GeoGuessr

 My workmate Dave Macarthur introduced me to this quite addictive online geography game. I am generally not one for online games; but I am hooked on this and have spent 15 minutes every day now for 15 days running trying to guess the locations I am dropped in. 

You have three minutes to make a guess as to where you are (and there are 5 rounds). Some like this screenshot are very hard: you are haring down the road looking for a road sign or at least a scrap of writing. Is it a roman alphabet like ours or Cyrillic? Or Thai? If it's roman letters, are there any ø or ç or ü to give a hint? If you're really lucky you'll see a flag.

If you want to try this, here are my hints garnered from 2 weeks’ experience

• I have never yet been dropped in China, USA, Canada or France. 
• The creator is Swedish. Scandinavia and the Baltic states occur quite often; so it pays to bone up on the telltale look of those languages. They don't all have Ås.
• The graveyard for high scores is South America. If I wanted to turn Pro at this, the first thing I would do is dedicate some time to researching the telltale differences between say Uruguayan and Mexican countryside. A newbie like me see signs in Spanish, some rundown abobe buildings with rebar sticking out the top, jungly trees and ocean. You guess Tampico in Mexico but it's Maldonado in Uruguay. Sorry you are 7,700km out and you score 3 out of a possible 500 points.
• No-one says you can't Google things in another tab during your 3 minutes; BUT my personal rule is you go in with your pre-existing knowledge and do your best. I have been known to yell to others in the room “which island in Indonesia has all the volcanoes!?”

I built a handrail

Our steps up the front are steep and uneven. Our older visitors sometimes find them hard to get up and they are perilous for anyone going down, especially when wet or icy.

So I have built two sections of handrail. I am not a builder, and I took a very long time dithering over design, materials and tools. I was keen to do it without concrete ended up going for concrete footings, and 10x10cm cypress pine poles, with slices of cypress for the handrails.

My first baby step after the 3 metre poles were delivered was cutting one in half. It was easy with the handsaw, and the sawdust smelled amazing. 

I cut six poles in half, and with Nick and his table saw, we sliced the rest into planks. His saw blade is just off vertical so the planks have bit of a line running one side where the cuts refused to meet. 

I wanted the handrail to follow the curve of the step, so I tried wedging some planks between the posts of the retaining wall and a regrowing gum sapling located in the perfect spot. I wet the planks twice a day for a week. 

They retained very little if any curve after all that. But I found that they were thin enough to bend nicely anyway, and as the posts followed the curve, so did the rail, once screwed firmly to the posts. My inspired* idea was to make a good handrail width by screwing a second layer of planks to the first. 

*This construction method has not yet passed the test of time.

The junction at the post 2nd from the top had to be more angular, as the posts were too far apart for one 3m length to span two gaps. Up near the house I had a lot more trouble digging good deep holes.

It lacks refinement and has a few ugly details, but I am actually really pleased with it. I had to solve a series of problems as I went and that was satisfying.

Now I just need to convince Dad (in his eighties) to use it.

Outdoor confusion

Sometimes, maybe once a year, my brushcutter feeds out the nylon line like it's supposed to. And it confuses the hell out of me.

Marcus bound for Hong Kong

Our boys have incredible abilities. Michael does not like to be literally outstanding; he often keeps his brilliance to himself. But Marcus has always been happy to be identified as gifted and to take advantage of the opportunities available. I am more like Michael, so I admire Marcus the way you can only admire someone who does things you cannot.

I tend not to let my mind roam too far forward. I do not plan on my own behalf, and I have not really imagined the boys’ lives very far in advance either. Let’s call this living in the moment rather than a lack of vision. In any case; I had not really pictured a time when Marcus would be 19 and living and working in Hong Kong.

This week he is into his last semester of his BSc. He has started some elements of next year’s Honours already (you can do that now) but he has been applying for summer internships and many scholarships including the Tasmanian Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford.

He had some quite long Zoom “interviews”, which in some cases were more like exams. He had a few call backs, including one with a securities trading firm called Jane Street in Hong Kong. They also have offices in all the other financial capitals.

They offered Marcus a 3 month internship which he is planning to take. He is not a complete babe-in-the-woods, but still was stunned to be offered a salary about triple what he was expecting. If he worked a full year at that rate he could pay off our hefty mortgage (should he so choose). 

This has given me all sorts of feelings. I will miss him like hell, as I would if he was in Launceston or Melbourne; but I will also worry because Things Are Happening in Hong Kong. Of course I am very proud of him as well. He has no intention of becoming a Quantitative Securities Trader, but what if they offer him a job at a E-Class-Mercedes-driving salary? I don't think I could knock it back – could you?

One thought that occurred to me was just what a quantum shift it would be for our family, between a generation with someone earning the average Australian income and the next generation earning more than 3 times that. And going back through the paternal line in our family, something like this happened between my great great grandfather David and great grandfather William.

David Rees was a puddler in a steel mill, who was convicted in 1843 of “manslaughter of John Bolan in a row at Swansea” and transported to Tasmania. His son William Rees became an insurance agent, and when he died his wife Martha carried on the business. His son (my grandfather Didds) started as a clerk at the local coal mine and retired as chief accountant of a large woollen mill. I wrote a bit more about it here in 2011.

In this analogy I am the convict and Marcus is the one making the leap into respectable white collar work. But I want to stress that I haven’t killed anyone and I can both read and write.