Jump to content

MakoKidd

+Premium Members
  • Posts

    34
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by MakoKidd

  1. Since this is a discussion about sorting, I'd like to re-emphasize a suggestion that may have been lost in the mish-mash above. Tables and/or datagrids can quite easily include a control that allows for users to choose to sort any column in the grid that they wish (ascending/descending toggles every time you click the same column twice in a row). Additionally you can include the LogID in the grid so if people want to see them in the order they entered them, they can choose to do so. I realize the resource problems are very real, and that sorting finds may not be a top priority, but standardizing table controls should be. Any time you see tabled data, those tables should be datagrids with user-sortable columns. This will end a lot of the sorting controversy.
  2. I am not so sure that this is a matter of punctuation in your password. My password contains two punctuation marks '!' and '@' and I do not have any trouble getting into the forums. You may want to try playing with the length or some other attribute of your password as opposed to punctuation. Unless maybe it's a comma?!?!?!
  3. Perhaps if there are so many people that consider you to be an idiot (personally, I am not making that judgement at this time), you might want to reconsider your own actions that seem to be provoking people to the point where they feel compelled to correspond with you. If you are judgemental and often throw in off-hand remarks, it can be easy for someone to interpret your comments in a negative fashion. I'm willing to bet that if you refrained from making comments in forums and logs, that these emails would stop. I think it's time for everyone to take owenership of their problems instead of trying to make the societal framework adapt to their personal woes (ie, change the functionality because I get negative emails sent to me). If you were innocent in this, you would receive as many emails as I do... Zero. My two pence, This is not an attack, it is simply a suggestion to take a look at your own behavior as potentially being at least part of the cause.
  4. I think the keyword here is "town", if you plan a trip to a more rural area you will feel some of the pain being voiced by the community with respect to the 15 mile limitation. I am currently planning a trip to Maui and the waypoints are not as concentrated as they are in downtown Honolulu, so it becomes quite a chore to keep zooming in and out and panning and zooming and zooming and panning. It's taking precious time and I'm starting to become annoyed. I guess I should have started my planning weeks ago (then I could have been finished in 15 minutes instead of taking over an hour. It seems that the convenience has been sucked out of the mapping software. Thanks, but no thanks.
  5. I have to say (as a software developer) that I'm a bit miffed as to why someone would go and make changes to something that worked just fine, when there are literally hundreds of other issues (all discussed in this forum) that require attention. Perhaps you just did it to see if the community at large would respond. Perhaps you were bored of the forum having the same old complaints and you wanted to stir up a hornets' nest. I really don't want to give the wrong impression. I DO think that the site is really great and the work you folks do day in and day out is commendable. I just want to say "If it ain't broke, don't 'fix' it!" And so you don't think that I'm just a whiner complaining about the change (I could care less if my cheese is moved from time to time), I like a lot of the ideas behind the new maps. There are some really cool features that I'm sure will be killer when the kinks are worked out. But for now the performance is very sluggish and the kinks are very apparent. Perhaps you could return to the old maps for the general public and then have a beta release for the contirbutors of the forum to evaluate until all the issues are resolved.
  6. Aloha all from Honolulu... I too feel overly compelled to chime in on this topic as I really did get better results with the way the google maps were BEFORE the change. If this is the way it is and there is no way to go back to the old way, then I'm going to be very sad indeed. The features I liked most were the way I could drag the map around and if I wanted to quickly look at the cache listing, all I had to do was click on the baloon and the listing would be summarized at the top (without opening a pop-up to open yet another window). PLEASE bring back the old way, even if you need to add another option to the mapping list: For online maps... Geocaching.com Maps Geocaching.com Google Map (old school) Geocaching.com Google Map (new school - advanced) Google Maps MapQuest Microsoft MapPoint Yahoo Maps Rand McNally Topozone Terraserver Tiger Census Maps
  7. Aloha all from Honolulu... I too feel overly compelled to chime in on this topic as I really did get better results with the way the google maps were BEFORE the change. If this is the way it is and there is no way to go back to the old way, then I'm going to be very sad indeed. The features I liked most were the way I could drag the map around and if I wanted to quickly look at the cache listing, all I had to do was click on the baloon and the listing would be summarized at the top (without opening a pop-up to open yet another window). PLEASE bring back the old way, even if you need to add another option to the mapping list: For online maps... Geocaching.com Maps Geocaching.com Google Map (old school) Geocaching.com Google Map (new school - advanced) Google Maps MapQuest Microsoft MapPoint Yahoo Maps Rand McNally Topozone Terraserver Tiger Census Maps
  8. I thought there were 50 states in the USA...
  9. My number one problem is muggles. I suppose it is my fault as I tend to geocache in town and don't often get the opportunity to get out in the country. What happens is I'll get to the general area and start my search. I try to think about how the owner must think. Where would be a great place to hide his thing. Urban areas have the added excitement of muggle traffic which will invariably make it so that you have to take several trips back to the cache site or have a ton of time on your hands to wait out the passersby before you can actually get a find. I've even successfully located the cache visually, but due to heavy foot traffic, I have to abort the mission and come back for it at another time. The trickier the hide, the longer the hunt and yes, the more attempts will have to be made. I suppose I could have better luck after dark, but then the muggles go to bed and the creepy crawly things come out. Take your pick. We're also blessed with an abundance of homeless people, so even after dark, the parks are full of muggles sleeping on park benches and rolled up in cardboard. It's too depressing to geocache at night in the city. The bottom line is to not give up. Unless you see logs that report DNFs and/or "Cache may be missing", then in all likelyhood it is still there waiting to be found. Another tactic I use is to come at the hide from a number of different angles and walk until you are at zero. Make a note of all the different "spots" and then average them out or intersect the paths to narrow down the vicinity. I can usually narrow my search area to a 10' radius this way, but like others have posted you still have to account for accuracy of both the hider's GPSr and your own. Also buildings tend to play tricks on your GPSr. The signals bounce off of them and affect the location of the GZ. Good Luck! and stay with it. It will get easier with time.
  10. Good Luck! ...and Happy Birthday!
  11. This post may be considered as being "off-topic", but at the risk of doing so, I apologize in advance. Would it be considered a commericial faux-paux-sp? if I were to place Dave & Busters Power Cards in a cache? I have no affilliation with D&B, but I do have a surplus of PowerCards with varying numbers of credits on them. I thought it might be a good way to get rid of them. Also, if it turns out to be good for business, I could approach them for addtional cards when I run out. Am I off my rocker here?
  12. I believe that some people (predominantly found near universities and other institutions of "higher" education) take on a role of educator and they honestly think that their criticism is helping us to become better at whatever it is that they are supposedly teaching. More often than not, these people tend to be pompus wind bags that have nothing better to do than to criticize everything around them due to some deep down lack that they possess in their own life. It doesn't sound as though the author of this criticism is particularly harsh, but rather, tactless and self absorbed. I pity the people who have assumed these types of roles for themselves as self-appointed professors of rhetoric. They are doomed to a life of never-ending self righteous overcompensation for their own shortcomings. Ignore him, if that doesn't work, find his caches and bash the crap out of them... jk
  13. Condoms, Pornography and Sex toys are among my favorites, but I've had a few complaints in the past... But seriously, I do not see anything wrong with McToys. They get a bad wrap probably because the people that place them in caches haven't spent much time and/or creative energy coming up with them. I believe that they are good for the growing number of kids from famlies that have taken up the sport as a good quality family past-time. I have recently discovered a large supply of keychain/lockets that I plan on making my signature item. I will place my avatar in the photo spot. Then the collector can decide if they want to keep the signature item or make it their own. my 2 cents
  14. Congratulations on your find(s). I am a relative newcomer to this sport (not even 1 month yet) and I sometimes feel embarassed to log DNFs, but this is a fallacy. The DNF could be legitimate. There was a 1/1 micro in my area and I found the exact spot where I think the cache should have been, but searching through the neatly stacked unnatural pile of rocks lying on top of a bed of tree bark, there was no cache. I logged the DNF and suggested that it may have been muggled or was this some type of decoy to distract me from the real cache somehow. Well I emailed the owner and he told me that it sounds like I had found the right place, so I just sort of kept my eye on the logs. Sure enough, about a week later another very experienced cacher (who I happen to know personally) also logged a DNF for the same cache. So it had actually disappeared. Since that time the cache is now listed as temporarily unavailable. I hoped it gets reactivated someday. Moral of the story is that a DNF does not necessarily indicate a failure of the seeker. Best of luck...
  15. All kidding aside, I think the help she was looking for was saving time in her preparations. "But, I've become a very busy lady and haven't found the time to do so much searching, editing, and printing without my son getting up in arms about wanting to "help" me. I've thought for a long time about buying a PDA to help me out, and I think it'll help." I think that going paperless lends itself greatly to keeping it all under control. Duplicate entry due to browser malfunction... Ack!
  16. All kidding aside, I think the help she was looking for was saving time in her preparations. "But, I've become a very busy lady and haven't found the time to do so much searching, editing, and printing without my son getting up in arms about wanting to "help" me. I've thought for a long time about buying a PDA to help me out, and I think it'll help." Not help in actually finding the cache. But who knows, maybe she does need the Cache Detector model.
  17. Spoken like a true techno-phobe... I wonder what attracted Team Cotati to Geochaching in the first place. This topic has nothing to do about helping find caches. It's about convenience, mobility and perhaps even a little bit about the environment. I don't waste reams of paper every year and ink/toner cartridges printing out maps and cache descriptions. And if none of the above reasons are good enough for going paperless, there's always the gizmo factor. Seems as though at least ONE person thinks that it is: "Palm Z22 - Good for a cacher who isn't very good? " Palm Z22, can it make a cacher who isn't very good...............good? It might but I doubt it very much because it won't help you FIND a cache one little bit extra. Unless, that is, you have the "Cache Detector Secret Beam" attachment. The Cache Detector Secret Beam only works with CDSB compatible caches - some restrictions apply - see manufacturer for details.
  18. Spoken like a true techno-phobe... I wonder what attracted Team Cotati to Geochaching in the first place. This topic has nothing to do about helping find caches. It's about convenience, mobility and perhaps even a little bit about the environment. I don't waste reams of paper every year and ink/toner cartridges printing out maps and cache descriptions. And if none of the above reasons are good enough for going paperless, there's always the gizmo factor.
  19. I concur Wholeheartedly!!! Although I am still a newbie, I find that paperless is the only way to go. This is an excellent article and I've been gearing up gradually since I started at the end of August. My first GPSr was a handheld that didn't have the capability to connect to my PC, but that was my fault as I didn't want to spend too much money on a hobby that I had no idea I would enjoy or not. My first 6 caches were all printed out (via cut and paste into MS-Word document) and I decided quickly that I didn't want to consume all of this paper and toner for my new hobby. So I put my Smartphone (T-Mobile MDA) to work with GPXSonar and started loading waypoints into my phone. This was better, but I still felt like something was missing. I still had to manually input the waypoints into my GPSr. Only 3 weeks after my first GPSr purchase I found myself back at the store buying one that had USB PC connection capability (I made sure to get color and SD memory expandability too). Now I am in heaven, I still use GPXSonar, and I've been going back and forth between the Geocaching application that came with my Magellan 500 LE and the ever-so-popular GSAK program (which I have yet to register, but probably will when the nag kicks in). With all of this having been said, there is no better way to Geocache and the Premium membership pays for itself in paper and ink/toner savings... trust me on this.
  20. Since you indicated that you might be opening at least some of these caches to the public, you might have to place them well in advance of the party in order that they get published in time (unless the timing of being published is to be after the party). You might consider a simple small photo album of your daughter's past 10 years with little anecdotal stories that the finders will get a kick out of (including a little embarrassment for the birthday girl - not mean but fun - every one loves those first potty training photos). Party favors of course, and something special for FTF. Perhaps the main Birthday Bache Cache can be of a higher degree of difficulty than the rest of them so that you can have one really nice FTF prize in there. The party theme you choose will lend itself nicely to the caches, and if you haven't chosen the theme yet, you could consider the obvious (Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones, Lara Croft's Tomb Raider (since they're girls), or any other adventuristic-treasure-exploration-etc related themes. Perhaps a safari scavenger hunt for the girls with disposable cameras that can be gathered afterward by Dad and developed while the girls have their cake for a fun slide show at the end of the event (awards ceremony). Maybe too much work - but fun. Most importantly - Make sure everyone is involved and having a good time! 2 cents,
  21. I wish I had seen this topic before I purchased my 2 GPSr units. I started out as cheap as possible, I found a store display model of a Magellan eXplorist 200 for under $100. It was good enough to get me hooked on the sport and realize that I wanted something a little better. I had always figured that Magellan was a good brand name due to their "NeverLost" fame with Hertz. Can anyone out there tell me why everyone seems to be chanting "GARMIN!", "GARMIN!", "GARMIN!"? Are the Garmin units really that much better? Is this a matter of fact or personal preference (opinion)? The reason I ask is that my 2nd GPSr was an upgrade to the 200 that I had originally purchased. Afterall, I had already become familiar with the Magellan UI and I didn't really care to relearn a new one. I got an eXplorist 500LE which had several improvements over my 200 (color screen, USB PC hook-up, SD memory expandability and Geocaching software). These features attracted me to this unit, but I ran into a reception problem with this brand new unit (still in the box with all the stuff that I never got with my first purchase). I was a little upset, so I took it back to the store and exchanged it for another 500LE thinking that this was just a bad unit. Afterall, my little runt 200 had never lost the tracking signal in about a month of use (pun was unintentional and discovered upon proof reading). Needless to say I am now closely watching how the replacement 500LE behaves. If this one drops my signal, I will be forced to change brands (and learn a new UI I guess). Or should I wait for the Triton 2000? Should I go to Garmin? What's the concensus? I wish I had enough money to buy them all and pick the best one! Thanks,
  22. I wish I had seen this topic before I purchased my 2 GPSr units. I started out as cheap as possible, I found a store display model of a Magellan eXplorist 200 for under $100. It was good enough to get me hooked on the sport and realize that I wanted something a little better. I had always figured that Magellan was a good brand name due to their "NeverLost" fame with Hertz. Can anyone out there tell me why everyone seems to be chanting "GARMIN!", "GARMIN!", "GARMIN!"? Are the Garmin units really that much better? Is this a matter of fact or personal preference (opinion)? The reason I ask is that my 2nd GPSr was an upgrade to the 200 that I had originally purchased. Afterall, I had already become familiar with the Magellan UI and I didn't really care to relearn a new one. I got an eXplorist 500LE which had several improvements over my 200 (color screen, USB PC hook-up, SD memory expandability and Geocaching software). These features attracted me to this unit, but I ran into a reception problem with this brand new unit (still in the box with all the stuff that I never got with my first purchase). I was a little upset, so I took it back to the store and exchanged it for another 500LE thinking that this was just a bad unit. Afterall, my little runt 200 had never lost the tracking signal in about a month of use (pun was unintentional and discovered upon proof reading). Needless to say I am now closely watching how the replacement 500LE behaves. If this one drops my signal, I will be forced to change brands (and learn a new UI I guess). Or should I wait for the Triton 2000? Should I go to Garmin? What's the concensus? I wish I had enough money to buy them all and pick the best one! Thanks,
  23. I wish I had seen this topic before I purchased my 2 GPSr units. I started out as cheap as possible, I found a store display model of a Magellan eXplorist 200 for under $100. It was good enough to get me hooked on the sport and realize that I wanted something a little better. I had always figured that Magellan was a good brand name due to their "NeverLost" fame with Hertz. Can anyone out there tell me why everyone seems to be chanting "GARMIN!", "GARMIN!", "GARMIN!"? Are the Garmin units really that much better? Is this a matter of fact or personal preference (opinion)? The reason I ask is that my 2nd GPSr was an upgrade to the 200 that I had originally purchased. Afterall, I had already become familiar with the Magellan UI and I didn't really care to relearn a new one. I got an eXplorist 500LE which had several improvements over my 200 (color screen, USB PC hook-up, SD memory expandability and Geocaching software). These features attracted me to this unit, but I ran into a reception problem with this brand new unit (still in the box with all the stuff that I never got with my first purchase). I was a little upset, so I took it back to the store and exchanged it for another 500LE thinking that this was just a bad unit. Afterall, my little runt 200 had never lost the tracking signal in about a month of use (pun was unintentional and discovered upon proof reading). Needless to say I am now closely watching how the replacement 500LE behaves. If this one drops my signal, I will be forced to change brands (and learn a new UI I guess). Or should I wait for the Triton 2000? Should I go to Garmin? What's the concensus? I wish I had enough money to buy them all and pick the best one! Thanks,
  24. The Magellan will tell you where you are. The 'Nav' button will toggle through 4 screens. One shows satellite locations (relative to the horizon), one shows where you are on the map (you are the arrow), one shows a compass that will point to your waypoint as long as you have one entered using the 'Goto' button and finally; you have the informative details screen that shows you your current coordinates (yes they change as you walk), elevation, the GPSr's accuracy (based on some error calculation algorithm), the date and time (accuracy here is important for locating satellites quickly), a trip odometer and your battery level. The map view also shows you your heading and rate of travel (speed). The compass view also shows you your rate of travel and distance from the target waypoint (this is my favorite mode for geocaching as it points right where you want to go (like Jack Sparrow's compass) and tells you how far away it is. Just be sure you are aware of the trails and terrain in the area so you don't fall victim to beating a path to your target as the bird flies. That's my two cents, MakoKidd
×
×
  • Create New...