Auld Pharrrt

I have been very busy designing an indexing system using Excel for myself and a friend. Our old way of doing this was to manually add links to all the caches in the series from the GC number to the webpage and from the cache title to the worksheet within our workbook. Unfortunately, I was chosen as a guinea pig about halfway through my design stage and had a hissy fit for about 5 seconds ... Happily, I can access both the older style via my daughter's premium account and the new version via my own premmy account. SO I have now re-designed my workbook to handle both search results as their layouts are quite different ... they even differ depending upon which browser we use. I personally really like the new version now that I have come to terms with it, but I do REALLY miss the distance from home section ... As we like to search for series of mystery caches far from home the new system basically has us pfaffing about moving the map at random until we spot a bunch of blue ? marks. Please bring back the distance setting. My other criticism of the new search method is the fact that it only lists up to 50 caches per "page." For the majority of series this is sufficient, but there are a good number of series with anything up to 150 caches and having to copy & Paste 3 pages is a bit of a pain ... I'd be much happier if the "page" displayed more results at a time ... I'm probably in a minority on this topic so I'm not hopeful of seeing it changing, but I'd give it 11 out of 10 if these two issues were dealt with but 9.99 out of 10 for just the distance setting coming back.

It may take a while to find one, but if the owner has mentioned that they had a FTF then you'd maybe track them down that way ... I'll try searching the Scottish FB pages for anyone mentioning having lost one.

Many thanks Hans ,,, I don't quite understand it, but I have printed it and will experiment later until I do understand it ... many thanks indeed.

If I remember correctly, you can view the area in Google and if you use satellite view the "SIGN" you are looking for is written in trees, not written in the trees but written BY the trees ...

It would be very useful if you could select the ones you want and copy them to a list of your own ... something like the checkboxes for delting them, but with the option to copy them to your own list. Although, making a pocket query from a bookmark list then add the ones you want to a new list of your own does work.

I find that a problem too, I'm fed up sending emails about it and NEVER getting any reply of any sort ... I find I can usually load the page once, but trying to return to it and it will not load ... I wish we could default to opt out and stay on the older pages for this one.

Today I had my first mystery cache published and I included the GS geochecker in the listing (other as well, but for my own reasons) ... Can anyone tell me if, as CO, can I view the stats regarding who tried to solve it, who failed to solve it, what co-ords failed etc.? I know Certitude does this as does others, but I'd like to be able to view some stats on my puzzle.

As a Scottish cacher, it took me a few minutes to realise that the Americans would understand the importance of the player numbers that they were assigned ... unlike British football (soccer) where players numbers might change in the USA they appear to assigned only to that one player (I may be wrong) ... also, the edition of the book might be different in newer publication runs ... I certainly had trouble solving that puzzle at first, but eventually my daughter and I stumbled upon the correct (ish) answers by using Google Streetview. Cully Long, the author, was helpful, but I didn't get to the solution with his help because I still didn't realise that the player numbers were so important. After I solved it, I worked my way through most of the book and hit another stumbling block which resulted in me leaving the book aside for almost a year, but recently I started from the beginning again and once again I couldn't solve The Rivalry and had to resort to "cheating" and reading my notes from the previous year when I had solved it. In the end, I decided that for the very first puzzle in the book it was very difficult when most people would have appreciated an easier one to start them off ... some of the later puzzles were extremely easy by comparison.

An excellent point ... I suggest that cache owners willing to help guide newbies along the road mention this fact on their listings ... I will update mine shortly to this effect. Alternatively, generate a new, easy cache in an nice central area near you and do the same, advertise your willingness to help get them started etc.

Apparently there are two Mysteries overlapping on the map... Sneaky!

Try refreshing your map

You may go to the TB's page and make a "Grab" log (by entering the tracking number here: https://www.geocaching.com/track/), so the TB will be in your inventory. Next, edit your original "Found It" log for the cache (or make a Note log) and in the drop-down menu at the bottom of the page, select "Dropped Off" for that TB, and submit the log. Now it will be correctly listed in its cache. Not if he doesn't have the tracking code to hand ... I'd write a note explaining you saw it in the cache on BOTH the TB's page and the cache's page. Then if you still want to return and get the code you can do edit your messages making them discovery and log.

Ditto, I agree, I offered to adopt a cache that was in the way of me putting a new cache in a great spot (intending to move it a little to the new spot,) but the offer was declined, there was nothing I could do after that except hope that one day it will be archived. I don't think you could even place it as a bonus box using it as the final stage of a multi-cache, but as someone mentioned, using the position as a "stage" in a multi should be acceptable, the best person to ask is your local reviewer I have found them to be exceptionally helpful if you explain the problem.

I'm afraid that they do go missing quite often ... I now buy cheapest ones I can find and release them with a travelling companion, but I have learned the hard way, DO NOT RELEASE ANYTHING PRETTY OR CUTE OR USEFUL ... it will disappear. Bear in mind, that in some (probably only a very few) that it could have been for genuine reasons that it was never dropped off again, people do have accidents, fall ill and even die sometimes, if no-one else in their family/circle of friends knows about Geocaching and these seemingly random trinkets, then they wouldn't know what to do with them. Some are probably genuinely lost by accident ... not too long after my daughter and I joined, she found a gorgeous geocoin lying in the grass near a cache. If I'd parked my van 8 or 9 inches further onto the grass it would never have been spotted. The coin wasn't logged into or recently out of the cache it was close to, but once she grabbed it and explained where she found it, both the owner and the person who'd misplaced it were very grateful to her. The person who'd dropped it is a well established, regular and experienced cacher and he was mortified that he'd been careless enough for this coin to have fallen out of his pocket at the side of the road.

Yep, no problem, just send me the tracking numbers in a PM via Geocaching.com ... I PM'd my reply earlier. Ron.

I've been thinking a bit more about this and I am certain that I saw something about a reviewer removing "ghost" trackables from a cache ... so, maybe if we start bringing it to the attention of the reviewer that published the caches, or our "local" reviewer then maybe we'll get lucky and have some of them cleared up. The only other option I can see, since Groundspeak seem to be ignoring us on this issue (this topic has been running for 5 years) is to boycott buying trackables ... if they want the financial gain then they really should be doing something about it IMHO ... I know my opinion won't be appreciated by many, but there comes a time when we (Groundspeak's customers) should stand up for ourselves and not be poo'ed upon by them. I did see some independent review sites where people had mentioned the problem also ... it might not hurt to add our own reviews!

Other than myself, how many takers so far? 2 other takers so far ... total revived 17 ... 3 TB's, 2 TT's and 12 Geocoins, not including one of my own geocoins! One sadly went missing as soon as I put in a cache, but I have a copy made and ready to go in 6 months time if the other doesn't resurface. I admit I am surprised that few people have taken the opportunity to get MIA trackables revived, there are sooo many missing out there. I guess it's just a matter of getting the word out to people. One person contacted me but didn't follow up on his 12 trackables that are missing in action. He asked how much I charged for this and never replied when I told him it was completely free. I see mine went missing again too. Actually it never moved from the cache you placed it in, but I got lots of virtual discoveries. Yes, I know. I'm a bit annoyed that 5 TB's recently went missing from two of my caches, the one where your's was and another very nearby ... 4 of the missing TB's were proxies I'd made, but I will re-release them later on near the end of this year (so don't give up hope.)

Off-topic, has nothing to do with the OP. But I agree. That pic is by the trackable's owner. They can do what they'd like with it. Hi Cerberus1, You are of course correct, my post was off topic, but I wasn't referring to THAT picture, the code for which is the standard 1234 etc ... message was sent via PM to whom it was intended for.

Bump

I suspect the clue is in the OP's message

Thanks..I've sorted now x It isn't wise to show the tracking code in any photographs of trackables ... most people use some sort of paint program to hide the code.

Since my original post on this thread, now that I have retired and am officially a pensioner, I have bought an old van, made a very basic conversion to make it convenient, comfortable and warm to sleep in and am about to set off with ma wee dug for a caching/fishing/camping trip where time has no meaning. Yeah, I likes Geocaching

Bear and Ragged mentioned the possibility of it being a browser add-on. Do you have any add-ons running in your browser related to geocaching? If it does turn out to be an add-on that's doing it, it's happening on the local computer side rather than on the website, so it wouldn't work the same for other people unless they run the same add-on. As a test, try looking at this cache listing which has a photo attached with "spoiler" in its caption. If the last photo in the gallery is blacked out, then it's definitely a browser add-on, because I see that photo just like all the others. However, if it turns out that someone has indeed found a way to do this in the gallery right on the website, that's where my earlier comments come into play about notifying Groundspeak that people are doing "hinky" things. This kind of behavior can be done with simple HTML. It's basically a Anchor tag that links to the "hidden" image that uses as image tag (rather than text) for the "link text". Like this: <a href="http://somehost/pictures/hidden_image.jpg"><img src="http://somehost/pictures/spoiler_image.jpg" /></a> Sorry, I have been so slow to respond NYP ... Yes, thank you for your help, as you suggest a simple HTML line will solve it for me.

No, I don't have anything like greasemonkey running on my computer, I see the same as you do when I view the gallery, but what that page has under "owner images" is exactly what I was looking for and had seen, once again you have provided me with what I was seeking (I think this is the 3rd time you've solved my problem!) I hate to break it to you, but you do have some kind of add-on running. I don't see a section called "owner images", and the only photo attached to the listing simply displays for me as the text "spoiler - conjoined trees", which when clicked takes me to the photo. I don't see any black boxes anywhere, which is why I'm convinced that what you're seeing is being generated on your end, not on the website. Anyway, I also agree that text descriptions are often more useful than photos. Especially in a an area filled with boulders, it would probably take me more time to figure out where the photo was taken than it would to spot the egg-shaped boulder. Also, for those who cache with handheld GPSrs, text is often the only thing that will show up on the device. Now this is interesting ... A-Team, you are, of course correct again, I have an extension in Chrome called Tampermonkey, which, as I understood it, prevents certain issues. Anyway, now that I have disabled it I see the same as you describe, the normal little square icon and the text spoiler pic etc., but when Tampermonkey is running I see the black "placeholder" ... I would do a snip of the screen but it probably isn't worth it unless you're particularly interested in seeing it. I'm assuming that Tampermonkey is what Bear and Ragged were referring to as greasemonkey etc. It just goes to show you learn something new every day and are never too old to learn ... I'll do some online research into Tampermonkey and make sure it's harmless.

That description -- "large egg shaped lump of granite" -- immediately sounds more useful to me than any picture, even if I could see the picture. But I don't mean to discourage you from your quest to find the technique and use it. I only get annoyed at picture spoilers when they're the only hint at a difficult find. If I see the picture later, after I couldn't find the cache, and it just shows me what I imagined from the text, I'm amused, not annoyed. Yep, The A-team has found what I was looking for. I agree that the description would normally be sufficient, but I'd hate it if someone had taken the time and made the effort to walk around my series (which if done in one complete circuit will cover a walk of 5.6 miles.) This particular hide is mildly evil by my standards because as you approach GZ you will see a fairly big mound which is littered with, literally, hundreds of rocks, most of which will be visible all year round. Anyone who gets as far as this cache might be a little dismayed at the sight that greets them which is why I want to add the extra solution if they want to view it. The "egg" in question is actually a little apart from the heap of rocks and it isn't necessary to clamber up to the heap. On one occasion, while searching for a cache, I injured my finger in the process of turning over large rocks (I was in a field of sheep and my dog jerked her leash which caused me to rip a fingernail off) and I wouldn't want anyone to struggle to unearth this cache. Anyway, I re-iterate my many thanks to everyone who got involved and tried to help ... I have definitely taken on board the suggestion from dprovan re. a more verbal description and I will improve that as well as include a clearer spoiler pic. Ron.