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TheAprilFools

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Posts posted by TheAprilFools

  1. I have a small feature request I would like to make to the notification system. Could we please add the ability to only send notifications for caches that the cacher has not found.

     

    While I do use the notification system to let me know about possible FTF's, I mainly want to know about caches that have been modified, disabled or archived so that I don't go looking for caches that are no longer there. My normal practice is to run a series of PQ's during the week to map out my local area and then using that decide where I want to go caching over the weekend. Since I have already found a significant number of the close by caches, many of the notifications I receive are of no value to me since I am not planing on finding that cache again.

     

    I believe that by making this change TPTB can greatly reduce the number of unnecessary notification emails the server sends and the amount of time cachers have to spend looking at notifications they don't need.

  2. I posted an 'I will attend' log to an upcoming event a couple weeks back. The other day was looking at my 'My Account' page and saw that at the top of the page was a list of events 'I plan to attend (in the next 30 days)' but the date on the event was the date I posted the 'I will attend' log, not the date of the event.

     

    Would it be possible to change the dates shown for the 'I will attend' logs on the 'My Account' page to show the date of the event rather than the date the log was created. Personally I don't find it useful to know when I said I was going to go to the event, but being able to quickly see when the event will happen would be useful.

     

    Sorry if this has been brought up before.

  3. I saved one of the geocaching.loc files to the disk and took a look inside it, looks like there is some trace data being generated in the middle of it, here is an excerpt.

     

    ......

    <link text="Cache Details">http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GC10B47</link>

    </waypoint><waypoint>

    <name id="GCYX8J"><![CDATA[Alameda Creek #3.1 by Blanston12]]></name>

    <coord lat="37.5655" lon="-121.99665"/>

    <type>Geocache</type>

    <link text="Cache Details">http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GCYX8J</link>

    </waypoint></loc><div id="__asptrace">

    <style type="text/css">

    span.tracecontent b { color:white }

    span.tracecontent { background-color:white; color:black;font: 10pt verdana, arial; }

    span.tracecontent table { clear:left; font: 10pt verdana, arial; cellspacing:0; cellpadding:0; margin-bottom:25}

    span.tracecontent tr.subhead { background-color:#cccccc;}

    span.tracecontent th { padding:0,3,0,3 }

    span.tracecontent th.alt { background-color:black; color:white; padding:3,3,2,3; }

    span.tracecontent td { color: black; padding:0,3,0,3; text-align: left }

    span.tracecontent td.err { color: red; }

    span.tracecontent tr.alt { background-color:#eeeeee }

    span.tracecontent h1 { font: 24pt verdana, arial; margin:0,0,0,0}

    span.tracecontent h2 { font: 18pt verdana, arial; margin:0,0,0,0}

    .....

     

    Hope this helps.

  4. I discovered a bad bug while trying to setup a PQ today, but its not PQ related, here are the steps to reproduce.

     

    1) Do any search of caches near any location.

    2) Click the 'Check All' button on the bottom of the page and then 'Download Waypoints'.

    3) I select to 'Open' the geocaching.loc file and get the following error from Expert GPS.

     

    The Open commend could not be colmleted, The file geocaching.loc could not be opened. This XML file contains on or more errors. Error 0xC00CE555 on line 103, position 19.

    Reason: Only one top level element is allowed in an XML document.

     

    Edit 9/13/2007: Seams to be fixed now, thanks.

  5. I can understand that they are working on the new sites and that we are not going to get any new features until that's ready, but I find it unacceptable they should let an existing feature remain so badly broken until this major upgrade is done, some time in the distant future. For now they should either fix caching along a route or remove it. It may be a known issue but unless we keep it bringing it may never get fixed.

  6. For deletion, did you go to the main PQ page, check the box for the one you want deleted, then click the database_delete.png trash can image to delete the unwanted PQ's?

     

    I did not get to the stage of creating a PQ for it, I was unable to delete the route itself.

  7. I know this has been discussed before but I will describe my latest problem uploading a route in hopes of getting TPTB to take this seriously. I will try to be as specific as possible the steps to reproduce this problem.

     

    1) Open Google earth,

    2) select add->path from the menu.

    3) Give it an appropriate name

    4) Use the Mouse to draw the route on the map.

    5) Click OK in the new path box to save it.

    6) Right click on the new path in the 'places' list and select 'save as' and save it as a KML file.

    7) Open http://www.geocaching.com/my/userroutes.aspx

    8) Select Upload GPX/KML, browse to the newly created KML file and select 'Upload'.

    9) Select preview, it shows OK, in my example its 89 points for 183 miles.

    10) It should now show the new route, the distance and number of points, select the check box next to the new route and click 'Save Selected Route'.

    11) It now shows zero points but the same number of miles but shows Seattle on the map. And when I select 'delete' it returns to the route list but does not remove it.

     

    I did another test using the same procedures but with only 11 points and it worked correctly. I am trying to plan a caching road trip for Labor day weekend and find the caching along a route system so buggy that its unusable.

  8. Oh The horror!

     

    I have a better idea, to make everybody even, lets just delete all the previous finds on locationless caches, so nobody will have it. And before someone else says something, it would effect my numbers too but it would be a small price to pay.

  9. Just to add my two cents to the subject.

     

    While it has been said by TPTB that they don't want to create PQ's of archived caches because they don't want cachers trying to find them. I would like to be able to have a PQ of archived caches for that same reason, because I don't want to find them. If I have created a series of PQ's in anticipation of a trip, it would be nice to get them setup and download in advance and then at the last minute run another that just downloads those caches that have been changed recently. The current 'updated in 7 days' PQ filter is a bit useless because normal finds trigger the 'updated' status and floods the PQ with caches that have not really changed, using up the 500 cache limit. Setting up notification on archived caches does not always work because often the area does not fit within a 50 mile radius, and before someone mentions caching along a route, they should read all the threads that describe the all bugs it has.

     

    I would agree that there is no reason to get caches that have been archived a year or even a month ago but within the last 7 days is reasonable. So I would propose a change to the 'Updated in the last 7 days' filter to not be triggered by 'Found' logs and to include caches that have been archived within that time. If someone is annoyed by the removal of found caches from the 'Updated in the last 7 days' queries they can easily setup a PQ on caches 'Found in the last 7 days'.

  10. I don't like this idea. I have a series of caches along the local creek. While each one has legal parking that is reasonably close, I encouraged cachers to start at the trail head and do the entire series. I do not want to advertise that there is an alternative way to do it. If they want to pull up Google maps and figure it out themselves that's fine with me.

  11. Ah . . . good. Thanks for reporting on that . . . but, but, but, how come so many caches are being Archived . . . ? <_<

     

    I think it was just our local reviewer clearing out his backlog, so I was not overly alarmed by that. I look at it as fields that have been cleared for new planting. :mad:

  12. If you have (or know someone who has) a link to the cache you can find it that way. i.e. GSAK (I always move archived caches into a database called Archived, rather than delete them), or on a BLOG.

     

    I find it much easier to just mark the caches as archived in your main database, change the status to archived or use database->global replace and change 'available status' to 'archived'. This way if they ever become unarchived you will still have the old logs.

  13. I have had the same problems. The caching along a route system seams to be very sensative, if I create a route using MapSource and then create a GPX from that it almost always fails, if I create it manually using ExpertGPS (by hand over the topo map) it works most of the time. I hope TPTB have focused some of there engineering resources on this problem.

  14. Were the links to the Archived cache and the Archive log missing? :P

     

    I use the cache page link to go to the cache page to download the .gpx file to put into GSAK to "clean up" my database.

     

    If the link was missing from the email . . . that would be a bit of a problem. :rolleyes:

     

    To answer your questions, yes the links were missing and I do the same thing with it as you do.

  15. Normally there are a series of links on the page, log, the user who posted the log and your notification record on the bottom of the notification email, to compare here is an example from a non archived cache I received today.

     

    This is an automated message from Geocaching

     

    For GCX9GF: Limp (Disabled) (Traditional Cache)

    Location: California, United States

    18.5mi S (29.7km S)

    Gitonyerhorse temporarily disabled Limp (Disabled) (Traditional Cache) at 7/24/2007

     

    Log Date: 7/24/2007

    will fix this one up in a jiffy.

     

    Visit this log entry at the below address:

    http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LU...ec-74ba73f69853

     

    Visit Traditional Cache

    Limp

    http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...4d-e7ff362806b4

     

    Profile for Gitonyerhorse:

    http://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=7e...5d-5be35d5c456e

     

    Notification: New Traditionals

    http://www.geocaching.com/notify/edit.aspx?NID=33

     

    Until last night all notifications for archived caches had this same information in it, and I find it to be very useful. If its been removed on purpose I would like to loudly ask for it to be restored.

  16. I got a bunch of notification emails tonight, but the ones for archived caches were truncated and only had only the following information (this is an example of one).

     

    This is an automated message from Geocaching

     

    For GC144D8: Over ? (Archived) (Traditional Cache)

    Location: California, United States

    27.2mi N (43.7km N)

    RV CREW archived Over ? (Archived) (Traditional Cache) at 7/23/2007

     

    Log Date: 7/23/2007

     

    Something seams to have broken.

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