Last summer I found myself a new hobby. It's called geocaching and it's a modern treasure hunting style game, utilising GPS technology. The idea is simple. Someone hides a cache, which is usually a waterproof container, and posts the coordinates and some information to the geocaching.com site. Other people (or players if you wish) can then load up the coordinates from the site and try to find the cache container. Once found, the person who found it leaves his or her name in the logbook inside and also logs the visit on the geocaching.com website.

This is the idea in a nutshell, but there's a whole lot more in the hobby. Different types of caches for example and mysteries that need to be solved to locate the actual container. There are events (which often produce event caches) and a whole lot of things in the geocaching community. There are also travelers, which are either tags, coins or other items that have a code embedded into to item. When a geocacher finds this item, he or she logs the find on the geocacing.com website and then takes it to another cache. In this way, the item moves around the world and the owner can follow the movements via the website.

Travelers can also be given a mission or destination you want it to achieve. I've finally created my first traveler called 'Linux 1.0'. The traveler is a little penguin cacheskinz with an USB stick attached to it. The stick contains the Linux 1.0 kernel source code as downloaded from here. My mission for Linux 1.0 is to reach one of the office buildings of the Linux Foundation. After taking a photo of the place with the traveler in the picture, the person doing this can then collect the traveler into their own collection.

Check out Linux 1.0 here.

Though I'm still a beginner with only 30 finds, I'm quite excited about the hobby and am looking forward to the spring (I'm not really a winter outdoor person) so I can go searching. Check out my profile on Geocaching.com, the player name is jaywink.

[ linux // sports // games // geocaching ]