Geocaching is a peculiar hobby since it appeals to individuals who might seem to have very little in common. On one end of the spectrum you’ll find the outdoorsy, wellie boots and pen knife types who enjoy rolling around in the mud, climbing trees and generally get all up-close-and-personal with nature. On the other end of the spectrum you’ll find the computer sorts, the ones who can write apps, be early adopters of new technologies and see the potential for fun in something as dry as the numerical readings of GPS coordinates. My first pair of shoes was a pair of wellies so I think you know which camp I fall into. Having said that, through geocaching I have had to slowly learn little bits of computer-speak here and there. I’ve learnt to tinker with html code when I’m writing new cache pages and I’m sure this is a skill that I’d never have attempted to pick up without the incentive provided by our hobby.
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In order to solve these types of puzzles you’ll have to dive into some slightly more technical solving strategies. You might nneed to get familiar with computers lingo: binary, hexadecimal, octal, html, etc. You might have to get to grips with the full content of a geocache listing, (the CO’s name, cache logs, background, image names, comments, source code and links are all possible hiding places for import information). You might need to dive behind the surface of the webpage to see what’s hiding behind. And the truly evil ones double up the puzzle by making you decode the information you find hiding behind the data. Honestly these caches have literally made my brain ache in the past and I’m still puzzling through my through some of the ones we’ve got here in Taiwan.
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For some of these caches it’s clear what you’re dealing with even if you haven’t got the first idea where to start - for example taroh & junwei’s Computer Street (GCPQ22), and for others you’re given almost nothing to work with, (and these ones shouldn’t be spoilt as figuring out what you’re working with is part of the fun).
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There are actually quite a few places which deal with this type of puzzle in a more sophisticated way than I could ever hope to and I’ll provide you with some links to them here and here, but if you search online for similar puzzle caches you’ll be able to find quite a few.
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None of the puzzles in this series should be too hard to crack since I’m aiming to help people like me paddle around in the shallow waters without going off the deep end.
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Shih Chien was the most special and virtuous Tamsun personage as well as an example of the humanity of Taiwanese people. In 1922, Shih Chien, who was only 24 and newly wed, gave up his enviable job and good pay to establish a beggar shelter and devote himself to the endless business of charity.
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Shih Chien was born in 1899 in Hu-wei (old name for Tamsun) Mi-shih Street (now Ching-shui St.). He graduated in 1912 from Hu-wei Public School and enrolled at the Taipei Engineering Institute, which was very difficult for Taiwanese people to enter. He graduated with distinction in 1917 and was soon hired by the Commerce and Industrial Section of the Japanese Governor-General Office as a technician. His work led him to inspect the living standard of the poor people in Mangkah. Shih saw the helplessness of the beggars under Japanese colonization, therefore he paid for the beggars medical fees and taught their children to read and write. In order to help more beggars, he asked his uncle Shih Huan to convince his father to sponsor him. Shih also collected timber and built a house on Green St. (now Da-li St.) in Taipei as the shelter for beggars. He named the place "Ai-ai Liao" (the house of love). By that time Shih had already resigned from the job in Governor-General Office in order to take care of the beggars and homeless persons in Ai-ai Liao full time. He washed their bodies himself, and taught them how to weave. He raised pigs and grew vegetables in the backyard in order to train them to earn money for themselves. His funds only came from limited donations. Shih Chien"s good deeds became well known to the Japanese as they were reported by the famous writer Kikuchi Kan, and Shih Chien was awarded prize money from the Emperor of Japan. What"s most impressive and moving is that both Shih Chien"s first wife (who died in 1932) Hsieh Hsi and second wife Shimizu Teruko both followed Shih to live in Ai-ai Liao with more than 200 beggars. In 1944 Shih Chien died due to sudden high blood pressure. Shimizu Teruko continued her late husband"s mission and maintained his work up to this day. The spirit of the Shih Chien family is an example to us all.
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When you find this cache you’ll come face to face with this man himself. I hope that when you meet him you’ll think about how easy it is to bring a little goodness into the world and consider what you can do that will make someone feel more comfortable today. (I’m not really one for preaching, but I really believe that doing kind things for others is always worthwhile.
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