Happy Humphrey

How did we ever survive before these third party websites? Sheesh. If you know there's no checker, when you design the puzzle you bear this in mind and make sure the answer is going to be unambiguous. This can be difficult to guarantee as you might not realise all the different ways that people try to solve your puzzle. It leads to resentment when people "solve" the puzzle and invest time and money in trying to locate a container that was never where you thought it was. The worst thing being that you still don't know whether you were looking in the right place and couldn't see it, or whether it was the wrong place anyway. I've solved many puzzles and thought I had a rock-solid answer that's beyond reasonable doubt, only to discover that the checker says "no". Pre-geocheck days you'd have to rely on sending an e-mail to the CO and asking for confirmation, but that's a slow and clumsy system and relies on a cache owner being ready and willing to send out e-mails (and on the cache seeker's patience). Some puzzles are so well-designed that you KNOW that you have the correct answer. Some are designed by someone who thinks that there's only one answer but hasn't considered the many different interpretations of the puzzle which all lead to valid coordinates.

More commonly, mystery caches don't actually NEED a checker, i.e. they can be solved and found without using one, but would be highly inconvenient and impractical without a checker. As far as I know no-one has proposed making one compulsory; the CO can still have the cache published without the facility. All I was asking is why Groundspeak haven't added such an obvious feature to the site. An integrated (optional) checker would seem like a simple enhancement. Has the company ever said why this has never been proposed? There are loads of other obvious useful things which they haven't added, which baffles me. So perhaps it's just that they can't be bothered as there's no competition to worry about and they don't need to forge ahead.

As I see it, Groundspeak could provide their own checker (using expertise from one of the existing providers) and of course it would be optional. The big benefit is that they could (almost) guarantee availability and forward compatibility, and the other benefit is that it could be integrated into the cache description building page. Should a third party checker have a feature that you want to use, you could still include that in your code. Third party solutions do work so some extent, but there's always the possibility that a provider suddenly loses interest, or goes out of business, or has health problems, or fails to renew their domain. And even though adding the required lines of HTML to the description isn't much of a problem to many of us, we should recognise that a lot of people can't and won't fiddle with any computer code. In some cases it wouldn't matter too much if the checker is no longer available, but a lot of caches with difficult puzzles are quite far away and you can't simply go and have a look to see if you solved it. Even if it's close by, you might be doubtful about your solution and have a less determined search if the cache isn't immediately obvious. Although you were correct, you'd then ignore that solution and waste a lot of time on further attempts. An example of the problem is with yesterday's downtime on Certitude. The puzzle I was looking at is very difficult and the cache is about thirty miles away. There are many ways of making coordinates out of the puzzle, so my "solution" is doubtful. Although the checker is available again now, it's too late for me to set out. And if I'd gone to look anyway...my answer was wrong so I'd have wasted $20 of fuel.

I have a few Mystery Caches that have a geochecker facility provided, and for the latest one I used Certitude, which seems to be the most fashionable at the moment (in this part of the world, at least). Right now http://www.certitudes.org/ doesn't seem to function, and caches which pretty much rely on the seeker being able to check their answer are degraded. So I was wondering why Groundspeak have never included such a facility? Third party checkers are well and good but as we can see, are potentially prone to error or reliability problems. Mystery caches have been around for a long time and an answer checking facility is an obvious requirement.

Presumably you're expecting to use the GPSr a lot in extreme weather conditions (which seems to be the main feature of the 62sc). Other units are much better otherwise. As the screen is quite poor and small I'd use a Talkytoaster map by preference, although for Canada you will probably need to buy maps.

The website has slowly evolved over the last ten years or so and I suspect that Groundspeak were happy just to make tweaks rather than drastic changes. I suppose because the established users wouldn't like dramatic change and for every one supporter they'd have a hundred people complaining about anything too radical. So it's all very old-fashioned now, as you'd expect. Indeed, geocaching has changed enormously but this isn't reflected in the design either. Creative ideas about caching have been shoehorned into unsuitable formats just so that staff weren't troubled by having to rewrite stuff that already "worked" and could get on to something new (that no-one needed). Rather than grasping the nettle, the focus seems to have been on several side projects and almost all turned out disappointing or were left unsupported. How I wish there was a viable alternative, but there isn't; geocaching.com contains the lion's share of the all-important data and have to be forgiven for resting on laurels. How I wish I could have been in charge of projects at Groundspeak too. The website would be buzzing!

I wonder if they'd allow geocaches if the letterboxes were treated to the same saturation rules (i.e. no cache within 0.1 miles of a letterbox)? Probably not. Also, it's interesting that an Earthcache needs permission. If one was set up without permission would the Landmark Trust send someone out to the site and remove it? I guess that Waymarks are also going to need permission, as they are often similar to Earthcaches (i.e. go to the coordinates and observe something, or go somewhere on the island, observe something then take the coordinates).

I'm sure you'll be very happy with it once you've got used to the interface. Looks a sound choice. Register it on the Garmin website to make things a bit easier. Don't forget to buy a micro SD card for the POI files so you'll have no worries about the number you download. After a quick check, it looks like the macro you need is the one here: Nuvi_GPX_v2.Gsk ...I'm still running an ancient version but it still works with the latest Nuvi. Basically it creates files in a folder you specify, and then you load to the Nuvi using the free POI Loader software.

I use a GSAK macro to create the file which loads onto the Nuvi using POI Loader. It seems to work fine with the new models as well as the older ones.

Garmin's Nuvi series still allows GSAK downloads. Mine (2447 LMT, bought June 2014) has lifetime map updates for Europe and is very impressive.

Or it rains. The other point is that there is more than one app, and it's worth trying others. I would concur with Chief that it might be best to use a phone app for a while until you decide to invest further. I use a combination of things, but primarily GSAK (for maintaining an offline database so that I can download thousands of cache details via Premium Membership then filter and sort easily) and an Etrex 20 (download selected caches to this and not have to worry about battery usage or wetness). I haven't come across the perfect solution yet, but this works best for me.

Is this a guessing game, or part of a mystery cache? Is tat indeed tat? Who is Bu Nobody (one of the Family Bu)? What happened to Sully's poor friend? If Deceangi is not here then why does the question seem to be directed at him? Who took a closer look at what? Does anyone care?

That would indeed be most welcome.

I got email for several logs yesterday. The email client on my iPhone shows the subject line so it was easy to see which messages I wanted to read and which I didn't. I just did a swipe from right to left to delete a couple of "enabled" logs. A single tap on a log for one of my caches and I was able to see all the relevant information. Touching the screen and moving my finger about 1/2" toward the top and and I could read the 2 sentence written as the log. I support the idea of providing an text only option but, frankly, I think the html logs seem to work pretty well for me on my 4" screen. I'm not wealthy so I can't afford an iPhone (in the UK they are horrendously expensive: £400 for a PHONE?). However, my phone only requires the screen to be turned (moved to Landscape format) and the latest log (2 hrs ago) is almost readable. It says "New Traditional Cache: Paige's Library Cache (". If I want to see what this means I only have to tap on the header and I can see the header in full, so I can see the GC code (what I'm supposed to do with that particular information is unclear). Below this is some text "------- ------ ----". Zooming in, the text disappears. Moving the text back into view I can almost read it but it's still a bit small. Zooming in again, it goes out of view again. Moving it back I can now read it, although it's now truncated because I zoomed a bit too much. So I scroll across and then back a couple of times. Now I have all the information required. The old version took two taps, but hey! that's progress for you...

The revision to the header is good and has addressed half the problem, so thanks for that. As so many others point out, the HTML format is still a problem. It seems OK for desktop use but surely quite a few people are now starting to use smartphones as their main communication device, and clearly this new e-mail format is not designed for a 4-inch screen. Surely if Groundspeak want to be open about this and don't want to revert to the more convenient format then it falls to them to provide an explanation of their reasoning in making this change without consultation. If they don't want to be open about it, well it's their call but I'd suggest that a hobby site owner should be striving to be open and honest at all times.

Assume you've just received 100 geocaching notification emails in the day and have a quick check through them on the bus home from work. I'm sure that this sort of number is quite common. 1. The [LOG] Notify / Bookmark / Owner tag in the header (or [GEO] or whatever) has gone, making rules more difficult and making it harder to spot a priority email. 2. Expanding on that, the header used to contain information about whether the log was a "Found" or otherwise. It still does, but my phone (and I suspect many others) truncates the header so you cannot now see what the log type is. This seems to be because of the over-long wording "Owner Notification" which is superfluous but appears to be regarded as top priority in the header. Which makes me think that the design was by a non-cacher. You might want to read any "Not Found" logs straight away in case there's a problem with your cache, but "Found" can be left until later. So this information should be at the top. 3. When you open the email the text is no longer clear and easy to read, but tucked away in a small formatted box which on a small screen has to be zoomed into for reading. Hardly a disaster, but this format is supposed to be an "improvement" and this is clearly a nuisance. If this means that it takes three seconds longer per email that's 300 seconds (5 minutes) of wasted time. Now, that might be nothing to you, but surely you can see that others do have an issue with the added annoyance factor. And I think what is particularly annoying is that no-one asked whether we minded having to change all our e-mail rules and whether we preferred the less-clear format, but it was suddenly released to us anyway.

What I can't understand is that they have this forum to get advance feedback for a proposed change. But I wasn't aware of this "improvement" being suggested. If it had we'd have quickly pointed out the pitfalls. I'd much rather that they improved the notification e-mails so that the text was even simpler to see on a phone and takes up less space. They were pretty good before, but improvements could be made. How about having an option for a single e-mail per day containing a digest of all your cache logs, sorted into "Found", "Not Found", "Needs Maintenance" etc.? Those that say "it's no problem, you only have to click a button", perhaps don't get up to 100 e-mails at a time on their phones.

The Tour de France in Yorkshire attracted a much bigger attendance than the Commonwealth Games and is a much more prominent event, but AFAIK there were no restrictions for cachers nor any problems reported. Perhaps this indicated that there wasn't too much to worry about for the Games either.

Add me to the list of complainees. I generally receive a dozen or so such emails a day (on average) on my phone, and previously could see from the subject line what the contents would be. And then on opening the e-mail could read it immediately and easily. Now you have to zoom in to look, and find the text amongst other stuff. This is almost exactly the opposite of how it should have been "improved". There are other issues with this, but suffice to say that I regard it as a big problem and it seriously needs to be reversed out.

Add me to the list of complainees. I generally receive a dozen or so such emails a day (on average) and previously could see from the subject line what the contents would be, and then on opening the e-mail could read it immediately and easily. Now you have to zoom in to look, and find the text amongst other stuff. This is almost exactly the opposite of how it should have been "improved".

So you are saying that no caches in big cities get published?

Perhaps you spoke to the wrong person in the council, or the wrong department. If you've really become fed up with wasting your time try a different line of approach. If the cache is just by the side of the road and in a public area then the council probably don't want to know. If you mention the potential cache placement to a reviewer, he/she will likely let you know whether it needs specific permission details, or whether the police might need to know (or if it's in one of the banned areas). London seems to have particular problems which other areas don't suffer from.

I think that there are two points here. 1. Groundspeak was not siding with the landowner, but with someone else who doesn't want the RoW to be used (that he's the owner of the land the path crosses is irrelevant: to take notice of his instructions would be like taking notice of someone who doesn't like people driving down a public road past his house). 2. I thought that part of the purpose of having relatively local reviewers is that they'd be aware of local laws and customs and be able to implement gc.com policies in such a way as to sit comfortably with them. Obviously you could automate (or semi-automate) the review process, but it wouldn't take into account factors that only a resident of the country would know; so there could quickly be a lot of caches approved which later turn out to cause problems on quite a large scale. Either that or you would find that your perfectly reasonable hide gets refused, based on faulty information. But if Groundspeak are going to overrule the local reviewer on important points of local law then they may as well do away with local reviewers altogether, and just have a team that investigates anything flagged up by the automated system.

Even if 500 people fail to renew their premium memberships because of this, I doubt that GS will notice. Certainly if half a dozen drop out they'd have no idea that it's any type of protest. People lapse all the time. Even on this thread people have mentioned that they've fallen out of love with geocaching in general. It's not depressing, it's just a fact of life that there's only one major geocaching website and it's overwhelmingly big compared to the minor ones. The fact that it has almost all of the best cache listings is enough to allow it to sail serenely through any small areas of choppy water that might be whipped up. I'm glad that Jacaru will continue, although most people would find standard membership quite limiting, as downloading caches becomes tricky and many caches disappear altogether.

I know that you're a lynchpin of caching in this part of the world, and it's a shame if you really decide to leave caching (or at least, take a back seat). As we know, Groundspeak will not be affected, nor care, in the slightest about it. Even if all of us that have heard about this issue decide not to renew it will matter to them not one jot. It's an ironic situation that people criticise them for not caring, and then somehow expect them to care when you leave! If it makes you feel better then go ahead, but the people affected will be those who have enjoyed your event organising efforts and cache placements. "TPTB" are unlikely to even hear about it, and if they do they won't be interested.