Yamar

What took me a long time to realize is that I change. Sometimes, to be honest and I can't believe I'm going to say this, but a micro under a lamp post is just fine. But only when I'm brain dead and tired. However, after I've just lived through a political meeting about a technical topic for work, those are often more satisfying than failing to find a difficult cache that I'd normally prefer. Now, if I could just avoid the lame meetings in the first place...

There will never be consensus for things like this though. Everyone has different opinions, which is why you should only listen to the people you have similar interests in. I actually wrote up a series of recommendations a while ago on this topic: http://www.geoqo.org/wiki/index.php/How_to..._good_geocaches It contains a lot of advice for people who are sick of finding caches they don't like.

And without notifying everyone else that you're just saying "me too".

It's probably time to remention that there isn't a developers list that anyone knows of. Groundspeak hasn't responded on this thread to actually state this and has been fairly silent about the whole thing in general. It probably is worth adding your name here, none the less, but don't be surprised when you don't get some notification that you've been added to a development mailing list.

For command line, don't have it prompt you for stuff... You do this by feeding it extra arguments. Long story, but #2 below should help. 1) get help for that plugin: geoqo -d help:export/kml 2) just try this and it should work: geoqo -s "any:" -e "kml:size=300:test.kml" (more improvements in the next release)

I've fixed the installation instructions for nmake... The nmake you put in place is actually an expanding archive, which you need to run to get the real nmake.exe (and nmake.err too) and put them in C:\perl\bin Now... I think you may run into other ploblems as well. I'll try to get a new release out this week that should work much easier out of the box on windows. I noticed that on my first try and expanded the archive. nmake.exe is in c:\perl\bin but i still get the error message. Did you happen to install the nmake.err file too? You need to run the nmake15.exe (or whatever it's called), then take the nmake.exe and the nmake.err file that it produces and put them in C:\perl\bin

I've fixed the installation instructions for nmake... The nmake you put in place is actually an expanding archive, which you need to run to get the real nmake.exe (and nmake.err too) and put them in C:\perl\bin Now... I think you may run into other ploblems as well. I'll try to get a new release out this week that should work much easier out of the box on windows.

Glenn just pointed to me to this thread, and I obviously might know something about this geoqo program ;-) The windows install is a pain in the neck right now (and I'm sorry). But it can be made to work because people have done it. However, the next release will have a significantly improved windows install script that should automate things greatly (you need to install activestate perl by hand though). The cache density maps are really cool to play with, but I do recommend you use them to help you decide where to go by filtering what you want to look for as well. To see my long rant on the subject of good/bad geocaching, see: http://geoqo.org/wiki/index.php/How_to_find_good_geocaches And then think about *what* you want to put into the density plot, rather than just putting everything in it.

I actually wrote something because I couldn't find anything else that would do what I want... I wrote it on Linux, but it works on Windows and MacOSX too... http://www.geoqo.org/ It's a full-blown database with a lot of extensibility to do just about anything you want.

I think most decent DB tools combine logs over time from pocket queries. IE, I've been running PQs for my local area for ages and the caches i haven't found yet keep accumulating logs. I can then spit them out ("export") to a GPX file from the database built up of multiple pocket queries. GeoQO does this, I'm sure GSAK does (I don't use it, but I'm sure I've heard people say it does).

Hadn't heard of that one; thanks for the reference! (VMware has always performed slowly with minimum ram... If you load your machine well with ram, it does wonderfully; and also make it go to full screen display)

The non-free copies don't let you create new installs... IE, it's a player for existing installations. That works great if you're playing a installation of a free operating system because it's legal to distribute those. But it doesn't work if you want create a windows installation (since no one can legally give you an already installed one).

Linux is a completely different beast than windows. You can't run windows programs under linux without running it under a "windows emulator". The free windows emulator for windows is called "wine" and it used to run mapsource ok. But it hasen't run it successfully for me in a while. Google Earth, on the other hand, works just fine under linux and you can download a linux version of it. You can do most things under linux that you can do under windows, but the programs are different (instead of M$ word, you have to use open office's "oowriter"). But most things exist (and are sometimes better than the windows counterparts). Except for mapsource. There is no linux equivelent that helps you install maps into your gps. It's about the only thing that makes me switch to windows sometimes. VMWare is the windows solution that lets me run windows-in-a-linux-window, but it's not free. (note: I use linux for work and am not a good person to ask what it's like for someone that's never used it before...)

Which, answers the subtlety in the original post nicely too.

Yep. Though the project APE caches would be illegal under the new guidelines then...

I applaud you for trying so hard to find a middle ground. It is not easy to do in almost every case and many people would have simply done as they wished without trying to find a method that appeals to as many as possible. I do think that the end result is a good compromise. Plus. My popcorn was gettingc stale.

As mentioned before, you can pseudo-do this now... you just have to run a *LOT* of PQs... one per attribute you're interested in... Then use a decent DB system that lets you compare two PQs and set internal attributes based on the contents of one. (my first example of using geoqo did just this: it imported a PQ of just scuba caches and you can set an internal "scuba" attribute so you can do intelligent things with it). Now, don't read this wrong: it'd be far better to have them in the PQs themselves. But Groundspeak seems to be concentrating on other things at the moment instead (server performance (yay), Waymarking, Wherigo, etc).

I had said: But it turns out it is implemented and I should read my own documentation... You can search for all caches in set A and not in set B using a well placed minus sign: geoqo -i bookmarked.gpx withscubaflag.gpx geoqo -s 'set:import:bookmarked&&set:-import:withscubaflag' -l But... I think you're having more fun with politics instead ;-)

If I understand your problem, you need to be able to compare two different pocket queries: one with the scuba attribute set (S) and one from the bookmark PQ ( and find anything in the B PQ that is not in the S pocket query. GeoQO can do this for you if you wish. Catch me on IRC if you want to try it. (in short, to list all caches in B that are not in S: geoqo -i B.gpx S.gpx geoqo -s 'set:import:S' -m setattr:scuba=1 --save geoqo -s 'set:import:B&&attr:scuba=-' -l ... GeoQO needs a way to do it without setting an attribute and only using SET filters, but it isn't possible at the moment)

Not that I know of. You might mail the author of geoniche and ask if he's ever thought of doing something like a network grab as he's fairly responsive. However, what you're asking for isn't trivial either.

So Jeremy.... Did the courts accept your legal last name change to Groundspeak? That's way cool!

FYI, geoqo can do this (and make a density plot for you as well which is something altogether cool in itself). http://geoqo.sourceforge.net/ (see the screenshots for a google earth screen shot of a density plot)

FYI, geoqo is a very new program that works on macs, linux, other unixes, etc. (oh, and windows of course). http://geoqo.sourceforge.net/ It's extremely fast and does a large number of things that other caching software doesn't do (including cache density plots; see the screenshots web page). It is new, however, and thus there isn't much nice pretty graphic support yet. But it's free (please help out if you want to pay back for it ;-) it is an open-source project so anyone can contribute to it)

Is this to be different from GSAK or an improvement on same? Just wondering what the advantage would be if any using it. Thanks Andrew Good question. I don't use GSAK (it's a windows program and I generally don't use windows except on rare occasions). I don't intend for it to compete with GSAK, as I'm sure it's a fine program. However, I honestly started this because I can't use GSAK and because nothing I've ever seen can meet my requirements for the odd ways in which I manipulate and export data to my 4 output formats (tomtom, garmin, cachemate, geoniche, ...) I end up doing many odd things to get my devices to do what I want in the field. I used to have a bunch of hand-thrown-together scripts that served my purpose, but didn't scale. GeoQO is my attempt to replace my old bad scripts with a new complete system that are suitable for others to use. (I had other linux-using friends that kept saying "what do you use" and I kept having to say "you don't want it", but yet they liked what I was doing). I wanted to make something that others could modify, extend, and bend to their personal needs. Thus, it's highly flexible and extendable. My guess is that it will do many similar things that GSAK does but I'm sure it'll do some things it won't and GSAK will do some things that geoqo won't do. I'd love to see a comparison list made, but I don't have one yet to give you. geoqo is designed using a real database so it's very very fast. You can do really really complex searches in amazingly quick time: Here's a count of all the caches in my DB that I haven't found: > time geoqo -s 'log:finder<>Yamar' -d count Search/Set Count: 11494 1.193u 0.138s 0:02.74 48.1% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0w (1.2 seconds) Here's a count of all the ones I haven't found, but my father has: > time geoqo -s 'log:finder<>Yamar&&log:finder=Spelunk' -d count Search/Set Count: 53 0.387u 0.209s 0:00.74 78.3% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0w (.38 seconds) But with only unknown and virtual caches: > geoqo -s 'log:finder<>Yamar&&log:finder=Spelunk&&(subtype=Unknown||subtype=Virt)' -d count Search/Set Count: 4 As you can see, you can do arbitrarily complex queries. Here's some interesting stats examples of what it does now, that I'm not sure that GSAK does (also see the screenshots page): > geoqo -d stats Waypoints: 12267 Geocaches: 12137 Waymarks: 129 Logs: 76506 Sets: 70 A memorized search around sacramento: > geoqo -s mem:sacsquare -d count Search/Set Count: 993 Breakdown of caches in the area: geoqo -s mem:sacsquare -d top10:field=groundspeak_container Top 10 'groundspeak_container's Num % Value ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 420 42 Micro 286 28 Regular 195 19 Small 45 4 Not chosen 24 2 Other 12 1 Virtual 10 1 Large 1 0 and by difficulty: > geoqo -s mem:sacsquare -d top10:field=groundspeak_difficulty Top 10 'groundspeak_difficulty's Num % Value ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 321 32 1.5 274 27 2 218 21 1 74 7 2.5 67 6 3 20 2 3.5 12 1 4 3 0 4.5 3 0 5 Here's the break down of the types of caches I generally find: > geoqo -s log:finder=Yamar -d top10:field=subtype Top 10 'subtype's Num % Value ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 621 80 Traditional Cache 54 6 Virtual Cache 52 6 Multi-cache 27 3 Unknown Cache 16 2 Locationless (Reverse) Cache 1 0 Earthcache 1 0 Event Cache 1 0 Letterbox Hybrid Hmm... Thought my traditional cache count wouldn't be so high. I need to go out and balance that a bit And finally, I don't know of any application that creates density plots (not that it's hard really, but this is a first I think):

GeoQO ( http://geoqo.sourceforge.net/ ) is a geocaching database for storing, extracting and searching through waypoints (etc). It's first release is now available on it's web site. Currently it is primarily command line driven (IE, there is no nice GUI yet). Though it has some highly useful features that make it worth using anyway (See the google-earth density plots on the screen-shots page). It should run on everything. It runs on and was developed on linux. It has been proven to work on windows. And it should be fairly easy to get up and running on OS X (though a README file describing how to do so would be highly appreciated). If you're interested in helping enhance the software, the code is available. It's written in perl and SQL if you're interested. Though help with the documentation would be highly appreciated as well.