MKFmly

Slightly on/off topic It's a transparent fairly standard marketing ploy by a commercial business with no hidden agenda. We are all inundated daily; with ads, flyers, coupons, online offers, membership plans, discount books and "free" samples. Why is Groundspeak being perceived/judged any different? A souvenir may have some intrinsic value or simply be a symbol of past experience. However without the souvenir owner's input and context the symbolic meaning and value is invisible. Via context; it's quite clear that J Grouchy was referencing Geocaching Souvenirs (and Badges) as provided by Groundspeak through members' profiles and not marginalising *all* souvenirs. It seems you are suggesting that *all* souvenirs have meaning to everyone, when that is merely the inverse perspective of what you are calling J Grouchy out for... Your Japan souvenir and the mother's pictures are meaningless to me, just as my branded golf shift and anyone's FTF's are meaningless to you. Obviously, its a personal perspective and value of meaning for any souvenir, where we have to extend to others the freedom to make their own determination of meaning... and in this case I have to agree with J Grouchy, the Friend to Find reward is meaningless (to me)

Rescuing lost hunters...

We will get a souvenir for that, will we? Yes, this one!

For a different perspective I always recall the Swiss Watch paradigm shift example. Geocaching started as a pre-dominantly wilderness game with participants having the financial capacity to purchase HH GPSrs and go hiking in far flung places and write stories. Now entry to the game is free, caches are everywhere, and players text their logs. That original paradigm (often lamented in the forums) has been gone a long long time. We are in the midst of a shift where those fondly looking back and those looking forward may diverge. Yes PokemonGo is not geocaching but it is a geo location adventure much like Wherigo's could have and should have been. I could easily see the opposite when quality caches dwindle to obscurity and geocaching and letterboxing are talked about as some old-school game. (If you peruse the forums many have suggested it has already happened...) Unfortunately, Groundspeak has not been very adept at predicting the very conservative vocal user community wants/desires and technology shifts with any accuracy so are obviously a little shy. The underlying paradigm here is that it will always be difficult. Although it may not exist right now, its short sighted to assume that capability will never exist. Some of the best parts of video games are community content (so too with geocaching) at some point the right set of easily understood/used tools will put that capability in the hands of geo location adventurers (maybe even geocachers). The ability of the community to easily integrate virtual (electronic) and physical stages to their caches just might be the savior of location based adventures...

Can/Us ? I can look it up, but I just thought someone may know/have experience. Wow Cost (Canada) Visa - Tourist $120 + $95 Service Charge Visa - Business $120 + $95 Service Charge Visa - Work $150 + $95 Service Charge

Are there visa fees? Are they expensive? A friend is going to Brazil for another event, they indicated the just missed the Olympic cutoff easement. They never gave a dollar amount but to mention it, likely means it a little bit of money.

Yes but for me it's really a utility box and we have a lot like this in France, but too big for the first one and to small for the second one You can continue to fight for your definition of a utility box; but a mural is still a mural regardless of what it's painted on...

That's the curse of community based decision making at its finest...you would think they worked for the government... one of the reasons I pretty much gave Waymarking a pass I suggest reapplying to the murals category with the utility box denial included.

Slightly of topic Consider deploying and finding your groups own "unlisted" caches... It provides an opportunity to show the game and a variety of hides/sizes/difficulty/terrains) while not impacting the game proper.

Frankly, it would only be a different path and different structure to the same end. Both service delivery models have advantages and disadvantages. Some have been highlighted. One salient point to consider is that non-profit does not mean free... A non-profit I know provides an annual 3 day hands on course for about 600 bucks and normally land just over the break even point, with a little left over for contingencies, tool maintenance, and insurance.

For those who have forgotten (or didn't know)... Groundspeak Acquires My Geocaching Profile (December 15, 2010) http://www.cachemania.com/geocaching-stats-tab-favorites/Groundspeak/2010/12/ It's obvious that GS has integrated some of the MGP stats in your GS profile page, whether it runs MGP site or just has access to the "methods" is maybe debatable.

^^ Improvising works of course and there is always this option available as well...

Tx good to know Phone data maybe not (not even now) tower triangulation probably as its passive I guess. I am sure the regulatory landscape (and technologies) are complex...

ohgood Question (for the cell phone expert). Since regulations require a cell phone to be able to dial 911 (even without a plan) and potentially give the phones location, how does that reconcile with "Airplane" mode and "Radios Off"?

Although it does not happen often, a GPS satellite can begin to send out corrupted signals therefore positional solutions using the corrupted data will be off until its repaired. Further, sometimes the GPS constellation (positional coverage of satellites) can be poor resulting in loss of positional accuracy. Sometimes even too many satellites near the horizon can degrade the GPS solutions. Higher end GPSr's often have the ability to reject specific satellites (if you know one is in error) and implement a horizon cut off normally increasing positional accuracy.

Sorry a little off topic.. J Grouchy, I have to respectfully disagree. As I stated previously I cache and complete challenges for myself. To categorically assume everyone who works towards or completes a challenge as a dishonest, cheating, throwdowner, system gamer, all about the numbers cacher (I'm paraphrasing) is disingenuous and disrespectful. There are many who still hold to a sense of honour and frankly we don't need (nor care) for someone to "100% objectively evaluate" our results because we already hold ourselves to high standards.

Leave the speciality caches (and higher difficulty) for now and find more traditional caches... your experience and finding techniques will grow as you learn to recognise standard containers, hides, and techniques. Note: Be aware that google maps/earth is not infallible and often the imagery is offset from reality...so be cautious with "Google Earth, I know I was looking in the right place"

As a cacher I don't so much compete with others as I do myself, it's of little interest that someone else had a harder/easier time with completing a challenge. I still complete challenges now not publishable on GC.com for my own interest (and to my own standards often the same or harder than published), we all deserve our own adventures. However I do empathize that meeting increasingly harder demands may improve the challenge experience for some, and changing or lowering the requirements may be perceived as undermining the achievement of others. There is no perfect answer here, but I am leaning to the Leprechauns suggestion of keeping the original cache the same and then create a new "10 Year anniversary" fizzy challenge... maybe it will inspire others to try more restrictive versions!

I am not so sure it's creep but our perception/expectation. A small is defined as 100ml to 1l in volume many "pill bottles" are larger than 100ml (roughly just under a 1/2 of a cup) and are rightly classified as small its just we rarely see anything that approach's the upper limit of the small clasification. The examples I recall use 16 year old container examples (they have evolved mostly to a LnL standard) and were often given in a relative volume of space IIRC, not the easiest to grasp for some of us.

Modify the database to allow for more size choices, update and further standardize the GC descriptions, improve the website (wiki whatever) to further educate and re-enforce correct size choice... nah that's just crazy talk...

Very good point. I use my own logs all the time. I'd still claim I'm writing for the CO first, and other seekers second, but if I can't remember a cache from reading my own log, I consider it a failure. So I can't say having the record for myself is the reason I write longer logs, but it is a convenient side effect, and considering what I'd need to know myself helps me identify what would help anyone else reading it. Heresy! Dam your eyes for longer logs! Logs are for hints, clues, tips, and spoiler pics. Cachers don't have the space or bandwith to display your novel on their phone/GPSr. No one, especially the cache owner gives a carp about your adventure, a couple of short lines are required at most as cache owners don't have the time to read more than three and god forbid if you find two or more of their caches and repeat yourself somewhat...TFTC and move on In all seriousness I agree, I try to write adventure logs for me and my future self (with varying degrees of success) if the cache owner appreciates them so much the better, if they don't...C'est la vie.

OK, fair enough (consider stop using it as an example though). For any sort of quantitative and comparative analysis you need to control the experiment. With the radio on and off are valid test points as well, but if you are interested in GPS accuracy (vice device accuracy) then you have to use the same baseline. You can poke around the GC.com benchmarking areas and the NGS. I may endeavour to dig out some of my data buried in logs (I have potentially 140 points with a mix of phone and GPS) not a statistically significant amount but a start. Track errors (not being on the same line for another test) just introduces additional error that gets hidden in the system error (your bike tracks may be better than you think). Tracking one edge of the sidewalk or the other may lessen biases in your data opposed to walking the sidewalk. If the track is uncontrolled the random errors will be attributed back to the device instead of the track.

How about minusing the Nominal (lowest) Degree Lat and Nominal Degree Long from the data obfuscating your position but still preserving the data relationship. (For example if the positional data is Lat N12 34.567, just minus 12 degrees.) In this case you really only test the repeatability of your device and without the raw data, no one can validate (or refute) your conclusions. As for controls I would be less concerned about open sky and more concerned with the cell network introducing any periodic or systemic errors or enhancements. I would do the test with the radio off. If you want to test the accuracy you need to test against a known baseline, either known survey markers/benchmarks or a post-processed DGPS solution of some form. Sure, if you want to repeat the data acquisition... How do you ensure your track is the same each time you do the route?

Yes, it clearly explains Time To First Fix (TTFF) that directly relates to the OP's question/discussion regarding GPS "accuracy and response times". It explains why some devices "appear" to have a faster TTFF and some tricks that can be used to speed up the TTFF. For good quality GPS measurements your receiver needs a copy of the almanac and the ephemeris data. In context of the above definitions, you present some pictures that "appear" to show your phone provides precise data and you assume accurate (but that is not proven its assumed). However, it's a little disingenuous to try to illustrate 33' errors on a 2 mile scale where differences between the tracks are visually indistinguishable. Not to mention that the receiver built in "accuracy" measurements are normally estimates and are subject to a significant amount of manufactures "fudging" often just to "appear" to be the best. It's just like cell phone signal strength measurements, where one phone shows 5 bars and one phone shows 2, where under the hood they are essentially the same value just "displayed" to an advantage. How about uploading your raw data and letting us have a look. I also suggest that you survey in some existing survey monuments (with known coordinates) for a start of an accuracy assessment.