Iowa Tom
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Posts posted by Iowa Tom
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If you do end up doing that, the students could later adopt the bugs from your alias account, once they finally get their own accounts validated. (This is done through the http://www.geocaching.com/adopt/ page.)
That is a GOOD thing to know.
Thanks! About the Gmail, I just made one of my own but one student said that they are no longer accepting new applications for the service. Anybody have any idea about that? I did recommend Gmail right at the beginning.
Thanks,
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I’m teaching a week long class about geocaching to 17 middle school age kids this summer (second year in a row). Both times I’ve encountered three big problems that can spoil much of the fun. They are (1) the student does not have or know of an email address he can use (2) he cannot access a known email address online and (3) he never gets the validation code that was “sent.”
The problem with getting the validation code is the worst. They say they cannot find it in their filtered mail either. If the student tries to modify their account they get a blurb about how they already have an account and so on and so forth. They cannot write to anyone on the forums because they need an account to do that and on it goes.
One main purpose of the class is to set up TBs to see them move before the end of the week. By the time they get an account, the class is over! I feel like placing their TBs under an alias I have and offer them the opportunity to “watch it” if they ever do get an account validated.
Anybody else resolve this issue consistently in a situation involving getting many accounts set up at once?
Thanks in advance,
Iowa Tom
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I don't get why you would go find a box with a GPS that has crap in it? Someone tell me the meaning of Geocaching! After reading the above post I thought of the following words that I memorized long ago.
"Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others."
It seems to me that you went into geocaching with the idea that you wanted to be served by others by way of entertainment and free goodies for yourself. If you don't like the fact that there is not something of value -to you- in the container, feel free to "trade up" then feel good about your generosity.
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Say I take the 128 MB back and get a 1 GB card and load more than 120 MB worth of data on the larger card; will that slow my GPSr down as I use it? I don't know as yet how much data I'm going to need.
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I purchased a Magellan Meridian Gold and –finally- got it to work via a USB serial adapter. The original Magellan 3D topo CDs didn't work either so I had to get a coupon number from Magellan to install the program from a DVD they had sent with my new GPSr. Quite a hassle to say the least.
I just bought a Lexar SD card that is 128 MB. Before I open the package I want to make sure it's compatible with my Gold unit. At http://www.thegpsstore.com/Detail-Magellan...an-Gold-GPS.asp, I read, "The Meridian Gold’s mapping capabilities can be further enhanced to show rural roads.......with Magellan's optional MapSend CD-ROM's and plug-in SD datacards in 16, 32 and 64 MB sizes."
Does this mean that I cannot use an SD that is 128 MB?
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Do a whole word only find for mA here: http://www.mtgc.org/robertlipe/myfaq/
Here are a couple other sites that may be informative.
http://mtgc.org/wiki/index.php?ModelComparison
http://mtgc.org/wiki/index.php?MappingSoftware
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I've found an inexpensive unit that will supply up to 450 mA. Do you think this will be sufficient? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
450 mA is almost a half an amp. I cannot imagine that an eXplorist draws anywhere near that much. My old Pentax ME super camera only drew about 20 mA. 450 mA would suck the batteries dry in no time.
Besides the only think that would get cooked would be the power supply, which should have a fuse or a breaker on it anyway.
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Here is a comparison chart that may be of value. I debated long and hard between the 300 and the 210 but cannot for the life of me remember why I chose the 210.
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The pictures posted here show a new way (for me) to hide a micro. Using a cheap 3/4 inch cement drill I bought for about $5.00 I bored a hole into a piece of local limestone. I did it on my drill press. To keep the bit from overheating occasionally I dribbled water into the hole. The cache container is a pill bottle that I’ve seen for sale at various pharmacies. This one is made of plastic. The hole was a few thousandths of an inch too small but I managed to enlarge it ever so slightly, and just enough, with an old twist type wood boring bit I had lying around. You should have heard the screech that made! That process was deafenately a “do not do this (when your wife is) at home” thing!
Epoxy makes sure the cache stays in the hole. The rock at the cache location is positioned with the hole down. Depending upon where a person hides it, it could be pretty hard to find. I am imagining it amongst the local rip rap like that in the top picture! Actually NOT.
The paper used for the log is Tyvek. I cut it out of a large envelope made of it. Tyvek does not tear. Very cool and I don't want to be legalistic but doesn't this violate the hiding a cache with the use of a pointy thingy section? "Caches that are buried. If a shovel, trowel or other “pointy” object is used to dig, whether in order to hide or to find the cache, then it is not appropriate."
Guess it would be OK if you brought the rock to the site though. Anyway seems OK to me but some might have issues.
I purchased the rock along with about 2000 pounds more of it last summer. I used that kind of rock, actually dolomite, to make a garden wall.
Now if hiding a cache under a rock qualifies as being buried then I want to know what the definition of buried is. If we cannot "hide" a cache unless it's exposed then, I must say that the challenge of finding most caches will, as a friend of mine once said, fall under the category of "no brainers." I myself really don’t like seeing exposed containers.
Thanks for the compliment by the way.
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The pictures posted here show a new way (for me) to hide a micro. Using a cheap 3/4 inch cement drill I bought for about $5.00 I bored a hole into a piece of local limestone. I did it on my drill press. To keep the bit from overheating occasionally I dribbled water into the hole. The cache container is a pill bottle that I’ve seen for sale at various pharmacies. This one is made of plastic. The hole was a few thousandths of an inch too small but I managed to enlarge it ever so slightly, and just enough, with an old twist type wood boring bit I had lying around. You should have heard the screech that made! That process was deafenately a “do not do this (when your wife is) at home” thing!
Epoxy makes sure the cache stays in the hole. The rock at the cache location is positioned with the hole down. Depending upon where a person hides it, it could be pretty hard to find. I am imagining it amongst the local rip rap like that in the top picture! Actually NOT.
The paper used for the log is Tyvek. I cut it out of a large envelope made of it. Tyvek does not tear. 
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I smiled all through that video report.
Hey one of my geocaching student's TBs made it all the way from Iowa in the USA to New Zealand in a few months. The last cache it was in was Dunedin Geocacher's Beer Appreciation Club (Otago). The TB is called Lil Kitty.-it
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I get mine at Hobby Lobby. They are cheap. I glue them on with Goop. To be sure they stay on, if I'm gluing them to wood anyway, I put a flat headed screw in first so that the magnet will attract the screw, thereby making sure it's more likely to stay put even if the glue comes loose. I often also smear the glue right over the top of the magnet.
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Place the flashing LED in a tube that is about a foot long. That way the light can only be seen from one direction.
I made a tube LED flasher once. I haven't put it to use, yet. I may use it in an event cache coming up. The LED and power supply are in a larger tube end. The long tube is about a foot long and ends with a cap with a 1/4 inch hole in it. The long 3/4 dia tube is lined with black flock paper.
The setup I use on top of my filing cabinet (linked three posts above this one) lasts for at least a month, maybe two. The frequency does not change as the 2 AAs dies but the brightness does dim. Right now I can, if I use binoculars, see it in full daylight from 0.25 miles away, at least!
At night it’s brilliant from 0.5 miles with the unaided eye. Adding a positive lens makes a world of difference when trying to direct and collimate the light. -it
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I have two electronic caches that are in operation all the time and one that I use only at event caches. The event cache produces a loud brief chirp at infrequent but regular intervals. The coord I give is just close enough to the chirping device so that a person can hear it. One guy said he followed a woodpecker around for a while before he realized he was on a wild goose chase or should that be “wild woodpecker chase”
then went back to the original coord and managed to discern which chirp was the right one. Another guy said he argued with his granddaughter about which chirp was the right one to walk toward but found out that she was right after all. 
That cache was very difficult to design and make. It has a variable frequency between the chirps and has a variable length chirp. It also only chirps during the day. Here is a URL for my blinking LED cache and here's the URL to my voice recorder cache.
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Here is a night cache that I made which begins with a focused LED sitting atop a filing cabinet in my classroom. The light is not visible from anyone's window.
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I have been in contact with Thales about this problem. I haven’t had time to do anything about it lately and now I'm out of town. Ironically, in this Day's Inn I cannot get the Internet at this place over by the heater (It's real cold outside and I like the heat) so I'm by the bathroom -- there I can get it. I didn't realize before how much I could hear emanating from other rooms. I guess their layout is the same. LOL
I more or less told the rep that's helping me at Thales what I think of their products and got a call the next day -while I was in my classroom teaching! A manager of some kind was getting involved and didn't catch on too well when I told him I would get back to him later. I almost feel sorry for them cuz I think they are might being bombarded with problems. I myself would not want to market a software product in the complex world we have now.
I'll work on this problem again maybe in a couple days
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Woah! I see we have a whole lot of HTML to choose from now!! COOL!
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It has been released. According to NASA it is getting about 8 km farther from the ISS with each orbit (about 90 minutes). Because of atmospheric drag it is closing in on the earth faster than the ISS and so is speeding up. That means it'll be ahead of the Station. More info can be found here:
http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/articles/Ba...itsat/index.php
I cannot get the J-Pass site to display all that they used to display but I was able to see when all the passes of the ISS would be through my sky day or night by going to http://science.nasa.gov/realtime/Jpass/25/JPass.asp . Under "options", "critera" click on "all passes" then jump ahead and see what if anything is coming. The NASA J-Pass site requires JAVA. At space-weather.com I read that a very few people have detected a faint signal so far. Personally I would rather see it reenter!
Good luck.
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IowaTom: do you have any background programs competing for com ports? Oftentimes if people turn off Palm's HotSync they find that things work more like it seems they should.
I know of no other programs competing for com ports although I do remember seeing that port 3 was busy.
I wonder if I can download to a SD card first then use that, assuming that will work?
I am going to "try" to load the topo 3D to my desktop and see if I can get communication using it.
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I recently got a Magellan Gold at a very good discounted price and found out from Magellan that one of their Topo 3D CDs that I got with my Meridian Gold was bad. They gave me an unlock code for the DVD that came with it as well. [Hassle #1]
Now I finally got the software loaded and got the USB adapter set up with a CD that came with the works and I am getting the infamous "Failed to detect GPS Receiver" message.
[Hassle # 2] Originally my Dell chose port 4 since 3 was “busy.” I went in and switched the number to 2 cuz the GPS manual seemed to suggest that a lower number was better. [by the way I got the same problem with port 4.] I also noticed that in my computer said baud rate 9600. I switched my GPS unit to that. I made sure that NMEA is off. I still get that pleasant “Failed to detect GPS receiver” message.I'm getting the idea why Magellan says that you should have new or near-new batteries when you hook up your GPSr to a computer. That's because by the time you get anything to work the batteries could be dead! If it wasn't for the fact that I like my Magellan units I'd be pretty mad right now.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
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Use a simple police scanner or a ham radio tuned in at FM 145.990 MHz to listen to a disembodied spacesuit circling the Earth! It'll be released before you know it.
Get the news here.
Awesome! CITO in Space anyone? There's some 9000 trackable objects up there right now. Soon to be 9001.
At least this one will burn up soon. 
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I had a similar problem only with cd 3. I contacted magellan via email and they told me my discs were faulty and sent me a new copy on dvd.
Finally, I'm glad to hear that someone else had the same problem!
They just wrote back to me and said my second disc was probably bad. They are going to send me the DVD of the same program.
I'm looking forward to having something that works!
I hope that it overwrites the partial program that's there now.-it
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We hope it'll be a blast and a learning adventure for the scouts and all those involved! I plan to bring my 8" telescope and plan to invite the local astronomy club too.
Looking forward to have all out work come to fruition!
Thanks WindChill for your hard work. I appreciate your talent in helping to organize things like this.
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One question to clear up some confusion on my part: is it the PC screen that goes dark and also says no data is being transferred? (and if so, how can you read a message on a blank screen?) I think I'm misunderstanding or missing something.
The screen message comes up momentarily in the center of the black screen. I almost don't have time to read it and in fact may have misread it because I never plan on seeing it.
About so many things going wrong for me...I just got a new Magellan Gold at an educator's discount price. I tried to load the topo 3D they make and cannot get past 28% of the 2nd CD before it almost stops loading. Now I have that to contend with part of a program on my laptop. Cannot uninstall what’s there and cannot proceed!!!!!!!!
I wrote about it on another thread I started. Yep, like I say to my students, “Trials come in bundles.”
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I don't get why you would go find a box with a GPS that has crap in it? Someone tell me the meaning of Geocaching! 
Hey one of my geocaching student's TBs made it all the way from Iowa in the USA to New Zealand in a few months. The last cache it was in was 
then went back to the original coord and managed to discern which chirp was the right one. Another guy said he argued with his granddaughter about which chirp was the right one to walk toward but found out that she was right after all. 
That cache was very difficult to design and make. It has a variable frequency between the chirps and has a variable length chirp. It also only chirps during the day. 
Geocaches In Environmental Education
in Education Archives (Read-Only)
Posted
The Evil Green Menace! WOW! What a terrific job of using geocaching to teach about a relevant topic in nature. I am impressed.
I believe I can say that I’m glad you liked my See the Light! cache. There are many misconceptions that people have about things in nature that I try to correct. My Sumac cache was set up to teach people that the brilliant reds of autumn are, contrary to popular opinion –not- hidden throughout the year by chlorophyll or anything else. At my Heart to Heart cache I address type-1 diabetes. I thought of that theme after my daughter was diagnosed with it not too long ago.
Using geocaching as a means to an end in teaching about important and just interesting topics is spectacularly meaningful. I started a science lab TB from this science lab cache. One neat thing about that is the TB is the lens taken out of the sunglasses that are left in the cache. The “half of a sunglasses” are needed to perceive the Pulfrich illusion. The purpose of the TB was to take the experiment and introduce it to who knows whom. It’s like an extension of the cache. Too bad it got ripped off! I will have to start another and another and another.
Here people are introduced to a weird psychological effect that few people are aware of. Read my June 24, 06 post at that cache. One of my favorites is Brachiopod. I love to read posts by those that discover the park and the fossils it contains. I've many more caches designed to do more than simply provide a log to sign or trinkets to trade.
Your beetle cache is the finest example of any that I have seen in the realm of environmental education. It's a type example of what many geocaches should be. Seeing that award winning cache webpage spurs me on to make more that are educational. I can see why it took you so much time.
Keep up the good work!!
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