jeremyp

I didn't mean to reawaken the feud with my Stonehenge example. I was just trying to point out the problem with the "all man made objects are litter" argument in a light hearted way (must remember the smiley in future). Just to make things worse, I'll point out that the entire British countryside is a man made object. ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

quote:Originally posted by The Good Shepherds:To some people, any man made object placed in the countryside is litter. By that definition, Stone Henge is litter. ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

My definition of litter: "The person who put it there was trying to get rid of it". ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

I think Cluedo fits your description. One of my caches involves trigpoints instead of caches as the "waypoints". ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

quote:Originally posted by Fil1976:Maybe the bear had watched far too many A-Team episodes and was unfortunately locked away in a box that had lots of useful apparatus. In attempting to create a giant cutting machine with which to cut his way through tupperware, he unfortunately cut his head off. Thats my explanation anyway. It doesn't work unfortuntely. The A Team may have been able to make a variety of impressive (if not ever lethal) weapons out of whatever was lying about, but they always had an oxy-acetelyne cutter and a welding torch, both of which must surely be inappropriate cache contents. ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

quote:Originally posted by Kouros:Pid, I seem to recall that spamming generally refers to any unsolicited commercial posting (either email, forum post, or otherwise) on the 'net. Expand that from commercial to "unwanted". Spamming originally meant the e-mail equivalent of junk snail mail. For those interested, the origin of the term is the Monty Python Spam sketch. However, its meaning has now evolved slightly to include any inappropriate messages/postings e.g. "please stop spamming the forums with new cache adverts" ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

quote:Originally posted by Squid Tempest: It's not just places of archeological interest that bother me - it's all of the countryside. I can see we're not getting very far on this, I'll just say one more thing: all human activity in the country is potentially damaging - including just walking through it. You have to look at each individual activity in order to determine whether the damage is sustainable. Where we differ is in which side of the line geocaching is on. Further, geocaching is not going to spoil your enjoyment of the countryside. Geocaches are always hidden out of view so the casual walker will have no idea that they are there. In fact there is a movement called "Cache in, Trash out" which might actually improve your enjoyment by reducing normal litter in cache areas. ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

quote:Originally posted by Squid Tempest:I think your crossword analogy is quite apt. I don't. If you fill in a crossword, that's it as far as that particular paper is concerned, you have "destroyed the environment". If somebody hides a geocache, the environment can be restored by simply removing it again (excepting that they put it somewhere exceptionally stupid e.g. you hide it in the fabric of an ancient monument such that damage has to be done to retrieve it). wrt your other point. Simply walking across a piece of ground does environmental damage. Either we stop all access to nice places that might have archaelogical interest or we strike a reasonable balance. IMHO geocaching is on the right side of reasonable. ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

I don't mean to criticise the content of the site. It was just spoilt for me by the hundreds of pop-ups that appeared. One of the ones I closed by reflex before reading it properly was the "select your language" one which didn't help me much due to my shameful inability to read French well enough. ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

After the fourth pop-up box came up I closed the window.... ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

quote:Originally posted by nigelswift:It’s places like, for instance, the open downland perhaps a mile from Avebury that could be problematical. It might not look like anything at all, but it’s part of the original sacred landscape and if you put a cache there then unless you’re prepared to personally supervise every searcher there’s the danger that someone might do something they shouldn’t. Unfortunately, your argument applies to everyone, not just geocachers. Unless you close off the land completely, you will get "wear and tear" caused by people and animals (domestic and wild). The addition of a geocache to a footpath currently only increases the traffic along it by about one or two people per week in most cases (look at the logs to see how often they are visited). I know this argument only works while geocaching is a tiny minority activity, but the fact is that it is . I accept that the question will certainly have to be revisited if the geocaching numbers increase significantly. I generally sympathise with the idea of preserving archaeological monuments, but a balance has to be found between the extremes of preserving the whole country in aspic and levelling all of our heritage. I don't believe that the preservation of every single archaelogical site outweighs the recreational enjoyment of the people who are alive today. ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

Overfilling the box can be a problem too. I've done several caches where the box was so full of stuff that the lid was almost impossible to get back on in a sealed way. ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

I can't remember doing a single cache which was hidden in a real Tuppaware container (i.e. made by the company called Tuppaware that does the parties). Mostly they seem to be hidden in Tesco's equivalent. In fact, maybe that's why the parties are stopping. ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

I think we need to calm down and be reasonable about this. If we take Avebury as an example, there are two caches near there. The Avebury cache itself is virtual (i.e. there is no physical object at the location) and the West Kennet Long Barrow cache is a micro i.e. very small container. Even if there was a full-sized physical cache in the middle of Avebury stone circle, it could not possibly have any environmental impact that would be noticeable amongst the effects of the general tourist trade. For those people who have never been there, there is a village in the middle of the circle (yes, it's that big) and a road running through it. There is also a large car and coach park next door and on a bad day *thousands* of tourists swarming all over it. Probably more people visit it every day than there are geocachers in this country. That's not to say that caches can be put anywhere. Exercising a certain amount of common sense is definitely a good idea. "Under the third sarsen stone from the left at Stone Henge" would be a particularly worrying clue, for example. Until ancient monuments are totally fenced off, erosion from tourists/walkers/pagans/Time Team are infinitely more serious problems than geocaches (when they are fenced off it breaches geocaching rules to place a cache there anyway). ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

quote:I'm not going to give my opinion, i'll only end up offending someone LoL I'm really offended that you feel the need to stay on the fence ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

quote:Originally posted by The Northumbrian: This seems to be the root of my hate mail as I did find both of the caches mentioned Did you write in your log "toppled over a few funny looking upright stones while I was there"? If I'd had the mail I might have replied with an informative e-mail about what geocaching is about and enquired why he felt personal abuse was an appropriate reaction. The more juvenile response would be to sign him up to receive spam from lots of commercial web sites ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

quote:Originally posted by Dan Wilson:Threats and swearing are never called for, a simple email to myself stating the rules of their site would have sorted this in seconds flat. Why do people need to be so agressive? What did you do wrong? You misunderstood the purpose of their site (perhaps some sort of statement of purpose on the index page would have reduced the confusion). The appropriate action on their part would have been an explanatory note followed by removal or locking of the thread (well you know how I feel about removal ) But no, *some* people went off the deep end. Actually, others were supportive of the geocaching sport. I only read a few randomly selected posts and opinions seemed to be evenly distributed. Going off the deep end is pretty common on the Internet because people forget that it is a public place or forget that typed messages don't transmit emotions very well. I've fallen foul of these problems myself several times I don't think you owe us an apology. You do owe TMA an apology for your original post which was inappropriate to the site's content. OTOH some of their members owe you an apology for behaving like thoughtless idiots. ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

I've done all the caches in the Avebury area (including my 100th). The day I did them was a hot day in July and Avebury stone circle and West Kennet Long Barrow were absolutely crawling with tourists. Don't try to tell me that placing a cache in a sensible location near any of those sites has a fraction of the impact of a busload of daytrippers. Let's be honest, the mere existence of a path indicates substantial damage by all the people who have walked along it. ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

Don't check the forums for a mere 24 hours and the world has turned on its head. If ever there was an argument for good moderators.... ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

el10t and I are going to do an experiment with a mobile phone, laptop and some clever software to see if that is a practical and affordable alternative. When I say affordable I mean on the assumption that you already own all of the above equipment. We'll let you know how it goes. ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

Problem no.1, the link to the web page has a space in it so when you post it to this site it gets mangled by the UBB code parser. This might work (replace the space by %20). On the whole, spaces in URLs are just too much trouble. I use a hyphen "-" usually. Problem no.2 the links on this page end in full stops which is what is breaking them. The easiest way to fix it is to open the html file on your PC in notepad and manually remove the full stops. i.e. any bit like this: needs to change to The images are there, so that will fix everything. BTW the first one looks like Chris of "Chris Norman Maria" fame. Another thing to be aware of is that the directory /file part of a URL is case sensitive (an unfortunate hangover from Unix file names). ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

quote:Originally posted by Team Blitz: Cag = Cagoule, a waterproof top, usually fairly lightweight, and WITHOUT the zip down the front (= more waterproof!). -in-a-bag = they sell them in their own tiny bag When I was a kid, cagoules had a single big pocket in the front of them (kangeroo style). When you weren't wearing them, you turned them inside out and stuffed them into their own pocket. Highly practical, but really nasty to put on if they were wet. ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

quote:Originally posted by Wronskian: And I can't get one of them shut again. Faulty goods. Send it back for a refund. ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

I don't think the ability to delete messages is necessarily a good idea. Otherwise you could post a controversial message, get some inflamatory replies and then delete your post thus making the thread nonsensical. At least at the moment you have to leave some evidence even if you can delete all the content. ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

Done some experimentation. I don't know if the behaviour has changed, but things do seem a bit more broken now. Currently showing everything unread since 8pm in spite of logging off and closing the browser several times. ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching