WalruZ

I have a waypoint 200 which runs Cachemate just fine, and I haven't had to install .net framework (although I did for Wherigo), nor SQL, nor do I have any desire to give up more program memory to a DB server. What do you do that cachemate doesn't?

Ewwww!

BuckyD & I met at an event and it was love at first find. TeamAlamo put out a cache, but there's nothing else commemorative. All that finding and hiding resulted in Geo Baby. (click on her gallery page!)

Who the heck knows? It seems like a chore to figure out. Perhaps you should do that work instead of expecting us to.

I'm coming late to the party, but fwiw - what keystone said. What you've hidden is what we call a 'fenceline' cache, really sort of a n00b thing to do. They walk to some nearby park, scan the whole thing, walk all the way to the back to the fence between the park and the neighbors, and stick a cache there, 10 feet from somebody's back yard. Don't do that.

I've found that hiding multiple caches at a cache site actually helps cut down on my maintenance load.

Does anyone else find spending upwards of 500.00 on a GPS a little frustrating that it takes another 100.00+ to add maps? OOPs forgot the extra expense of upgrading a worthless 64MB chip to a 2meg?. I don't. I use the aforementioned Yellow Etrex H, $99 at my local sporting goods store. The H gets excellent reception and is really all you need for geocaching.

One piece of advice. When it's late, don't park in the park parking lot. In general, don't park in an area that would make you suspicious. Find legal anonymous parking further away on the street and walk to the cache site.

Good god, people. The reason you shouldn't put a cache on one of these boxes is because it's stupid. Not so much stupid because they're dangerous, but stupid because they're nothing special. Geocaches are supposed to take you to something interesting, or fun, or neat to see, or even beautiful if the proximity rule allows it. Transformers are urban junk, even if they do provide a necessary service, and making you poke around on one is dumb. It's just not a good geocache, safe or not.

Update: I played the tutorial cartridge at lunch today on a waypoint 200 with bluetooth 'mobile crossing' gps, no problems. Very good. I do suggest going to "Settings / Memory / Running applications" and stopping everything else on the device before starting Wherigo. Many PPC applications don't actually terminate, so you have to do this to free program memory. Also, if you're tight on memory, look for large unneeded files to delete and then tweak the memory allocation such that there is more program memory allocated. I could see a new user being confused by the cartridge. I was. Once I received a task in a zone (name the alien) I wandered away from the zone and could no longer see the alien. A line in the task like "make certain you're in the alien landscape zone!" would have helped there. After all, it is a tutorial.

So does this mean that if I develop a cartridge I can't, say, email it to a friend? How does that work?

FWIW, I have the new player running on a waypoint 200 using BT GPS. The GPS has to be on before starting the player (it would be nice if the player failed that test more gracefully) and it does seem to want a chunk of memory, something that is tight in this model. But the play-anywhere cartridge worked, up until it asked me to go outside. It's raining now, so screw that...

Other than sound, could you give a quick ballpark evaluation of how Wherigo might be different on the colorado vs PPC? I have the new player running on my Waypoint, and if I'm going to mess with the builder I would like to know what to look out for, UI-wise. For example, the PPC is mostly point and tap. Wouldn't colorado input be more oriented towards the manipulation of focus via the wheel, and then tap via the center button? I don't want to trot out and spend $600 on a device I don't need, so any cross-platform wisdom would be appreciated.

If I do a cartridge of my own material I'll probably make it so that doing the cartridge also shows you the coords for a geocache. I'll then make a puzzle that requires playing the cartridge to find the cache. Assuming that's even ok. We already have letterbox hybrids. How about Wherigo hybrids? Everyone knows that geocachers will do anything for a smiley.

Frankly, I think talking to these people is just shooting ourselves in the collective feet. Things go much better when we just keep our mouths shut.

I've actually waymarked on and off since the site was established. I treat them like photo-virtuals, meaning that I require (of myself) a photo on-site to document a find. Most owners don't strictly require such a thing, but I play the game the way I want to, and that's what I make myself do. I also enjoy finding not-yet-waymarked items, much like locationless caches of days gone by. The main tool for Waymarking such items is actually the digital camera. Once an item is spotted, many pictures are taken including one of myself onsite and one of my GPS screen showing the coords. I can then, at my leisure, do online reseach, organize the photos and write up a waymark page and submit it. I find that it's not an either-or proposition. I waymark as I geocache. The combined experience is richer than either experience by itself. A few random items of mine that I like... A fountain in Monterey A muffler man in San Jose A Moon tree in Berkeley (these are hard to find) An outdoor sculpture in Palo Alto (abstract sculpture is easy to find) A Terrain 4 hiking trail A 6 Million dollar pedestrian bridge (must be suspension type) A landmark El Camino Bell in San Francisco (my wife's category!) My local farmers market An incredible overlook in Big Sur (there's no such thing as 'vacation waymarks') Pikachu! (an exclusive category - this is the only visitable example in the US.)

Duck brand is the ticket. Their cammo tape makes stuff disappear. I've actually had trouble finding a 5 gallon bucket covered with the stuff. Walmart has it with all the other duct tape, and if one doesn't, another will. They have their own web site This is actually a really good deal.

afaic, the whole idea of a trackable collectible is at odds with itself, which is why coins travel for awhile and then go 'missing'. they're pretty easy to produce, so people have been making new ones left and right, and when it got to a certain point the early collectors dropped out. to be truly collectible there has to be scarcity, and with new issues coming out all the time, that just isn't the case.

Adding cammo duck-brand tape to any plastic container is the best thing to do for extra protection. Paint chips.

Geo Baby is up to 806, and she just turned 2 last month.

There are already web sites for that sort of thing, like, you know, zillow and such. This is someone just trying to drum up business because real estate is in the toilet right now. Good luck with that.

it's a self-limiting problem. just go out and cache and sooner or later the areas you're interested in will open up.

Barbie Legs have their uses...

Jock strap. Really. NIB. I've taken to carrying small and micro ready-to-caches as swag. They're really popular with subsequent visitors, and they're not all that expensive to make.

Congrats on 200! Advice. Once you exhaust your immediate area, start moving further and further afield. That's when geocaching really pays off, recreation-wise.