Iowa Tom

Click me. By click me I meant click on the smiley face.

Click me.

Look on the bright side. Imagine the aurora displays that'll happen at all latitudes! Imagine the increase in cancer as the solar wind pours down through our atmosphere. Cool!

Teacher of five science subjects (8-12). Before that I worked as a photographer in a defense industry. Now I can describe to my students what it feels like to lift a metal that is only slightly less dense than gold. It was the uranium in the tank penetrators I occasionally photographed.

After one of my geocaches was visited by someone that felt a need to use as many 4-letter words as they knew when signing the log, I decided to make my most valuable ones that are not multicaches or mystery caches PMO. I really do not want just anyone that joins to find them. Once the kids (?) found that one log they could get online, sign up for free, and destroy much of my hard work. Another perk that is really great about the PMO caches is being able to see who visited the webpage, how often and when. For that purpose only, I have made some of my newest ones PMO, just for the first few weeks anyway.

Is there a way to write things into the HTML that will not show up and will not be weeded out? I have a large table that I would like to write in situ instructions on, like row 3 etc.

Here's another way of doing it. I see that the watch face acts like a protractor.

This reminds me of something that I tell my students about this time every year. I occasionally get out of my car when lost in an unfamiliar location at night and look for a constellation that I can use to get my bearing. It works well but one time I tried it using the moon. It had just broken out of the clouds and I thought for sure it was just just coming up. It had been cloudy for days so I had not been keeping track of its phases. Anyway it was going down. I drove around and around totally confused. On another topic, to align the satellite antenna on the roof here at the school I used this site http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneDay.php to obtain the transit time for the sun. The school is not oriented N-S so I had a very hard time telling directions while up on the roof. At the transit time I aligned a straight edge until I got a minimum shadow. Then I scribed a line with a permanent marker along the ruler. We used that as our reference for the meridian. The satellite happened to have an azimuth of 180 degrees so that was convenient. I just used another line that I scribed on the parking lot to find the planet Venus when it crosses the meridian in the daytime. It's far enough from the sun at this time that it's easy to pick out.

I am always concerned that someone will describe a cache as trash. Anything other than the cache left behind is a great way to ruin the sport for everyone. Even the cache itself should look like it's supposed to be there. That I do by making a lot of birdhouse caches. They don't look out of place and muggles tend to ignore them.

I find that sometimes when an extra set of " " is added by the machine at the other end that it does not affect the outcome. Other times it does. I haven't taken the time to find what always works and what always doesn't work.

Thanks for this and thank you everybody. I learned a lot about what to use by looking at the source info on cache pages that I was impressed with. I have had people suggest programs that do the HTML for you but I prefer doing it the long hand way. That's how I learn. I have made a lot of autocorrects that will finish the tags when I type in a minimal amount characters. Like f.. makes <FONT> and so on. For a guy that uses the Columbus method when typing, "When I find a key, I land on it", any thing I can do to save time helps.

If you look carefully, you will notice that the inner "double quotes" are a different shape. They are not proper quotes (I would guess you use MS-Word to type your text, as it will change quotes to smart quotes as you type). As html tidy doesn't recognise them as quotes it will treat them as part of the attribute value and add its own. So make sure you use proper quotes (ascii 0x22). Please tell me what (ascii 0x22) means. Right now, after getting my computer fixed, I only have Microsoft Works. Not that that matters I suppose. I have even tried saving the HTML I write as a text file then paste that in but I still get the same problem.

I am now convinced that it is a software problem with the Groundspeak (or whoever) software. It seems to be designed to automatically "correct" problems with HTML that is submitted. It is interesting that they even capitalized Groundspeak even when I didn't when I typed it in here.

I clicked on the validate account link and am waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the validation to come through. How long should I wait before I decide that it isn't going to come through? What can I do if it never does? Last night it worked right away for my alias. Maybe the system is bogged down right now or maybe someone is currently working on the problem. It's done and for now I'm on the move again.

I feel like I've been validated. Actually I got the now infamous invalidation e-mail two days ago. I use mediacom and have had trouble not getting mail from other important sources as well. When I saw it come up I thought, "Oh no! Now all my 70+ geocache webpages are either gone or will be once I 'start over' with a new account." Or so I thought. Fearing the worst I used an old alias , which I had to validate again, and copied the source code of each webpage. I feel better having all the HTML on "paper" anyway. Now if a terrorist somehow destroys my data I have record of all that I typed in. I use HTML a lot and do NOT want to go through typing all that in again. -it

I have been using the geocache.com site for years then two days ago, when I was working on HTML on a new cache, I suddenly got this.... "You need to validate your account. If you have the validation code from the email we sent you, visit the validation page, otherwise you can send a validation email." And this in another instance: "Sorry. Your account has not been validated. You need to validate your account before you can report or edit a listing." Am I going to loose all my data for my 70+ geocaches when I validate my account again???? I have taken the time to copy all the source code (under page source) for most of my geocaches so that I have a record of what I have but could not reach my most important ones because they are premium member only and I have yet to renew my recently run out membership. Thanks! -it

I find that most containers leak. I've even had water get into my match containers. I think somebody may have overtightened the problem ones. I've used rubber roofing material, weather stripping and even rubber mouse pads to try to keep the rain out. I myself make most of my geocaches. To me making the containers is as much fun as hiding them. Camouflaged PVC pipe is good if you plug one end with a tightenable rubber plug. A little water will get in that too it the plug is kept upright. It gets by the threads and collects over the rubber seal. Then when someone opens it the little bit of water pours inside. I overcame that by putting a PVC cap on top of the plug. The cap needs to stay on and needs to be bigger than the plug however. It cats as an umbrella. This is probably beyond what the majority of geocachers will want to do because of the time involved, but most of my caches are homemade birdhouses. They shed water and muggles walk right past them. I wrote about one of them here . The houses I make are all different as well. To camouflage PVC I cover it with camouflaged duct tape then paint that using Rustoleum camouflage paint. The tape fades badly so I paint it. The paint sticks to the tape better than to the PVC and the tape sticks well to the PVC. I also wrinkle the tape on purpose to add texture. -it

Why is it when I type in: <font color="red"> to a geocaching webpage I am designing or trying to modify that geocaching.com automatically adds extra quotation marks to make this? <font color="“red”"> I seem to constantly struggle with those blasted little " " that crop up. I often forget to look for them and spend a considerable amount of time trying to figure out why the colors or the font style etc. are not working! As far as I can tell it isn't terribly predictable either. Do I need to make the text to a certain font or convert it to plain text before pasting it to the webpage?

Talking about overreacting. Once I accidentally broke about a pint of concentrated nitric acid onto the floor in my classroom, fortunately on a Saturday, and called the fire department to ask them what to do. I didn't have anything to neutralize it with, and it can react with copper to release a toxic gas. To make a very long story short, 17 people in 7 vehicles showed up. The school was evacuated, except for Harry the custodian, nobody could find him. Several guys dressed up in moon suits with breathing equipment and two-way radios. They headed in (finally) with radios a blaring. "We're in," they declared when they opened the door. They detected little but sprayed a few pounds of sodium carbonate on the acid. Afterwards I asked them what they would have done 20 years ago. They said, "We would have sprayed sodium carbonate on it." They billed us over $2,000.00 for their golden opportunity to try out their Hazmat training. Beware, if a bomb squad gets involved, the geocacher may have to foot the bill. -it

I think that a moderator should move this thread to the "GPS Units and Software" forum. That would be the best place for this. You asked, "How accurate is it, to 50 feet or 2 feet. Do I need to buy detailed maps?" All the amateur units I am aware of willl get you within 9 feet or so at best. But that's fine. I am VERY glad to have detailed maps when traveling. Nothing beats knowing the names of upcoming streets and knowing where all the country roads are. "what is the need for 12 channels, 10,000 waypoints, 500 routes, and so on." Don't even consider all that hype. As far as I know any unit will have plenty of waypoint and route capacity. Good luck, -it

Once I was out with my GPSr and my cell phone. I lost my cell phone and used the track that my GPSr stored to follow the same path back from whence we came. My son was with me and we called it using his cell phone every 100 feet or so until we heard mine ring faintly in the grass. The next time I lost my cell phone I could not find it even with the trail because I was out of range of the cell towers. -it

Puzzle caches and other advanced modes of playing this game are a natural outcome of a maturing sport. The makers are using their minds more and requiring that the players do the same. That's great! "Stop and drop" singularities are being replaced by more sophisticated expressions of the minds of the makers. I designed and built the first stage of a two-part multi-cache as a bird-house that requires that the participant bring their own 9-V battery. Once they plug it in they have to figure out what to do to read a coord for the next stage. The first person to find it did it w/o any hint. Here's his log. I don't think he was disappointed. Bringing their own power supply gives the players more of a sense of participation and anticipation. The one thing that does bother me about my own puzzle caches is that I have to go to great lengths to prevent cheating (AKA shortcuts). One of the first to visit my 9-V cache cheated so now everyone else has a harder time of reading the coord. I added a silvered piece of plastic to reflect the light of a flashlight right back into the cheaters eyes. I'm looking forward to some [but not all] of the geocaches getting more and more sophisticated as the years go by. -it

I see the increase in puzzles as an inevitable geovolution to a higher level of consciousness.

I once told an electronic engineer about geocaching and he responded, "That sounds like a no-brainer to me." That was when I began to make geocaches that were definitely not no-brainers. I have developed a clientele of sorts. E.g. read this post. Once a prominent player of the sport told me that he passes mine on by. Why, he's like me and doesn't have the time to solve the hard ones. I make them because they are a challenge (some a big challenge) to create. I find that they are a way of expressing myself, of using my mind - also known as my brain. Until creativity is banned from geocaching, I plan to keep on keep'n on. -it

I experienced something like this when out counting meteors during a meteor shower back back in the 70s. I was setting up my lawn chair on a flat part of a quarry (at ground level) when I heard rustling. I'm not easily scarred but when I turned on my flashlight and saw at least a dozen glowing spots, I nearly had a cow! Actually that's what they were, black cows, in a picked cornfield. Since then I have dissected enough cow eyes and understand how they glow. -it