TheAprilFools

Two sides to the issue. Since I live in California and there are currently more that 21 thousand active caches I would need to create 43 PQ's to get all of them, but I can only create 20. Even if I could since I can only run 5 a day it would take 9 days to run all of them. On the other had there are real ownership of data issued to deal with as a person no honor could take the prebuilt state GPX files and build there own competing geocache website, which would be bad.

I know a number of ppl who have two or more PQ's setup to weekly generate the caches they have found. For me, unlike others who have have commented here, I don't want the archived caches in my list because the way I use it, I create maps of available caches for a group I often cache with and even though I have found it, it shows that its available for others in the group to find. The point I would like to make is rather than make someone setup a number PQ's (up to twelve or more for some) that use up a lot of server resources. Lets create an incentive to create PQ's that are not as costly for the server to produce. There have been times where I was planning a trip to another city or state and I wanted to see a map of all the caches in the area, so I ended up downloading them 20 at a time into expertgps and combining them into a single map, this has to take a terrible toll on the server. Why not make a stripped down PQ that shows more caches, I would think in the end everyone would win as the users get the data they want with the minimum of work on the part of the GC.com servers.

For me and I suspect most cachers who generate multiple a PQ with our found caches, we are using them to generate maps of where we have been. I dont think full descriptions are needed so a simplified output file is all thats needed, and I think a LOC file would fit the bill. I am sure everyone has used the cache display screen for there own finds or someone elses finds, or even show me all the caches close to a zip code, and you see in the corner the total number of records and which page of 20 are currently on the screen. Each time this page is displayed, the server code fetches the list of caches from the database, displays the total count and which ever page is needed. It already has all the information it needs to generate a LOC file of the entire result without having to hit the database again. I suspect hitting "next" a couple times would requires more resources than downloading the result as a LOC file once.

From my understanding the notes are stored in the Groundspeak extensions and its gathering the notes that takes the bulk of the resources. Of the few things that remain in the GPX file after you remove the Groundspeak stuff is the cache type and if its found or not, which I find useful and should not require much more resource to read from the database as it already has the cache record already. As for the 5000 limit, right now based on lists I have seen it would effect maybe 11 cachers, lift it to 10000 and it would effect 1 (and a second soon). I realise you don't want someone creating a query that would get all caches in north america, there has to be some limit, 5000 seamed like a resonable suggestion.

I have read several topics over time where peaple have asked for archived caches or all the caches they have found regardless of quantity or if they are archived. I have also read topics and responses where we have had problems with the PQ server not being able to generate all the queries it needs to in a single day because of the resources required to pull up all those notes and generate the GPX file. I may have an idea may help all these things. We allow users to create a query that lifts the 500 mile limit, the archived restriction and the 500 cache limit (to some higher number like 5000, there has to be some limit) provided that the PQ only generates a LOC file or GPX file without Groundspeak extenstions and no ebook. I know there are some who would like complete descriptions of the caches they have found but be honest, who really needs the descriptions or the notes for caches they have already found, they are not likely to go and find them again. If you are traveling, you could use it to download the location of all the caches in a state, not to actually use it to find the caches, but to see what area's to focus on so you could then create normal PQ's for them. Before everyone gets out there popcorn, I already have mine ready.

Abbreviated information would be fine for me. I run a number of PQ's in the beginning of the week and then would like to have one or two queries I run durring the week just to pick up new caches and existing caches that are no longer available. I think if we could create a query that only picked up those caches, whose status has changed in the last week, including the archived. It would simplify the queries I need to run, and I could probably eliminate three that I run now.

This suggestion has been made, but I don't recall if it is being considerd as something to implement. I too would find this very useful. I remember making this suggestion and everyone got out there popcorn.

I use basically the same technique. The actual price for GSAK is 20$ (what a bargan), I thought I paid more for ExpertGPS so I went to look up the price and VW is correct, they must have dropped his price since I purchased.

Actually I thought that it was the O's (the letter between N and P) that is not used. Thanks for the info Jeremy, hopefully the software developers will have enough time to fix there programs and all those old GPSr's will break and have to be replaced. On a related note, the Y2K problem will be nothing to 2038/1/19, thats the date that TIME ENDS!

I was wondering about what the plan was for the waypoint ID's in the future. I was doing some thinking on the subject and this is what I discovered. For caches up to and including GCFFFF the last four digits of the waypoint ID is a hex number and there can be 65536 caches. For caches starting GCG000 and later the numbers are all numbers and letters except I L O S and U, giving 31 numbers, resulting in 446865 possible cache ID's. The first "Q" cache (GCQ000) was placed on 2005/8/1, the first "P" cache (GCP000) was placed 2005/5/20. Given that rate, unless the "GC" at the beginning of the waypoint ID or change the length of the waypoint ID we will out if ID's in March of 2007. Is there a plan for what comes after GCZZZZ? I know its not a problem for a little while but I was wondering.

What exactly is a "walmart micro"? Has walmart started selling super cheap micro caches made in china that are designed to put the makers of all other micro caches out of business?

Wow, thems fightin words!

In the upper right corner of your "My Account Details" screen there is a link for "Search for nearest caches from your home coordinates".

I think the powers at be are afraid that too many peaple would have there feelings hurt. Best advice I could give is read the logs on the cache and if its a new cache, read the logs on there other caches.

Edit: I was not coping Hemlock, I just pushed submit a little bit after him.

Its not really "OLD" format. There is an effort by some to make HTML code XML compatible and adding the / to the end of the br tag does that as it closes the tag. Otherwise standard XML parsers would expect a </br> somewhere later in the page.

If there are multiple icons that use the same image, could we only show the image once and have the mouse over text show the list of names it applies too.

test

Just testing

I just tried this out on my new Motorla V551 and it works well, thanks. One thing though, the pages don't show the cache type, container type or difficulty. If we could add a line to the listing page that showed Trad/Small (3/2) Would be great.

Thanks Jeremy, that would be very cool

Since I live in the PST zone I sometimes get home and start posting before midnight and it takes me until after before I finish. There are usually several I enter with the wrong date before I realize its switched.

This is a minor problem that tends to bug me. I went and found a few caches yesterday (7/31) but was too tired to log them when I got home so I decided to wait until the next day (8/1). Every time I go to enter a log entry it defaults to the current date and I have to change the drop downs for the month and day to the day I want to log them. Would it be possible that if I had entered another log entry within the last hour, to default the date of the next log entry to the date of the last log entry rather than the current date.

I think this would be great addition as its the minimum you would need to go find the cache without having to log into the website to down load it. I think attaching a gpx file would make the email to big to send to someone's cell phone. I agree this would be a great feature, it could be restricted only to active caches that were archived as disabled caches are already known to be unavaliable. But even as it is, its a great feature and thanks to Jeremy and anyone else involved in producing it.

Thanks Jeremy