Primitive Person

I'm very unlikely to ever find this cache, but I do approve of the location! The structures themselves are fascinating, and I took a boat trip to see them a couple of years ago. Well worth the effort. Lee

Quite a few people seemed to flounce off in a huff a while ago because they were unhappy with Groundspeak, but that always seemed a bit extreme to me. Whatever Groundspeak may or may not have done, I'm happy just to get on with finding the caches. I go through fits and spurts. Longest period for me without a cache find was about three weeks. I've cleared most of my local caches - the ones I want to do, anyway - so as time goes on, finding fresh caches involves travelling further afield, which gets more time consuming. A lot of the caches near to me are incredibly cryptic puzzles that just baffle the hell out of me. Surrey is absolutely plagued with these things, and there's hardly any trads or reasonably simple multis, which I find very frustrating. I'm likely to never do them, and as all the alternatives dry up, I may end up caching less often. Lee

I went to Thurso and Wick back in April, and found that the cache density north of Inverness is very sparse indeed, so you won't get much in the way of numbers, but the ones that are around are of pretty good quality. As I was travelling by train, and there are only four trains a day from Inverness to Wick and back, I was limited in where I could go and the number of stopovers I could make, but I had to include Transect Line, which is one of the best caches I've done. It's about four miles from Altnabreac, one of the most isolated railway stations in the UK, and I loved it - beautiful walking in an area almost entirely devoid of humans (but I did acquire a dog). Haven't really done any more in the area, but wherever you go, it's gorgeous, so enjoy yourself... Lee

I do a fair bit of central London caching, and it's a very mixed bag, to be honest. Some of them are great, and some of them...err...aren't. Almost everything is micro or nano, so if you're not so keen on those, there's less to choose from. Flonopoly, as mentioned, is good, and I must get around to finishing this series. There's also some very nice caches in Regent's Park worth looking at. Personally, though, I think my favourite is Father Thames & The Mermaid (GC1RWGW) - really out of the ordinary. Make sure you only try it at low tide, though! Lee

This seems to fit a nano perfectly! I really, really wish that people would be consistent and classify anything film canister-sized or smaller as a micro. Loads of nanos are classified as "other" or "not stated", which then screws things up a bit. I use Lordelph's icons on Memory Map, and there's a Micro symbol in there. However, if people use "other" or "not stated" for nanos, they show up as non-micro-sized caches, which can be annoying and misleading. A Nano category would maybe solve the problem, but I don't see a need for this if people apply the guideline quoted above properly. Grrr! Lee

You don't need a netbook to log caches! A smartphone does the job for me. I've got one of the original Asus Eee's, running Linux. Never used it for caching, but it's very small and perfect for using on train journeys etc., especially one where wi-fi is provided. Lee

It's very early days with the Vario IV - I've had it less than 24 hours! It seems good, but there's a few things that seem a bit retrograde compared with the III, mainly position and function of buttons, and the lack of a tilting screen. Speedwise it seems very similar, although my III had been running Windows Mobile 6.1 for ages, as opposed to 6.0 which it shipped with. I thought about Android, but several things put me off. The G1 is undoubtedly a nice phone, but for me Memory Map is a killer app, and Android doesn't seem to have any equivalents. It also doesn't have a built-in office suite, which I use a lot. Windows Mobile certainly isn't perfect but it's very businesslike, and that's what I like about it - does what it says on the tin, really, and I can't say I have any major gripes. In 18 months of using the Vario III, it did everything I wanted of it and constantly amazed me with what it could do. That said, I've found places to download beta versions of WM6.5, which is meant to be vastly better than 6.1, so I'm itching to try it out. Lee

Back in April I went up to Thurso by train, and stopped off at Altnabreac (supposedly about the most isolated station in the country) and found the nearby (well, four-mile hike!) Transect Line cache, which had been almost exactly two years without a find by the time I got it. It's been found once or twice since, but it's very infrequently visited - if you look at the area, it's not hard to see why. Great cache, by the way - recommended! You might be lucky and get a random dog for company when you go looking for it. Lee

Hmm, I'm not sure. I've got the vario III and if I try and add any amount of waypoints (I'm not sure if it's sending some or all the waypoints i've got) but I get the out of memory error. Perhaps a fresh install may do it? I never had any trouble with the III at all - it just worked, which was great. I tried a bit of experimentation last night, though, and I seem to have cracked my problem with the IV. I made the waypoint file for Memory Map smaller by deleting the child waypoints, and it worked without any trouble. I'll try sneaking the bigger version in as soon as I can, to see if I can get it to work - perhaps I've sorted whatever was causing the problem. Beeline seems to like the GPS now as well, as it worked fine when I tested it this morning. First impressions of the phone (now I've got stuff working) are mixed. The form factor of the Vario III, with the tilting screen, is WAY better, but the IV's keyboard is lovely and the display is awesomely better. It's the same physical size, but has four times the resolution (640x480 instead of 320x240) and the difference this makes is amazing. Memory Map looks incredible on it, especially with Lordelph's Lovely Icons. It's also way better in bright sun than the III. TouchFlo 3D is annoying in the extreme, though, and I turned it off the second I worked out how. The settings straight out of the box seem designed to drive you to madness, and it took a lot of tweaking to get it working the way I had my III set up. Lee

I just upgraded from the T-Mobile Vario III (TyTN II) to the Vario IV (Touch Pro), mainly because my III was showing its age and starting to fail. It's been a great machine, and I've had high hopes for the IV, but I'm having great problems with it. First off, Memory Map 5. It installs, opens and works fine, but as soon as I try exporting waypoints to it (about 4000, done using GSAK), it locks up and crashes, requiring a soft reset. It sometimes displays "Out of Memory", so I wonder if I might have to make do with less caches loaded, but my III worked with no problems at all. BeeLine GPS also says that some GPS standards are not supported. The thing gets a fix, but I'm not sure if it'll actually work properly in the field - haven't been able to test it yet. Can anyone suggest any fixes for these? Or am I going to have to give up and either use different software, or a get a different phone? Lee

Well, maybe - but I strongly suspect the culprit(s) here are just bored kids who will rapidly get just as bored doing this, and give up soon enough. They don't seem to be doing it for the "ideological" reasons that some cache-trashers have been hiding behind. I suspect they won't do any more, because almost all the local caches are now premium-member only anyway. I'll give it a couple of weeks, and if the trashing account hasn't been active, I'll open them back up again. Lee

I suspect the novelty will wear off fairly quickly and the whole problem will pass. I'll keep an eye on the situation anyway.

I've had it pointed out to me that there's a cache trasher at work in SW London. Three have been targetted so far, all in and around Worcester Park. The culprits are not premium members, so I've immediately made my own caches premium-only and will check them shortly to ensure they're OK. I thought hard about whether to post this here, but I thought it was the best way to make everyone aware. However, PLEASE don't make a bigger deal out of this than necessary - let's not debate it endlessly, as these people want attention and I fully intend not to give them any. Previous discussions on this topic have gone on forever and given the trashers far more attention than they deserve. Just pointing this out for local cache owners to action as necessary. Lee

I get you. I tried out Navicache recently, and it's a ghastly site compared to this one, with far fewer features, a horrible user interface, and most importantly - hardly any caches at all. Lee

Seems pretty obvious to me that logging a find on your own cache is a bit daft, to say the least, but I can't say I'm going to lose any sleep over it...each to his or her own, I suppose. Ultimately, the game is dependant on a certain degree of honesty, trusting people only to say they've found a cache when they have. I can't say I've ever bothered to cross-check online logs with the logbook on any of my hides, so there you go. I've got one or two people who have logged finding my caches several times, as they pass by and leave TBs etc. Strictly speaking they should leave notes rather than log finds, but I can't say I'm bothered enough to do anything about it. Lee

True. Various other sites I use have recently begun cutting back on services available to free users, and massively increasing the number of ads they're carrying. GC.com shows none of these signs thus far, and membership continues to rise, so I'm guessing it's in good shape. I'm sure there would be plenty of backers ready to step in if trouble arose - Garmin have, of course, recognised the value of geocaching as a way of shifting GPS units to people who would otherwise never have considered buying one. Lee

I log on the fly from both Beeline and Memory Map, which are PQ-powered and therefore not breaking any rules - a click in the right place on my phone's screen opens up the website, and I type my logs in there. Since owning my current phone (HTC TyTN II) I log probably about 90% of my finds as soon as I've found them. Easy, really, and it doesn't need any apps that aren't out there already (and are legal!)

Yes, I am going to stop using the application, because I don't wish to cause any trouble. No, I'm not going to sign up to your Twitter feed, because you've proven yourself to be extremely unpleasant, and I'd rather not interact with you. I can live without previously mentioned application, if it's not meant to be used. And I can live without your attitude as well.

Oh really? How odd then that in the thread about live.geocaching.com you said the following about their service: Funny how people's opinions change depending on who they think is listening... God, I can't believe how rude you are. I wrote that before I found and installed (*deleted by moderator, as using this application violates the Terms of Use for the site) , which does everything I need it to do. I shouldn't have to justify myself to you, anyway. Apologies, I wasn't aware there was an issue with this software. I installed it after a reference was made somewhere else on here. Could you explain what the issue is? I'm happy to stop using it if there's a problem, although I'd like to know why, and if there's any possible solutions, as I do like the functionality. Lee

Has anyone registered galileocaching.com yet?

All of this is precisely why Virtuals have never appealed to me in the slightest. I'm personally quite glad they're no longer allowed... *ducks*

Oh really? How odd then that in the thread about live.geocaching.com you said the following about their service: Funny how people's opinions change depending on who they think is listening... God, I can't believe how rude you are. I wrote that before I found and installed (*deleted by moderator, as using this application violates the Terms of Use for the site) , which does everything I need it to do. I shouldn't have to justify myself to you, anyway.

If you're interested in general; I imagine that most people use one of the geocaching.com official apps, don't they? See forum section for iphone caching. I don't have an iphone so I tend to use the WAP site, or simply the main site via 3G. I don't use an iPhone either. I use an HTC TyTN II, running Windows Mobile 6.1, and for caching I use BeeLine and Memory Map, which both take Pocket Queries and do wonderful things with them. Both programs let you find the nearest caches and can display all the relevant details, and offer links to the online cache page - I just go into this to log my finds, and it's very easy. I've recently started using (*deleted by moderator, as using this application violates the Terms of Use for the site) for caching on the fly - it goes online to find your nearest caches, and seems pretty good, but not as good as those already mentioned. I really have no need for anything else, and I think a hell of a lot of cachers feel the same. The whole point for me is to get me outside having fun, and I've got all I need for that. Lee

You've hit the nail on the head here. Guidelines and rules evolve because they have to - situations arise that could not have been foreseen in the past. On a (non-caching) website I use (which shall remain nameless) a lot of longtime users have gone crazy about new guidelines, but they've been introduced because, without them, the site would be open to legal challenges that would threaten its entire existence. A lot of these disgruntled users have gone to another site without such guidelines, but as that site grows, it will have to change - it's inevitable. As geocaching is a game which can potentially get on the wrong side of security authorities, it's important to have standards all parties can sign up to, and as soon as you get *too* open, you lose that completely. Fragmentation of the hobby is not good news - it's far better that everything can be found in one place. Like it or not - and I have no issue with this at all - GC.com has ended up becoming the default home of the game, and it's got there for a reason. The rules and guidelines are really not very restrictive at all - you only have to look at the variety of caches out there to work that one out - and in my experience the volunteers, reviewers and moderators are fair and decent people who do their best to keep a very diverse range of people happy. In terms of site features, do we seriously need any more? Given that this is a game that's meant to get you outside hunting for things, I personally don't need anything else that's going to shackle me to a PC! I've got enough software to run on my phone to enable me to find and log on the fly, and that'll do for now. If you don't like it here, no-one says you have to like it, but really, the idea of attempting to start another site from scratch to include a few bells and whistles is a complete non-starter. Lee

When Opencaching was started the Germans got it done, while this side of the pond, got to the prototype stage, but didn't finish. It's probably possible to get an ISO image of that prototype database. I've never given up on the concept of a cacher owned and controlled site, but I don't have the programming skills to build the site, and not much time to do more than pay the bills on some net addresses that will be handy. Other sites: Terracaching.com Navicache.com Hungary, France, and Russia have their own sites. I honestly can't see why so many people complain about this site - honestly, doing better than this will be so much effort it's just not worth it. GC.com costs next to nothing to use, and I've never had an issue with it, or the way it's run. I've got plenty of software running on my Windows Mobile device that gets me to the tupperware, including GCz which can access the database without Pocket Queries. I can't see why it would be worth the extensive effort to set up a "rival" site - I recently joined Navicache to see if I was missing out on anything, and the site is dreadful compared to this one. There are hundreds and hundreds of caches within a few miles of my house here, and on Navicache they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The site is also extremely un-user-friendly. I know people have issues with GC.com, but on a day-to-day basis, it's very, very usable and does the job just fine. If you really want to do something to make caching better and improve the technology, volunteer to help out here. I can't help but feel that a lot of attempts to start new sites hark back to the "good old days" when, to be frank, caching was somewhat elitist, and there's a lot of resentment that more people are into it now. Lee