paleolith

I'm 74. I switched to a trike five years ago. I do not miss the road rash! With a Rohloff hub, 20" drive wheel, and judicious choice of chainring and cog, I have an 11" low gear -- and because of that third wheel, I can ride at one mph and get the benefit of that low gear. Couple years ago I did an Adventure Cycling tour in Vermont. I was far and away the slowest in the group, but I was the only one who rode up the 14% grade at Mount Jay. All the others walked at least a bit. I did three other AC tours recently, but probably won't do any more -- that's where age has hit me, I can still ride all day but not fast enough to get the full pleasure from an AC group.

Just had occasion to use it today. Yeah, font size that forces me to put my face in the screen is a bad idea. All app changes should be reviewed by several people who are at least 60yo.

Likely. They would have to figure out how to separate the lid, but that's not hard. And they took all the contents rather than dumping stuff on the ground, but kids in this neighborhood are mostly environmentally conscoius from an early age. I agree, not a cacher -- there just aren't that many around here. When first placed, the cache was quite hard to find due to dense coral ardisia, a nasty invasive. I had trouble finding it myself several times. The city has used several chunks of grant money to supress the ardisia, so now it's a lot more likely that someone will stumble on it. I accept that I should have altered the hide years ago, but I still think it weird for someone to take the box without the lid. Next version will have to be smaller and actually hidden, rather that assuming no one will trip over it.

I think I've found four desk-puzzle caches. I solved three, but one of those I found totally by accident while not even geocaching. I found Queen of Swag without solving the puzzle -- maybe it's solvable, but I spent a few minutes on it and then realized that everything I needed was in the description. I majored in math and had a career in computer programming. Desk puzzles are too much like work. And they keep me inside when I really need to be outside more.

Nothing will fix it as long as COs know that posting Maintenance resets the flag and inhibits the reviewers from setting deadlines.

I know that ammo boxes get stolen. So I chained this one to a tree. Unfortunately, I only chained the handle, so someone took the box without the lid.

I've used actual mil surplus ammo cans. They work great in SoCal. In Florida, most of them get wet inside. How much is flaws in the seal, how much is just changes in atmospheric pressure and numidity driving moisture past the seal, how much is a tiny bit of debris getting caught in the seal and wicking moisture in, how much is moisture getting in when finders open them ... I don't know. A dry cache in Florida is a wonder indeed. It's made worse by the many people who think it helps to add a plastic bag, any plastic bag, even one with no seal mechanism and with holes. As most readers of this forum know, the purpose of a plastic bag is to identify the log book and to prevent it from drying out.

1 January 2013

I think that guamgirl46 was referring to her specific location, which from her username is presumably the island / US territory of Guam. It goes along with the rest of the discussion to say that local knowledge matters.

I suppose the switch to fashionable "dollars minue one cent" pricing is mostly just amusing. Still, I always appreciated that Geocaching did not follow that fashion.

Most email systems have mechanisms which allow you to direct certain emails into specific folders. If by "too many emails" you mean "too many geocaching emails mixed in with other emails", then filter the geocaching emails to a separate folder. Then you can scan them on your own schedule. Edward

Those who say oh, just moderate it differently and it'll be easy ... probably have never tried to moderate an open group. The offenders who want to rant can be extremely vitriolic toward moderators, and defining limits is a fool's game because those same offenders will warp logic to claim their "right" to post whatever they want. Group moderation is hard. BTW, I don't think Google Groups has been pointed out as an alternative. Yes, it's basic, but many see the lack of FB's flash as an advantage. Edward

Thanks for the reply, and sorry it took me so long to return. I've submitted a help request. No telling what it will take to get it past the front line ...

Multiple consecutive dollar signs in a cache title are treated as formatting characters rather than literals, and may not be displayed. It looks like $$ is markup to start/stop italics, and when present in a title, is not properly escaped at some point in processing. For example, see https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC6933_mulholland-cash

Account is now locked at 3,079 finds. I noticed at about 1200 finds because it logged caches I follow in Florida and California. Don't know if the account tripped something automatic or if a real person is on duty. I suspect it's the latter, as an auto-trigger would probably trip well under 3,000. Edward

I recently bought an eTrex 30x to replace my old HCx, which had failed. I'm still trying to get behavior I liked on the HCx to appear on the 30x. I realize I'm asking several questions at once, but I think it's better than starting several threads, and the questions do all relate to migration. It doesn't help that since my HCx totally failed, I can't examine it to figure out how I did stuff. I use the GPSr mostly for bicycling at the moment -- also for geocaching but my issues relate to bicycling. Aging eyes and the placement of the device about 3' from my eyes (recumbent cycle) make it hard to see. #1) On the HCx, I had a screen set up with three large-number fields: distance, speed, and time of day. The first two are fine on the 30x. On the HCx, I had time of day set up as HH:MM and it displayed as large as the other numbers. On the 30x, I have not been able to find a HH:MM option, only hh:mm:ss, and it displays small even on the large-numbers format. Is there a way to get a large time of day display? #2) The HC had a way to automatically save tracks to the microSD card. I've put that microSD into the 30x but it doesn't seem to use it. After just a few hours of riding, it says my track storage is already half full. Very odd for a modern device to be so limited, and if I go out for a week with no ability to download, it'll apparently fill up. Is there any solution? #3) I get an enormous amount of what I'll call "scatter" in tracks. (I would call it jitter except that Garmin uses that term for something else.) When I'm stopped, the track "moves" about every 25-45 seconds (roughly). Sometimes 15', sometimes 1', sometimes even 0'. I end up spending a lot of time in Basecamp to delete these clusters of scatter, and it's enough that I can build up significant mileage if I'm stopped for an hour. I thought I remembered a sensitivity setting for this on HCx, but I don't remember where and can't find any such thing on the 30x. The HCx did this a little, but at least an order of magnitude less. How can I deal with this? Thanks for any and all help, Edward

Where is the summary of the changes? I'm offended at being asked to accept the new versions, many pages long, implying that I'm supposed to analyze the new vs old and figure out what the changes are, when Groundspeak already knows. Yes, I realize this is SOP on the web. That doesn't make it right, and I expect better from Groundspeak. Edward

Thanks!

I just noticed that one of my bookmark list descriptions is not displaying correctly. This is no mystery; I had three links in old BBcode format. I tried changing them to MarkDown format, but that also just displays the unformatted text. The edit box for the bookmark list description shows no tools. Is there a modern way to have links in the description, or am I limited to just giving them as plain text (if at all)? Thanks, Edward

The standard answer is "sign log, get smilie". Edward

The purpose of putting the log in a plastic bag is to help finders identify the log when a variety of other items are in the cache. 99% of the time, plastic bags do nothing to keep the log dry, and often do far more to prevent it from drying out. There are bags which can keep a log dry, but you can't buy them at the supermarket. The purpose of supermarket food storage bags is to prevent MOST of the moisture from migrating (in or out) for relatively short periods of time under controlled conditions. But long term (as in a cache), the tiniest hole will allow water through. The plastic itself isn't totally resistant to water passing through -- anything less than 4 mil PE is almost a sieve, and you really need thicker than 4 mil. And it only takes water vapor migrating to leave something wet. A difference in vapor pressure results in a strong force to equalize that pressure. Once water vapor infiltrates, it eventually condenses as conditions change. The upshot is that there are four common reasons a log is wet: 1) Someone found the cache in the rain and did not adequately protect it. 2) Over the course of multiple finds, water vapor entered when the cache was opened, and later condensed inside. 3) A bit of vegetation (eg blade of grass) got caught in the seal when the cache was being closed, and acted as a wick. 4) The cache container is insufficiently waterproof for the placement and weather conditions. None of these issues can be addressed by adding a plastic bag. When you have time and weather conditions allow, you can address the first three cases by allowing the log and all other items in the cache to dry thoroughly before reclosing it (and removing the "wick" in the third case). In the last case, NM is in order -- you can't fix it for the CO. Unfortunately, at least 90% of cache containers are insufficiently waterproof. The percentage is higher in wet climates -- a decon works fine in SoCal but is a disaster in Florida. Even waterproof match cases usually leak when left outdoors for a long time in wet weather. Even some of the containers sold by Groundspeak do poorly over the long run. The only containers I've observed consistently keeping water out are ammo cans (in excellent condition), Lock-n-Locks (brand only), and preforms. And even those are subject to the first two problems. Edward

This at least has an easy answer. Several coordinating answers actually. Programmers don't see things the way users do, yet programmers design and write software with interfaces based on what they themselves understand and like. They do so without testing on Real Users. They do so without involving User Experience (UX) professionals, or even the more narrowly defined User Interface (UI) specialists. Even experienced designers need to test on Real Users rather than trusting their own beliefs about what will work. For a good collection of articles, see https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ GC does not have a record of doing sufficient user testing. I won't claim they don't do any, simply because I have no knowledge of their internal processes. But we've seen many cases where the both the initial design and the final product show many signs of inadequate Real User testing. On the other hand, what we on the forums think is equally suspect. We are the 1%, or more likely the 0.01%. We do not represent the bulk of Real Users either. Even allowing for the expected high rate of lurkers, far more than 99% of GC users never visit these forums. Edward

There's a cache which I 1) adopted, 2) found, 3) passed on to someone else. It is an old, well loved cache. I located the inactive owner and persuaded him to give it to me. I did assume responsibility for maintaining it, though I later passed on that responsibility to someone more geographically able. Had I not done this, I would be discussing that cache in past tense rather than present tense. Of course I could have logged a find before adopting it, figuring I'd delete the find if I were unable to adopt it and never found it. Or I could have waited and logged the find after passing it on. I could even have made the text and dates accurate, since those are editable. (Or is the system going to stop me from altering the date on a Found log to a date within a time period when I owned the cache?) The announcement fails to answer lots of questions about ownership changes. As usual, it does not even recognize ownership changes, referring to OWNER as though that necessarily meant HIDER. Even when it doesn't make sense for the HIDER to log a find on a cache they hid (and I've said there are cases where it does make sense, though not many), this is different from a adoptive OWNER logging a find on a cache they did not HIDE. If the problem trying to be solved is accidental multiple find logging (either from communications or website issues, or just from cluelessness), then focus on that problem rather than trying to make a bunch of "generally ought to" guidelines into absolute rules. Edward

As for the trig caches ... create a new category. Similar to benchmarks, but better implemented, and integrated with geocaching. They don't fit the geocaching model, but they are clearly popular GPS games. Why fix the inconsistency by kicking them out rather than by providing an appropriate framework for them within geocaching? Edward

Well, of course they posted it to the User Insights forum so we could give our feedback before the decision was made. Oh ... oops, nothing has been posted to User Insights in over a year. Guess we know where we stand. The problem this change is supposed to solve is ... what? Perhaps accidental double logging, I've seen a bit of that. Armchair logging has been a big problem at times. This change will of course ... do nothing about armchair logging. The restrictions on owner logs are just silly. Do those logs always make sense? For a difficult challenge, it makes sense for the owner to be allowed to log Found It. (I did so for the two challenges I've published, and no one has complained. I was not even close to FTF on either.) Are those logs often fun? Yes! Owner DNFs are some of the most humorous I've read. Owner NM and owner DNF logs can be owners poking fun at themselves. This change seems to be a victory of rules over fun. Edward