hours’ time. Here’s hoping!

Footnotes

1 Without clouds in the way, the prettiest pictures of sunsets occurs just after this point, of course. I’ve spared you seeing a photo of an unoccluded sun, which – depending on the brightness fidelity of your screen – you’d possibly need to wear special shades to look at anyway?

2 I know, I know: I’ve been geocaching for sixteen years – I “should” have found more than that by now. Well, I’m pretty laid-back about the sport, and often only target caches with a reasonable number of positive reviews or that are otherwise interesting to me. I’m not so-interested in making the “number go up” as I am in exploring interesting places and seeing cool things.

3 Or is it an upside? It’s certainly keeping my focus on the world around me and away from screens!

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Chuck Wagon

Apparently, zero of the imagineers building this Disneyland Paris cafe conceived that “Chuck Wagon” sounds like what a cowboy would call a wheeled vomit trough. 😂

Faux Old-West building painted with lettering identifying it as the Chuck Wagon Cafe.

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Contactless Transport in London vs Paris

Paris’s public transport tickets suck… for now!

In his blog post yesterday, Terence Eden observed that of all the cities he’s travelled to over the last year, Paris had the most-ridiculously-unhelpful public transport ticketing system:

Fuck Paris. The only way to buy a metro ticket is to download an app. Fair enough. But, after downloading the app it tells you to install another app!

Navigo app saying I have to install another app.

What the actual fuck? A convoluted, messy, and frustrating situation which has resulted in awful reviews for them.

Trains and metro travel require separate tickets at different prices. You can’t easily hop from one to another. You need to think carefully about the route you’re taking. A more convoluted route may be significantly cheaper because it doesn’t involve swapping between services.

This absolutely parallels my experience of hopping around the Paris’s metro area, last time I was there.

Dan, a white man with a ponytail and a goatee, site in a Parisian cafe sipping a glass of white wine.
If I’ve got to navigate my way through Paris’s public transport network… I’m going to need a drink first.

I was interested to hear, though, that by 2030 virtually all of Paris’s public transport will accept contactless payment, bringing its convenience level to a similar level to that of London. Cool.1

From the sounds of things, this is clearly designed as a convenience for visitors to the city, not regulars and locals:

Dès le 30 juin 2026, les touristes et les voyageurs hyperoccasionnels pourront opter pour valider leur titre en sortie de l’aéroport d’Orly sur la ligne 14 avec la carte bancaire.2

Paris’s relationship with tourists is different from London’s

But the bit that surprised me is Paris’s pricing for the parts they’ve deployed so far:

Les prix des titres de transport via les bornes d’achat sont les suivants :

  • Bus/tram/funiculaire : 2,55 € (soit + 0,50 € sur le prix classique) ;
  • Métro/train/RER : 3,35 € (soit + 0,80 € sur le prix classique) ;
  • Aéroports : 14,80 € (soit + 0,80 € sur le prix classique).

Buying transport tickets in Paris using a contactless card… costs 0.50 € to 0.80 € more. Paris will charge you for the convenience of tapping in and out with your carte bancaire.

A row of ticket gates in a London Underground station.
Tap in, tap out. Unless you’re eligible for discounted travel, you probably might as well use your debit card to get around London. Photo by Luca Sammarco.

Contactless is clearly more-convenient for city visitors, but I think the difference between London and Paris’s attitude to it says something about the relationship both cities have with their tourists. In London, most travellers can use whatever bank card and mobile wallet they’ve already got… and they’ll get as good a deal as possible. But in Paris, doing the same will invariably cost more than a conventional ticket would. You pay a convenience-tax.

Both cities get tens of millions of annual visitors and extract billions of euros worth of financial benefit from their tourist economies. Paris doing slightly better overall, but they’re closely-comparable enough that differences like this probably mean something.

Crowds file down the escalator into Charles de Gaulle-Étoile station.
Tap in, pay a premium for the privilege. Thanks, Paris! Photo by Candelario Benítez.

I’m not saying that London loves tourists and Paris hates them! It’s not so simple as that. But I think perhaps the cites try to present themselves in a different way.

London’s public transport says: we’ll work around you. You can learn the rules as you go; you don’t have to “learn London” to get around. Just use your usual contactless card wherever you go; we’ll work out the details, and your daily cost will get capped just the same as if you chose to pick up an Oyster card. Visiting the city as a tourist is an ordinary use-case for the transport network.

Paris’s public transport says: you should learn the rules. You’re welcome to visit, but you either need to do the work to be a “temporary Parisian”… or you can just use your usual contactless card but we’ll charge you a premium for the convenience. Visiting the city as a tourist is a special case that the transport network sees differently from being a local.

Neither approach is “wrong”… but I think it’s interesting. And now I’m wondering what the approach is like across other European cities.

Footnotes

1 I’ll almost-certainly have to tackle the current-generation of Paris’s public transport at some point before then, but I’ll look forward to the improved version once it rolls-out.

2 “From 30 June 2026, tourists and hyper-ocassional travellers will be able to pay by bank card on Line 14 out of Orly Airport.” Emphasis mine.

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The secret API I used to tell LeShuttle about different outbound and return passengers

I’ve got an upcoming trip to France: I’ll be driving there through the Channel Tunnel, via LeShuttle. But owing to a quirk in our family travel arrangements, we’ve have a slightly different set of passengers in the car for the outbound leg than for the return journey.

LeShuttle’s broken website

This is something that LeShuttle’s Advance Passenger Information registration form ought to be able to handle… but it very-much can’t.

Screenshot showing a web form with Dan Q and three other passengers on the outbound leg of a journey. Personal details appear to be blurred, but are actually spoofed AND blurred, per Dan's tradition. A 'Return passenger information is the same' checkbox is checked.
You’d think that to specify different passengers for the return leg, all I’d have to do is uncheck that checkbox, right? Wrong!

I was able to provide all of the personal and passport details of everybody on the outbound leg, but un-checking the “Return passenger information is the same” checkbox did… nothing. In fact, when saving the form and logging in again, the checkbox would be automatically re-checked.1

This is the point at which a normal person would either:

  1. Add the details of all passengers, both outbound and returning, to the form, and just hope they can sort out the confusion at the terminal, or,
  2. Try to get hold of a human Help Centre/Contact Us system (good luck!) who can sort it out.

Fortunately, I am not a normal person. I… am a software security engineer.

API reverse-engineering

My browser debug tools quickly indicated how this entire process works, and gave a clue as to what was broken in LeShuttle’s systems.

  1. When you log in, it makes a POST request to https://nextus-api-prod.leshuttle.com/b2c-api/GuestApi/Read?bookRef=...&surname=..., including your booking reference and surname (which acts as your password) in the relevant parameters.
  2. This returns all of your details in a JSON document. Prettified, and with all of the actual data replaced with explanatory comments, it looks something like this: 
{
  "loginDetails": {
    /* credentials you used and other metadata */
  },
  "bookingDetails": {
    "outboundTravelDetails": {
      /* details about your outbound train and vehicle */
    },
    "returnTravelDetails": {
      /* details about your return train and vehicle */
    },
    "leadName": {
      /* details of the person who booked the trip */
    },
    "outboundPaxDetails": {
      /* For the outbound journey: */
      "paxLine": [
        /* First passenger: */
        {
          "paxDets": {
            /* - name, nationality, gender, DOB */
          },
          "docDets": {
            /* - passort number, expiry, issuing country */
          }
        },
        /* Second passenger: */
        {
          /* ... and so on .... */
        },
      ],
      /* Total number of passengers: */
      "noOfPax": "4"
    },
    "returnPaxDetails": {
      /* For the return journey: */
      "paxLine": [
        /* ... each passenger: same format as outbound... */
      ],
      /* Total number of passengers: */
      "noOfPax": "5"
    },
    "storedPaxDetails": {
      /* Pre-saved details? All blank for me */
    },
    /* More metadata */
  },
  "status": {
    /* Yet more metadata */
  },
  /* Even more metadata */
}
  1. Once you’ve made some changes, you press “Save”. This triggers a POST request to https://nextus-api-prod.leshuttle.com/b2c-api/GuestApi/Save with Content-Type: application/json and the entire JSON document from before, with your modifications, passed back.2

If you’re a programmer, you’re probably already making a guess as to what the underlying problem is. And you’re probably right:

  • The “Return passenger information is the same” checkbox value is not stored in the data that gets passed back and forth.
  • Instead, it’s derived by looking at the outbound and return passenger information. If it matches, it gets checked.
  • If it’s initially checked… the form doesn’t bother loading the UI that allows return passenger details to be modified.
  • But… this means that it never loads that UI:
    • the first time you visit the page the passenger list is empty both ways, which matches: anything you enter will necessarily be recorded into both the outbound and return fields, so
    • the next time you visit, it also matches… so it still doesn’t load the fields,
    • and so on.3

“Fixing” the problem

Knowing how the API worked, I was able to simply take the JSON document from the /Read endpoint, modify it so that the outboundPaxDetails and returnPaxDetails each contained the correct details for that leg of the journey (being sure also to update the total number of passengers noOfPax, which is for some reason a stored value rather than a derived one), and then submit it back via the /Save endpoint.

Having done this, I hit the /Read endpoint again to confirm that the data had, indeed, retained the data I submitted. When logging in again to the Web interface, I noticed that the checkbox now doesn’t automatically check itself. The correct data gets passed back and forth4.

Obviously LeShuttle need to fix their damn site. But at least – thanks to a little API reverse-engineering – I was able to submit the details they wanted from us.

Footnotes

1 Before anybody asks: yes, I tried all of the obvious things like using different browsers, clearing caches, disabling plugins, etc. I even had another passenger, using a different computer and operating system, give it a go. This one’s definitely a bug in LeShuttle’s systems.

2 I choose to assume that they’re doing some kind of server-side validation to ensure that a customer can’t, for example, modify details they’re not permitted to without a charge, such as which train they’re booked onto or the registration plate of the vehicle they’re bringing. But obviously I haven’t tested this, because it’s not among the information that I’m authorised to modify. Ethical hackers get permission before they poke at things they’re not sure whether they’re supposed to… especially if it’s a travel-related system and they’re somebody who has an unusual name that routinely gets them stopped and questioned at the UK border in general. 🤭

3 It occurs to me that possibly LeShuttle provide access to the relevant form only after the outbound journey has been made? Which would be a terrible design for the system and would represent terrible UI (why provide the checkbox if it doesn’t do anything?). I decided not to chance that this could be the expected approach, though, and just “fixed” the data up-front.

4 I haven’t tried modifying any of the outbound details to see if this re-breaks the return details. I suspect it would be fine, based on my analysis that the bug exists only in the front-end. But I can’t be sure without testing, and proper testing is something that LeShuttle’s own techies are getting paid to do. I don’t care enough about their website to do it for free!

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Food divided by Distance

I was pretty ill yesterday. It’s probably a combination of post-flood stress and my shitty lungs’ ability to take a sore throat and turn it into something that leaves me lying in bed and groaning.

I spent most of the morning in and out of a fitful sleep, during which I dreamed up the most-bizarre application: a GPS tracker app that, after being told your destination and what you were eating, reported your journey progress to social media by describing where you were going and how much of your food was left1.

Mastodon status 'Walking to class, eating a cheese sandwich' with a map showing a route to a University campus with a walking route indicated, and a flag about three quarters of the way along labelled 'Eating a quarter of a cheese sandwich'.
The “eating progress” could either be updated to the status itself or overlaid onto a map of the route.

I should be clear that in the dream, I wasn’t the one that invented this concept; in fact, I didn’t even understand it at first (maybe I still don’t!). In the dream I was at some kind of unconference event with a variety of “make art with the Web” types, and I missed a session by falling asleep2. I woke (within the dream) right before the session ended and rushed in to see what was being presented, and only got the tail-end of the explanation of how a project – this project – worked, after which I felt rushed to try to understand it before somebody inevitably tried to talk to me about it.

But it could work, couldn’t it? If you’re one of those people who routinely tracks and shares their location (like Aaron Parecki, whose heatmapping inspired my own) or journeys (like Jeremy Keith does), it’s a way to add a bit of silliness to that sharing.

Bluesky status saying 'Flying to Manchester, eating half a bag of salted peanuts', with a FlightRadar24-style illustration of a plane half-way across its journey over the Irish Sea.
For times you’re disconnected or otherwise unable to self-track, tools like FlightRadar could step in.

I’m probably not going to implement this. It is, in the end, the kind of stupidity that could (should?) only appear in the dreams of somebody who’s got a bad head cold.

But if you manage to take this idea and turn it into something… actually good?… let me know!

Or if you’ve just got a cool, “Web 2.0-ey” idea for the name of an app that tracks both your journey progress and your meal consumption, I’d love to hear that too.

Footnotes

1 Under the assumption that its consumption would be evenly distributed throughout the journey. Because everybody does that, right? Counting the number of steps they make before taking another equal-sized bite. Right?

2 Even in my dreams, I can dream of falling asleep. And, sometimes, of dreaming. A fever probably helps.

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F-Day plus 12

It’s now twelve days since a flood struck my house, causing the ground floor to be submerged under a couple of feet of water and ultimately leading us to kick off an insurance claim process.

A home office with its floor stripped down to poured concrete and an industrial dehumidifier running.
My regular home office of the last six years sits stripped-down, with no flooring, skirting boards, or power (with the exception of the specialised circuit powering an industrial dehumidifier).

And man, a home insurance claim seems to be… slow. For instance, we originally couldn’t even get anybody out to visit us until F-day plus 10 (later improved to F-day plus 7). The insurance company can’t promise that they’ll confirm that they’ll “accept liability” (agree to start paying for anything) until possibly as late as F-day plus 17. Nobody will check for structural damage until F-day plus 191.

Oh, and the insurance company have advised us to look for something like a “12 month let with a 6 month break clause”, which is horrifying. We could be out of our home for up to a year.

Dan, a white man, stands with his arms raised outside a nicely-decorated converted barn.
Right now, though, we’re spending two weeks in this holiday let about half an hour’s drive from our house. It’s pretty nice, except that we have to commute over the ever-congested single-lane Burford Bridge to get the kids to and from school every day2.

Some days it feels like being stuck in a nowhere-place… but simultaneously still having to make the regular everyday stuff keep ticking over. Visiting the house- currently stripped of anything damp and full of drying equipment – feels like stepping onto another planet… or like one of those dreams where you’re somewhere familiar except it’s wrong somehow.

But spending time away from it, “as if” on holiday except-not, is weird too: like we’re accepting the ambiguity; leaning-in to limbo. Especially while we’re waiting for the insurance company to do their initial things, it feels like life is both on hold, and not-allowed to be on hold.

A nervous-looking French Bulldog in a teal jumper looks up from under a desk.
The dog gets it. I had to take her to the house for a while on Monday3 and she spent the whole time leaning against my feet for reassurance.

And I worry that by the time they’re committed to paying for us to stay somewhere else for at least half a year, they lose any incentive they might have to contract for speed. There’s no hurry any more. We’re expected to just press pause on our home, but carry on with our lives regardless, pretending that everything’s normal.

So yeah, it’s a weird time.

Footnotes

1 I’m totally committed to this way of counting the progress, which I started on F-day plus 3. I get the feeling like it might be a worthwhile way of keeping track of how long all of this takes.

2 Normally, the younger and older child are able to get to school on foot or via a bus that stops virtually outside our house, each day, so an hour-plus round-trip to their schools and back up to twice a day is a bit of a drag! We’re managing to make it work with a little creativity, but I wouldn’t want to make it a long-term plan!

3 And do some work from there, amidst the jet engine-like noise of the dehumidifiers!

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Sky potholes

Amusing announcement from the captain of my plane out of Tenerife South this afternoon. In place of the usual recommendation to keep your seatbelt fastened while seated in case of turbulence, he advised that there was a “risk of potholes”.

I’m sure the analogy makes sense to the Brits aboard, but I hope it translated well for the Spanish speakers on this plane!

Dan Q found GC45BDD Mirador La Paz

This checkin to GC45BDD Mirador La Paz reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

My partner Ruth and I are staying at the Meliá hotel down in the city, from which amazingly I was able to get a WiFi connection despite the considerable distance!

Dan and Ruth stand on an overlook, pointing at a seaside Meliá hotel in the distant city below.

As others have observed, the hint is misleading for this cache. Substitute the word “right” in place of the word “left” and the hint makes more sense!

SL, TFTC! And thanks for the great view!

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Dan Q did not find GC1PYFN Parque Taoro

This checkin to GC1PYFN Parque Taoro reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Ruth and I made several attempts today without success: a muggle was sat nearby in such a way that access to the GZ was obstructed. We took a walk to the nearby Anglican church – whose architecture, if you ignore the volcanic rock, is uncannily like that of Anglican churches in the UK – but then we returned the muggle had very much set up camp and was going nowhere. We attempted to find a way to the cache from the opposite side without luck, and eventually had to give up. 😔