BugznElm'r

A very sad day for UK geocaching. Mark did more for UK geocaching than anyone of anything else. He was a tremendous character and I will miss him. My sympathy and condolences to his family and friends.

Have a great day everyone! (D'oh! Wish I was going too!) Kathie (Mrs Bugz)

I was in a car accident a couple of weeks back. I was shunted off the carriageway, rolled down an embankment into fairly dense woodland that seemed to have closed up behind me in the dark. I was left trapped inside the upsidedown vehicle and there was a strong smell of petrol...! You might expect that in such a circumstance on a busy motorway people would immediately come rushing down to help but anyone who saw the accident must have just driven on by... Luckily I eventually found my phone and called 999 but I had no idea where I was apart from the last junction. My iPAQ was connected to my bluetooth GPS and so I expected to be able to see my location but unfortunately the PDA had gone off (either because it was running off the car battery or I suppose the jolt from the impact may have affected it). Luckily it swtiched on again but my last position had been lost. My bluetooth GPSr wasn't able to get a signal (because of the trees and being inside an upsidedown vehicle, I suppose) and TomTom doesn't keep a log either... Luckily the firemen found me before too long just by searching along the road and I'm OK generally although battered and bruised but very happy to be alive! But it's really made me wonder about the technology, both in an emergency and after the fact in sorting out the legal and insurance issues. How many times have I thought how useful it would be to have the GPS and its track log and bread crumb trail and all the useful info of speeds and direction? But I didn't have my hand held GPS and the bluetooth one has no interface or memory... In answer to your question, I really don't know if they could have used a grid reference if I'd been able to give them one. But I'd never realized before that there are stretches of 'wilderness' alongside motorways that left me feeling more lost than I've ever felt out on any moorland or mountain range either in the UK or abroad! Take Care! Kathie (Mrs Bugz)

Well, you did bring it up! The bottom line is that a bag on the outside is unlikley to be of much use. Far better to put the contents in a bag and put that into the box.

The problem with tupperware style plastic boxes in the outdoors is not that the air expansion pops the top so much (I doubt that it would have enough overpressure to do that) but that the daily heating and cooling of the air inside the box causes moisture to be sucked into the box. This is how: In the morning the box is cold The air warms up over the course of the day, the air in the box expands and a small amount is pushed out the seals In the evening the air cools and the air in the box contracts. Slowly, colder (and depending on the weather) damper air is sucked into the box The moisture condenses and soaks into absorbent items Why does the warmth of the day dry the box off? Because it never gets warm enough. The less there is in the box (that is, the more air it contains) the worse the problem. Similarly, the less often it is visited the worse it gets.

Congrats to the Wayfinders from Team BugznElm'r! And well done on doing the Cotswold Way too. (Would love to do that myself one day! ) And it was great to meet you yesterday too! Mrs Bugz

Well done from Team BugznElm'r!

Well done from Team BugznElm'r!

Well done Pooter from Team BugznElm'r!

Congratulations from Team BugznElm'r!

Had a smashing time - thanks Inuk! Good to see you all again and to meet new people too! Many thanks to Pengy&Tigger too for the puzzle cache. I manage to impress Elm'r with the speed of doing the logic puzzle - don't think he knew what a highly logical mind I possess! Great fun! Looking forward to logging it. Cheers! Mrs Bugz <-- keep forgetting to add that!

Thanks for the clarification! Mine is in a stone wall with 'built-in' niches every now and then and it's a tall wall so no chance of removing any stones! I think that should be ok. Mrs Bugz

Wasn't caching but, when I was a kid we set out for a holiday in Cornwall and when we got lost found that the maps we'd packed were one of India and one of the night sky!

Hey thanks Mancunian and everybody! (Nice surprise when I logged in to log the event! ) Had a great time yesterday by the way. As for on to the next 100, we decided we'd quit when we got the ton so that'll be our last cache.... . (Nah just kiddin' - had you going though didn't I? Onward and upward! Lookout Seasider!! ) Mrs Bugz

Glad to hear it's working now. One more tip: Sometimes the connector in the bottom of PDA needs a 'little wiggle' - I had to do this on and off for the whole journey to the North West event yesterday! The ports on the IPAQs especially can be very dodgy ... Mrs Bugz

Now I'm confused (it's not uncommon! ) One of our caches is indeed in a dry stone wall. Does this mean I need to remove it??

I've had this - have you tried resetting the pda? Ooh also make sure your gps is on first... Failing that, I'd suggest you check the interface settings are the same on both eg garmin, nmea or whatever. Hope you sort it ... Mrs Bugz

Great idea! Done!

Looking forward to the event. (I think it's showing up as the wrong date in the calendar though)

Um when you'll do totally crazy stuff on a mountain side to get a ftf on a 5/5. Ooh it was worth it though

Cool idea - prefer walking to the train though ... meetya at the top!

Forget the tapping through menus - we use this and it's worth the price for sure (it's free!!!!) ... http://www.webattack.com/get/pocketpc/BatMemTime.html Never had a problem with it! Good bit of software.

Be careful - how you upgrade depends on the maps you use. If youa re using Memory Map 2004, then upgrade to the latest and best. however, DON'T upgrade to the Memory Map 2004 viewer (version 4) is you are using the older maps because it won't read them (copyright issues). You will have to uninstall the old version of ActiveSync before reinstalling version 3.7 - a major pain - I know because I went through it!

Did you upgrade to the latest version of ActiveSync at some point? It will fail to work if you have ActiveSync 3.7.1 installed and you have to install 3.7. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&displaylang=en Memory Map 2004 works fine with 3.7.1 and neither Microsoft or Memory Map have plans to fix the issue. The only solution I've found is to downgrade to 3.7. Hope this helps!

Excellent application! Many thanks for making it available!