oaknest
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Posts posted by oaknest
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I have enjoyed the first two books in the Cliff Knowles series.
Hope the next one is still coming soon!
Hey, Rat...PLEASE write the sequel to Cached Out soon! It left me wanting so much more!!!
What a sweetie you are. I am working on a sequel, although the geocaching content will be lighter. Don't expect anything for at least six months.
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I've had two days now of geocaching.com pages not loading without several attempts, multiple logs being generated on one request and now I can't even get logged onto geocaching.com for minutes at a time.
WHY DOESN'T Groundspeak REALIZE THAT IT'S MORE IMPORTANT TO HAVE STABLE, RELIABLE 24/7 ACCESS THAN IT IS TO ADD ANOTHER BELL AND WHISTLE THAT PEOPLE DON'T NEED!!
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I'm so grateful for GSAK. I rely on it to plan all my geocaching trips.
Sometimes though I just want to check something quick and will bring up a geocaching map to look at some caches. I keep forgetting all the problems with the geocaching.com maps including failure to show corrected coordinates. The geocaching.com maps have been messed up for years. I think it's time Groundspeak concentrated on bringing the maps up to a higher level.
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It happened to me. The Zagg protected my Montana great for the last 18 months. But it was showing its age from wear and tear, so I carefully pulled it off to replace it. About a third of the top layer of the touch screen came off with it. Talked with Garmin, but the best they'd do for me is $160 for repair/replacement.
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Since searches of the entire database is apparently too demanding for Groundspeak's limited servers, why don't they restrict each search to a single state/country. That would have the dual benefit of reducing the number of records to search, and the search in most cases would be more helpful to the user.
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Heck, we're not even asking for a fancy search that covers multiple fields.
One simple text field, cache name - how hard can it be to index that?
Methinks the problem is management, not software.
Agreed. I learned to do searches like this using SQL commands in the first week of my Database 101 class in college. There are several other tools that make these searches even easier and more efficient.
Apparently Groundspeak is stuck in the last decade running their own servers. In this day and age of Cloud Computing, there are dozens of companies out there running Server Farms that host other company's software and databases in an inexpensive and efficient manner.
I just wish Groundspeak concentrated more on things that Geocachers need and use instead of concentrating on things like Twitter and Facebook integration and Geocaching Calendars. I shouldn't have to rely on GSAK as much as I do for basics like searches and Maps that are more useful in planning geocaching trips.
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Yeah well, maybe if Groundspeak had the money that Google does then their search would work that way. But they don't, so it doesn't. As someone who works in IT, I understand why Groundspeak has done this - and if you read their explanation, it makes complete sense. Note that you can always use Google to search for your caches by name - it works too...
Google is free (if you're willing to ignore their advertisements).
I pay $30 to Groundspeak annually for "Premium" membership (plus they sell advertisements on their pages). And I can't even search for words in titles of caches!!?!
No, it DOESN'T make complete sense to me!
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I can search "alley" on Google and instantly get links to 74 million pages on the internet that match.
But geocaching.com removed the ability to find the 540 caches with the word "alley" in the title because the search is just too difficult. Wow...
I had hopes Groundspeak would improve the search capability to allow searches by state or country.
Instead they degraded the search capability so much that it's practically useless now.
With every "improvement" to geocaching.com, I rely on third party tools more and more.
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Two days in a row I've suffered with this problem. The day before that was the site update. So that's three days in a row the geocaching.com has not been available for an hour or more.
I really wish they would put a higher priority on being available closer to 24/7.
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An upcoming release will extend the corrected coordinates to PQs, the API, the beta map, and the large map on the cache page.
So it has been 6 months!
what's up?
PLEASE Groundspeak - FIX THIS IN YOUR SMARTPHONE APP!
I hate that the puzzles I have updated on the cache page do not transfer over to the app.
Seems like a lot work if I have to make a PQ of solved puzzles (from a bookmark) to make this a viable caching option.
I have to rely on other geocaching apps as they ALLOW corrected coordinates to be just that...CORRECTED!
I REALLY wish that functionality like this that is actually useful to Geocachers took precedence over yet another Facebook integration modification.
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I have never used the visual tools, like the maps on this site, for my trip planning or cache raid runs. There are far better tools available for that purpose. No work a rounds or other limitations. Perhaps you need to re-evaluate you work flow. The maps on the site are ancillary at best.
Thank you. I've looked around and found some great GSAK macros that I wish I'd found earlier.
Apparently I'd been too reliant on Groundspeak to provide what I'd needed.
Any suggestions on other tools you found useful?
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Just my opinion... but I wouldn't consider another level of membership based soley on 'better maps'. I dont mind putting in a bit of 'preparation time' prior to caching trips. To me its all part of the game.... working with, and making the best of, what we've got! Making it too easy just aint fun!!
As I said "Just my opinion".
The challenge of geocaching SHOULD be figuring out where that tricky cache is hidden, or getting to that 3+ star terrain cache, or finding the 50th cache of the day, or figuring out the solution to that interesting puzzle you've been working on.
The biggest challenge shouldn't be getting the basic functionality of maps to work in the "preparation time".
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Who cares how many forum posts and found caches anyone has, they're just numbers.
Anyway, back on topic...
I do not think it is necessary to have a new level of memberships just because of these so called silly maps, I like them. They have more detail and can be edited by anyone, which I think is great. If you don't like them, get a greasemonkey script, or use another mapping program.
[edit] Apparently I was too critical in some of my posts on this topic, so after learning of some great mapping tools outside of the Groundspeak web site, I am no longer complaining about the new maps.
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Gee, why didn't anyone think of that before?
For the record, I'd rather not pay more for maps I hardly ever used.
[Edit] Apparently I was too critical in my original post, so my apologies to anyone I may have offended.
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This hobby isn't about the maps. It's about finding caches..... I'm not about to let the map issue ruin the hobby.
I find the maps to be an important part of geocaching.
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i am willing to pay more too but heck $100 is too steep even for my willingness lol
I know it sounds like a lot, but when you figure $2 per week, and I waste a least a couple hours per week waiting for the new maps to update plus the time and effort going back and forth between these maps and Google satellite maps trying to figure out how to get to some caches, a dollar an hour of avoided frustration isn't bad...
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Please see Nate's thread on Google Maps.
I used to think these new maps were horrendously bad in every way. But now that Groundspeak has explained why this is a good thing, I guess I'll stop complaining about all the frustration and wasted hours trying to use these flawed maps to plan my next geocaching trip.
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When I move the maps or zoom in/out, it now takes from 5 to 10 seconds for all the cache symbols to appear.
You need an hourglass like those provided on most web pages that will display during the time the page is loading, then go away when finished so I don't have to guess when the map is fully drawn.
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Since Groundspeak proves again and again they are unable or unwilling to provide useful maps with the current pricing structure, I would be willing to pay $100 per year or $20 per month or whatever it takes to get maps that are useful, have quick updates when I move the map or zoom in/out, have scales on the maps, are able to provide useful satellite images, etc.
In other words, provide maps like Groundspeak had two years ago.
I consider my time valuable and I am wasting so many hours trying to plan trips with these lousy maps that I'm willing to open my checkbook wider if given the option.
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I've complained about the beta maps for a year until I got banned from the voting forums. Let's see if I can express myself in these forums.
Groundspeak has now replaced the lousy beta maps with something even worse. These maps are SOOOOOOOOOO slow to be almost unusable. And satellite views without street names - come on. Can't click on caches with iPad. Can no longer use back door to get to the original maps for pocket queries.
But at least I can go to various geocaching.com pages and get linked to twitter, facebook, digg, buzz, del.icio.us, reddit, stumbleon, flickr, youtube and my email server. It's really hard to cache with the new Groundspeak pages, but I'm socially connected all over the freakin place. Makes you wonder what Groundspeak priorities are. Wish it was geocaching.
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Cacherstats was a great site until Geocaching.com had to "improve" their website which broke so many things I used to find useful. Hope they can work around the latest challenges.
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For every Nissan Leaf you see on the road, that's $7,500.00 of our federal tax dollars and $5,000.00 of our California tax dollars that was given to a private citizen to buy a car that the government feels is Politically Correct.
Thus ends the mystery of why our taxes are so high and the government is still so far in debt.
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The more Groundspeak adds stuff for those silly challenges, the more difficult they make things for geocaching.
This update broke the ability to reliably read the geocaching logs, but it included 39 (THIRTY NINE) changes made to try to improve Challenges.
Groundspeak keeps saying if you don't like Challenges, just ignore them. That would be easier to do if every Challenges update didn't break something else that Geocachers use.
When, oh when, will Groundspeak fix something as basic as working maps for Pocket Queries???? It's been broken for many months...
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I hate the new PQ maps. I used to be able to just click on the Pocket Query map logo and get a map simply displaying only the caches that I wanted scaled to a map fitting my screen.
Now I get a map cluttered with hundreds of caches I'm not interested in amidst a sea of talk balloons. I have to zoom in several times to get to the option to clear out the extraneous caches which means I am no longer able to get a single map displaying all the PQ caches on a single screen.
I click on what I think is the icon I want, but instead a list pops up with three neighboring caches requiring another click or group of clicks to see the next cache on my proposed caching route.
Everything that used to display immediately or I could select in 1 click now takes a long series of clicks. Planning a day's caching trip that used to take an hour now takes at least two hours and a lot of frustrating clicking to do the same thing.
I appreciate seeing the url's in an earlier post to allow me access the maps that work. But it shouldn't be this hard.
Spam messages.
in Website
Posted · Edited by oaknest
Getting several of these SPAM messages today. If Geocaching.com can't keep their messaging system from being hacked, I wish they provided a way to turn it off!! Or at least a way to delete Messages without opening them first.
As it is now, I have to open up the SPAM message before I can do anything, than I can only "hide" it. That violates a cardinal rule of cyber security!! The only thing to do with a suspicious message/email is to immediately DELETE it.
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