just testing this vmail thing again. lost my previous number

GeoCaching - My newest thing to try

as you can probably tell, i am finally trying to start blogging again [thanks Lorian for the kick in the pants] and what better time than now while i am a proverbial leaf in the wind.

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So I've done what for me is a fair amount of travelling over the last year in a mix of business, family and tourist-mode trips. When i was in Miami late last year with my sis, we decided to rent a vehicle and it was the first time for us driving anywhere outside Barbados on our own so we borrowed a trusty little Garmin from my cuz and away we went. That in itself was an adventure as the battery died on us in one of our trips but we can talk about that later.

 Anyway, ever since then I've had an interest in GPS tech. i honestly think, as a small island guy, that GPS has to be the best thing ever invented short of the wheel. anyway, so as i was digging around recently i was looking for my own sat nav unit, then it morphed into looking for an app for my nexus devices [#teamandroid]. as the search continued i somehow landed on this Geo-caching stuff.

 i wont reinvent the wheel, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YTqitVK-Ts] that's the basis of what it is. so i decided to create an account and see if anyone had any caches anywhere around London. to my surprise, there was one on a walking route i use when i just want to get out the house from time to time. it was literally right there, well at least according to the map. In fact the amount of caches that popped up around me was a bit overwhelming. I'm sorry I didnt stumble across this earlier for a number of reasons, one of which is it's December and the temperatures aren't good for a West Indian to be rummaging around on the outdoors.

 So I've found what is going to be my first attempt to find and log a Geocache. will see how it goes tomorrow when the sun is out.




 Other useful stuff i found
- Maverick App
- GPS essentials app
- Geocaching intro app
- google maps [one of my favs]

War ... and charity .... and war .... and charity .... and more war ... and

Saw the strangest thing (to me at least) recently while on the tube. Being in tourist mode, I was reading as many of the little posters along the railings ... and a pair next to each other caught my eye. The first was one remembering war poems, think it was 'poems on the tube' or some such campaign. The second was a charity asking for help so kids of war torn places can have warm clothes for the winter. Maybe I am too young to understand, or maybe because of where I live I can't understand, and yes I know the two aren't directly related (the second was a recent domestic conflict) but it just seems crazy that war is honored and regretted on adjoining posters and some how the average man has to fund both ends, first thru taxation, then through guilt induced or sympathetic donations. Wish we could avoid all this by avoiding war in the first place. I won't lament over the past big wars of the world, but military spending and research these days in big economies is so large. If we diverted some of that money or even all, I'm sure everyone would have warm clothes to wear. Of course, half of these cities wouldn't be flattened in the first place. War is such a useless cycle of waste and suffering, and I just can't wrap my head around how we still support it. Well I can understand why a business supplying services and products of war would, but no one else benefits in any way. Anyway, let me stop now cause I still in the people place, ain't want them get vex and put me out.