mirabilos

Where’s OpenStreetMap on the new map? Can’t find it, and Google’s maps are utter s*** lacking any and all details a geocacher would need.

So it's NOT stupid to discriminate on the basis of age if the law requires it? Laws can be stupid, too. But I meant: it’s stupid to discriminate between geocachers (purely) based on age. The COPPA restriction is not for geocaching but for “access to Groundspeak’s services”. You can go caching without that, you know. I’m not allowed to say more here.

Ah well, I’m known for being a bit of a USA critic, but that’s not the topic here. Besides, this is just about using Groundspeak’s services; crazypig *is* 13, and anyone younger can either go with someone older or, well, decide USA law doesn’t apply to them and cheat, which too may do “anyway” (actually something I’d *not* suggest, just something I know from e.g. Facebook users). The basis here is actually “child protection online”. This has nothing to do with thinking kids too young for geocaching. If Groundspeak would not bar people younger than 13 by their terms of use, they’d have immense liabilities, have to monitor their site, etc. so this is actually reasonable of them. I’d suggest for newbie cachers (of any age) to go with someone older / more experienced at first, anyway.

I think discriminating against kids due to their age is stupid in this. I’ve seen kids behave as better cachers than adults. Even that ADHD kid around here realised he was being stupid initially, got better, and said sorry to those whom he annoyed in his first few weeks. (Incidentally, rich parenthood, so he was PM right from the start.) So please, BraillerCD, re-think what you wrote. Now, hi crazypig. You do not need to become a PM for geocaching well. I’ve been around for about a decade, on several sites, and only very recently (after some argument with opencaching) decided to buy myself the PM. But as Basic Member, with a valid eMail address, there are no concerns against you, I can assure you! As for the intro app: the problem with it is, again, the people and the lack of introduction (heh…) and communication. If you are a versed geocacher, you can use the intro app with no problem, except you’re castrating yourself by using it as you don’t see all the caches. (That being said, the Groundspeak apps aren’t really good. I can recommend a combination of Cachewolf + Cachebox for Windows Mobile (not Windows Phone), and a friend recommends the c:geo nightly builds (not the release versions!) for Android. Only if you’re on iPhone or, Gods beware, Windows Phone, I know of no alternative that’s better than Groundspeak’s. Many geocaching applications have features that help you to cache better, such as bearing/distance to waypoint calculation, an advanced calculator or even a mystery solve tool, better offline use, etc.) The problem here is not “geocachers who use the intro app” but “people who stumble upon the intro app and then approach caches”. Hope this clears up things. I looked at a few of your cache logs, and I think you’re doing fine ☻

I’m still making my caches PMO on GC.COM for the lack of validated contact for those users. That’s been a problem – lack of contact. Sometimes, you have that with regular site users too, but very rarely. As for the trees and ladders… well, climbing also isn’t my strength, but that’s mostly obvious from the Terrain rating. I can always come, look and DNF with no problem. (Not finding a D1/T1 is embarassing, but also happens. Not finding a D3/T4½ is something to not even look twice at.) And recently, together with cachers I met during caching or on events, I’ve climbed some trees, even. So, one learns.

Sure, but this application allows people to go geocaching without us being able to contact or report them for potential abuse. This is just a no-go. Newsflash, PocketPC applications for geocaching have been around since before 2006… and they rocked, even back then, already. I’ve *still* not got enough money for a “pro” GPS, but have been running around with a borrowed Sharp Zaurus, with my own 12" laptop (yeah…), and with a cheapo PocketPC from just before Windows Mobile was terminated, and am still happy with the latter. So, you don’t need this application. The others would just use your normal site account, which means you have a contact eMail address. Oh, and they’d allow one to use all cache types and sites.

And we can't even have a "report this user" link in their profile if they do something totally inappropriate/stupid… Recently, I saw this on a nice cache in the forest which is a bit offways (which you could have seen from reading the listing, even if it was not explicitly written): (loosely translated) "Stupid, that's in the woods, we haven't come here all the way on skates just for this." Of course, no eMail address. I can almost understand why oldtimer geocachers take their listings down

Meh, I had the reverse problem… went caching with a coworker on Sunday, and he wondered why he could not see most of the caches (PMO tradis or any non-tradis) we went to. I did take time to inform him of everything, of course.

No. If they invent IGCD, they should stick to it, otherwise everything from them loses credibility. I made myself a calendar entry, but was baffled about the lack of communication as well. Uhm, what challenge? I made a cache tour with friends on Saturday the 2nd, and got: “ Congrats! You're locked in as 942 out of the 26088 geocachers around the world to earn the Achiever souvenir to date. Considering that there are millions of geocachers worldwide, that’s pretty awesome!” Considering that we extended the tour a bit, so I could find all nine (9) icons available in the region, at least twice of each… it was a piece of cake. Last year’s was more difficult, but was what got me kickstarted again (I was at 429 caches before 1st of August, 2013, and am at 1076 to date, although I stopped caching extremely much after 31st of July, 2014, when I completed the 366 day challenge… I got into it after the 31 day challenge). PS: Hmm, forum signatures here don’t work correctly either…

Good question, I was wondering about that too. I just hope a non-event cache counts for that day, but as it did in 2013, it probably will.

Ah okay. I admit I did not look into the DTD/Schema (those make my head hurt, most of the time), so I was not sure if this was an enumerated field (for those not as deep in the know: like HTML '<form action="get">', the “action” attribute can only be get or post but not potato) or just a string field. Even if it was just a string field, though, I'm happy that (apparently) people notice it breaks other users of this format and revert the change.

Cachebox for PocketPC (whose last released version is from 2009 unfortunately, since the developers are doing Android stuff now) was affected both by the Unknown/Mystery dichotomy (luckily, it falls back to Unknown if the cache type is, pardon the pun, unknown) and – much worse – the stage renaming to virtual/physical stage. GPX import now throws a NullReferenceException, and Live API queries just abort after importing caches that do not use such waypoints. So yes, changes like this *do* affect third-party applications (even paid-for ones like GeoScout, which cost me 20 GBP, which is quite a bit!), even those that use only published APIs. Do not break published APIs, and, if you absolutely must, do it in a way that keeps old applications running (e.g. offer a GPX version field for PQs and detect the client in the Live API and downgrade the protocol if the client is known old). Thank you! //mirabilos, also a programmer, lessions hard learned.