The World’s Greatest Scavenger Hunt

May 15, 2015June 12, 2015 ~ Ross ~ 2 Comments

Today’s topic is one that is very near and dear to my heart: Geocaching. If you’ve heard of it, great. If you do it, even better. But if the word puzzles you and you’d like to learn more, then continue on, dear reader. Continue on. You’ll fall in love.

In simple terms, Geocaching is a game that anyone in the world who has a Global Positioning System (and recently, GPS enabled smartphone) can play. It began in the year 2000, when a man named Dave Ulmer stashed a black box full of books , videos, money (probably not a lot) and other goodies in the ground. Going online, he publicized a set of GPS coordinates that would allow anyone to discover the exact location of the box, originally termed a stash. The rules of the game were simple: Find the box, take something, leave something different behind. And most importantly, sign and date the logbook that was inside the container, as proof you had been to visit.

geocache ammo can — Your average Geocache- Ammo Can Edition

Now, 15 years later, the rules are much the same. Called geocaches, these containers can vary in size from being no larger than your finger to large canisters full of swag to trade. In every cache there is a piece of paper or logbook, which you sign when you find the cache. They’re not always easy to find, and the locations they can be hidden in are sometimes very tricky and devious. There are even different types of caches to find: multi-caches, caches that give you coordinates to a location where the coordinates to the next location are hidden until you arrive at the final cache; mystery caches where you have to solve a puzzle in order to find the coordinates to the cache, and many more. It’s a brilliant little hobby, and tens of thousands of people hunt for them every day. There are caches hidden almost everywhere, and the U.S. is especially saturated with them. Don’t believe me? Go to the website Geocaching.com and type in your location. I will bet you money that there is at least one within a few miles of you right now. You’ve probably passed by it for years without a clue as to its existence. Here’s a map of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, a town I’ve gotten into trouble plenty of times in. Each green rectangle, question mark, and smiley face is the precise location of a geocache (smileys are ones that I have personally found).

Map of Murfreesboro Geocaches

I know, it’s nuts. How are they so prolific, you ask? Well, one of the cool features of geocaching is that anyone can place one. If you see a good spot for one, you can put a cache together, plot the exact coordinates, and upload it to the website. You’d be surprised at how quickly people will start hunting it down. The geocaching community is full of really great people, just enjoying the outdoors and the thrill of the hunt.

Now there are specific rules of course, you can’t just throw a container into someone’s yard and call it a day. Placing a cache on private property without the owner’s consent is a big no-no, and so is placing one too close to where many people are normally active. After all, people are naturally curious animals and often horribly mess up things they don’t understand. This is where the term muggles comes into play. Yes, just like the race of non-magical folk from Harry Potter, and they’re just as common. Muggles in the geocaching sense are people who don’t have a clue about caching, a.k.a. all of you guys reading this (well before you read this- now you’re in the know!). If they find a cache, they might not leave it alone, they could vandalize, destroy, steal or otherwise ruin the geocache, and believe me, that’s the worst thing that can happen in this game. So if you have the urge to find some caches, don’t let anyone see you when you find them. It can raise some awkward questions or worse, they could see you replace the cache, find it themselves, and steal/remove it. It adds a little clandestine activity to the scavenger hunt, which makes it all the more exciting.

Muggle-dodging aside, there are also some other rules critical to successful geocaching. If you come across a cache that contains all manner of interesting goodies, feel free to take one! However, please only take ONE, and in return you must put something of your own into the cache. Nothing of extreme value is necessary, I’ve seen stickers, plastic spiders, and even packs of gum (which I really don’t recommend). Just feel free to take a memento and leave one for the next cachers to enjoy as well.

One of the most important things you can do is leave the cache just like you found it. Some of the geocaches are planted in very tricky locations to reach, or otherwise very well hidden. It is vital that once you have finished signing the log and/or trading items, you place it back exactly where it was. The GPS coordinates have been precisely set by the CO (cache owner), and if you move the cache it may become difficult or impossible for anyone to find it after you.

keep-calm-and-go-geocaching-1

Lastly, have fun! This whole game has been designed for the sole purpose of giving people a fun and interactive way to explore the outdoors, learn local history and enjoy hunting down secret treasures. I’ve come across some absolutely beautiful areas while searching for these babies, with stunning mountain views and sparkling waterfalls. I’ve also learned some fascinating things about Tennessee, like the fact that there’s a tiny park in the middle of Murfreesboro that has a monument at the precise center of the state, or that there’s a piece of Mount Rushmore in the middle of Smyrna. Crazy stuff, and I know about it solely thanks to geocaching.

If any of what I’ve just said piques your interest, then I encourage you to go to the Geocaching website and sign up for an account. Like everything in this world, anything people find remotely fun gets commercialized so companies can turn a fat profit, but a regular account is free and gives you access to more geocache locations than you could ever find in a lifetime. A premium account is a monthly or yearly subscription that is worth the investment for heavy geocachers, but completely unnecessary for anyone starting out. You can also download a variety of geocaching apps from the Google Play Store or App Store. The official one that is produced by the makers of the website I just linked to has a very slick design, but is often unreliable when it comes to determining your exact location. Also, never, NEVER pay for its $10 big brother. It is actually worse than its free version, and is hella overpriced to boot. My favorite would have to be c:geo, which, while possessing a slightly more cluttered interface, has far more options for the non-premium user and gives you much greater control than the “official” geocaching app. Both use your geocaching.com account to login and therefore when you log a cache you’ve found on either app, it posts it on your account so you can see it on the computer, the other app, or whatever: they’re all connected.

So there you have it! My rudimentary explanation of one of my favorite outdoor activities. I hope it catches you on fire as it did for me, but if not, that’s fine too. You might come across the word in a few years and remember “hey! I read a post on some guy’s awesome blog about that. I should check it out this time.” In the meantime though, I’m gonna be out searching for caches. I hope to see you out there one day too (except I’ll probably think you’re a muggle and hide). Happy hunting!

A Scintillating Poem to Titillate Your Senses

May 8, 2015May 8, 2015 ~ Ross ~ Leave a comment

Well, you guys asked for it (though I don’t know why), so here you go. This is the poem that was published in the Spring 2015 edition of my school’s creative arts publication Collage. It’s not that big a deal, but it was fun to dream up something to submit and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the editors saw fit to include it. The image below is what it looks like on the actual page. Don’t judge too hard, I’m a novice!

I know, pretentious and artsy, but rest assured I did it merely for an experiment in poetry, not because the events in the tale actually happened to me. I penned the words and thought they flowed well, and I suppose some people agreed. Maybe I’ll see if I can get two published in a row? Who knows…

3 Months to End Two Years

April 30, 2015April 30, 2015 ~ Ross ~ Leave a comment

“My philosophy is: if you can’t have fun, there’s no sense in doing it.” Paul Walker

I’m making this post for three reasons. One, because I want to increase the number of posts I make a month until I’m doing about two a week, and I want every month of my archives to have at least one more post than the month before it until I reach that goal. Two: because this is the end of the last week of my Sophomore semester of college. and Three: It’s been three months since I started this blog! Anniversary celebration! *cheers*

Time really flies for me. When I started college in the Fall of 2013 I had no idea what to expect. Like so many others, I was nervous but also somewhat excited. It was going to be a new experience for me and I just hoped I wouldn’t die. I was definitely not expecting the speed at which the years would pass by. Man, I feel old just writing about this.

Every semester is far shorter than any of my school periods were in high school. We get a whole month for winter break, while most schools I know of are lucky to get a week. Semesters begin after all other schools do, and we get out earlier too. Plus I only have to go to campus two or three days a week, making it far easier to find time to study and work. It’s really nice, but also fairly scary.

It’s scary because I almost feel like my life is passing me by way too quickly. When I’m waiting for something that I don’t want to happen, it seems like it happens way faster than it should. That’s my take on waiting on the two days I have to go to campus every week. It’s not that I hate going to school, I’d just rather not have to at all. I’m lazy, and getting up at 7 AM on a regular basis doesn’t do it for me. And yes, I’m well aware primary schools have it way worse. Another perk of college. But because of how speedily the days pass, the semesters are over before I feel like I’ve even done anything of note, and before I know it the next one has started again. And so on, for two years. I hardly feel like I’ve accomplished anything over the past two years. Sure, I’ve learned quite a bit from my classes (some far more than others), but it’s all so rushed I’m not quite satisfied when it’s all over. And I mean to change that.

How, I’m not quite sure, but I’m going to figure it out. I’d like to study abroad if I get the chance, or maybe join some student organizations. Besides finding a good career from all this, I want to have a lot of fun before it’s all over. I want to look back on my college days fondly instead of hardly being able to remember them at all. Finding out how is all part of the fun. And I’m all about having fun.

Here’s to my Junior semesters!

The Island of Ghosts

April 12, 2015September 8, 2015 ~ Ross ~ Leave a comment

I’m not gonna lie, I really enjoyed the movie Skyfall. I’ve been a fan of the James Bond franchise ever since I was a pubescent snot, entirely thanks to my father who sat and watched every single movie with me. I watched Bond work his way through modest set pieces like an underwater nuclear reactor and Fort Knox to increasingly grandiose and exotic locations like the beautiful Taj Lake Palace and hotels made entirely from ice. As Bond became more and more extravagant, so too did the movie studio’s desire to shock and amaze its audience with dazzling locales. The most recent destination Bond visited was a place that very much exists in real life: Hashima Island.

Looks like any other island, right? WRONG.

As soon as I saw it in the film, I was in love. Boy, that place is awesome. If I ever went to Japan, I’d definitely try to tour it. Hashima Island, known as Battleship Island to the Japanese (or the more ominous Island of Ghosts), is a 15.5 acre island about 9 miles off the coast of Nagasaki (yes, that Nagasaki). What makes it so interesting is that the entire island was inhabited by over 5,000 people up until 1974, at which point the population became drastically reduced to 0. Almost the same as the number of people who read my blog! Coincidence, or Illuminati?

Jokes aside, the reason for this sudden disappearance wasn’t anything crazy. No diseases or alien abductions here, I think. Hashima Island was the site of a large underwater coal mine, owned and operated by the Mitsubishi corporation. When the majority of the world decided to start using less of that pesky, carcinogenic fuel, Mitsubishi shut the mine down and sent everyone away. The large apartment buildings you see in the picture were inhabited by the miners of the precious resource.

Now remember, this island is pretty small. Ridiculously small, in fact, especially when you take into account its maximum population of 5,200ish souls. That’s a population density of 835 people per hectare, if Wikipedia is to be believed, which is equivalent to the astonishing mathematical equivalent of 216,264 people per square mile. That’s a lot. Actually the largest population density ever recorded. Seriously, look it up. Oh, you wanted to see more pictures of this epic place? Well, I won’t stop you.

Hashima tenements — Every floor empty… of human life, that is.

Creepy, right? But I do adore abandoned buildings so much, and an entire island full of them? Sign me up. Another interesting thing about Hashima is that it was only just recently opened for public tours. Not all of it, mind you, on account of those silly public safety laws Japan has, but some. Enough to get a very interesting peek into the derelict buildings of the mysterious island. Oh, and Google even got an employee to make a trek of the island with their cool Street View tech. 360 degrees of abandoned island goodness. You can check out those awesome photos and take a little virtual tour of the island here.

I spent hours looking through photo galleries of Hashima Island. I love how it looks, and I love the way nature interacts with abandoned, falling apart structures. If I had the chance to live in a post-apocalyptic world and travel the land, I’m sorry, but I’d be first in line to nuke everyone.

Orrrr I wouldn’t have to cause worldwide devastation, if I got my fix by visiting places like this. Seeing old television sets left behind, personal belongings strewn in the deserted concrete monoliths- mmm, that’d be awesome. But for now, I can enjoy the sights from a distance, thanks to travel websites and Google Images. If any of you ever get to go, be sure to tell me how awesome it is! Drinks on me.

One more for the road? One more.

Hashima stairway I lied. One more after that. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to do Urban Exploration, which is the exploring of these kinds of dilapidated structures and abandoned places, often by flaunting the law. But hey, a small price to pay to see these beautiful places first hand. And this one can be visited legally 100 days out of the year! I’m in.

Hashima Street View — An image from Google’s Street View

Slicing Away at Our DNA

April 9, 2015April 9, 2015 ~ Ross ~ 2 Comments

No, I didn’t mean for that to sound like a catchy jingle.

Man, heavy topic today, so put your thinking caps on. We’ll be taking a stroll through the beautiful gardens of our deoxyribonucleic acid sequences, so come on and join the party! If we’re lucky, we may even get to find out how fireflies get their fire, and whether or not we can make humans glow in the same way! (but only if you’re good.)

Everyone who’s ever passed a basic biology course knows about DNA. It’s a double helix, the twisted ladder! Two loooooong ropes of nucleotides that have bonded together in a specific way, twisted around in a pretty shape, and folded on top of itself in a hundred different places. But do we really know what all that means?

Until recently, I would have been able to tell you the names of (most of) the parts of DNA, a few facts about it and other assorted trivia. Things that you have to memorize for school but never really think about outside of class. And I’m so sad for that, because now that I’ve looked into it just a tiny bit, I’m blown away by how simply amazing humans and their cells really are. I wish I’d gotten into this stuff years ago.

Think about it. The DNA inside you is what caused every single cell inside your body to be built. Your liver cells, your brain cells, all those skin cells that you rub off a few thousand of every time you scratch an itch- they were all mapped out by a supercomputer known as DNA and created by… your very first cell.

Everything you are, the billions of cells that make you who you are, all came from one cell. I’d hazard a guess that everyone knows this, but take a moment to think about how truly awesome that is. The moment you became alive, you were nothing more than two halves of a cell meeting up and becoming one. But you weren’t satisfied with that. No, you wanted to double your size- quadruple- octuple!- continue growing and making more until you formed your own rough copy of your parents. Don’t ask me why, that seems like a terrible idea. Maybe it sounded good at the time.

Let me take a moment to briefly explain why all this stuff matters. I promise there’s a point to all this boring science. The reason that those cells were all able to become vastly different is because our DNA (and this is important) has the instructions inside of it that tell the cells what to be. Now remember, every single cell you have has the exact same DNA inside it. All of them! Even gametes, though they’re a little different, but that’s a post for another day. Anyway, that’s amazing! You should freak out! Your skin cells have the exact same information inside of them that your heart cells do, and yet they have totally different functions! It’s impossible-to-understand wizardry!

…Or is it?

The question you should be asking yourself is, “What parts of the DNA tell the cell what to do?” And the answer to that is, genes. The textbook definition of a gene is that it is a segment of DNA that codes for a specific trait. It’s several of the nucleotides that form DNA and when it’s activated, it starts producing proteins that give the cell its new purpose. Everyone knows that genes are what affects eye color, height, and other aspects of the body, A.K.A. traits. DNA is the master blueprint for forming exactly who you are, how you are.

Now the answer to that question begs another: If we could somehow discover what genes go to which trait, would we be able to… mess with them?

Of course we can! Through the strategic placing of certain proteins that eliminate specific segments of DNA, we can delete genes that we want gone and study what happens once those genes have disappeared. Even better, this process doesn’t have to be random. Scientists can locate the exact point on DNA where a gene begins, so while they may not know what that gene does, they can certainly delete it and observe what happens in the test subject.

I’m sure your next question is similar to what mine was when I found out how easy (for skilled scientists, anyway) this process is. “What awesome bioengineering have we done to things???”

How about making cats glow in the dark? [here’s a video link to that news story.] Or GMO (genetically modified organism) foods? Curing genetic disorders should be possible too, right? Scientists have been doing this kind of thing for decades (and I do mean only decades, this is cutting edge stuff we’re talking about), but there’s so much we have left to learn. But yes, all of these things are being done because we have the ability and knowledge to do them, and experimenting with it can create some pretty epic things. Who knows, we might even cure cancer one day.

It all starts with DNA. It’s not a magical word that makes people give you mad respect if you can spell it perfectly, it’s not a mystery box that scientists pull random experiments out of and go “hey, that’s neat.” It’s just a string of information that your body reads so that it knows what to do. That’s all. If we re-write some of that information, we can find out exactly how a body reacts. Not magic. Science. And science is understandable, and really, really awesome.

Oh yeah, I promised to talk about fireflies and their Luciferase, didn’t I? Well allow me to save that for another day. Have to have material to keep you all coming back, right? Oh, and if you have any questions, I encourage you to comment them below. I’m still learning all this stuff too, and any more incentives I can get to study it, I’ll take. Farewell my friends, see you next time!

The Death of My Blog

April 1, 2015 ~ Ross ~ Leave a comment

It is with a heavy heart that I announce this. Though my time providing you all with interesting and sometimes bizarre content has been enjoyable to say the least, I’m afraid that this letter I received from my overseers at WordPress.com has put the nail in my coffin. I’ll let you all read the words that I did early this morning, as I rifled through my e-mail inbox for Groupon deals, Viagra offers and spam to delete. Well, it was fun while it lasted!

April 1^st, 2015

Mr. Houser:

This CEASE AND DESIST ORDER is to inform you that your actions including but not limited to making boring posts, irritating your readers with lame stock photography, and consistent lack of creative and original thought in every word you type have become unbearable. You are ORDERED TO STOP such activities immediately as they are a gross misuse of the tools we intend to be used by people that are actually good at blogging. We pride ourselves on maintaining a site that can be looked up to by future generations of bloggers and your blog is an atrocious inkblot on our crisp, perfect website.

Again, you must IMMEDIATELY STOP these unwanted activities and delete your site promptly, or else we will do it for you. You also risk incurring some very severe legal consequences if you fail to comply with this demand.

This letter acts as your one and final warning to discontinue this unwanted conduct before we pursue legal actions against you. To ensure compliance with this letter, and to halt any legal action we may take against you, we require you to fill in and sign the attached form and mail it back to us within 10 days of your receipt of this letter. Failure to do so will act as evidence of your infringement upon our right to have good writers and bloggers use our service, and we will hunt you down mercilessly.

Sincerely,

Preston Wordsmythe

Founder and Chief Censor, WordPress

The second page of the message was just a form that said “1f y0u 4r3 4 n008 l053r, 51gn h3r3.” Not sure what it meant, perhaps a cryptic final jab at my blog? I really don’t understand all that legalese anyway.

April the First be with you!

Money Memos: Jumping Jeffersons

March 19, 2015March 27, 2015 ~ Ross ~ 2 Comments

Well well well, welcome back my fine fellow pecuniophiles. Yes, I made that up. No, I don’t know why there isn’t an official name for people who are addicted to money. Catchy words aside, I recently came into a rather large supply of bills and they’ve got some very interesting qualities I’d like to share with you.

You may remember my first post about my pet project of collecting defaced dollars, but if not I encourage you to refresh yourself by reading it here. I’ll wait for you to finish, I like to think it’s fairly amusing (at least my mother and co-workers tell me so).

All done? Excellent. Today I want to show you all one of my favorite subcategories of Money Memos: the “Where’s George” variety. The website www.wheresgeorge.com describes itself as a “Currency Tracking Project.” On the homepage you can type in the unique serial number found on every piece of American paper currency and it will pull up a list of every location that another person has typed that serial number in before. This allows you to see the many locations around the country that that very bill you hold in your hands has been. It’s actually pretty cool and I encourage you guys to try it, if you haven’t before.

Now obviously not every bill will pull up its history, after all there’s over 1.31 trillion dollars in circulation at this moment, just in bills. That adds up to quite a large stack of cash. If that amount in $1 bills were stacked end on end, they would cover the distance of more than one quarter the way from here to the moon. Outrageous. Clearly, even if not every bill has the value of $1, it would take us quite a long time to catalogue every bill in the Where’s George database. So how do you know which ones will have a history on the website?

Conveniently, currency tracking enthusiasts will stamp, write, or otherwise deface a bill with their website’s name to let you know that it has been entered into the system before. There are several official stamps that allow you to quickly and easily mark a bill to let the world know that this bill is being… watched.

where's george examples — Examples of normal “Where’s George” markings

Once the stamper enters the bill into the database, makes a note of its condition and where he or she set it loose, the game is on. They will wait patiently for someone to come across it and be curious enough to type the serial number into the website and see where it came from. The results are sometimes surprising, other times you’ll find that it started very near your location five years ago. Maybe you’ll learn of a new part of your state you’d never heard of (where even is Erin, Tennessee?). Nevertheless, it can be fun to do, and I keep a list of Where’s George serial numbers in my phone so that whenever I come across them, I can store them and save them for later.

Now since I deal with so much cash on a day to day basis, it stands to reason that I’ll come up against these bills sooner or later, probably more often than my traditional Money Memos. So imagine my glee when I discovered that the two groups were not necessarily mutually exclusive. Allow me to demonstrate.

Handwritten. The poor man’s way of marking his Where’s George collection. I’m not sure what website you’ll be directed to if you type in wheresgeoue.coa but I imagine it probably involves discreet monthly payments of $49.95. Not that I’ve checked. It might be quite a legitimate business site for all I know. Never mind that I’d list this bill as a Where’s Abe, unless George Washington suddenly got a sick beard and oversized mole without consulting me. Also he would have had to dig his way out of his concrete tomb that’s roughly the size of all the houses I’ve ever lived in put together.

But I digress. Handwritten Where’s George notes are less common than you might think, perhaps because if you’re crazy enough to mark hundreds of bills with your favorite website’s name you’ll probably just make the investment in actual stamps to save yourself the Carpal Tunnel. Also people will never find the right site if your handwriting looks like the cuneiform of an ancient Babylonian.

Honestly I’m not sure why this guy went to such great lengths to tell us what the website does considering the site’s name does a pretty good job of that already. What’s with the ‘@’ symbol anyway? The person went to all the trouble of writing a whole bunch of extra words and suddenly couldn’t write one more character. “Gee willikers, my arthritis is acting up again! Better use that fancy new symbol all the kids use these days to spare myself some pain while I write this overly-descriptive message on A COUPLE THOUSAND BILLS.” Sheesh grandpa, get a stamp already.

But by far my favorite (and the most depressing) George Memo I’ve found is this one.

I can picture it now: A very young boy learning about Where’s George for the first time, his eyes glowing with the fascination of a child who has yet to discover better things to do than eat worms and roam the outdoors with his dog. He decides to bypass that annoying system that uses the internet and start his own network of roaming dollar bills. “Plese,” he says. “Plese call, for I can track!” is his desperate plea for someone to let him know where his bill has traveled. I denied his request. I’m far more likely to cross reference his phone number with the directory of Wadley, Alabama (population 745) so I can nail the bill to his door and wait for him to get home. That should get an interesting reaction. I foresee him wetting his pants when he realizes some mysterious, possibly supernatural force has tracked him down to exact vengeance on him for defacing a dollar bill, but that might be too optimistic.

Yes, I might be sadistic, but Where’s George can be a fun little diversion if you find yourself in posession of one of these bills. Sure, the website looks like it was designed by a colorblind toddler but it’s functional and it’s cool, so it definitely gets my vote for first president *wink*

If you decide to hop on board with the craze and see how far your bills travel after you spend them, I encourage you to do so. Just please don’t write them by hand, or you’ll make me facepalm and say…

Andrew "Jesus" Jackson — I think some Native Americans might take exception to this description of Jackson

That’s all for this segment, folks. Now go out there and collect serial numbers!

The Addictive Nature of Blogging

March 18, 2015March 18, 2015 ~ Ross ~ Leave a comment

“If a story is in you, it has to come out.” William Faulkner

Over the past few days my blog has seen a pretty major overhaul! I published a new, large post, added several new pages, updated others, and even put it all into a new theme that I think suits the tone of this website a little better than the last. And let me tell you- it’s been way more fun than it should be. I was practically giggling like a schoolgirl when I was surfing through the hundreds of possible themes I could give this site. Researching that post made me trawl through dozens of obscure facts and fascinating research. It was amazing! The more I write on this blog, the more I enjoy it. It’s gotten to the point where every time I successfully finish a post and publish it, I experience something I can only describe as a writer’s high.

It’s like a burst of adrenaline that makes me want to write even more, and it’s usually what spurs me to make another post right after, like this one. I like to think of them as sidenotes or behind the scenes posts, explaining my ever-changing opinion on blogs and the things I’ve learned about them (they’re under the “news” category if you want them all). It is, of course, murder to have to wait until at least one day after my previous post to publish them- but, like the families of Krakatoa, I don’t want to oversaturate the market with blog posts. Of course I’m not comparing my posts to diamonds, but… the principle is the same.

Writing as I am still under the effect of this high, I think I’m sober enough to say that I’m definitely in love with blogging. At least I’m enjoying my whirlwind romance with it. Hopefully it develops into something that can stand the test of time. In the meantime, I’ll keep posting, and I hope you guys keep reading!