caderoux

Just approved: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...b9-bd96ad87ed1e 8 virtual stages (plus potentially 8 red herrings on the map) leading to a final physical - a couple miles total driving or biking this scenic neighborhood. Any comments?

I believe it's based on the "cache placed" date for published caches. What's the range of dates for an email received 7 hours ago? For example, here's my notification: From: Geocaching Notify Bot <notify.EPPY@geocaching.com> Mailed-By: geocaching.com To: caderoux@gmail.com Date: Mar 2, 2006 2:17 AM Subject: Geocaching.com Weekly Cache Notification Greetings from Geocaching.com, Recent caches in your area... 2/24/2006 (Louisiana) AUDUBON'S VINEYARD by mausdad (Traditional Cache) (GCTK61) (2.45 mi/3.94 km SW) http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?ID=352101 2/26/2006 (Louisiana) CAT TAle'S by mausdad (Traditional Cache) (GCTMD3) (5.07 mi/8.16 km N) http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?ID=353281 My cache was set as "placed" 2/27 prior to ever enabling and approving, and approved just prior to GCTMD3. I assume it should show up next week only if the cutoff for March 2 emails was 2/26.

I hope not! I've got several in the "in the works" stage, and hate to see them disappear. I've had some in the works for as long as two months. Personally I don't mind having the reviews see them early. That way if he/she spots something that won't work or be approved, I learn of it as soon as possible and can correct it. I had one in the works for much longer than a couple months (GCMX6A) - it just got approved and it didn't come out on the weekly notification. A new cache just created became GCTNJJ, so you can tell that cache waypoint is real old. What are the criteria for being included in the weekly notification?

We currently have: Are on my watch list Would it be possible to have: Are NOT on my watch list I was trying to get a query to check on caches I haven't found which I need to add to a watchlist. Because of the page caching and/or load balancing, the page displays of whether you are watching something are not always accurate if you've been going through lists of caches back and forth, it's sometimes difficult to keep your place.

Clayjar's rating system - as linked to on the cache page at http://www.clayjar.com/gcrs/ - seems to handle the rating pretty well: See the bottom section: How easy is it to find the cache? Cache is in plain sight or location is fairly obvious. Cache could be in one of several locations. Hunter may have to look for a while. Cache may be very well hidden, may be multi-leg, or may use clues to location. Cache likely requires special skills, knowledge, or in-depth preparation to find. May require multiple days or trips to find Finding this cache requires very specialized knowledge, skills, or equipment. This is a serious mental or physical challenge. Please consider visibility, accessibility, and relative signal strength due to tree cover or other obstructions when answering this question.

That looks like a SQL injection effect to me.

I just seeded a new cache with an unactivated Selective Availability (Red) Geoclub coin, an unactivated Ammo Can Geoclub coin, and a BillsBayou handmade custom coin. The cache will take a bit of work to find, and I wanted it to be worthwhile. Some of those geoclub coins are selling on ebay for $20 and more. Since most people do not do puzzle caches and multi-caches, I wanted the ones who do this one to get something for it. I think it's a shame that people tend to simply filter out even the slightly difficult and slightly long caches. Sometimes, I'll trade for a neat geobutton or take a nice FTF prize, sometimes I'll leave them for the next finder. Generally, I don't trade but I do like to leave unique items that someone else might like - I have some Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco trading cards which I have been leaving. I'm not a coin addict (I think it's gotten a little out of hand), but I do have a geocoin club subscription which I got so I could leave some nice FTF prizes and stuff. Happy Lundi Gras!

Great idea. But I think we should all just write our own - that way we can make the site say what we each want it to say.

Greasemonkey?

Don't get me wrong - I love GE - but it doesn't make anything too easy.

Bold added for clarity. I can't help you with that, but I found this history to be accurate (i.e. well documented) and useful: http://www.guysnamedkim.com/geocache/geocache_history.html

Someone around here coined the phrase "Grope and hope like a dope" for these.

Yes. I'm suprised anyone can find anything just using GE. GE will not get you to ground zero. It's probably more due to geo-instincts, likely hiding places and a wide search.

I don't find GE maps to be well-calibrated at all (manually entered readings I took myself). It makes life easier in a lot of ways, but no - GE doesn't make the actual cache-finding easier.

one word: tagging

Nonsense. It's a fundamental principle of HTML that markups written using older standards are just as valid as markups written using newer. There are decade-old static web pages that display as well with modern browsers as they did with Mosaic 1.0. It would be madness to stop rendering a generation of web pages whenever a new HTML definition is released. A lot of these old markups don't have DTDs and stuff - would you claim that these were actually written using older standards? Or just written during a time of lower standards? So the the bigger problem is that people tend to think that if it renders fine in their browser that the markup is actually valid. Then when it fails to render fine in the future or in other browsers, they want to blame it all on the browser. It is the browsers' fault after all - their permissiveness encouraged sloppy behavior - stronger compliance checking would have helped everyone in the end.

Not sure. I don't use the PDF feature here.

Aaahhhh! That at least confirms I'm not going crazy (changing HTML code)... I was doing something like this: <font face="verdana"> <table> TableContents </table> <h3>Header</h3> </font> which was turned into something like this: <table> TableContents </table> <h3><font face="verdana">Header</font></h3> I'd like everything to be in Verdana Font, but as you can see, the table was taken out of the tags (of course - in this case, the standard font on gc.com is Verdana, but the PDF looks horrible). I've had success with inline CSS syntax. Unfortunately there's no way to insert a STYLE tag int the header right now - they you could use the cascade properly. Try <table style="font-family : verdana ;"> if that doesn't work, try <td style="font-family : verdana ;">

Since the file is generated on demand, the server should check your session and return an error instead. Do you know if it's a temporary disabling? (and if not, why is the button on the screen at all?)

Subscribing with no notification is kind of like how we get our magazines in New Orleans - we don't! I guess subscribing wihtout notification is for making a watchlist. The UI on this board has some funny rough edges - I like the "Amend my email settings" button and "Close Fast Reply" button.

I click on GPX and just get a blank page - no offer to save the file or anything like on regular pages. I was trying to bring all the additional coordinates into Google Earth. It may be because this cache has additional waypoints.

Assuming those 3 PQs are disjoint (not the same query), if you had maintained an offline database and switched the PQ to last updated in 7 days, using the same percentage of activity which CR had (14%), and saying 1K per cache, that's: 3 x 400 x (100-14)/100 K wasted every week = 1032 (over a MB of data transferred - before zipping - but a server still has to do the zipping, which is also a cost) Multiply up by number of people doing the same thing. I'm sure you get the idea: if everyone switched to this method - gc.com would save 84% of it's bandwidth costs due to PQs. Of course, that's ideal potential savings. In actuality, the savings would not be that large, but people who can optimize their queries and move the work off gc.com's servers can still reduce gc.com's cost to process PQs significantly. For example, I have seen estimates that traditional webmail solutions (not AJAX ones like gmail) cost 10 to 20 times the bandwidth of traditional POP3 solutions which are really lightweight. I imagine a similar savings for web services-based interaction instead of web pages.

It's probably never going to happen - and we've seen plenty of performance issues on this site. I don't think there is any high priority on the site to reduce bandwidth through reducing page reloads etc. It took a long time to go and disable the PQs for people who weren't using them - yet given all the concentration of attention on PQs, you'd think that one of the first analyses would have been PQ traffic versus site login frequency, to determine likely PQs going unused. Look how long it took to implement the client-side encrypt and decrypt hints and even then it was still broken for days even in the most popular browser, IE. There are a lot of things which could boost global performance like implementing web services. Same thing with pocket queries. Imagine how many bytes saved per month as people can switch to last updated and get archived. I would guess the bandwidth costs haven't been worked out. I think Nielsen's book gives a cost comparison - like if you save this many kbytes per page load - this equates to this much profit. I think the old GIF Wizard optimizer use to show your savings per visitor, too. This ain't Amazon.com, but someone's losing money.

I'm getting other emails from gc.com.

Thank you all - I'll be sure to add those links.