Calendar Photos

The submission deadline for calendar photos has come and gone, with a total of nearly 600 photos submitted! I actually started weeding through them last week and have now narrowed down the choices to 28 pictures. The more I narrow the photos down, the harder it gets. The first ones are easy--I don't even read anything about the photos. Date in the corner? Delete. Telephone wires running through the middle of the photo? Delete. Blurry photo? Delete. Strange photo of a person wearing a lobster hat? Delete. (Though that one did make me laugh.)

Now I find myself looking at four photos of beautiful waterfalls, and I think, "Okay, I can't use them all. But which one?" Then I start looking at where the photo was taken. If there are a lot of nice photos in a certain part of the country, I'll lean towards the photos taken somewhere else. Or if I've already picked a photo by one person, I'll try to pick another one by somewhere else. And one in a national park I ditched--beautiful photo--but all else being equal, I had to go with the waterfall not in a national park.

And I still have four waterfall photos left to choose from. Hmm.... At the very least, I still need to narrow it down to no more than two. It might boil down to which photos I can find the best quotes to go with them. I haven't even started looking for quotes as of it. Or maybe which months I need a photo to fill with. If I have an empty slot for January, I'd probably go with the waterfall in the snow. If I have an empty slot in October, I'd go with the waterfall surrounded by the fall leaves. Decisions, decisions.....

But I'm now down to 28 choices to choose from. There won't be a silly calendar this year--I actually lost money on those last year due to the lack of interest in that one. I'm kind of leaning towards not doing a "sunset edition" this year either. There are enough photos for that, but this year a large number of them seem surprisingly similiar.

But that still leaves me with 28 photos to choose from, and the choices just keep getting tougher....

Ireland In Two Days or Less

I already posted a brief notice of Amanda and myself in Ireland. Little did I know, Amanda brought the little cord for our cameras, so I actually have some pictures to post this time around. =) First, let's examine the view out of our hotel window. We're on the sixth floors (or rather, the seventh, if you count floors American style), overlooking the Shannon River (or "the River Shannon" as locals like to call it). We also have an incredible view of a huge pile of scrap metal. =)


Since this photo was taken, a ship has since arrived and they've been moving the scrap metal onto the ship. It's still an impressive little pile, however.

Then we headed off to see a little of town. The castle below is King John's Castle in Limerick. It was built about 800 years ago and had been attacked numerous times over the years, both above ground and below it through the use of tunnel warfare.

This next photo is from inside the castle. It has a nice museum in a building (not visible in this photo) and an underground area they've been excavating that us tourists can visit (again, not visible in this photo). That's Amanda in the foreground. You can recognize her from all the patches on her pack. =)


And that was pretty much it for us. We crashed particularly early, absolutely exhausted from the long flight from Seattle. The next photo is of our hotel the next morning (which is today, actually). It's the tallest hotel in Ireland if their claims are to be believed. *nodding* Our room is on the other side of the building. These people have the "pretty views" rather than the junkyard views we got.


We headed off to the bus and rail station for a bus tour of the area. We met up with a small group of people, piled into a small bus, and headed out to Bunratty Castle.
I always like to take pictures of flags when I'm in foreign countries, and Ireland is no exception. This particular flag flies over Bunratty Castle. =)

I saw Amanda taking a picture of this window--part of a "village" recreated next to the castle--and thought it looked particularly scenic and followed suit. Then she admitted--she saw it used on postcards! The cheat! It is a nice photo, however. =)


There was even some wildlife sightings.


They were in an enclosure, however, which makes spotting them particularly easy. =) Then Amanda decided to become friends with one of the donkeys.


From there, we headed out towards the Cliffs of Mohar, but the weather, alas, was not cooperating. You may recognize these cliffs as those used in the movie The Princess Bride. Upon our arrival, however, I can't say I recognized anything.


A peek of the Atlantic Ocean was there, but the cliffs were infuriatingly surrounded in fog. But alas! It started to clear!


And by the time we left, it was almost entirely clear! The weather, my friends, can change in an instant! So we were rather delighted to see the cliffs in all their glory, towering hundreds of feet out of the ocean.

The last major stop was to a desolate rocky area known as the Burren.


In case you're wondering what any of this has to do with letterboxing, I planted a letterbox there under that rock in that last photo where Amanda is standing. Amanda also planted one at Bunratty Castle. Look for the clues soon!

And once again, we are back in the hotel room at Limerick, waiting for daylight to head back to the Shannon airport and the end of our two-day whirl-wind adventure.

Carpe diem!

Where the heck are you, Ryan?

Has anyone even noticed that I'm not around anymore? Yep, it's true. At this particular moment, I'm at an Internet cafe in Limerick. That's in Ireland for those of you not up on world geography. Amanda worked a flight out to here that has a TWO day layover--so I kind of tagged along to enjoy the dirt cheap flight and free hotel room, and two days of soaking up the local sights. I've never been to Ireland before.

I've been in the country for about five hours now, practically a walking zombie from being so tired, but darn it, I only have two days here and I'm going to make the best of it!

We took a short van ride to our hotel in Limerick--learning along the way that Limerick is the third largest city in Ireland (who knew?!) and our hotel, the Clarion, is the tallest hotel in Ireland! Woo-who! Alas, we have a sixth room floor with a view over the largest pile of scrap metal I ever have seen and the river Shannon. Actually, it's kind of cool. =) I guess once they collect enough of the scrap metal, they ship it off to wherever scrap metal goes to die or get recycled.

Amanda and I visited King John's Castle this afternoon, which has been the highlight of the day. Fascinating stories of battles fought, both on the surface and through underground tunnels. We've book a bus tour for tomorrow, so hopefully I'll have some interesting stories about that later.

Now we're wandering around town rather vaguely looking for any promising locations for letterboxes. In town, though, it's not looking good.

So that's what's going on on my side of the world. =) I'm ready to get some sleep, though. I think I've had all of about six hours sleep in the last 48 hours, and it's catching up to me. *yawn*

Submit Your Photos... NOW!

It's that time of year again. Summer is coming to an end, back to school sales are in full motion, and another year of Project X is upon us. What is Project X? It's the annual letterboxing calendar, full of beautiful photos taken by letterboxers, while letterboxing. (Okay, usually while letterboxing.)

You can read more about the letterboxing calendar and what kind of photos we're looking for on the Project X link under the Toolbox menubar option, or just follow this link. =)

The deadline for photo submissions is the August 31st--less than a week away!--so if you want to be in the 2009 letterboxing calendar, get your submissions in now! All winners get a free calendar with their photo in it!

Be Careful Out There!

I was walking along the Alki waterfront yesterday afternoon, as I often do, admiring the snow-capped Olympic Mountains and the sun that was soon to set behind them. Very scenic, crowded with what seemed like hundreds of people enjoying the view, playing volleyball, and laying out on the beach.

Near the end of the beach, a concrete retaining wall comes up out of the water, and I like to walk on it. Right up close to the water. Especially at high tide, like it was then, and watch the water sloshing around the rocks at the base of it. It also gets me off the very crowded sidewalks this time of year. So I was walking up to this retaining wall, about to start walking on it, and I noticed a large, severely overweight man standing on the beach, back towards me, watching the sun set. He had no shirt on, and it might be politically incorrect, but the first thought that went through my head was, "Oh, I so don't want to see that."

Just as I was about to step onto the retaining wall, the rest of him came into view, and OH MY GOD! He had NO clothes on! And the second thought that immediately went through my head was, "I'M BLIND! I'M BLIND!"

Yes, I bumped into my second "naked hiker." The first one happened years ago while looking for some letterboxes along Denny Creek. I'd never seen a naked hiker before, and it was something of a shock at the time.

But this newest "naked hiker" incident is even more surprising--because it was in a VERY public place: Alki Beach! At least Denny Creek was mostly deserted. I saw him on a weekday and we two were probably the only two people hiking the trail that afternoon. This one was on a crowded beach with hundreds of people around. He was off at the very edge of the beach, mostly hidden by the retaining wall to passer-bys, but it was a shockingly public place to see a naked man loitering around.

I kept walking.....

If you think that was the end of the excitement, you'd be wrong. About ten minutes later, I passed by a small group of trees whose branches are growing out over the retaining wall which forces me off and back onto the sidewalk for a hundred feet or so, and while passing by them, I couldn't help but notice a group of five or six people who seemed to be searching for something. They looked mightily suspicious to me, but I doubted they were letterboxers since I knew of no letterboxes at this particular location. (I have caught letterboxers 'in the act' before along this walk, so I know they're out there--but this location wasn't where any were located.) Could they be.... geocachers? Hmm.....

So I asked them, "Are you guys looking for something?"

And the one replied, "No, not really." He paused and stammered, and they all had that deer in the headlights look. "Well, it's like a treasure hunt," he continued.

"Geocaching?" I asked, probing.

"Yeah! You know about it?"

They asked if I knew where the cache was located--and I waved them off, no, I'm not a geocacher. I didn't even know there was one nearby until I saw them acting suspicious. =) I did express some doubt, though, saying that the cache could be missing. It was an incredibly public location--the type that I wouldn't expect a letterbox to last for more than a week at--and I can't imagine that a geocache would do much better. So I suggested that it might be missing, but I really didn't know for sure since I knew nothing about the cache.

The man pulled out his cell phone or something, punched a couple of buttons, looked at it, and said, "It was found earlier today."

"Well, then," I said, "there's probably a good chance it really still is there." I wished them good luck and continued on my walk, wondering if I should have told them about letterboxing or about the letterboxes around Alki. They were probably puzzled why a non-cacher such as myself would know so much about geocaching in the first place.

But I couldn't help but be amused by the situation. They had absolutely no idea who I was. Not an inkling. In the letterboxing community, I'm rather famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view), and this family didn't have a clue I ever existed until I caught them geocaching. It was kind of fun being anonymous. =)

So if you head out to Alki to find a couple of boxes or meet me at Pegasus for pizza, I have two warnings for you: Watch out for naked men, and if you act suspicious while looking for a box, I might pounce on you. ;o)

AQ Milestones

Did you hear about the chicken that tried to cross the road? Got run over by a herd of premium members chasing after a new hat. Poor thing never had a chance.... =)

But seriously..... I was looking at the AQ Stats page this morning and noticed a couple of particularly round numbers.

The first is the number of traditional letterboxers listed on Atlas Quest passed 50,000 sometime yesterday afternoon. As of 1:45 this morning (Pacific time), it was up to 50,020. Do you realize that when I first started letterboxing in 2001, there were under 1,000 letterboxes listed for all of North America on letterboxing.org? Now there are over 50,000 listed on Atlas Quest--and that's not even all the letterboxes out there!

Okay, yes, it includes boxes that are long retired and unavailable for whatever reason, but still.... 50,000 boxes had been out there at some point in time. And those are just the ones listed on Atlas Quest!

The other noticeably round number is the total number for all types of boxes, which just passed 100,000. Not really a particularly meaningful number, except that when I first started Atlas Quest, my intention was to design a database that could handle at least that many boxes quickly and efficiently. Guess I need to think bigger than that now. =) Plan for a million?!

Events and Gatherings

I know this is hard to believe for some of you folks out there, but there's a whole world of letterboxers we never meet. They lurk in the shadows, following our clues, stamping silently into logbooks, never to be heard from again. Well, at least until the next letterbox they sneak out to find.

Perhaps they read the message boards. Or perhaps they're reading this blog. But they don't post, they don't plant boxes, and we'll never know these people.

Which is a shame, really, because for me, one of the best part about letterboxing is meeting other letterboxers. What a strange and varied group we are! Across all ages, races, religions, and geography--brought together by this strange hobby that started on the moors of England.

So one of the earlier features I added to Atlas Quest was the ability to list letterboxing events. A place for us to mingle and meet each other face-to-face. If you've never been to a letterboxing event, you're missing out on a heck of a lot of laughs and fun!

I didn't actually put much effort into event listing on Atlas Quest. Events were still relatively uncommon, but the event code had fallen woefully behind the times and not kept pace with the plethora of events happening today. Tonight, that has changed. Welcome to Events 2.0.

The most obvious change might be all the new icons associated with events. There are quite a number of them! One whole category of icons is an event subtype, so help narrow down what kind of event to expect when you show up. Is it at a park or restaurant? Is it an online gathering in a chat room? Is it a camping event? Or is it primarily a non-letterboxing event that letterboxers are invited to attend such as tag sales or birthday parties? Now you can specify such subtypes to let people know at a glance what kind of event to expect.

There are a couple of new icons as part of the regular bunch of attributes as well, such as the meet-and-greet attribute to mark an event as specifically to meet (and greet!) an out-of-town letterboxer. There are also two different icons to distinguish between an event with a mystery date and time and an event with a mystery location. There has always been that distinction internally, but it wasn't always obvious to see.

I also retired a couple of attributes that didn't seem nearly as useful such as a kid-friendly event. Except for pub crawls (which now has it's own subtype icon, I might add!), is there such a thing? Seems like I retired another attribute, but off the top of my head I can't think of what it is anymore.

Other improvements include the ability to save events in a favorite search, which can also be used to notify you of new events listed that match your search. The event notifications had stopped with an update earlier this year due to some changes incompatible with events, but they're all working together nicely again.

There are two new features associated with events as well: potluck lists and carpool lists. Any event marked as a potluck will allow you to specify what items you plan to bring to help insure everyone doesn't show up with milk and cookies. The carpool lists allow you to mark yourself as being available as a driver or wanting/needing a ride (or both, if you're flexible!) to help facilitate carpooling to events. With gas prices so high, it's probably more desirable than ever to split fuel costs. For events you're already signed up for, you'll want to "Edit Signup" to mark your potluck and carpool options. Normally, you'll be asked for that when you do sign up, but obviously, already existing signups won't have that information.

Anyhow, to make a long story short, the event code has been completely rewritten and you'll find very few things associated with events unchanged.

The rest of the changes are rather minor by comparison. I fixed a number of bugs, including the map markers now being clickable again and tracker notes sorted by date rather than by the tracker they're in. I didn't keep a list of all the minor tweaks and bug fixes that are in this update, but you'll likely find them along the way as you use the website.

Hope you enjoy all the changes, and I'll be online fixing any bugs that show up overnight just as soon as I wake up in the morning. =) And with as large of an update as this is, there WILL be bugs. Though with most of the changes exclusively in the event section, it probably won't cause you any problems with the message boards, clues, or other areas on Atlas Quest.

Happy trails, and get yourself to an event! =)

-- Ryan

Just Call Me Reverend

Well, it's official, I guess. My mid-life crises must have struck (I just turned 33, you know), because I signed up online to become an ordained minister. As always, I blame others for this strange predicament. =)

In fact, I blame AceoHearts most of all, because he's the one who suggested it to me. Somehow, he got it into his mind that I'm responsible for his current engagement with JBBK, and even went so far as to propose at a letterboxing event this last weekend. If there was to ever be a letterboxing wedding, this would be it!

And he e-mailed me this crazy idea that maybe I could preside over the ceremony. It's a crazy idea--the fool!--but it got me curious about the whole idea of what exactly is an "ordained minister." I suspect most of us have seen that episode of Friends when Joey becomes and ordained minister, but that's just TV, right? He was probably joking, anyhow.

But out of a morbid curiosity, I started doing some Googling about what exactly is an ordained minister and what does it take to become one?

The answers I found were shocking. Just click a few mouse buttons, type in your name and address, and presto, you too can become an ordained minister in mere seconds. No classes, no tests, absolutely free.

So why not? I filled out my name and address, clicked submit, and I am now an official ordained minister, and can legally perform marriages. Well, there might be some other hoops I have to jump through before I can do an actual wedding--crossing T's and dotting I's and such, but in theory, it seems that I really can legally perform weddings in most of the country.

After filling out my information and clicking the submit button, a window popped up with the "receipt of credentials"--mostly just proof that I submitted the form--and it says:

This is to certify that the bearer hereof
Reverend Ryan Carpenter
has been ordained this Monday the 14th of July 2008 11:15:22PM
and has all rights and privileges to perform all duties of the Ministry.

So there you have it. It's official. I'm a revenend. An ordained minister. And folks, this ain't no episode of Friends!

Now you're probably wondering if I actually plan to preside over any weddings.... I can only imagine that a fool would want me to preside over their wedding, but hey, I'll give it due consideration.

So what did you do for your birthday. =)

Back in April of 2001, I read a small blurb about letterboxing in Backpacker magazine. It was hardly a mention, with probably less than two inches of type. Little did I realize how that blurb would change my life. I met Amanda through letterboxing. I started Atlas Quest and somehow managed to scratch a living off of it. And now.... it's led me to this. Becoming an ordined minister.

Where will letterboxing lead me next.....?

Hello, from Bermuda!

Just a quick note to let you all know that I'm still alive. =) They charge something like $50/hour for the Internet on the cruise ship, so I've been avoiding it needless to say! (I'm at a post office now where they let you play online for 30 minutes for free.)

Anyhow.... There's a lot of messages waiting for me, and you'll still have to wait a few more days before I an reply to them all. I haven't even looked at the message board. Yikes!

To make a long story short, I've 'thru-hiked' Bermuda. Adventures coming soon! (Assuming Wassa hasn't been telling you tall tales already, of course. *nodding* Trust nothing he says. *more nodding*)

Happy trails!

-- Ryan

Fun and Games

This afternoon, I uploaded a new minor feature to Atlas Quest--notes. Not to get confused with tracker notes, though, which I'm actually thinking about getting rid of in the long run. AQ mail, message boards, box comments, tracker notes.... so many things to keep track of, eh? Well, now you can create what I call box notes. It's a little space where you can attach your own, personal note with a given box. It's for you to see, and only you. What you use it for is up to you. I image a lot of people will use it to record solutions for mystery boxes, or perhaps write directions to the park if they aren't included with the clue already, or maybe cut and paste a description of a tree or bush that's referred to in the clue that you aren't familiar with. Maybe you'll make notes on your own boxes, to remember what maintenance needs to be done with them. Doesn't really matter--it's essentially a private notebook attached to every letterbox listed on Atlas Quest.

When you view or print clues, any notes you've written for the box will be included. I figure if it was important enough to leave a note on a box, you probably want that note with you when it's time to find the box.

On a totally different matter, have you ever tried to Google your own name? I did, and not surprisingly, a page about me comes up. Not a shocking development, to be sure. On a lark, however, about a month ago, I set up a Google to notify me whenever my name is used in an article that shows up in Google News. I don't get much press with my name in it, but let's see what it turns up. And wow, am I one busy guy! =)

Keep in mind, I once did a directory search for "Ryan Carpenter" just to see how many listings show up. There are over 300 of us known to be running around this country--thus, the reason I have not been able to buy ryancarpenter.com as a domain name. Even at Intel, I shared a name with another Ryan Carpenter and we'd often get each other's e-mails when someone tried to contact one of us but didn't know which was the "right" Ryan Carpenter.

So while I don't get much press, some of my namesakes do. =) Apparently, I'm a baseball player--a pitcher, if I understand it correctly. And just today, I found out, I'm getting married to one Megan Smith on August 9th. (Sorry, Amanda--I had NO idea--trust me!) And wouldn't it be hilarious if she gets a Google Alert for anything that shows up with her name, and she ends up reading this blog post?

I kind of enjoy seeing what my name twins are up to, so I keep the Google Alerts coming. =)