htomc42

The "Needs Maintenance" section at the top of the new dashboard says I have "..1 cache that needs my h elp". I went to the cache, and entered a Owners Maintenance log. I did it directly on the cache page and not through the menu link on the Needs Maintenance entry. The cache is still in the "Needs Maintenance" section and won't go away.

The point is that the CO is not in the game anymore. The last time the CO was on the site was in 2003. The CO clearly can/will not take action. The question is, is there some one who can/should take any action? Or are these old ownerless caches just free game for fake logging? You could always take a picture of the cache log, and call out the fakes on a public forum.

I think I found the problem. I did find all 4 of those "missing" trackable numbers- they were way further down on the page! When any log is entered, geocaching.com enters it into a number of lists- profile of all activity, Trackable items Detail, etc. These are in reverse chronological order, with the most recently entered log at the top of the list. Apparently, when numbers are entered using the discovery API, the time-stamp used to keep the list in order, is not set! I had several cache finds and trackable visits/discoveries on May 3rd, and they are all correctly listed in reverse order. However, those 4 trackable discoveries are now listed at the very bottom of the list for May 3rd. So, I think there is still a problem with the trackable discovery API- it is not properly time-stamping the discovery logs. They have the right date, but not the right time. When I edited the log for one of the "missing" trackables, it's time-stamp was properly set, and it was then displayed in the correct order. Interesting mystery/possible bug in the API.

When I go to a cache page, it shows a very nice graphic in the upper-right to indicate whether I've found it or not. Could we have something similar for trackables? It would be -very- handy to have some indicator, as close to the top as possible on whether I have posted a Discovered/Retrieved/Grabbed log for a particular trackable, without having to wade through page after page of logs.

The website project-gc.com has a very handy tool for logging multiple TB numbers at once, using the same date and log for all of them. It says that it uses the Geocaching Live API to do this. I processed several TB numbers using it- and when I go to geocaching.com, it does show that log for each of the trackables. The problem is that it shows the log -only- for those trackables and nowhere else. There is nothing at all in the profile nor the 'trackable item details' page about it. Is this a problem with that API function? I went to one of those logs, and edited then saved it. Once I did that, the log showed up everywhere as normal. Has anyone else used one of these tools, or noticed similar problems with it? I'm thinking that gc.com probably stores those lists, rather than generating them dynamically from all the individual logs in the database, every time a page is rendered. If that is the case, it looks like something in that API isn't regenerating those lists, just adding the log to the trackable and nowhere else.

One thing I notice about the new HTML format is that it doesn't include the GC numbers for the new caches, as part of the text. I had just gotten my system working nice with the new GSAK API feature 'Get Caches' by GCXXXX code. I could just take the text and parse out the GC codes, put them in the textbox, and get my own custom query of the new caches in the announcement, in minutes. Now, the HTML version doesn't have the GC codes displayed with the link text like it does the events. Ok, so maybe I can scan the source code instead. So, I do a 'View Message Source' in my browser, only to find base-64 encoded everything. Yuck- no codes at all, so it's back to the server-intensive and time-consuming method of having to fully load each individual cache page, and click 'Get GPX' to manually get them one at a time. I'm just glad that I can display HTML format messages- otherwise I would effectively be without the update.

Hunster and I are planning to do some water caching on Lake Lanier this coming Saturday (7/7) and want to know if anyone in the area is interested in going on this, to help share the boat expenses. We will most likely be getting a pontoon boat, and will be getting "Marroned" (GL8H2MBG) and several other high/difficulty ones that are important for the Jasmer challenge. Exact time and duration is TBD, due to rental costs- if we can get enough people, we can possibly do this all day and really clear out the lake. Send an email to one of us- (htomc42 or Hunster) via geocaching.com, or email: htomc42@hotmail.com - hunster615@yahoo.com = if you are interested

I also use GSAK as my waypoint manager, and I am also very limited as to the number of characters that I can use in my GPS (Magellan Explorist 400). I find it very helpful to edit the hints; when I import a pocket query or other large number of waypoints into a database, I run a macro that I wrote called HINTFIX - it abbreviates the words in the hint, and appends a character code indicating the cache size. I then step through them in GSAK's waypoint edit mode, and make other changes as necessary, to cut out the fluff and further abbreviate words that my macro doesn't catch. By running that macro first, then stepping through them, I can edit the hints very quickly. If its just useless hints, then I can look at the other cache description fields in the editor, and make the appropriate changes. It takes some time to get the data just right, but with a few tools, it can go much quicker.

http://breakingnews.nydailynews.com/dynami...EMPLATE=DEFAULT Thief steals car GPS system; cop looks at programmed home coords and returns it to owner, arrests thief!

While searching for the "Hope Creek UFO" cache (GC12DBZ), I found an unlisted benchmark in the woods. This cache is located beside a huge hill that rises up from nowhere (old dump?), and I found this mark while traversing around the bottom of the hill toward the cache. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a picture at the time. The benchmark looks like a piece of 3/8" pipe, sticking straight up about a foot out of the ground, and its painted fluorescent orange. About 1 ft away is a new-style composite Witness Post. The coordinates of this mark is: N 35 57.133 W 078 58.519, which puts it about 2.139 miles away from areacode 27717. The closest mark in the database is AB2903 DUMP which is about 0.2 miles away. Does anybody know anything about this sort of mark?

One problem is that GPS satellites aren't geosynchronous. If China destroyed every single one of them that flew over their territories, would that be enough to degrade system performance elsewhere?

Here's what they are doing with all the money we are paying them to manufacture everything: http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/W...china_11_29.asp I"m sure they'll make friends all over the world by attacking "enemy" GPS satellites.

Here's a couple of possible things that would greatly speed up the process of entering and keeping up with TBs and coins: 1) On the main page for a trackable item, some sort of indication near the top, as to whether you have already discovered or retrieved that particular item. Currently, I have to either manually check the logs for the item, or keep my account's list active in another tab, and manually search that list. 2) Include the "enter trackable codes" textboxes somewhere on each item page, so that the next one can be immediately processed, without having to go back to the Trackables page. That might save a lot of page loads.

I'm trying to create some bookmarks, but I can't figure out a good, consistent way to get caches onto those bookmarks. Its easy enough to use the button to create a bookmark, and to set the active bookmark in the dropdown box. And, I see the icons on the right, which when you click them, turn blue to indicate that the cache is now on the indicated bookmark list. But, when I do anything- click the links at the bottom to view the next set of caches, or if I go anywhere and back again, or even if I just jiggle the Google map around a bit so that it recalculates the caches shown, it resets many of the previously-set items on the bookmark! Some of them will stay set (turned blue) and others won't- every time there's any sort of postback, some are un-selected. I have no idea what actions to take to make a cache "stick" in the indicated bookmark. Its a real hit-and-miss to create these bookmark lists, which means that I have to end up doing several pocket queries to get an area instead of just one. Am I missing something?

Maybe I'm missing something, but is there a good way to save the image shown in the browser? There is a custom print option, but that seems to save the image as a postscript file and not as a jpg/png or other type of image. I tried saving the page, but the picture was all split up in to individual grid segments.