trigpoints

Puts GPS in context. Ordnance Survey now maps the UK primarily using GPS technology, making trigpoints obsolete....

Triangulation Pillars

Trigpoints are the common name for "triangulation pillars". These are concrete pillars, about 4' tall, which were used by the Ordnance Survey in order to determine the exact shape of the country. They are generally located on the highest bit of ground in the area, so that there is a direct line of sight from one to the next. By sitting a theodolite (an accurate compass built into a telescope) on the top of the pillar, accurate bearings to nearby trigpoints could be taken. This process is called "triangulation".

A major project to map out the shape of Great Britain began in 1936. The network of triangulation pillars, with accurately known positions, led to the excellent OS maps which we enjoy today. The coordinate system used on these maps is known as the "National Grid", and it is essential that you are familiar with this system if you are to get the most of OS maps, or this website. The OS provide an introduction to the National Grid on their website.
trigpointing website

Perception of Place and the Driving Experience

The proliferation of roads and the ubiquity of the car as a means of transport alter the cultural perception of place. More specifically contemporary car travel creates ‘non-places’, a term coined by anthroplogist Mark Auge to describe transient spaces for traffic, communication and consumption, from inside a car on the highway to the transit zones of an airport.

The experience of ‘non-place’ is multi-faceted since both the transit space itself; the space formed by and for the purpose of transport, and also the relation that individuals have with these spaces, can equally be said to define the condition.

The car driver relies on visual perception for the vast majority of tasks, and the field of vision is controlled by the framing of the windscreen. The in-car experience of place is passive and remote, and the experience of driving is marked by a lack of sensorial input, aside from that perceived by the eye. Physically the driver is inactive, and has less opportunity or motive to stop or explore or choose a route than a pedestrian or cyclist. Consequently the car interior is isolated from the external environment, and as such the driver can become passive and disengaged from the external landscape. This dislocation is further accentuated by the speed at which the vehicle travels; a factor that reconfigures concepts of location and creates a manifest transition between the experience of driving and that of stopping at a location.

The spaces created in the immediate vicinity of roads and highways cease to function as places in their own right, and their distinct identity is effectively erased. Instead these sites are transformed into zones of isolation and ambiguity; experienced only whilst ‘passing through’.

63,135 mobiles, 5,838 PDA's, 4,973 laptops

Forget them not

Hailing a cab is a serious risk to company data carried in mobile devices. In the past six months in London, 63,135 mobile phones, 5,838 PDAs and 4,973 laptops have been left in licensed taxi cabs - that's three mobiles per cab - according to Taxi, the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association magazine, and Pointsec, the security company. Surveys were carried out in nine cities around the world from Chicago to Sydney. Londoners were most likely to forget their laptops, passengers in Copenhagen most likely to leave their mobile phones, and those in Chicago most likely to lose their PDAs. London taxi drivers also collected a harp, a throne, £100,000 worth of diamonds, 37 milk bottles, a dog, a suitcase from the fraud squad, condoms and a baby. The good news is that, globally, 96% of those who left their PDAs and laptops in licensed cabs, and 80% of those who left their mobiles, got them back.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,,1403955,00.html

geocaching cache

N 51° 41.387 E 010° 00.807
UTM: 32U E 570052 N 5727022
my first geocache

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