wildlifewriter

Congratulations, Boo - and be sure to give the other two a nice crunchy bone as a reward. They deserve it!

Congratulations, Boo - and be sure to give the other two a nice crunchy bone as a reward. They deserve it!

Neither. This (according to Michael Green) is related to the method used to measure distance by Arabian camel drivers... "How far to Inshalah, O Son of the Desert?" "Twelve cigarettes, Effendi..." An advantage of this system is that it adjusts automatically to the event being timed. For instance: it takes me 4 cigs to write 500 words on any given topic; 2 cigs to read a forum post by "The Forester", 8 cigs for the taxi to arrive when they say it'll be here in ten minutes; 6 cigs to watch an episode of "Inspector Morse", and 0.004 cigs to change channels when a programme comes on featuring Mr. Jeremy Clarkson.

Not nessescelery. My understanding of these things is like that of a hamster contemplating a new and very complicated wheel, but here goes... When WAAS-mode is first enabled on your GPSr, it has to download a set of parameters from the EGNOS system, before being able to apply corrections. BUT... this data is only transmitted at intervals. If your receiver misses a segment, it has to wait for it to "come round again". (This is a gross over-simplification of what is really happening, but it's good enough for us hamsters.) It's very easy for a data string to be missed, first time round, because the IOR satellite is low on the horizon (from the UK) and its signal isn't very strong. The only time I tried the experiment for myself, it took between three and four cigarettes for my GPSr to make sense of the EGNOS signal.

Report sent by e-mail, 22:20hrs.

You didn't wait long enough.

I'd be very interested - if the software runs on PalmOS. I have a Garmin iQue 3600 with Cachemate, GrxView, and only a very few pictures of ladies with no clothes on.

Clearly, since investigating a murder is more important than geocaching, they'd probably have thought: "This isn't a clue, it's only another one of those b_____y geocaches" ..and moved on. That would be the sensible answer.

There are two issues, here... 1) Receiving the EGNOS signal. 2) Making use of it. On "mainstream" handhelds (Garmin/Magellan) the signal strength bars may indicate that a signal is present, but not necessarily that the signal is being used to apply differential corrections. Some units will display an upper-case "D" in or over the signal bars, when the latter is happening. The latest schedule for EGNOS to go live appears to be "Q1-2005" - that's now two years behind the original target...

Update: Paid-up members of the Bridge Bandits Fan Club will want to know that their log entry for GCKNNN has now appeared, It's in two instalments (!) and depicts a nightmare vision of one man's descent into loss, despair and finally, insanity. Soon to be a major motion picture: "The Bogfather" directed by Francis Ford Cortina; starring Dustin Hoffman as "Harry", Meryl Streep as "Edel", John Rhys-Davies as "Klaus23", Bernard Hill as "The Old Git" and Eddie Murphy as everyone else. (450 minutes)

'Er... just explain one more time, what "go commando" means...'

So they did. Oh,... the retrospective awards haven't been listed yet. And the winners are... Best Co-organizer Award:- Lance Ambu Heroic Journey Award:- The Bridge Bandits Funkiest Land Rover Award:- Barnabus Patience In The Face Of Intolerable Provocation Award:- Debbie & Moira (dead heat) Most Cache Sheets Recovered After They Were Blown Away By The Gale Award:- Jenny & Mark Forest By Torchlight Award:- Romur Steep Learning Curve Award :- Wuthered Dreadful Waterproofs Award:- Donnacha

And a (slightly belated) Well Done from me too... The Old Git

Yes indeed - and I'm sure they won't mind their real names being used, so: congrats to "Donnacha" (D. O'Nnacha), "The Rookie" (R. O'Okie) and "Klaus23" (V. O'Rsprungdurchtechnik). Those of you who have visited the Emerald Oil will know that this is some achievement, given the much lower cache density, damnable roads and generally unpredictable weather. Special Endurance Award goes to Jan, for being cooped up with those two for a whole week and (doubtless) not being able to get a word in edgeways...

Thanks to everyone who braved howling gale and lashing rain at Saturday's Sweep Down to the Sea event. Special thanks to Klaus23 and The Lads for their gift of very fine Cotes de Ventoux "Old Git" 2002. Nothing could have been more suitable, or more appreciated. Mine's a large one!

Stopping the papers blowing off my desk, when the window's open. (HINT: works better with batteries installed.)

The answer is (and this may startle the unwary) - it's for conducting polls with. Which in our case we have not got - and a dam' good thing too, IMHO. The button is a standard part of the kit, when you buy forum software like what this here is. A sysop can disable the polling feature when setting up the forum software, but the button remains. If it were to be removed, that would simply replace all the "Something's wrong - the poll button doesn't work" queries, with "The poll button has disappeared - does this mean the sky will fall on my head?" queries. So there you have it. Or rather, you don't...

Nice work and well done Without wishing to go OT, could someone list the OS sheets needed to cover the Alchemy series - for the benefit of us foreigners...

FOF: That is certainly the view that a reasonable person would take, in such circumstances. However, all the evidence suggests that you may not be dealing with a reasonable person in this particular case. That being so, it's probably better if you just close the topic, and have done with it. A pity that no-one could help you with the original query. Whatever it was.....

About forty seconds. Then another minute or so to remove a reference to lesbianism, which may have caused offence.

Aaaah... I see. If the cache is directed at special-interest groups, then one has to get creative when naming it. The more specific, the more difficult it becomes to choose a suitable cache title. For example: it could take weeks to name a cache which appeals to people who are abnormally obsessed with cycling AND Flemish baroque painters AND brass band music. (But you could just enter: "The Van Dyck Black Dyke Bike Hike" and leave it at that...)

Sensible answer, now... 1) Most of the "regular forum hounds" are, almost by definition, keen cachers. If your new cache appears in our radius of operation, we will know about it, probably long before the automatic notifications go out. 2) If your cache has some unique feature or special virtue, refer to it in the cache description. Most people read the listings carefully before seeking a cache although there are, admittedly, exceptions. 3) If this is the first one you've placed, an urge to tell everyone and anyone about it by any means available, is natural. (This is the same reason that people insist on showing photos of vile and mis-shapen infants round the office.) You'll get over it. 4) But if your new cache DOES turn out to be the greatest piece of planning, placement, concealment and descriptive HTML writing that ever saw light of day filtering through beech leaves - it will soon become justly famous, anyway, and you won't have needed to "advertise" it.

My point, exactly.

If you leave out one certain person, and e-mail the rest of us, you'll probably be all right.

10 reasons why Golf is LIKE Geocaching... 1) The worse you are at it, the more goes you get. 2) The majority of people who take part, don't understand the rules. 3) You sometimes get a free drop. 4) A lot of time is spent searching for something that should be there, you just can't find it. 5) There are rabbits all over the place. 6) A lot of drinking and lying is involved, afterwards. 7) Midges. 8) Nettles. 9) Tim Brooke-Taylor. 10) Meaningless lists...