tiiiim
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Posts posted by tiiiim
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typing the postcode into maps.google.com does not bring back any results. nada. zilch etc
I do have a link on the LHS to set default location whicj I assume I have never done. Would you have done this tiiiim? If so, this could as you suspect, weigh googles answers in your favour.
I tried entering BT2 8GB UK as a location and that brings back nothing either.
My maps page may be 'up the left'.
I will have to experiment later, but atleast I can search now. Thanks again.
Hmmm, weird: I used the 'Set default location' in Google Maps to set my location to the USA. I then typed in my UK postcode and it still took my straight to my proper address in the UK!! It wouldn't be using geo-IP location information over what the user has expressly set as their default?
I then typed in your postcode using the same default location in the USA, and it returned this:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source...mp;t=h&z=16
which is in the centre of Belfast, as with the Geocaching search.
No idea why your results are different, but my theory's obviously wrong! Anyway, glad to help you find a work-around! I hope it stays working for a while...!
Google maps shows my location exactly, I don't think its an IP thing, as when I buy my lottery ticket online I always get a page which says "We think you are outside the UK" even though I'm in deepest, darkest Suffolk.
I see their point...
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typing the postcode into maps.google.com does not bring back any results. nada. zilch etc
I do have a link on the LHS to set default location whicj I assume I have never done. Would you have done this tiiiim? If so, this could as you suspect, weigh googles answers in your favour.
I tried entering BT2 8GB UK as a location and that brings back nothing either.
My maps page may be 'up the left'.
I will have to experiment later, but atleast I can search now. Thanks again.
Hmmm, weird: I used the 'Set default location' in Google Maps to set my location to the USA. I then typed in my UK postcode and it still took my straight to my proper address in the UK!! It wouldn't be using geo-IP location information over what the user has expressly set as their default?
I then typed in your postcode using the same default location in the USA, and it returned this:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source...mp;t=h&z=16
which is in the centre of Belfast, as with the Geocaching search.
No idea why your results are different, but my theory's obviously wrong! Anyway, glad to help you find a work-around! I hope it stays working for a while...!
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I wonder if GC.com is using the Google API to geo-locate the searches. If so, then the behaviour everyone is seeing is:
- As expected. The API will throw back its first guess at your location from anywhere in the world. UK postcodes are but a small set of the data the Google machines have in their database - they'll just return whatever matches your search criteria first, and there could be other places in the world with BT in the name, whether it be postcodes or the local theme park...
- The GC staff have no control over what the API spits back, so can't do much about it. Well, I guess GC could see what you've set as your home location and tag the country code onto the end of searches, but that depends upon everyone correctly setting their preferences.
When going to maps.google.com (i.e. global Google) and typing in your postcode only, does it work? It does for me, but I presume that Google does some geo-IP matching to see what country you're in, then return results relevant to that country. Using the API through the search box on GC.com, Google has no idea what country you're in (and remember the servers are in the US, so the queries to Google will come from the US, not the UK) and will return results which it thinks are relevant.
Obviously, this is all conjecture. I'm probably wrong.
- As expected. The API will throw back its first guess at your location from anywhere in the world. UK postcodes are but a small set of the data the Google machines have in their database - they'll just return whatever matches your search criteria first, and there could be other places in the world with BT in the name, whether it be postcodes or the local theme park...
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Using the search on the Geocaching home page with your exact post code (including spaces) and the word UK afterwards seems to work.
i.e.: BT2 8GB UK. That got me caches in Belfast. (Adding the relevant country after any description such as postcode, town etc usually takes you to the place you expect...)
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I would suggest that you take the time, to think why a few of your customers find it nescacary to violate their EULA/TOU.
I do think you can boil it down to very few reasons. If you could make a few changes, I'll bet you that you could remove 90%, if not all, of the need for spidering and other abuse of gs's site:
- include the same number of logs in a PQ, as in a directly downloaded GPXfile for a cache
- When defining a PQ, add the functionality to get (recently ?) archived geocaches
- Laslty I would suggest that requesting a GPX-file on ones own caches, should give you *all* logs
Why spider for GPX-files, if you can get the same in a PQ ?
Why spider for GPX-files on archived caches, if you can get it with a PQ ?
In stead of starting a battle against (potentially) millions of imaginative abusers, why not just remove the need to become an abuser ? Then you would not accidently harm legitimate customers, and if there is no need to abuse, the number of abusers would be very limited.
I'll bet you that buying CPU-power and bandwidth is very much cheaper in the long run (hence eliminating most of the need for the battle), then paying developers and sysadm's for fighting a never ending battle.
You staff (that is doing a very good job, btw), could then use time on developing nice-to-haves, instead of fighting abusers hiding between happy customers. In the end your employees would be more happy as well, when they can dedicate their time on making things that makes customers happy.
Just some thoughts from my keyboard...
Ys
Thomas
You know this entire post really comes off as a threat.
Give it me or else!! - is how I read it.
I'm sorry if thats how it sounds, because it was definately not how it was intended.
I think the users 'demanding' these features are VERY few and far between. Why can't you just live with the site as presented. Seems like a novel idea.
To clarify... I dont need these changes, I'm perfectly happy with the functionality as is. Actually I still haven't seen the warning-page in question.
My point was that if you rethink using time to battle abusers, and instead use the same resources in changing the site in a way, so the abusers don't have any reason to abuse, you could use the same resources in a constructive way instead.
I.e. instead of trying to battle abusers (and harming some lgitimate users in the fight), why not just remove the reason for abusing ?
I did not state that we should get 20 logs/cache in a PQ, just that you should get the same number in a directly dl'ed GPX, as you get in a PQ. That could be 10 instead or even just 5 last logs in a GPX and PQ. The main thing is that you remove the reason to spider for GPX-files, when you can get the same data in a PQ.
I am sorry for the legit users seeing issues but for the 'bad guys' suddenly having issues - I have no pity.
(sorry for going AOL) me2.
But I do have pity on the legit users, getting slapped on their hands, because it has been decided to battle abusers instead of just removing their reasons to abuse.
Lastly I want to notice that the site has been slow the last ~2 days. But I dont know if its the cables from Europe or gs's servers sweating due to some mean abusers.
Ys
Thomas
For what it's worth, tcorell, I couldn't agree more with you. Spend time and money upgrading the obviously broken system, instead of spending more and more time and money patching it up. Last time I said this though I was politely told to go away cos people didn't wanna pay more for a better/working service...
- include the same number of logs in a PQ, as in a directly downloaded GPXfile for a cache
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Your script information is sliding right by my brain. For example if I wanted to batch 2 waypoints I enter "mile 10.kml,gravel pit.kml
Is this even close?
GPSBabel cannot do batch processing the way you want it to (at least, the way I think you want it to!). If you give it 4 files as an input, it will spit out ONE resultant gpx (or whatever) file, which will be an amalgamation of all the 4 files. It will not produce 4 separate files.
The suggestion was to script your own loop in whatever coding language you want, and within each loop you pass gpsbabel your file and make it convert to whatever you want, then the next loop you do the same and so on until you have processed all your files. If you've never scripted before then yeah, it's not that easy!!
(Apologies if this is not what you meant, and just ignore this post!
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I've just had a look at the motorway junction near home and the map about three years out of date.
That's interesting. From the information supplied by OS (see the PDF http://opendata.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/docs/help.pdf) all of their data gets updated at least once a year, with some up to four times a year. Also, I heard on the BBC 4 series that they've been running (On The Map, if anyone's interested http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rd8z5) that they add up to 5000 updates per day - or did I hear that wrong?
Is that junction correct in Google Maps? And in OpenStreetMap? And what type of OS data were you looking at?
Updated once a year???
I have moved house since, but around 10 years ago I got a vist from an OS surveyor. She wanted to count my trees, to see if I had a copse, or a wood or a forest, and to check my boundries, I asked "Why". She said "We do this roughly every 25 years"
Well, that's what it says in the PDF. (The correct link, by the way, is http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/.../docs/help.pdf)
Perhaps I should qualify this. The PDF mentions "Update Cycle" for each OpenData product (and I'm only talking about the 10 OpenData products here, nothing else). Also, I was slightly wrong - one of the products (Landform) is unmaintained. Other than that, it's every year or better. Now the issue is: what does "Update Cycle" actually mean...
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Google Earth will load a GPX file straight from your GPS, either drag it onto the google screen, or use the "open files" dialogue and change the file type to all, or gpx.
When I found this out (not that long ago) it blew my mind!
It also saddened me: I pride myself in a) knowing about all the features to a program and b ) testing a program to the limits, so why I never just tried to open a gpx file in GE I'll never know.
I'll just put it down to a very new feature update..... 
</offtopic>
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I've just had a look at the motorway junction near home and the map about three years out of date.
That's interesting. From the information supplied by OS (see the PDF http://opendata.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/docs/help.pdf) all of their data gets updated at least once a year, with some up to four times a year. Also, I heard on the BBC 4 series that they've been running (On The Map, if anyone's interested http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rd8z5) that they add up to 5000 updates per day - or did I hear that wrong?
Is that junction correct in Google Maps? And in OpenStreetMap? And what type of OS data were you looking at?
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That's great - and they look really hot in Vector, but they still don't really show stuff useful to cachers - Bridleways, Footpaths and so on.
However, if you want to look at "Important Buildings" and "Railway Stations" then these are just the job.
I think Edgemaster is correct though, it appears the jewel in the OS' crown won't get released any time soon.
In this day of Technological openness though, that the Government didn't do this as most companies do - for personal use it's free and fine, but for business use you have to pay for it.
It seems to me that the major money players (eg. Architects, planners and the like) are going to get all the things they need free and the regular people like me and you are going to have to continue to pay through the nose for it.
The OS is unique in that there are few countries in the world who map their countries down to such a fine level - for instance, in the US, the USGS don't produce maps lower than 1:24k and the quality of even that is variable.
No doubt this is going to rumble on for some time. Apparently, the whole "Opendata" thing has been bubbling since 2003.
You're all right, of course: for geocachers this release doesn't really bring much to the table, especially those who go out onto the countryside footpaths and bridleways. For those caches on or near a street or in cities and towns, however, OS StreetView and the VectorDistrict stuff has a blinding amount of detail - use it as you see fit, I guess!
The main advantage is that now the data can be used to fill in the missing roads and names etc on OpenStreetMap and we can concentrate on filling in the footpaths/bridleways etc etc....
But yeah, for geocachers: as you were.
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Howdy!
I am looking to get cachemate for a palmpilot that I am looking to get for those overseas roadtrips and after solving one question (Cachemate to Garmin waypoint transfers are a go!) I have another.
In cachemate is it possible to separate my cachelistings (like different pocket queries) or do they all come in as a block? I dont have cachemate yet and I was just wondering if this was doable as I like to stay organised. Know what I mean?
Depending on the internal memory of the PDA, you have the ability to have more than one database in memory. For example, if you build 5 pocket queries and import them into GSAK, you can then export them as individual databases into the PDA as long as when you export them you give the exported csv file a unique name.
If I remember, you may have to go into Cachemate and create the databases with their unique name prior to importing the csv file.
That's the way I'm doing it - create a new, unique database first within Cachemate, then import your converted GPX file from your PC (it should be in .pdb format...). When you re-start Cachemate on the PDA it will recognise your converted GPX file and ask what database you'd like to store it in - just choose the new one you just made...
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What complaints do you have with the geocaching.com Google Map?
- I don't want the map to refresh as I'm panning around.
...snip...
If everyone used this script, we could probably reduce server load for GC.com by quite a bit due to this feature alone! Maybe, perhaps, potentially...
- I don't want the map to refresh as I'm panning around.
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It's perfectly OK to find a cache, even a PMO cache. Thanks to the advent of no additional logging requirments you can find the cache and even log it. Even if the cache says "NO LOGGING BY NON PREMIMUM MEMBERS" You can log it by the rules of this site.
Your good to go.
To further this, I as a non-premium member wouldn't even be able to see that the cache page says "NO LOGGING BY NON PREMIUM MEMBERS" so it'd have been difficult to tell whether the CO was OK with me logging or not before ALR's were stripped...
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I saw a post the other day that some uses Perfect Mark to hide. I got it on my iphone (the only thing I use for geocaching).
I hid my first cache today near my house and used perfect mark to get the center coords, listed as
30.131771 n
-95.489525 w
but ALAS i have no idea what that means or how to put it in the form you submit for a hide.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
You may want to try the app MotionX-GPS - this can display your coordinates in a variety of formats and may be easier to use than Perfect Mark. Quite frankly, -95.48925 w should strictly mean 95.48925 degrees east so I'm not sure Perfect Mark sounds all that good!
Be warned that iPhones have terrible accuracy. They might be OK to hunt caches, but never use them to obtain coords for a hide. It will always be wrong. You need a real GPS to hide caches.
This is wrong. An iPhone does have a real GPS chip. It does suffer from slower startup times and wandering positions, but no more than a standard GPSr in my personal experience. So to say it will always be wrong is incorrect, although I guess all GPS devices are 'wrong' to some degree of accuracy!
Oh, and one more thing... Google maps are usually off by a bit. Never use a Google map to figure out if the waypoint is in the right place. It will give you the right neighborhood, but that's about it.
And this is also misleading. ALL coordinates I've ever put into Google Maps (GM) and Google Earth (GE) which I've taken off my GPSr have given me the correct location to a within a few feet - i.e. nothing less accurate than a GPSr. However, IT IS recommended not to hide caches using only GM or GE, as it is known that some satellite tiles are not correctly located - use it as a second check.
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To summarise for those who might still be confused:
1) First, write your log and submit it.
2a) Once submitted you then have the choice of uploading photos to the log there and then or...
2b) You can edit your log at a later date and attach photos then.
I also found it confusing at first that I couldn't specify an image to upload whilst writing the log, but soon learned that it's gotta be done after submission.
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I've read through this entire train-wreck, and all I got was this:
1) Bacon flavoured beer.
2) Something about a pony biting a donut, or a donut biting a pony, or something.
3) Oh yeah, and no-one agrees on religion. News at 11...
A donut biting a pony would be something to see...
... but only if it were made of bacon.
The pony or the donut? I'm getting SO confused.
Technically, a bacon pony is a large pig, no?
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I've read through this entire train-wreck, and all I got was this:
1) Bacon flavoured beer.
2) Something about a pony biting a donut, or a donut biting a pony, or something.
3) Oh yeah, and no-one agrees on religion. News at 11...
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In France, the motorway mayhem series is called "Autostop Series".
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What type of file is your 'GPS track'?
If it's GPX it'd be pretty easy to work out the elevation gain, as each saved point should have an <ele> and </ele> tag, which shows the elevation for that particular point.
Whether there's a program which gives you just the elevation gain I don't know, but I could quickly knock up a script on my Linux box and tell you your elevation gain if you want...
EDIT: Alternatively, use something to convert the GPX file into a comma-separated value file (CSV) and import that into Excel. Then you can use the min() and max() functions to work out your elevation gain (or any other function you fancy!)
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I need some assistance.
I have a set of coordinates I was given:
+39° 46' 35.76", -121° 44' 29.93"
How do I translate that into something my GPS understands:
(xx.xx.xxx, xxx.xx.xxx)
Thanks!!
There's loads of calculators available on Google.
I'm slightly confused by your GPSr coordinate format: is that DD MM.mm or something completely different? If it is DD MM.mm then just do the following:
1) Divide the seconds (those with a " after the number) for each coordinate by 60.
2) Add this number to the minutes of each coordinate (those with a ' after the number).
3) There you have DD MM.mm.
[ 4) If required, the + is either North or East, whilst the - is either South or West ]
Or perhaps I'm missing the point?
EDIT: Just seen that you actually have 1000's of finds - has something messed up on your GPSr? Something doesn't quite add up here...!!
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I've been having some fun with your post, obviously, but seriously... I can't even imagine how or why you even NOTICED that correction much less why it would bother you enough to raise an eyebrow... and yet you actually took the time to not only start a thread about it, but to maintain that thread?!?I hardly put this is the same boat as major site changes that bring the site to its knees. You are just pulling our legs, aren't you?
About it being as bad as some of the PQ issues? Yeah, I'm not being serious about that.
But I am being serious about it not being mentioned anywhere. One line in the forum guidelines is not much to ask for. Now that I know about it I can work around it: groudspeak. I just wish it wouldn't mess with stuff in code blocks.
Like... why?
The OP probably wrote some code within the code blocks, and due to the auto-formatting on these forums it changed the way Groundspeak was written. As most code languages are case-sensitive, Groundspeak with a capital G is not the same as Groundspeak with a lower-case G, so it fluffs up the script/programme which was written. When writing code for another forum user - say, someone wanted help with a particular script for Greasemonkey or something - and the script includes the variable Groundspeak in lower-case, the user being helped will just copy-paste the code with the incorrect case and won't have a running script: a nightmare for the developer.
Of course, the solution is not to include a variable or word called "Groundspeak" within your script. Tricky, though, when the GPX schema uses <Groundspeak:bla> (in lower-case, obviously)....
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Fascinating topic, especially for a non-premium member.
Am I getting this right? The hypothetical plan is to cache PQ data on a second server/database. This data will be updated every XX minutes. As a result, PQ data may be a bit old when generated (by XX minutes + YY minutes for everything else such as receiving email, driving etc).
What data would be cached? All the information for the cache? This seems like a lot! Why not have some cache attributes (such as active/inactive or change of coords) which are 'high priority', and when changed by the owner they update the PQ cache immediately? Obviously, the PQ cache would still be update every XX minutes as well.
The problem then is to define the high priority attributes...
Just thinking!
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Steady on Rest of the World - USA only!
Gotta start somewhere though, I guess.
(If you're in the UK, loads of cycle trails on OpenStreetMaps but unfortunately you can't get directions with OSM. Well, not easily anyway
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I'll just put it down to a very new feature update..... 
geocaching.com API?
in Website
Posted
The one thing you can do is show your Stat Bar on your personal page. Go to "Your Profile", and it's on the right hand side. Right click and select "Copy Image Location", and use that within the src attribute of an <img /> tag. As far as I'm aware, this is allowed. Obviously, it only shows how many finds and hides you have, no individual stats...