-Phoenix-

checking for viruses,is always a good move at this point Take a look at your processor useage, see if its running high, and if you can identify what using it

Something few companies realise these days, truth is 'gesters' like this cost them sod all, but reap huge benefits is customer goodwill.

I would turn up if it didnt conflict with my shifts, though if your doing it over the holiday weekend then thats fine (Ill just skip the cluster of caches in that area for now)

Seams you have a dilema, you either put the cost out of reach for some folks, or remove the desirability for most folks, hope you got your math right, it sounds an expensive gamble.

Very true, snipeing is a major problem with ebay, I too have been known to snipe bargins on ebay, and frankly, there is no other way I would bid on ebay these days, since my idea of a bargain price is apparantly a lot lower that 99% of people, who aparantly are prepared to bid well in excess of what the article is actually worth, and if you do bid slightly above this then there are aways people who will bid higher!

Too right, Geocaching is VERY Anorakie!

The other side of that coin is, what is the point of tracking something that never moves? Since some of the coins will likely be bought by those interested in collecting. Even more may be left or given as prizes and merits, or even as just a cool trade item. So you wonder how many will actually travel cache to cache vs. how many will make one/two people downline and stop? OH boy, just what I need, a genuine limited edition 1 of 10,000 coin with absolutely no intrinsic value, sign me up, Ill take a dozen, they will take centre place in my collection of washers!

I think aRRKS are slowing down a little these days, they have been known to go to bed and expect the cache to be unfound by the time they get up at 5am. I think aRRKS domination has come to and end, there are quite a few in grabbers in the NW now, and if you are not quick off the mark, then it will be gone. rjl194 have also been known to be quick off the mark when grabbing FTFs, a reletive newbie beat all of us to The Karaoke Night, and I could easilly have been beaten to The Pub Quiz had bluemike286 been a little more observant. OTOH Moody River in its original form was a bit of a hard one, and the less said about One in the Eye the better!

You will be glad to know that all your points are spot on now Bob

Id have to ask what the point of the coin is if it cant be tracked?

An hour is pretty good from being approved to being logged as found, especially if the finder doesnt log the find in the field, and have tp get home I cant comment on the time it takes to get approved, maybe Eckington gives priority service to your area About two hours is norm around cheshire, but if you dont get out the house within 30 inutes of it going live then there is a strong chance you are too late. Two caches did go live 8pm last sat and remained unclaimed for 12 hours which is dadgum near a record., especially for a Sat evening.

Datum offsets for the map are fine, I can understand the need for that, I deal with 6 axis co-ordinate offsets on a daily basis. But to display a load of waypoints on the screen in two completely different datums, with no evidence as to which waypoint is in which datum, and having no option to set the co-ordinate system for individual waypoints is dumb in the extream

Strange but Ive just learnt that Fugawi has TWO sets of Datums, and will display them both on the screen at the same time! I did check that under preferences that it was set to WDS84, and indeed it was, for GPS datum, but, there is a second display datum which also needs setting to WDS 84!!! Consequently, anything that was uploaded into Fugawi was done with the GPS datum, and correct, however, anything entered manually in WGS84 was plotted using the display datum!! When I convert the display datum to WGS84, it then converts the values of the waypoints I manually enterd into the WGS equivalent of the WGS co-ordinate I entered into the display Datumn! This is really dumb.... Fugawi monumentally sucks! Thanks for the help

Has anyone noticed that Fugawi can be extreamly inacurate in some areas? Having done about 100 caches using Fugawi Ive noticed that whilst in most places it will be absolutely spot on the nose, whilst in an area just 5Km south of one cahce that is bang on position (Id say witin 5M) there are a cluster of caches that are all positioned about 100M too far west. Sadly because these are Puzzle caches I cant give much more details, but streetmaps place the caches in the correct location. Likewise, if I look at some caches east and west of here they are also spot on position.

Shucks I failed, I was aiming for 65 to get my free bus pass (curtesy of the Assembly) Dave Is geocaching in North Wales feasible by bus? Maybe this Welsh assembly isnt a complete waste of time and money after all Congrats Dave, race you to 300

I use my GPSr as a speedo on a kite buggy, and looked into this question car speedos are inacurate because they measure speed at the gearbox, then convert it into road speed with a bit of math, consequently they are horribly inaccurate and as already said, they tend to be set to measure over 'on the safe side' GPSr measure speed by taking the first integral of the distanced moved, which it calculates by looking at the position at time 1 and the position at time 2 etc this means that the accuracy is dependant wholly on the accuracy of the position readings, and yes, it sucks as a speedo when driving through a dense forest This also means that GPSr suffers from lag, it never tells you your current speed, but in fact the average speed over the last few cycles (you can guess the cycle time by watching how quickly it updates under heavy acceleration and deceleration conditions) The ratio of EPE (Estimated Positional Error) to actual speed is important too, a low EPE at high speed will give great results, where a high EPE, at low speed will suck. Consequentially, with a GPSr you find that the accuracy as a speedo increases wth the speed and distance you are going, intitially at slow speeds and short distances it sucks, likewise when slowing down and stopping it also sucks, however, in a clear area, with 8-12 good satelites and a low EPE, travelling at a steady high, speed, then it is very accurate

St Georges day meet

well, I have a couple of trips planed in that area over the next week, adn I would reccomend the St Georges day meet next weekend, you will see just about everything there and can grab a few caches with borrowed kit

comparing this to my complete list Nearest 0.6m One in the Eye (actually the cache is quite a bit further away) Furthest 7.4m The not so easy anymore - Hope Mountain Geocache Total Difficulty 39.5 Total Terrain 33 Still on the page only 1, Dee bore Earth Cache

It strikes me that after scoring your first 100 caches, that your 20 nearest unvisitied caches starts getting interesting, either all these caches are very far away, or there are specific reasons for them being unvisited. Heres a summary of my 1st page Nearest cache 5.7m Dee Bore Earthcache (Cheshire/Flintshire) - This cache can only be done satisfactorary during a dozen or two days a year, dont bother trying again until Autumn Furthest cache 19.5m No more boats -No special reason for this being there Total Difficulty :- 35 Total Terrain :- 37 Others worth mentioning <EDIT> St George's Day Meet - Nearly forgot this one, its an event cache, cant do until next weekend. </EDIT> Edclusham Mountain Got a DNF on this one, but it was recently visited so I plan on trying again real soon Warren Dee Wind Farm My cursed cache!, got a DNF on it due to lack of a boat, then it got disabled, then reinabled, then disabled again.... get the picture! Dog Gawn Mystery Cache - disabled "Bodiceas Grave" - left until weather is good and Jill is on her feet properly again, we find this site quite interesting and would like to do it justice. Fables, Myths & Legends ... King Arthur's View - last in a series that hasnt come high enough on my todo list there are 5 more that are down on a trip we tried earier this year but aborted and not got around to doing the tip again, and three that are North of the Mersey that we are planning to merge into a trip sometime to justify the trouble of trolling through the Mersey tunnel and across Liverpool.

I supose the more important thing is whether yourself as a parent can ahndle it, because your reaction is what gives the kids the cue for their reactions Myself, being brought up in an agricultural family, I was openly exposed to the facts of nature on a daily basis, animals mate/die/get eaten/suffer horrific injuries etc were daily facts of life.... I never knew chickens came shrink wrapped until I was 13, and the thought that we wouldnt want to eat those cuddly orphan lambs which we hand nursed never occured to me, fox hunting was a way of protecting the local farming community from financial loss, and helping to maintain the community.... it strikes me as strange that as a kid we lived in an area where there were less than 20 families living within 5 miles of us and we knew them all on first name terms, yet there are now over 100 families within 500 yards and we know just three in such a way... I guess thats the benefits of progress!

Well it wasn't me - a lamb is bigger than me, mind you I am partial to a bit of leg from a welsh educated engineer The avatar one of the percey boys! My leg is well used to getting unwanted attention from dogs, at one time it considered having a restraining order placed on one dog that was stalking it! Not singling terriers out particularly, for any reason other than the fact that larger dogs tend to depend on power of their jaws to crush and pierce, whilst terriers tend to have a more violent/thrashing type of attack that has a tendency to rip and tear, foxes do this as well, but Ive not heard of a fox go on the 'rampage' with lambs (chickens yes) All knowlege gained from an early life living on farms, animal kills are all part of life especially at this time of year, and like already said anything could have been the initial cause of death and carion birds would have just taken over after that. From the further description given it sounds like the carcases may have been thrown in the hedge by the sheppard, much more convinient than taking them back to the farm, because then they would have to be 'properly' disposed of, and giving lamb carcases to farm dogs is a real dumb idea unless you want to develope your own sheep killer!

Try looking at the output formats in GSAK, see if you can find one thats comatable with your Symbian Phone, I use CacheMate, which is great cos GSAK even sends the file to Hotsynch

Thats Nice to know!

Id be very surprised if a big cat made 4 kills in a night and didnt consume its kills, that is very uncharacteristic of Cats, sounds more like a domestic dog, probably a small one like a Terrier. Maybe the fact that the carcases are still there are indicative of the bird in question not being large enough to carry away the kill. Shielding kids from such things is a little overprotecting I think, much better would be for them to see these things, and have the situation explained in the right context by their parents, nature does some brutal things sometimes, and the more you can help your kids understand how nature works then the better prepared for life they will be.