Iowa Tom
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Posts posted by Iowa Tom
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This is the best converter apllication that I have seen. http://www.fizzymagic.net/Geocaching/FizzyCalc/index.html It's very useful for a lot of things. It's a simple application that you have to download.
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I like to write stories in my logs because I like to tell stories; also, like another person said, I use the Internet as a diary. I can literally look up things I've written about on many forums by using certain key words. I've challenged my students to find something I've written about. E.g. do a Google search for "Tom, Iowa" "Iridium Flare" "South Pole" and you'll locate an old post I made to a satellite observing group which lead to the theme for this geocache.
I do wish people would try to use spell-check and be more careful with their grammar. I myself use Firefox partly because of the automatic spell-check feature. Lord knows I NEED IT! I also reread my posts several times before I let them go.
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The look in the kids eyes that found the cache was priceless!
Great! This would involve some work but you may want to do a pictocache or pictocache/regular cache hybrid too. What they are is using a GPSr to find a starting point then using photographs with trees etc. marked (only in the pics of course) for the kids to follow here to there. The cache, or a coord to the cache etc., is at the end. I've redone the pics of this pictocache, they are a lot better now, but you can get the idea here anyway.
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What's with all the people being so testy in eastern Iowa lately? I have been party to and have seen several instances of people being really defensive and/or really short with each other lately.
Since being downsized out of a job as a teacher, I may not be giving any more tests but I may be a bit testy if I don't find employment soon. Actually I myself don't know of more than one person in Iowa that I thought was out of line in his response to someone else.
I promise, you will not get any impolite e-mails from me.
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At the moment I am sticking with EasyGPS to download the tracks. I see that they come up as are dashed lines. No matter what setting I set up, like even maximum resolution, they are that way. Even when I walk very slowly. Is that something that I cannot get away from when moving over small distances, like within a couple of football fields?
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The program you want to use is called SportTracks.
I tried to download this but cannot find it anywhere now. I tried a second installation and still nothing.
I also tried downloading the .NET program just in case that might have been the problem. However I got a message saying that that version is incompatible with a version that is already on my computer. It then stopped that installation.
Any idea where I can look for sports track? As far as I can tell it's not listed in the programs that I get to via the start menu.
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You will need to install the Garmin drivers for the GPS. You can download them from www.garmin.com
Thanks!
I just got it to work as is!
I finally found a help menu helpful.
Tom
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I just bought the wrong adapter at Best Buy. I wish I would have read the previous response first.
I have a USB to serial port cord that is part of a two piece cord that I use with my Meridian Gold Magellan. It has a choke (I think it is) in the cord. It enables me to hook up the etrex with my laptop. I didn't think of using it before because I didn't think of going to the USB.
I am going to try to get it to work. Does anyone think it will? Right now I'm trying to "find" any signal from the etrex using EasyGPS.
Tom
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Thanks for the input. Now I am looking for a gender adapter to enable me to fit the female Garmin cord end to the female plug-in on the back of my Dell laptop. Does anyone have any suggestions about where to get one of those locally? I need it right away.
Man that was a fast response! I was just there. The help didn't know what I was asking for. I found a cord that might work but may not have had the right number of pins. It was also 25 big ones. Best buy has a set of 4 adapters, one of which might work, for 15 bucks. I am going to call the tech guy from school tomorrow.
Thanks for the help.
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Thanks for the input. Now I am looking for a gender adapter to enable me to fit the female Garmin cord end to the female plug-in on the back of my Dell laptop. Does anyone have any suggestions about where to get one of those locally? I need it right away.
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I am going to have the kids in my geocaching class plan out a pattern onto an aerial photo of the school grounds. Then they'll try to create a drawing using the track feature on the etrex units that we are using.
The kit I borrowed comes with a serial adapter cord. Is there a free program that will allow me to download just the tracks to my Dell laptop and in turn print them off? Otherwise I will try to photograph the screens once they are done. I may be asking for some one-on-one help in making the program work for this.
Thanks,
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Can I create an account and submit caches that wont get reviewed/published (not for public usage) on our private land so the kids can experience geocaching?
Also can I bypass the cache proximity guideline as our area is pretty small.
You cannot have temporary caches listed as real ones with their own webpage nor can individual geocaches be closer than 0.1 mile. Maybe you can figure out how to make one permanent one as a multi-cache with many components. Can a local geocacher maintain it or even take over ownership of a multi-cache that you create?
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I have made one geocache that has a chamber that is a house for a mouse. Another is a bird feeder. Four others are also for the birds. I like the idea of supporting wildlife, not repelling it. If the cache gets eaten, compensate with hardware cloth or sheet metal etc.
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I've taught geocaching to two kid's groups and what I have discovered gives me the most headaches is getting them registered with geocaching.com so that they can own a TB and getting their TBs registered. You may not want to do that however. Oftentimes they cannot access e-mail away from home. That has been a big problem.
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As a Brit we're supposed to have converted to Metric years ago....
I hear you measure 2 x 4 boards in meters. Is that right?
I guess what you start with, you stick with.This is certainly the case with me and clocks. In my mind I convert digital numbers to an analog face to "see" what time it is.
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METRIC SYSTEM!?!?!?!? My car gets four rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
My old truck still gets about 2,268 miles per butt. That's doing pretty well I think!
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I use Terraserver Viewer to access topo maps of a particular coord.
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I feel I have a good grasp on liters and kilograms, and meters are easily treated just about the same as yards. But I've never really gotten a 'feel' for kilometers.
I use cm and mm but Km have far less meaning because of the fact that all the country roads in the flat part of Iowa I live in are laid out in mile squares. The thought of having to convert in my mind the number of miles in X number of km would be a pain to say the least. I could get used to it I suppose but there is little need. I use metric when measuring parts for a new geocache container I'm making because it's far easier to divide and multiply decimals. No standard ruler uses decimal inches.
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I remember the 1st time that I read, easy find and predictable in regard to a person's finding my geocaches. That was the best geo-irritation I have received up to this point. Now I make a lot of caches that are not hard to find but that have the log hidden away in the cache itself. Some people never do find the log but claim credit anyway. That was not my intent.
Another thing that comment energized in me was to make lots of puzzles. Yeah it may be an easy find, once you figure out the coords.
I've created some containers that are very camouflaged. That helps, especially with the micros. Lastly, sometimes the caches are a challenge to reach and require a tool to make reaching it possible.
For the one you have now I would think that you could develop a new scheme and archive the current one then employ the better idea. The people that have already found it will find it again cuz they know where it is (assuming you use the same place), but oh well.
Be glad you have visitors. Mine are hard enough now that I don't have many at all in some cases; like 4 a year. Then again I live where there's not a large population of geocachers either.
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Glad to read of your excitement. I think you will get a lot more responses for help if you write to the general forums.
I use Magellan myself.
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I was in another part of the state of Iowa with my son once listening for the 17-year cicadas that were out at that time. We made our way to the top of a tall screened in tower and while at the top I droped onto my back to look underneath a white bench up there. Just as I began to say. "This would be a good place to hide a cache." I found a cache!
Actually it was only a coordinate written on a piece of card that was taped in place. It was one stage of a multicache. Last year a local guy was looking for a good spot to hide a new cache along a bike trail. He popped the lid off a hollow metal fence post and found a puzzle cache of mine that he hadn't been able to figure out the puzzle on! He then walked a ways down the trail, found a neat looking tree, climbed up into it and found another good place for a cache. He reached in and pulled out another one of mine.
That one required that he find a key to get at the log. He managed to find the key 10 feet away in a hollowed out branch at ground level. I allowed him to take credit for finding both.
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On another note, there's this interesting location.
That one is a classic.
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When I recently saw this satellite image I happened to notice the name of the river along which many caches were probably flooded recently. I never thought to look to see if any places where named cache or had the word cache in them. I have since found three towns: Cache, Illinois, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
At topozone.com I found a lot more places with the name cache in them. Beware, this topozone link takes at least 1.5 minutes to load, but it has a long list of cache locations that will help you to take the challenges I present below.
Now let’s see if you can figure out what cache is located at the red X here.
Another challenge - can you locate the name of the cache marked with the X along the Cache River in AK?
I think a bunch of mine may have ended up here. Can someone tell us the name of the cache nearest to this location? It’s near Cache.
Does anyone know of any other geocache near something that has the word cache in it? Here in NE Iowa there's one under a big sign that says Cache; it's a salon or something. I thought that was hilarious.
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I myself grimace when I find a cache that's almost indistinguishable from trash. No wonder some people don't want us to hide things. I hate to bring this up but I have thought about the need of having containers approved before being set out.
I make almost all of mine from scratch and have found that keeping water out is almost impossible. It's better to have them off the ground for sure.
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Stinging Nettles
in How do I...?
Posted
Nettles uses formic acid as a weapon; so do ants. It injects it just under your skin. Curious thing, when I'm working with acid I know when I get it on me because it itches. I used to carry a solution of baking soda to rub on the bad spots when I brushed a nettle accidentally. The baking soda will neutralize the acid, if it can get at it. The problem is, if the acid is within your skin, even a little ways, the soda may not get at it soon enough. Desperate measures may call for urine, since it has ammonia in it, and ammonia reacts with acid.
The best bet is learn to identify then stay away from wood nettle and stinging nettle plants. I always wear long pants when I go out into the boondocks. I learned that the hard way when I was a kid. The acid even soaks through the knee area of my denim pants sometimes.
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