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CanUK_TeamFitz

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Everything posted by CanUK_TeamFitz

  1. There are 37,247 views of the Hamster Caching thread and only 171 posts. Just sayin' The Hamster Caching thread was started in 2008. Just sayin'
  2. I have ALWAYS had a huge ego. Geocaching just helps me polish it. I'm going to take your double negative as a positive by perceived intent even before I read your last line. My friggin' huge ego won't let me be abashed. Thanks. BTW- I appreciate folks that disagree with me. Don't be silent. LOL I just realised what I did there, in fact the last 3 lines are all a mass contradiction! FAIL
  3. All good points, particularly thicker skin, though I find it a little ironic. If I may offer a different perspecitve - and I entirely expect to get flamed for this... From experience I find it's the forum regulars who need the "thicker skin" - particularly the ones who are first to mention the phrase. They're the ones who have grown accustomed to a particular forum culture and get all their knickers in a twist when some newbie comes in and perhaps has a new idea or new challenges. They act quickly to put the newbie straight and a newbie is left with incentive to either conform or GTFO. It shows a very closed mind, lack of generosity and lack of intelectualism that a newbie may suggest something and is shot down, but a forum regular may suggest it a bit later in another thread and it's accepted or encouraged. Sure newbies may need to work on their delivery or do a bit more research, but ultimately they are people with different life experiences, they may also be a little guarded with their first posts and as such will be more defensive - leading them to react worse than they would were they more integrated. Most importantly some newbies are older, wiser, more experienced and maybe even more important than even YOU (plural) are in RL! We could be entertaining angels and we should always have that in the back of our minds. Shame, there are some wise people and advice on this forum, I think they get drowned out by all the egos. Snoogans is one regular I know I can say I've never found anything I didn't dislike in any of his posts - even the ones I disagree with silently. What is sad is there are people here who's opinions I respected and admired but some of them have picked sides with a forum regular and flamed me - which has led me mark them down when I previously held them in higher esteem. Then there's the passive aggressiveness which is just not necessary in this type of game. Though perhaps I should be thankful for all this, it's got me to frequent the forums a lot less and geocache a lot more -- unfortunately for the moderate members here things will probably only get worse as more decent people stay away, leaving only the cliques and the flamers - and more innocent gardners are probably going to get hurt. I say all this with no malicious intent, and not aimed at any one person in particular.
  4. Update: We have 5x confirmed people. But 2x may drop out after the first ring. We will be kicking off at 7am Saturday morning from the first cache in the series: N 51° 42.309 W 000° 36.673. Ping me for my mobile no. if you're interested. However if you get lost but I probably won't be able to give directions - that's what a GPS is for! Please make sure to bring sensible footwear (you don't mind getting wet), possibly a spare pair of socks and plenty of water + energy snacks. Please feel free to invite anyone who you think would be up for it.
  5. I took a look at the script and it doesn't appear that there is anything specific about it that makes it linux only. It's a fairly basic bash shell script. Bash prexisted linux by four years and the commands that your script invokes (sed, grep, egrep, etc) have been around in versions of unix since the early 1980's. Bash runs fine in a windows environment using Cygwin and natively on a Mac. A perl script is certainly not the only alternative for parsing a MyFinds PQ on a PC. I could probably write up a version of the script in PHP or Java in a couple of hours that wouldn't require spawning any additional processes (sed, egrep, etc.) other than invoking the Google CL command. It looks like there's a version of GoogleCL for windows that wouldn't be a limitation either. It appears that GoogleCL actually requires Python so writing a Python script instead of using bash would probably make some sense as well. Well as I say people are free to use it - if they can port it through Cygwin then that's great. My skills in Python are nill and Perl are negligible - which is why I used a shell script. Of course, I could ask if you could do this better, why you haven't done this already for people to use? I've put in some considerable hours to get this to work - limited though my skills are - I haven't kept the knowledge to myself and am freely sharing. I've not previously been able to find anything that does it through googling - if someone had done something previously that I could find and download then I'd have gladly used that.
  6. Google have now released a tool called Google CL for command line publishing. For a while now I have been working on a script to parse the "My Finds" pocket query and looking for a tool to enable seamless publishing. So I've finally managed to create one that when run will parse the PQ zip file and then publish all "Found" logs to your Blogger blog. Details can be found on here: http://wafitz.net/2010/07/blog-your-geocac...s-with-blogger/ Results can be seen on my Blogger blog: http://wafitz.blogspot.com/ Caveats: Linux only. I won't be developing a Windows version so install a serious OS or hope that someone can rewrite it in Perl or another language for Windows. It's true that Blogger will publish XML but this is a much nicer solution and removes the horrible formatting that comes with the default XML layout. It will only work for 1 found log per cache, more than one may cause the parser to break. (You can add a GC code to the excludes list if necessary). Tested on my PQs but may be further bugs. I hit a post limit on Blogger after about 30-40 posts during testing. After this number Blogger will automatically enable word verification and prevent autoposting for 24 hours. I've limited the script to parse/publish only 30 posts per run. Needless to say it's GPL so free to modify and improve. Let me know if you have any questions.
  7. Could you take a bunch of spare logbooks with you (probably a dozen or two), and replace any that need it? You can save me even more maintenance, by replacing any missing caches; you might need a dozen of those. Thanks. I'll offer to be on stand-by via phone; that also means you'll be able to add any missing numbers for the bonus for the caches that were replaced but are currently without their numbers. Plus, it gives you a useful PAF number. Best wishes for your mission - I hope you get the Golden Bonus! Hi Solly, I'll make sure to grab some logbooks and I'll take you up on your offer for PAF - sending you a PM shortly! Cheers!
  8. Just an update we have a group of 5 now confirmed, +1 maybe. So if you're not in Scotland or the US or Norfolk and anywhere near Chesham next Saturday you will be in the company of ... err ... strangers ... but friendly cacher strangers.
  9. (New thread - for some reason I typed the wrong date on the first one - could a moderator delete the other? thanks) _TeamFitz_ and MrBen will be attempting the Chiltern 100 series next weekend, starting around 6/7am and continuing till we can stand no more. Anyone want to join us... particularly any lone cachers who have been holding out? Send us a message or comment here! The more the merrier!
  10. 28 July is a Wednesday... Doh! I absolutely have no idea why that number was in my head when I typed it! I meant 31st! Sorry! ETA: Started a new thread with correct date - mod please delete!
  11. _TeamFitz_ and MrBen will be attempting the Chiltern 100 series next weekend, starting around 6/7am and continuing till we can stand no more. Anyone want to join us... particularly any lone cachers who have been holding out? Send us a message or comment here! The more the merrier!
  12. Just like some Nigerian Statesmen play the bank transaction system differently than the rest of us. Fraud is fraud.
  13. Hey! That is awesome - I used your website to find the ghost stations near me for my cache series - had no idea you were a cacher too! Thanks for the website - incredibly useful and fascinating. I imagine it took a lot of time and hard work to put into it.
  14. Why not combine both? http://www.geocaching.com/bookmarks/view.a...74-b0f445edc29c And please add to the series - I'm finding the rest are too far from where I live (to commit to maintenance). /shameless_plug
  15. We just got back from Ireland and stayed in Killarney! Which caches did you do? The most memorable for us had to be 360° - DNF and Found log!
  16. I think there are ways to make the cache description more accessible. Using the intro field correctly for example. I love caches with historical background. I like to go, find the cache, admire the view and then sit and read the description for what it's about. What I find difficult on my BlackBerry screen is where all the history and background info starts at the top of the page and important cache info is squeezed somewhere in the second from last paragraph (of about 10 paragraphs) so you have to scroll up down and around for ages to find what you need - doubly irritating doing multi's. I always try with my cache descriptions to put important info at the top - parking, physical cache, rules etc, and then the history/background comes after - with the exception of puzzles obviously.
  17. I'm a big fan of The Walking Dead comic series which is about to become a TV show, I started using the terms "roamers" and "lurkers" respectively for passers-by and those hanging around. The terms fit comfortably with me, they are subtle, not insulting and not zombie-sounding (well, unless you read the comics). The only thing is there is not really a verb that can be made out of them, but I'm ok with that. I just use the word filched, pilfered, plundered or other. I suppose I could always used "delurked".
  18. Logged on the Tim Healy pass, 330m above sea-level. Can anyone think of a good caption?
  19. I'm loading the pq onto an empty garmin. I know how to use the list feature. I don't use the map generally to verify the pqs are there.It seems to be something to do with the header of the cork gpx file. I removed the header and then appended the wpt tags into a pq gpx that I know worked and it actually worked.So I need to examine both headers and see why one would be accepted and the other wasn't.Any one else experience this?
  20. I use a Garmin GPS Map 60CSx, I use gpsbabel directly to transfer PQs. We're headed to Cork this morning, I'm trying to load a PQ for the area onto my Garmin but it just doesn't seem to transfer any. PQs are working, others I've tested today have worked. I've tried 50 mile radius (179 caches) and 40 mile radius (113 caches) and it just doesn't work. I'm wondering if there is a rogue cache listing somewhere with special characters, and if anyone else has experienced such a problem? Asking in Brit forum rather than technical as I'd like to know if anyone has/or can try it and if they had the same results and if they solved it?
  21. I had a TB held for 9 months by the first finder to pick it up after release. I checked their profile they were still finding caches and dropped off another TB they had picked up with mine. I emailed the cacher a polite message after about 6 months - no response. Was dropped off a few months later with no explanation. If it was in a cache and reported not there, I'd mark it as missing. But if it was with a cacher I'd leave it on their name permanently as a record of that they had or have it (unless of course they fess up they lost it - I have no problem as that happens).
  22. Thanks for all the suggestions guys, I will keep thinking and perhaps tweak the original idea. Still want to go with a "floating" TB cache, but maybe locale restriction or some kind of other way to obtain coords (puzzle still seems the easiest). I like wimseyguys suggestion of fostering interaction between cachers. I've actually been thinking of something like that for a while but wondering how I could do this with a cache or TB...? Ok my brain has been ticking whilst writing this post.... what if I tweaked the idea of a travelling cache into an open source type mystery cache/TB combo. In the TB I put coords and all info about the cache. Then I encourage finders to post their own puzzles/hints on their logs. Anyone seeking the cache would need to read the TB page and then pick a puzzle or work it out from other cachers hints! Of course, it would mean a bit of police work - I'd have to delete/encrypt any logs that decided to just give the game away.
  23. Yes I was thinking of a puzzle maybe on the cache page itself, of course the difficulty is assessing what to grade as the difficulty?!
  24. Then read my OP again - the coords for the mystery would be in the TB cache - for people to "find and log." How do they sign the log? How do you sign a log when you find a geocache? --- To be clear - there would be ONE physical geocache and ONE TB (which I'd call a travelling cache). In order to find the physical, you'd have to get the coords from the travelling cache. You do not long the travelling cache - it's technically just a TB, you find and log the physical mystery cache.
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