'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe

There's a geocache I've got my eye on that has loads of stages to it, and as useful as the Geocaching Android app is it is very fiddly to work with child waypoints on it. So I thought I'd dig out a classic Garmin yellow eTrex I've got and give that a go. There's a snag though: it's so ancient (it's the same one we used when talismancer first introduced me to geocaching in 2006!) that it had fallen foul of the GPS date rollover in 2019 and was convinced that the year was sometime in 2002!

I know that several GPS receivers have firmware updates to fix this (even very old models) so I thought it's worth a try, and if not I can always ignore the incorrect date (assuming that doesn't cause problems with getting a GPS fix). So, first up was the Garmin website and their WebUpdater which detected the GPS (handily my new PC has a real serial port, and the serial cable I made up years ago based on this somehow still works) and proclaimed that I was running the latest version! Some more searching threw up a changelog which had the latest version as 2.14... which was rather confusing, as the eTrex claimed it was actually on 3.10.

So I did more digging and found this archive which had some v3.x firmware installers and suggested (based on the folder naming) that they would work on a basic eTrex. Well, I don't have anything to lose, so I pulled down the v3.30 updater, ran it, and it merrily detected the eTrex. A couple of minutes later it'd loaded the new firmware on and everything seemed to be working.

The later versions hadn't been picked up by the wayback machine but they gave me a hint for what to search for and I tracked down the actual latest v3.70 firmware on the Garmin website. It appears that there's two hardware revisions of the basic yellow eTrex, and the newer revision uses v3 firmware. Anyway, after running the 3.70 firmware update I did a factory reset, left it outside for a while to get a fix, and one of those updates has fixed things as it's now showing the correct date!

Now you see it...



...now you don't!



Yesterday morning at the crack of dawn Fawley power station chimney and turbine hall were demolished, so before the crack of dawn I trundled along to Warsash to watch from the shoreline (because why not? - and because someone was hosting a geocaching event, also because why not?). The internets suggested that it could be popular so I avoided the suggested parking and instead parked up outside St Mary's at Warsash... which was the right decision, as by the time I'd walked to Hook Park Road everywhere was packed and apparently someone had crashed as well!

Walking there made for something of an odd pilgrimage in the pre-dawn gloom, with torchlit coat-clad walkers dodging the flooded roads (and in one case trying to manhandle a pushchair around a particularly deep puddle). At the beach itself I emerged into the teeth of the autumn gale battering the coast, and got thoroughly soaked through while waiting. I did consider bringing an umbrella... but decided not to in the end what with how windy it was. That was probably the right choice given what happened to other umbrellas:



The chimney went down right on cue, followed by a more visible explosion taking down the rest of the turbine hall, and a few moments late the surprisingly loud bangs reached us (apparently heard all the way over in Fareham). And that was that! A local landmark that I could see from the right spot in Fareham is now gone, and just the cleanup left followed by turning the site into a housing development.

And because this is the 21st century, of course I have video of it (though without the bangs, because of all the wind noise) 😁

I'm typing this post from a train in the middle of nowhere because I can. Yay on-train wifi! Not that it's that fast a connection - I seem to be getting all of 512kb/s out of it.

I can't believe I just typed that. It really isn't that long ago that 512k was a reasonable Internet speed - now it makes browsing painfully slow.

Anyway, so what all's been happening in the world of boggyb? Well, various odds and ends that I've been meaning to post but haven't got round to doing so - so here's a round-up to clear the backlog.


Last month was elemnar's birthday and we ended up going to Reigate for the day (parking in what The Gnu described as the worst car park ever). We followed a surprisingly interesting tour around Reigate that The Gnu had found, taking us through tunnels and moats and into castles and odd side streets. There's even a cave system that's occasionally open to visitors! We then went to Prezzo for lunch wherein amusingly The Gnu and I ordered different pizzas that intrigued us, then both of us spent the meal thinking that we preferred the look of each other's pizza. So perhaps next time we'll swap the order round?

After that we went to the real goal of the trip which was to sample the Monty Bojangles café and enjoy variations upon chocolate drinks (I had a chocolate milkshake, they had hot chocolates - and our drinks were all very nice!). Finally as we had a bit of time left we wandered towards the park in search of a few geocaches. The first one we found was a literal letterbox cache mounted in plain sight of everyone (it even had a sign saying "Geocache" and everything!). The next few were less successful - we found 3 or 4 in the woods, of which most were damaged or missing parts. Shame, really, as they were rather inventive caches - one was a bird feeder, another was a box hidden in a log complete with a very large 'X' to mark the spot.


Hmm, my wifi has dropped down to 128kb/s. That 15MB "fast Internet" cap didn't last long!


Later on in September was the parents' anniversary which we all celebrated as this year is a significant number. The parents had been mulling over various plans and ideas but in the end went for a simple family celebration mainly consisting of lots of board games at which allegramente demolished us all. We played two full rounds of Mahjong which allegramente ended up winning overall with a couple of high-scoring hands (it's all about the doubles). Later on we moved on to the next scenario in our ongoing Settlers of Catan: Seafarers campaign (Through the Desert, I think) and allegramente once again pulled a win out, this time through a strong military (i.e. lots of Knight cards) which defeated my expansionist approach. Finally we came to Ankh-Morpork - this time allegramente won the first round fair and square (possibly as one of the Lords?), and in the second game conspired with the others to pull off a win as Vimes while destroying all my buildings and assassinating all my minions. I think that was the first game that ended with one of us (me!) having nothing on the board at all!


Overheard at Taunton:

Punter 1: "Excuse me, I was booked in that seat"
Punter 2: "Oh, so was I"
Punter 1: "...twat" *stomps off*

Charming.

As it happens I'm in someone's seat, but given that this seat was booked from London Paddington and yet has been empty since Westbury I doubt the real occupant is about to turn up.


What else... car check time! It's been a while since I've blogged about it, though I have been doing the monthly checks and keeping everything topped up. October is MOT/service month as well so I need to arrange all that, along with a few other things - the rear shocks were flagged for upcoming replacement at the previous service and I still haven't got round to getting the exhaust tightened (that's the one which Halford's replaced over a year ago - they apparently didn't do a good job of fitting the new one!). Plus there's the ongoing power steering puzzle though that said, it has been more reliable over the past year.

As to the tyres, well the chap from Kwikfit turned up, checked the tread depth on all of them, and commented that there was loads of tread left (3/4mm on the fronts, 5/6mm on the rear) so they didn't need replacing after all. Except for the punctured rear, and since none of the others are new he suggested replacing the most worn tyre on the other side and moving that to the same axle. So in the end he replaced OSR and NSF, and swapped NSF with NSR giving me two new Goodyear Efficientgrip Performance tyres on the rear and a pair of reasonably evenly-worn boots on the front. And arranged a refund of the unused tyres which was nice. Full marks to Kwikfit mobile!


Anyway, enough rambling for now. Onwards to Cornwall!

That walk was somewhat longer than I expected. Left the house at approx 4:40pm, returned at 8:30. GPS guesses the trip as being 12 miles, though some of that was by bus. As a result, my feet are most unimpressed.

For a change, I decided to get the bus to Portchester and then walk back to Fareham (usually I do this walk from Fareham to Portchester and get the bus back). Unfortuantly for me, it was blowing an absolute gale towards Portchester, and so I had to fight the wind all the way back. It was sufficiently windy that you could lean into it and not fall over.

But I found all three geocaches I attempted (including one where I walked to where the co-ordinates were, turned round and spotted it instantly), dropped off a travel bug I've had for too long and took some nice photos, so it was all good.