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<useless comment> My gps 'unit' has 160GB memory, unlimited tracking, unlimited waypoints, a 10" screen and includes bluetooth/wifi/3G connectivity. It also has a movie and music player, 3MP camera and I can load all the maps I want. Unfortunately, it's a netbook, so portability and ruggedness are definite issues... </useless comment>

That is brilliant - thanks for the link. It has also confirmed that I have cached in Merseyside and got that bit of my map coloured in (as I thought I had, but wasn't showing on INATN) ... only just, but at least I know it is true There's a lot of brilliant OpenStreetMap mashups, but unfortunately most are undocumented - I think I only found out about this one by lurking on the OSM IRC channel. It's a shame, because if you want a type of map, chances are someone's done it in OSM...

I'm a little late to this party, but you can see boundaries on a map (as originally requested) here: http://www.gedanken.org.uk/mapping/osm-boundaries/ To use, it's fairly straightforward: 1) Choose Administration Level 6. 2) Then choose the county you'd like displayed (called a 'boundary' on this page). 3) Then click Add (towards the bottom on the left) and the boundary will be drawn on the map. I think most of the boundary data is imported from OS or NPE sources. It may not be 100% accurate. Edit: I tried to show the Bristol/Somerset/Gloucestershire boundaries you mention, and I think you want the following: [*] Bristol [*] Somerset [*] North Somerset [*] Bath and North East Somerset [*] Gloucestershire [*] South Gloucestershire Unfortunately the site doesn't provide the facility to create a perma-link with just those boundaries. It can, however, provide a GPX file of the selected boundaries - I wonder if this could be useful to see if any caches fall within the boundary limits: perhaps something for gpsbabel?

May I once again dare to suggest - EVIDENCE = typical ? egh ? where ? and why you don't post on forums is maybe because you antagonise quite mild mannered forum members with your comments about your silly actions and reasons, that are bound to get slapped down ..... trip trap trip trap .......... get real and grow up .......... trip trap trip trap Good God, bad day at work pal? Badger, it's clear some people aren't reading your posts, or if they are don't quite understand. I'd ignore them - you argue well and I haven't seen any evidence of antagonism. Reviewer: is this a GMP only initiative, or is this being/has this been rolled out further?

Sounds fun! Here at the University they're (finally) trialling QR codes on coursework submissions - unfortunately, they don't have the correct equipment yet so some poor admin bod has to use an iPhone to scan each bit of work in individually and then upload the images to the network: not really the idea, but that's institutions for you!! Anyway, I was looking at QR codes a while back, and couldn't find anything which would just take in an image (be it online or a native app) for my Ubuntu netbook: has this changed since? Also, be prepared for all the people with "only works with a smartphone and I'll be darned if I'm caching with one of those...."

None of the replies given so far will give you accurate results. Spherical Trig (Haversine) formulas are adequate for very short distances, but since the Earth is not a sphere... Using UTM coordinates and Mr. Pythagoras will give you accurate distances but not across zone boundaries and not with good bearings. The good formulas with all the fudge factors are out there in the Googlesphere, or you can reverse engineer from this Javascript calculator. I just keep a copy of the page on my hard drive. There is also Compsys21 from the FAA, which is very powerful and a Royal PITA (the pain not the bread) to use. Its value is in being able to calculate intersections and allowing you to save sets of coordinates and calculations as text files which can be re-used by the program. That page looks to me like it uses Vincenty's algorithm to calculate distances. If you click on the link provided by Redwoods Mtn Biker, I posted a link in that thread to http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.html. That page actually displays the Javascript source for calculating distances using Haversine or Spherical Law of Cosines. Dig deeper, and it has a link to another page: http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong-vincenty.html <== the guy has implemented and shown the source code for the Vicenty formula. I have some scripts which calculate distances between lat/lon points. For my purposes, the Vincenty formula is WAY overkill, as at most I care about distances about 3km away. But as is said in the quoted text, if you're planning on performing calcs of lat/lon pairs over much greater distances, then the Vicenty formula is probably the best (apparently, up to 1mm accuracy!). Don't be put off by the do/while loop, unless speed is what you need....

At the moment, your comment is the last one on the RSS feed, which is a few hours behind. I guess the RSS feed is not generated on-the-fly, rather it is updated every few hours?

Oh. My. Goodness. This, exactly this - I may have to become a PM now... EDIT: Hmm, mis-read it. Almost there with the PQ on demand - one day the email will be history!!

Isn't there such a thing as a My Finds PQ? Not sure myself, as I'm not a PM...

Come on dude: PHOTO PHOTO PHOTO!! I'm a (student) engineer, and would love to see the innards of this thing - sounds totally overkill, but totally awesome!! If you can, why not?! As for your original question: there's always gonna be someone who doesn't approve cos it doesn't fit in with some sort of guideline. Personally, (and if I had a hide) I'd love for a robot to find it!! I'm assuming you'll be there as well anyway, rather than just letting $$$$ roam around freely in the countryside.....!! tl;dr sounds awesome, photos please!

FWIW, I don't think this postcode thing is a GC issue. GC uses the Google API to geolocate the postcodes (I assume, since having a postcode database all to themselves can't be cheap), so you'll have to put up with the shortcomings that that entails. I built a crappy web app some time ago using the Google Maps API, and always had to append "UK" at the end of any postcode to get it in the right location: after all, how does Google know you mean ST8 or whatever in the UK over the same postcode in Venezuela? Of course, YMMV.

Short answer: as far as I'm aware, there isn't. Long answer: apparently there is, and it's the same WAAS system. The reason I don't think there is: a) I've never had a lock here in Europe (but did in Canada), but others swear that they have and I did a project at Uni involving GNSS last year, and I'm sure I wrote that WAAS was US only... Apologies for not really answering...

There are loads of places from which you can download Garmin OSM maps. Have a look here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map...Garmin/Download. You'll have some difficulty finding one for *just* Toulouse - most are individual countries.

Frank, you emphasized MANY for a reason, and I asked for clarification. Officedepot.com doesn't seem to have a an "All" options for searching. They show a max of 60. Where did you see that option at? http://www.officedepot.com/a/browse/copy-a...white/N=5+4224/ -Raine Really? Does it matter? I thought the original question was - please may we have some more logs showing by default, and if possible, let us select the amount in 10's|50's|100's|All or whatever...

Ha, yup, that's basically the same as the Excel example I gave above - took me too many seconds to realise what all that 1/57.2958 was all about! pi/180 -> degrees to radians... Doh!)

What mapping software are you using on your netbook? (I run Ubuntu on the netbook) Mapping software: well, I use Navit for sat-nav capabilities, which uses the OSM maps. I've also been known to pre-cache an area in Google Earth and then track using that also. For Geocaching I wrote my own script which allows me to leave my netbook in my rucksack, and it speaks to my via my headphones. I communicate with the netbook via my Palm m500 PDA. It's all a bit of a hack, but I love a machine that can do 1000 things!!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/10x-GLOBALSAT-BLUETO...=item4a9f097000 I bought one of these off the same guy, though he doesn't have any singles on sale at the moment. I use it with my netbook and it works flawlessly - in fact, I have a more expensive (about 3 times the price) USB GPS dongle, and this bluetooth one works better than that. It picks up a signal much faster, and stays locked in poor signal conditions. It can be charged from your USB port, or any 5V outlet with a USB A/B cable. YMMV.

http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.html Not a tidy formula as such, but this webpage lets you enter your two points and it calculates distance and bearing. Further down the page it shows the algorithm it uses. One method is the spherical law of cosines, and you can do this in an Excel cell: =ACOS(SIN(lat1)*SIN(lat2)+COS(lat1)*COS(lat2)*COS(lon2-lon1))*6371 That's straight from the webpage, by the way - have a look for more geeky stuff! P.S. That's all in metric by the way...

Also, you may want to change the title (or get someone who can to change it) - your problem is not search by zip, its with additional caches showing up which you don't want. The zip code part works fine...

For the record, and so you don't feel alone, I like your ideas! There are a lot of things on this site which could do with some improving, and it's only with posts like yours that the brainstorming begins. gc.com is very 'comfortable' with what it has, though, and so are many, many cachers who have learned to live with the restrictions features. I think that the site and architecture behind it belongs back in 2002, but if you want to geocache, there's not many other places to turn to. I guess what I'm saying is that the ideas are good. Very good, and definitely belong on a website in 2010, especially for a game relying upon 21st century technology. Some people have filled the gaps with some absolutely amazing greasemonkey scripts, but don't expect the geocaching overlords to be implementing anything too hi-tech too soon: there's far to many bugs with the site currently (see other posts in this very forum!) to be developing anything new...

Actually, all you need is: PDA site:forums.Groundspeak.com Everyday's a schoolday!

They do this to ease load on the servers, apparently. Personally, I think it's rubbish (fix the problem is the answer!), but them's the rules. You need to search using Google using the site: keyword. So, if you want to search the forum for the word PDA you'd type into Google: PDA site:http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/ Note that there is NO space between the colon and the http:// bit. This should work. It's not a solution, but a workaround.

BBC link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s2wvh It's currently on air on BBC 4 (TV). Three part series.

This is very true. Well, at least about the countryside footpaths and public rights of way. For those caches in cities and along roads the data may prove more useful. As ever, YMMV.

Note that OpenStreetMaps (OSM) GB team (where those free Garmin maps are sourced from) are currently in heavy discussions amongst themselves about the best way to 'import' all this new OS data to enhance the OSM map. There are lots of areas in OSM which are much better in terms of detail than the OS maps. Then again, there are parts which are just blank, though they're getting fewer and fewer!! <my interpretation> Currently, the general consensus is that careful tracing over the OS StreetView raster data where no OSM data exists is OK for now as long as the tracer knows the area and is confident of the OS accuracy, but we're really holding out for the VectorMap District as this'll be far easier to import due to its vector nature (if indeed importing is going to occur). </my interpretation> Some interesting links for those bored and fancy a look: OSM OS OpenData Wiki: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ordnance_Survey_Opendata Complete OS StreetView Britain: http://os.openstreetmap.org/ Various visualisations and comparisons: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ordnanc..._visualisations So to the OP - use the OSM maps from the links provided in this thread. The maps will only get more awesome! Also, there is another thread about the OS maps over here: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=244981