Lovejoy and Tinker

And, a cheap GPS will not give you the paperless functionality of the cheapest smartphone. I wouldn't mind betting you can get a second hand smartphone (Android or WinMo especially) or a Pocket PC capable of running caching software and memory maps for less money than a GPS such as the Oregon. So the non GPS option may just be the cheaper one. Our Etrex Legend cost around £150 which is not a small sum and yet for full day caching trips taking in multis and wherigos we would be lost without the added functionality of the ppc.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that a dedicated GPS designed for outdoor use is NOT better than a phone for pointing you toward the cache - for a whole number of well rehearsed reasons including ruggedness, battery life, accuracy etc. (Not so sure that's a reason to leave a phone in the car though, I always like to have mine to hand for PAF or in a worst case scenario to call for help, but there you go, that's just me) However a phone can come into it's own in a number of ways and can be a handy tool to take along apart from its obvious function of being a telephone. We don't have a fancy expensive paperless GPS but I do have a windows mobile phone, which I had before we started caching. So with a few bits of software I can turn my phone into a paperless GPS and bring up full cache details, hints, previous logs, photos (including spoilers) and calculations for multis. On top of that, with memory map loaded I have all the OS maps I'll ever need right there in my hand, with a little red circle showing me where on the map I am. Makes finding footpaths a whole lot easier. So I don't think it's right to just dismiss the carrying of a smart phone as being unnecessary and something to be kept safely tucked away in the base of a back pack or left in the car in case it gets damaged while you use a proper GPS instead. The OP question was (I assume on the basis that they don't have a dedicated GPS) how to protect phones from the wet, not whether (s)he should replace it with a GPS.

I'm sure the rain won't cause problems on the screen through a bag. Does the screen still respond to finger touches through the bag. (I think the 4 has a capacitive touch screen doesn't it?)

I put the phone (HTC HD2) away when it's raining and just use the Garmin. The phone is mainly used to run memory map and look up cache details for multis, hints, previous logs etc so it is not our main 'searching' device. And it's not even a simple question of protecting it in a case because with these new fangled capacitive screens, water droplets will act as finger clicks and cause chaos on the screen. It's one of the disadvantages of using phones for caching. There are others but as I'm sure you have found out there are benefits too.

Yep, that's the menu options they should have put there in the first place. Thank you, nice work

You have GreaseMonkey scripts? Turn them off. That may or may not help. I have Greasemonkey scripts on and I log on fine with Firefox. The GC Tidy script causes the 'log a cache' box to pop up then disappear again. There may be others but that's the one that caused the same problem for me this morning. All other scripts back on and it works fine now (even though many of the scripts don't do anything anymore ).

That's how it comes across to me - compels my eye to look at it - motion does that. It drives me crazy. It's great that someone in Germany or Australia logged a cache, but what difference does it make? I took a look at that page for the first time in ages today just to see what people are talking about. I can't see much on that page which a regular user would want to access regularly as the vast majority of the page is taken up by a huge blue box linking to a video of what caching is all about. There are the 4 'news' links on the right but they don't seem desperately up to the minute. I have my bookmark set to the /my page as that's where all the important stuff to me is, and all the links I need are there. Just don't see the need to have the main home page open on the screen other than for a quick check now and then.

Just to put the other side of the argument, I actually quite like this new feature. Don't use this home page as my gc.com landing page so it doesn't get in the way, and it's actually quite interesting to randomly dip into one of the scrolling activity markers and have a quick read about fellow cachers and caches around the world. Would I want it to be local? No not really Local caches I am interested in are on my watch list. Local events and newly published caches are on my notifications and in the weekly GS newsletter. People I know are on my friends list. Events let you keep up with what is going on locally as does meeting people out and about. So having this little window on the world of caching beyond our doorstep, and involving places, caches and people we would otherwise know nothing about, is an interesting addition. I don't think it's meant as a news feed that will be compelling reading for everyone.

Have you checked the dates on your 4 new cache logs? A couple of us have been caught out this morning by changing 5/5/11 to 4/5/11 to log yesterday's finds. But this logs the find as being 5th APRIL and hence the found it log on the geocaches list drops down so they are not at the top of the list (which is sorted in date order) See Happy Humprey's new thread: HERE

Thanks for finding the place to change the format, I have changed mine now after being caught out just like you were this morning. I actually prefer having the month name as there are so many US based sites I visit and so many different ways they present the date, it's nice to have the month name. That way there is no ambiguity, no stopping to think "Which site am I on and what format is this" and no clicking on one of the drop downs to see if it goes up to 31 or 12 to determine which is the month and which the day.

After playing around for a couple of hours I am getting to like the new site and layout. The width thing is not a problem for me as I use a 10" netbook all the time and the page fits perfectly - if it stops having to scroll sideways on certain cache pages then that's a plus. Would be nice to find a happy solution for those with bigger screens but please don't fix the width too wide or those of us on small laptops will be forever scrolling sideways. I can understand how frustrating it must be to be looking at a narrow strip down the centre of a lovely big screen so there must be a solution for that. I like the compact drop down menus across the top of the page that free up the left hand column, that's loads better. Hopefully the maps will get sorted very soon, and the script writers can get the broken firefox scripts back up and running (especially the map ones and the ones that move the Personal Notes section and hide the disclaimer bar). Other than that I think once the shock of "Arrgghh it's different" is gotten over there are some genuine positives in the new site design.

I had exactly the same problem earlier and posted about it but then edited my post because I found out what was wrong: The logs had been entered as 4th APRIL in stead of May. Don't know if they've changed the date format in the log entry box and in my half asleep state I went into autopilot or if I just had a senior moment. But if it happened to you too perhaps something has changed.

Ignore me, sorry, problem was with log dates, all sorted now, sorry

Which is the nearest railway station or bus stop to http://coord.info/GC2GAVP ? Click on "Google maps" Zoom in. Oh look! Six bus stops! Click on one it tells you the buses, their times, and the site to get further info. Edit the search at the top to: rail station near N 55° 58.271 W 003° 37.599 (GC2GAVP) Linlithgow Rail Station 1.2E I agree with you Rutson, the information in a lot of cases is easy to access and I therefore wouldn't argue that cache owners should spell it out on every cache page as some are doing. I was perhaps being a little mischievous in highlighting one of the poster's caches which did not provide public transport info but did detail car parking info. This after they had said that assuming everyone drove when constructing a cache page was 'lazy' and that people should include nearest bus stop and train station info in their descriptions. By the way, can I just say thanks for your GSAK Memory Map macro - invaluable, thank you for sharing it.

I agree. For us our caching day starts when we start walking and finding footpaths, not driving round and round country lanes in an area we don't know all that well trying to find somewhere to park the van while burning up diesel. Driving round and round is frustrating (not to say expensive), especially on the single track roads round here where if you need to turn round you sometimes have to drive a mile before you find a muddy gateway to turn the van. In the end you find a space at the roadside where if you park right up against a hedge you can just about get away with not blocking any access gates or the road itself. Then 2 miles round the walk you find a little picnic area with plenty of parking.

Excellent choice of theme for May, fits nicely with a photo I took at Cotehele Quay while completing the Windrush Century Celebration multi this afternoon.

One way is to go back to the cache page, scroll down to your log and there are two links below your text. One is to edit the log, the other is to "Upload an image to this log". You can also add an image from the "View / Edit Logs / Images" link Hope that helps haha beaten to it

Which is the nearest railway station or bus stop to http://coord.info/GC2GAVP ? I know from the cache description that I can park my car at the leisure centre but would I know how to get there by bus or train if I was on holiday in the area? Some of Birdman's caches would be near impossible by public transport - mainly because there is little of it round these parts. And even if you did know where the nearest bus stop was, chances are that a bus only stops there once a day, so while you might get there, getting back could be an issue. I do take your point about saying if there is a bus stop reasonably close, but that still leaves a degree of research on the part of the non driving cacher to work out if it is doable, especially in a rural area. Having a google map to hand with road names etc is usually enough I would have thought to take to the various bus and train websites to see if there is a service.

Just going through the possibilities, is it possible for a mobile device to post a log on an unpublished cache via an error in the cache code on a field note? Trying to think of a way a log can be submitted without having to open the actual cache page.

...and the 5 minutes quoted above isn't an exageration. I submitted our new one last night and it was literally published (by Lindinis) within 5 minutes. Excellent service, don't know how they do it. Thanks all reviewers for your dedication, we wouldn't have a game without you.

Might stop all those pointless micros But seriously, if just question 1 could be answered 'yes' that would do for me. Or question 4. Or 3. Or even 2 I suppose. So yes, great idea.

You mean a , a , grrrr, a . Oh, I know what you mean. Also know what you mean about the 'easy peasy lemon squeezy' logs. Don't think they are meant to be mocking to previous or future cachers but I agree they are annoying when you're in a bad mood after a DNF. They're annoying on our caches too because actually we didn't really set out to make our caches difficult, or devious, or clever. They are where they are to take people to nice places with nice views or something interesting nearby. When someone writes "quick easy find" I can't help thinking to myself "It wasn't meant to be difficult, did you even notice the view or your surroundings? Was the only thing you got from my cache a sense of misplaced accomplishment that you found it 'quickly'?" But that's just when I am in a mean mood. I think the truth is some people are not great writers and often struggle for something to say about their adventures, so will use "quick easy find" and "tftc" to pad things out a bit without really thinking how it might be misinterpreted. No point in getting too worried about what people write, these days I'm grateful if it isn't just a dot or an empty log

If someone doesn't feel confident that they can find a good spot, construct a good cache, or (most importantly) comit to maintaining their cache once it's out there, then I would rather they didn't hide one. It seems to be (in our area at least) that there are prolific, consistently good hiders who enjoy finding the locations, constructing caches & cache pages and looking after them. They are good at it and we really appreciate their efforts. There are also those who get into the game and feel the need to put out caches straight away to 'pay something back'. These tend to be (though not exlusively) uninteresting hides which go missing after a few weeks and sit disabled until finally archived. Then there are folks like us who just put out what we feel comfident we can maintain - we only get one day off a week, and call us selfish, but we'd rather spend that day finding new places and being out with friends rather than running round replacing logs and checking out caches with DNFs on them. I still have over 2000 caches to find within a 40 mile radius of my home, on top of the nearly 1000 we've found to date. So we're not reaching crisis point yet But in areas where there are a small number of caches and large areas not populated at all, what you need are some cachers with good hiding skills and commitment, not just everyone putting caches out from a sense of responsibility and because they think they ought to - in my opinion.

What's the macro called? (There are a few to do with archived caches) I use FindArchived.gsk which allows you to specify a number of days prior that the last set of PQs were imported. I just found this useful as my PQs come in over several days to make up the full set so I can go back to the right day to look for unupdated(?) ones. I'm sure there are other ways of doing it but this works for me so I have stuck with it.

All new caches are normally published in the period between you posting a question on the forum and someone replying to it