teamhillside

I'll answer a few specifics:- gmail - I use that because it has excellent filtering / forwarding facilities. This means that when I get a notification email from Groundspeak I can be sure that it automatically also gets forwarded onto the twittermail address. Its the sending of the email to the twittermail address that causes one of my twitter accounts to be updated. You don't have to use gmail. Notifications can be set up so that they go to a specific email address, so this could be your twittermail email address instead. I prefer to use gmail because that's my default email account so I can be confident that even if the twittermail updating didn't work for some reason I'd still get to read the notification email. In terms of setting up the twittermail account, www.twittermail.com is the place to start. That will help you with "linking" the twittermail account to the twitter account (which is what I think you mean by "following"). Hope that helps some! Matt

I have been getting increasingly frustrated with my non-WAAS old basic yellow eTrex, and had been considering a fresh model. However, difficulty to justify +£100 to SWMBO when "you've already got a GPSr"! Spotted a thread over at the UK sub-forum talking about bluetooth receivers being cheap, and plumped for a "Copilot" branded one for about £13 delivered. As I already have a bluetooth enabled phone (albeit a quite old one) with java capabilities I thought I'd give it a whirl. Have to say I'm really pleased with the outcome. Phone obviously has reasonably nice screen, in theory I could also post logs straight from it to the internet (though don't because it costs money!). Accuracy of the GPS seems very very good. I was 20m inside a shop at the weekend and it still got a signal, something my etrex would never have done. In terms of software I've tried two - GPSJ (costs 9 Euros for a licence) and trekbuddy (free). Trekbuddy seems better (can import GPX files, retains all of the narrative details etc etc) but unfortunately works badly on my Sony Ericcson k750i due to file permission issues. However, it does work nicely on my wife's newer Nokia 6303 Classic, so I'll use that from time to time. GPSJ is simple, functional and works. Obviously I have to carry two devices now, but I did find that if I just popped the bluetooth GPSr in my pocket (or in my hood one time!) that things still worked fine, so I ended up just holding the phone. A nice cheap way to replace my etrex! Matt

If you're running a desktop, not a laptop. Matt

Sorry to say, but USB to serial converters are notoriously picky. I had a Prolific based one (made by Aten) that the IT guys at work swear by for updating their Cisco routers, but it wouldn't play with my eTrex.See my pain here:- http://gsak.net/board/index.php?showtopic=12678&hl= I found an FTDI chipset based USB / serial adaptor worked in the end without trouble. HTH! Matt

To those loving IE6:- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8488751.stm Perhaps time to upgrade, or write a strongly worded letter to google ("...Yours sincerely, Disgusted of Surbiton") Matt

I posted the following on the GPS & Technology sub-forum. For most mobile networks (unfortunately, not mine!) this gives an opportunity to get "Published" notifications sent immediately to your mobile by SMS if you want to know straight away if a nearby cache has been published. http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=234615 Hope someone might find it useful! Matt

My three year old calls it a "hob nob" for some reason! Matt

In the absence of any hints / tips here, I've worked out a solution for myself which I thought I'd share. It involves using twitter, which I'm not a fan of, but does seem to offer some free services which might be worth using. What you need Ideally two twitter accounts A twittermail account Possibly a tweetsms account (unless you are on Vodafone, O2, Orange or Three) What I did I set up two twitter accounts - e.g. @caching1 and @caching2 I setup a twittermail account which was linked to @caching1 I set gmail up to forward new cache notification emails ("Published") to the email address that I established with twittermail I then set @caching2 to "follow" @caching1 This means that @caching2 will see the publication of new tweets by @caching1 (which are posted automatically by email from gmail) I have a virginmobile phone, so twitter can't automatically forward tweets to my mobile by SMS. So I therefore setup a tweetsms account. This costs £0.05p per message to send to my phone, so I reckon about £2.50 per year will work fine for me with the amount of notifications we get. I've set tweetsms to text me any new tweets by @caching1 which it does by monitoring @caching2's twitter account. I believe that the tweetsms functionality is available for free from twitter itself in the UK if you do have a phone on the right network. Hope this is of some use to somebody! I was inspired to solve this problem as by chance I achieved my first FTF this weekend because I happened to check the email at just the right time. I want to take luck out of the equation to help me find more nice fresh caches!! Cheers! Matt

THanks for the generous offer - in fact, you are right your scripts were nice and easy to modify (and work fine in Chrome). My profile page is now much tidier, especially as I've removed some of the other elements on the right hand side specifically with the aim of bringing the "pocket queries" link higher up the page. On a netbook with a widescreen resolution that has made a load of difference. It was lil devil's scripts that were baffling me - I'm sure the content would work, but Chrome doesn't seem to offer the ability to select which parts of the script to enable. However, I'm going to have a play with notepad and see what I can achieve! Cheers! Matt

I'm new to greasemonkey, driven by tidying up the new pages. I use Chrome rather than FF as a browser, and this does support much of the GM script. One feature that doesn't seem to appear however is the opportunity to select which features of the GM script to enable (e.g. the bag 'o tricks has various options). I'm happy to manually edit the code (I've worked with other scripts in the past), if someone can point me to the sort of lines that are likely to help me out here. Or alternatively, perhaps the way for me to do it is to just lift the elements from other's scripts that do the "work"? Guidance gratefully received! TIA! Matt

(I'll preface this with "no doubt this has been discussed before) but my brother in law got a GPSr for Christmas having been out caching with me a few times. He asked how I managed the caches etc, and I thought about my combination of $30 premium membership plus $25 for GSAK and then decided that I would struggle to convince him to part with his cash (sic). It occurred to me that making a few PQs available to new caches would open their eyes to why premium membership was worth paying for, and allow them a simple introduction to caching. Perhaps allow just 2 or 3 PQs, don't allow them to run to a schedule etc etc. I'm sure some will respond with "$55 isn't much cash, plus he can save $25 on GSAK by not registering" but I'm making the suggestion to help encourage people, not to make an excuse for not doing it in the first place. Matt

Can I politely ask why you don't log finds as "found"? I understand the "not wanting to be part of the numbers game" element, but given (as you say) the existing site becomes less usable, why do you do it? Genuinely interested! Thanks Matt

Just a post in support of a separate Linux sub-forum, even recognising that it would be quiet. Just as an example, I bought a netbook with linux installed (saving the cost of a MS licence) at around the same time that I got the bug for geocaching. Other than searching via google "linux geocaching" I struggled to get started on finding an appropriate linux solution. I did eventually come across sites which were of some help, but I think it would be fair to say that not all of the posts have the word "linux" in them which to the uninitiated makes searching quite difficult. Grouping posts which are related to linux together would be valuable, and would save traffic from the main forum. I don't know how much time and effort is required to monitor / moderate a forum, but if that is the reason why not to set up a forum then surely that's self defeating logic - easy to monitor / moderate forums would have very little traffic, and therefore would be of less value, whereas busy forums would have a great deal of traffic, carry a high maintenance overhead and therefore should be refused!! Having said all of that, between the forums here and at GSAK I have had most of my questions answered (including by robertlipe, thanks!), but I consider myself to be a reasonably self-sufficient researcher - not every one is! Matt

Note that for the UK providers, this list is very out of date - for example the virgin service doesn't exist, despite being listed here (and duplicated on other sites elsewhere). Matt

Just wondering if anyone had any useful pointers on this issue. I don't check mails over the weekend much, and I'd like to be prompted for when there are new caches close to my location. So I use the notifications to generate the appropriate emails when a new cache is published. Using gmail, these notifications are automagically forwarded to a specific email account after being received in my main geocaching mail account. I came across a service provided by x-on (no link provided, but you can track it down if you are interested) that allows 3 free emails to be sent to a mobile by SMS per day. I don't anticipate receiving more than 3 per day (usually that many per week would be a maximum) so I thought I might be able to use that to receive some up to date notification. I can email perfectly fine to the SMS number and receive the SMS quickly. But when the email is created automatically (either by filtering by gmail and forwarding, or alternatively using xfruits to create an RSS from gmail and then use xfruits again to email the RSS feed to the SMS email number) it doesn't arrive. I suspect that the x-on free service is ignoring emails where the header shows that it isn't a "normal" email - i.e. forwarded etc. Does anyone know of any way of making this work, or an alternative way of getting a few emails sent to SMS? My mobile provider (virgin) doesn't have a working email to SMS gateway for PAYG customers (despite some websites claiming that they do). THanks a lot for any help / pointers. Matt

I do think there is an inconsistency here. If you are not logged in you cannot see the google maps link to the cache location. But if you search whilst not logged in, you can view an accurate google map with the cache locations displayed. I've found several caches myself without using a GPS simply because the google map made it blindingly obvious where to look (e.g. single tree in a field etc). Ignoring the obvious fact that accounts can be created very very easily just to see coordinates, it would be more consistent if the website randomised the location of caches for non-logged in visitors, in the same way that the google earth kml link does. Matt

From the top 10 jokes at this year's Edinburgh Festival:- 7) Marcus Brigstocke - "To the people who've got iPhones: you just bought one, you didn't invent it!" Matt

What's wrong with the basic eTrex? I have the non-H version, and I don't recall ever been so far away from GZ that a "better" GPS would have helped me much. Simply for geocaching, its fine. For paperless caching, you need other tools too. For use as a live-mapping tool (either walking or driving) it doesn't work either. But as a budget GPS for geocaching, its perfectly good. Matt

That's more likely to be google's maps inaccuracy than the Groundspeak data. I've found many caches without my gps just by using the Groundspeak / google maps, particularly by using the "satellite" overview too. To be honest, I'm amazed that google manages to get their satellite images that accurate! Matt

Its deliberately coded that way by Groundspeak. Every refresh of GoogleEarth asks for cache locations, and the response from the geocaching.com servers is to generate an approximate (but randomised) set of coordinates for the cache. I think (though may be wrong about this) that this is in order to discourage people from using GoogleEarth as their only tool for browsing caches, possibly in order to protect revenue generated by people visiting the geocaching.com website. I don't think that it is coded this way to save any hits on the server, as clearly the server is having to do a random calc for each cache requested. The bottom line is that accurate coordinates can only be obtained either from the geocaching.com website directly, or via pocket queries (premium members only). There has been a lot of debate about the use of GE as a geocaching tool, particularly as Groundspeak temporarily disabled this feature, and then brought it back recently (to wild shouts of praise and congratulation!). GE is very good for giving you a general indication of where things are without having to visit the website. But its not designed to get you all the way to GZ. HTH Matt

It means that google has blocked your IP address by virtue of you having requested more than 1000 map images in a day, I believe, when using the google maps static map API. See post 11 on this page (links to the GSAK support forum):- http://gsak.net/board/index.php?showtopic=12793 I know nothing more than I recognised the image from the GSAK forum, though I note it says that there is a 24 hour limit, and if the 24 limit is repeatedly seen then it may be blocked more permanently. HTH! Matt

Agreed! Except I think you mean the left hand side Mark Indeed I did!! I've been accused of not being able to distinguish my elbow from another part of my anatomy, but I normally credit myself with getting left and right correct!! Thanks! Matt

Yes, I was aware of that. But it is in micro-vision and below the normal scroll line. The right hand side menu is where the most important choices should be linked. We can debate whether "find a benchmark" or "resources" are useful menu items, but surely "My pocket queries" would be one of the highest traffic items, particularly for new premium members. From reading the forums here, a large number of the discussions revolve around PQs, and they are the single feature which most premium members pay for (aren't they?). I would like to be able to return to the PQ listing from any page on the site, and the best place to do that would be to add a menu item on the right hand side. Maybe its only me that finds the current arrangements non-intuitive? Matt

Just about the main reason to become a premium member is the use of pocket queries. And just about my biggest frustration every time that I visit the website is the absence of a quick way to return to the pocket query page. I know that I can use www.geocaching.com/pocket to get there straight away (and I have this book marked), but why oh why is it not a menu option in the main menu? I can only click a link to get to pocket queries from a few pages, and I can't go there directly from either of the three pages that I would really expect to be able to - ie from viewing a cache, from viewing the results of a search or from viewing the results of a pocket query itself. I've searched for if this has been discussed before and couldn't find it (partly because the search function for the forums are imasculated by the requirement for search terms to be > 4 characters long (though Groundspeak isn't alone in this, so I don't criticise it if it is a sensible management tool to reduce server load)) either through searching in the forum using the site's search functionality or via the google site search. Thanks for reading! Matt

As an aside, I have the notifications come into gmail, which are then filtered and forward to my_mobile_number@x-onsms.com so that wherever I am I receive the notification. The SMS email forwarding is free, but limited to just 3 SMS per day. Should be more than enough though! Matt