jef

Glad you guys like the new version! I might add a little feature soon so you can download coordinates and markers from the map directly to your GPS, via a .loc file.

I guess the only current option for avoiding use of the hideous GUIDs is to manually construct the wp=GCnnnn form of the URL. That sucks somewhat.

Ok, but how do I convert from the new GUIDs back to old-style decimal IDs? Or should I just live with the new 36-character GUIDs?

I am having the same problem. The main page recognizes my login as usual, but on any individual cache page it just says 'You are not logged in' and 'Log in to log your visit'. I click the latter link, log in, and it still says 'Log in to log your visit'. Refreshing does not fix it. Restarting the browser does not fix it. Exitting the browser, deleting the geocaching and Groundspeak cookies, and restarting does not fix it. Everything was working just find on Saturday evening, I logged six caches. Monday afternoon was when I first noticed the problem.

Here's a search for all marks within a mile of my house: http://www.geocaching.com/mark/nearest.asp?lat_ns=N&lat_h=37&lat_mmss=52.913&long_ew=W&long_h=122&long_mmss=17.714&dist=1 Here are two marks that used to show up in this search and now do not: http://www.geocaching.com/mark/details.asp?PID=HT0968 http://www.geocaching.com/mark/details.asp?PID=HT2845 By my calculations these are respectively 0.22 and 0.53 miles from my house. I know they used to show up in the search because that's how I found them back in May when I logged them both. Whassup?

Here's one that I doubt anyone (including me) knows the answer to: where is the longest great-circle segment that doesn't hit land?

I'm working on a cache that will be buried in sand. The trick is that when you get to the GPS-marked location, you have to perform a little old-fashioned surveying (using on-site materials) to get the real location. I think the final surveyed location should be accurate to within inches, so it won't be a question of digging up a 40-foot circle. This cache should be a lot of fun, and it would be a shame if it was excluded by the no-burying rule.

My preference is that anywhere the rangers get to drive their pickups, mountain bikers get to ride our bikes. There are plenty of old roads in Yosemite, for example, where biking ought to be allowed.

I've used mine on a few geographic/photographic database projects. For instance: Berkeley Creeks: http://www.acme.com/jef/creeks/ Nike Missiles: http://www.acme.com/jef/nike/

I've used mine on a few geographic/photographic database projects. For instance: Berkeley Creeks: http://www.acme.com/jef/creeks/ Nike Missiles: http://www.acme.com/jef/nike/

I do all my caching on my bike, both finding and hiding. Well, except for the one cache hidden during a road trip to Deception Pass.

I do all my caching on my bike, both finding and hiding. Well, except for the one cache hidden during a road trip to Deception Pass.

I searched the DB for marks near Badwater in Death Valley, and the lowest one I found was -256 feet. Since Badwater goes down to -282 feet and the map shows lots of benchmark-like notations out there, I guess none of the interesting marks in the area are in the NGS database.

I'm still looking for a second bottle of Chocolate Cola. That was the Right Stuff.

All good advice above. Another home remedy that removes the oil after an exposure is clay suspended in water. It soaks up any skin oils real well. Good for your complexion too. Visit a ceramics shop and ask for fire clay, or bentonite, or kaolin. These will be a very fine dry powder, tan or red or gray. Mix it with water until you get a nice smooth slurry, then put it in a bottle with a tight-fitting cap to take with you on expeditions. Along the same lines, if you are exposed and didn't bring any of these remedies with you, look around for some clayish dirt. In my area most dirt is full of clay, it drives gardeners mad. Rub it on your skin with some water, it works almost as well as the pure stuff from the ceramics shop.

You're right, I was confusing the two types. Thanks.

I think putting an optional password on a cache would be great. Some examples of how I'd use it: What is the name of the bronze statue at N 37 52.304 W 122 15.408? What is on the benchmark at N 37 56.855 W 122 18.305? What was founded at N 37 52.387 W 122 15.379? It would also be nice to be able to set a flag on a photo or log entry, so that only those who had validly found the cache could see them.

I posted elsewhere about an idea I had for enforcing locationless cache finds. The hider would specify a code word or words; seekers would have to enter one of those words to successfully log a find. The words would be something you find on the cache, or a question you could answer at the cache. Both hiders and seekers could also mark specific photos as being locked to all but valid finders. I think this would be a pretty cool feature to add. Besides cutting down on the abovementioned log maintenance tasks, this would also help with the problem of locationless caches getting orphaned, and having no one to do the maintenance.

>If you filter out Bozo (in the forums) and >several people reply to his/her post then >you have no idea what they are talking about. Yes. You have to set things up so that it's fairly easy to temporarily bypass the filter and see what a bozo is saying just one time. I do this on one of my other discussion systems by turning off the filter when you use the link that displays a single post out of its context. But mostly you just ignore the responses to the bozo. In practice the issue doesn't arise too much, since the really obnoxious folks get bozoed by pretty much everybody.

Now that I've had a chance to read through the non-benchmark forums, I see that virtual and locationless caches are a hot topic lately, and that the Geocaching admins are somewhat frowny about them! That's too bad, but I can understand the problem - it's way too easy to spam a bunch of stoopid caches when you don't have to bother with creating an actual cache box. However I still think virtual caches are the right solution for importing non-NGS benchmarks, so I don't want to see virtual caches pushed too far into second-class status. We have a guy in the SF bay area who creates hundreds of utterly pointless caches. They're not scenic or interesting locations. He just logs the location of a piece of trash he found and calls it a cache. Yes, really! An empty soda bottle in a tree: cache. So stoopid traditional caches can be a problem too. What if we were to approach this problem from the other direction? Rather than deprecating certain types of caches, how about providing tools to let people filter out certain cachers? And in the forums, too; after only a couple days reading, there are already a couple of posters who I don't really want to see any more. When I implemented user-based filtering on the WeLL back in 1992, I called it the bozofilter. I still consider it an essential feature of any discussion forum.

You couldn't figure it out? What was that line in your signature again?

The one feature I really wish my good old eTrex had is position averaging, so I could leave it chuckling to itself for ten minutes and get a really accurate fix. Do any current units do this?

I got one of those AOL tins too, and immediately thought of cache use. My XII microcache (#16109) is three film canisters joined end to end.

I noticed a different problem with photo uploads - it doesn't work when I use Galeon with popups disabled. Enable popups and it works. I'm guessing it's the popup progress indicator that actually does the uploading?

Yeah but what about azimuth marks? Enquiring minds etc.