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Round winners – November 2024 (Round #173)

Congratulations to the winners of round November 2024, a round of firsts and upgrades for each: Fashven from Scotland turfed home his first Gold to add to his three silvers, Nicos from Berlin added his first Silver to his bronze, and magnusn from Stockholm, with his first Top 3 finish and his first C, took the Bronze medal. Well done all!

Upcoming events

If you are organising an open event, don't forget to write to insider@turfgame.com a couple of months in advance to get the information about your event into the newsletter :)

December is Advent Calendar time! There are again two to keep you entertained and challenged this year. There is still time to join in, with both allowing tasks to be completed by end-Dec. Thank you to Turf Skåne and PlanetGary.

- Following tradition Turf Skåne have an X-mas calendar with turf missions and book prizes, as usual starting 01 Dec. The tasks can be found here https://turfskane.com/julkalendern-2024/

- Welcome to the PG Turf Advent Calendar 2024, devilishly devised and craftily created by the mischievous editor of Planet Gary for turfers anywhere in the Multiverse to try their hand at, pull their hair out and most likely scream with frustration. Who will win the prestigious Golden Turfman?, a unique special award lovingly hand-crafted in the Planet Gary Bike Shed. See the famous PG blog for notes on how to partake, and the daily tasks - https://planetgary.org.uk/pg-advent-notes-2024/

2025 begins with a bang, or maybe a calm gathering of turfers at the traditional Turf Skåne Nyårslöftet, now in it's ninth year. It is a closed foot event, and will be held in Malmö this time on 1st January 2025. More info here: https://turfskane.com/2024/10/26/nyarsloftet-2025/

LuleåIce'25 will be held Saturday, March 15, 2025, following the success of the first LuleåIce event last year. It is an open event on the ice outside the centre of Luleå, with the same concept as LuleåIce'24 i.e. skates, skis, run, walk, but not bike or anything with a motor. More info will come at the beginning of 2025.

Congratulations to the winners at LusseTurf in Västerås on 8th December 2024! The prizes went to Gusmasen in first, ripe in second, and to MrSnyten in third place.

Bonanza 2025: 7^th of June in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

The first Bonanza outside of Sweden will be held in Edinburgh in June 2025, and is a must for all. Planning is in progress for a fun-filled long weekend, with the Bonanza itself on June 7th, and extra events such as ESOCWalter's legendary 'Crazy' event around it. Come and enjoy Edinburgh City with it's seven hills and climb our volcano - Arthur's Seat. Or walk/cycle along the Firth of Forth at Cramond and Portobello. Take the World Heritage zone at the Forth Rail Bridge, neigh at the Kelpies, wonder at the Falkirk Wheel (that is a beam!) Glasgow, Stirling, Inverness - with nearly 13 thousand zones in Scotland, and two English regions nearby, you won't be short of things to do. Please pre-register your interest by completing this form, and join the 48 already pre-registered. See you in Edinburgh!

A favourite get-away to the west coast of Scotland

One of my (féarglas) favourite places to visit in Scotland is the island of Great Cumbrae, by Largs, and nearby Ardrossan and Irvine on the west coast. A short ferry ride from Largs, Cumbrae is sometimes referred to as the ‘Island of a Thousand Bicycles’, though possibly an exaggeration compared to a busy Stockholm cycle path! It has a (zoned) 16km circular cycle around the coastline, with spectacular scenery and stunning panoramas.

My favourite spot/zone is FintrayBay, where I sit and enjoy delicious ice-cream while soaking up the peace and beauty of the bay. You pass a memorial to two Midshipmen of HMS Shearwater, which sank close to the Northern part of the island in 1844, and 'Hush Hush', a WWII listening post. Novelty rocks seem to be a thing with the unusually painted Indian Rock, the shapely Lion Rock, and the fun Crocodile Rock in Millport town. This is one of the island's most iconic fun landmarks, a must have photo. The Cathedral of The Isles, also in Millport, is Britain’s smallest Cathedral and was my unique 7500 zone in May 2022, a moment shared with my son on our wee road trip.

Turf Goals for 2025?

As 2024 draws to a close and 2025 approaches, you may be thinking of setting a Turf goal for next year. Possibly it will be just to stay in the same division or maybe to get that wanted medal or rank, attend the bonanza in Scotland, or maybe even a country explorer? Many ways to play, many goals to choose from, something for everyone.

ChilliFarmer went ambitious with his goals in 2024 - to win 12 consecutive R (region) medals. And he has done it! - winning his 12th consecutive R (region) medal on 1st December. Bravo! From his home region of North West England to further away South West England, there were 4 different regions amongst the 12 wins - the other two being East Midlands and Wales. All conquered in 2024.

There was a strategy to make the most of living near a region boundary. Rather than just take the same zones each round to potentially win his home region of North West England, he took an equal numbers of zones in three or four regions. This gave an opportunity to choose the easiest target towards the end of each round. He also needed to understand and predict, for each region in each round, what other turfers in these regions were likely to do. And had to watch out for anyone else also trying to steal. (I am reminded of ESOCWalter and his R medals in NE & NW England, changing regions in the dying hours of the round. Just 10 minutes before round end for NE England!)

There are not many active turfers where he lives and most zones are only worth +1. Less interesting than turfing in Sweden. If you pick unpopular areas here, it is possible to hold some zones all round. However, you need thousands of them to get a big score, which requires lots of travel and planning and turfing in new areas. His highest round total points was 1,813,929 points, in round 168, setting a new North West region record, and while not enough for the gold nor the silver medals (??!), it secured him a bronze medal.

The hardest part of the challenge was not telling anyone about it, for fear of getting 11 months in and then someone disrupting it. It was a nervous time for the 12th R, with only a few days of his year long challenge remaining. Unknowingly, FeTaTo turned up on a unique hunt when ChilliFarmer was in South West England. Particularly worrying, as she busied herself taking zones, but luckily on this occasion, she had already taken more in Skåne earlier in the round and did not move over to SW. Phew, the 12th R was secured.

ChillFarmer's goal for 2025 might be a bit easier - any 12 medals. Whilst you can never have enough R/region medals, there are some easier medals such as aquaman, trainer or assists.

Turf Picture of the Month

This months Turf Picture of the Month is from Rymprak. It was taken during the "All light on Uppsala" - light festival (8-24/11)

If you have a Zone picture you want featured as Turf Picture of the Month, send it to insider@turfgame.com Please include your Turf nick for recognition!

Turfa lugnt/Safe turfing! And wishing Munin a fabulous holiday down under!

//féarglas

(If anyone has received the email twice, sorry!)

...if you want to contribute to future Turf Insiders, send your story to insider@turfgame.com :) C'mon and share your big and small stories with the Turf world.

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A new android version is now released after a few weeks of beta-testing.

The update mainly provides a new suporter page, but also includes other improvements.

We are now dropping support for android version 7 and below in order to give everyone else a better experience. 0,5% of our android users are affected and need to upgrade their OS.

2.1.36
-German supporter-page fix
-German translations updated

2.1.35 -New supporter page

2.1.32 -Improved app-is-active notification
-Removed support for android 7.X
-Background improvements
-Improved supporter payment process

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Round winners – October 2024 (Round #172)

Congratulations to the winners of round October 2024: Björke from Östergötland turfed home his sixth Gold, AJHB from Greater London added a third Silver to his medal row and gerald_flux.rc from Berlin turfed home his third Bronze. Well done mates!

Upcoming events

If you are organizing an open event, don't forget to write to insider@turfgame.com a couple of months in advance to get the information about your event into the newsletter :)

LusseTurf in Västerås will be held again this year the weekend before Lucia (13^th of December). More information will come! There will be zones, "lussebuns" and good fun!

Bonanza 2025: 7^th of June in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

The Bonanza will be held outside of Sweden for the first time in 2025. The Edinburgh turfers have two very successful ”Sconanza”s behind them and are now planning for a fun-filled long weekend in June 2025. The Bonanza itself is on June 7th, but there are extra events on both June 6th and June 8th! To pre-register interest, complete this form, which will also help give an idea of expected numbers. So far 40 organized turfers have pre-registered. See you in Edinburgh!

Two good things from Turf-dev by Drassen
”The first thing I'd like to tell you is that we are currently giving the development some love. The Android app has been gradually crippled by some bugs that were introduced by Google when they updated their Google maps libraries this summer. The bugs sometimes made the app crash when experiencing a change in signal strength. This is finally solved, which can be clearly observed in the crash-statistics that Google provides, here seen in the picture.

An issue that we faced during the refactoring and upgrade process is however legacy support. In short terms we will soon stop supporting android versions 7.X and earlier. This affects 0.5 percent of our users and is a priority we need to do in order to provide a better app. We will continue to make small updates and enhancements these coming months. If you want to be a daring early adopter, you may join the turf beta at google play.

The second good thing is the continuing development of TurfTeams. If you live in Stockholm you may have noticed quite a few new motivated users during October. These users were a part of our wellbeing-at-work initiative. TurfTeams users are just like normal users except they get some extra treatment in the form of toplists, statistics, support, on site kick-off, etc. We hope you all invited them to Turf nicely and also gave them a fair fight for the zones:) If you'd like your own company to join in on a health challenge, turfteams.se is the place to start.”

An important part of Turf is the issue system, which we keep getting back to again and again. The updates regarding the frequent crashes of the Turf app was high-lighted both by issues and posts in social media. To quote a somewhat annoying Swedish commercial, ”Writing about it in social media, helps a little. Writing an issue, helps more.” However, one issue makes no update, many are much more likely to get result. So if you experience something with the Turf app you feel is not normal, write an issue :) Don't expect others to do it for you.

We all know that warded is the place to keep track of how many times you have taken a specific zone. The colour code goes as this:

1 take (green), 2-10 takes (yellow), 11-20 takes (orange), 21-50 takes (red) and 51 takes or more (purple). Some years ago the term "fetlila" (fatpurple) was coined when taking a zone 1000 times or more. More recently "toklila" (crazy purple) was used by Oxid in Uppsala when describing a zone you'd taken 5551 times (or more). What will the next step be?

Turf Picture of the Month

This months Turf Picture is of the zone LossieLight taken byTheInquisitor:

LossieLight

If you have a Zone picture you want featured as Turf Picture of the Month, send it to insider@turfgame.com Please include your Turf nick for recognition!

Turfa lugnt/Safe turfing!

//Munin

...if you want to contribute to future Turf Insiders, send your story to insider@turfgame.com :) C'mon and share your big and small stories with the Turf world.

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