BigNick
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Posts posted by BigNick
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Welcome,
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Originally posted by sgkahu:Is there a source of travel bugs in NZ??
Drop me a line at nick at automata dot co dot nz, I have an extra bug I can sell you (only one), from memory they are $11.44 each.
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One thought - we have only found three caches so far but the difficulty/terrain ratings don't seem too consistent! Is either of the ratings intended to give an indication of distance from carpark? Having young kids means that's a vital piece of information.
Have a look at the Clayjar cache rating system - this is how I rate all our caches. The rating should include the distance from parking, but as you will find out, there is usually more than one way to approach a cache - this can make a caches terrain rating a lot higher or lower than the one on the webpage. (Physical or Electronic maps can help find the best approach)
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Great hobby - will have to consider buying a GPS as a family Christmas present I think!
Looks like you have been bitten by the geocaching bug - watch out, it can be addictive (having just travelled 1270Km for 9 caches, I can attest to that
)Cheers
Nick
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Originally posted by brentc:I still use the Polymedia DVD - I get the Pocket Query to send a search for Caches we havn't found twice a week. Delete all caches from the GPS then upload the new search to the GPS with EasyGPS then download to Polymedia
I have added support for TopoMapPro into GPSBabel (you will need to build from the CVS tree) so you can convert the .loc file from geocaching.com into a places file - maintaining the full cache name and URL link. I have also emailed Vision Software about TUMONZ so we will see if I get a response from them about loading waypoint files.
If someone has some examples of the waypoint files used in Polymedias NZMapped (or specifications), I can look at adding support for that into GPSBabel.
Cheers
Nick.
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But what is to stop someone who finds or steals your GPSr from just changing the owner info? Is it protected somehow? This is the nice thing about hacking the firmware, it makes it quite hard to change the details by a dishonest person.
Still, it is a nice feature - hope it migrates through the whole product line.
Cheers
Nick.
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Originally posted by BigNick:Do they yet support opening a text file containing waypoints?
And the answer is.... no
How the hell do get caches into the program without uploading to your GPS, then down to Tumonz - loosing all the names in the process. When I first purchased Tumonz I talked to the developer and they said it was on the todo list. You would think it would be easier to do this than implement the 3D feature
Oh well, next release maybe (or I could look at reverse engineering the binary file that they store the waypoints in... 
)Cheers
Nick.
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Wow, I have just had a look at the updates for TUMONZ - I have not checked since I downloaded 1.2... the route planning looks good, as does the corrected Gamin/Magellan upload/download. TUMONZ certainly has matured since the first release. Do they yet support opening a text file containing waypoints?
I will have to dig out my CD, dust off my PC and reinstall and have a play. (If only they would write a Mac version
)Cheers
Nick.
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I see that there are three copys of NZMapped available on TradeMe at the moment.
Interesting to see who is selling it... I wonder if this person and this person (see bottom) are one in the same?
Cheers
Nick.
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Don't forget to check out Nandors maps of New Zealand caches. Might help to plan the route.
Cheers
Nick.
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I am in the process of adding support to GPSBabel for TopoMapPro place files (so you can convert .loc/.gpx files to TopoMap place files and visa versa maintaining the hyperlinks and being able to automagically create better waypoint names (rather than GCxxxx)), and rather than just rely on my data for testing, I was hoping that someone would like to send me some data from their TopoMapPro software (just the .txt file that you save when you "Save Places"). My email is nick at automata dot co dot nz, if you could just zip them and fire them through, that would be great.
Cheers
Nick.
[This message was edited by BigNick on November 04, 2002 at 08:25 PM.]
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Originally posted by SimonG:The idea is to have a series of virtuals leading up to a single physical. Each virtual will give you a code which you have to enter on a website. This will access the next scene of a murder mystery story accompanying the series. Each scene will be set at the location you just visited, and give you the lat and long of the next virtual. Once you've done all the virtuals, you have to solve the mystery to work out the location of the physical cache.
Now that is quite scary - I have been planning a similar cache for a while now. I have crime scene photos, autopsy reports, witness interviews, plastic knives and guns (for within the caches), finger print reports, evidence bags and was planning on having a 'line up' of people, each with a set of co-ords (that you decipher with the clues) - only one of which will get you to the correct final cache location (but I was going to pick them so that the cache page clue would be applicable to all the potential final locations Mwahahaha)
As yet I have not finalised all the details (so much planning required) and actually been out to place the caches (all of mine were going to be physical with the info available both at the site and from a web page) so I am looking forward to seeing yours.
Cheers
Nick.
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Originally posted by Steve & Ruth:These stat sites seem to be inaccurate, I know for mine I have hidden 6 or 7 caches but it says I have hidden none.
Yeah Dan had a problem for a while with the 'hidden' caches - you can check what he has on file from you (using 'User' page) and update it using the 'Missing Logs' page.
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Perhaps that could be a new webpage to be created by one of New Zealands computer skill-blessed cachers!!!Jeremy is having a crack down on programs that slurp data from the GC.com website, so this would probably not be a good idea
(see here and here) Though I do have the scripts that geocacheuk.com use for the UK stats, so it would not take too much work to implement.
Cheers
Nick.
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Originally posted by BigNick:LOL - I decided that placing caches was the only stat of Gavs that I had any hope of getting higher than him in
Ok, I know that numbers don't really mean anything, and this stat is only going to last another week or so (until Gav gets back from the US) but currently according to Dan's Stat Site we have 1 more physical find in New Zealand than Gav
(but he beats our pants off in total finds)Of course when Gav gets back from the US he has 30+ local caches to find,so we are going to enjoy it while it lasts.
Cheers
Nick (and Bernadette)
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Hi Karl, any news on when your software is going to be released?
Cheers
Nick.
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Originally posted by TeamHunterGatherer:quote:
Originally posted by BigNick:I keep talking about getting a 4WD, I wonder if I should keep my fingers crossed
nah, sorry nick... i tried that for months... gave up and bought my own. she has been nice enough to pay her share though
What, Bernadette has been paying for your 4WD, no wonder she has not got me one
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So is that how you get what you want from your wife, the constant badgering technique, must remember that.I keep talking about getting a 4WD, I wonder if I should keep my fingers crossed
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We are comming up to our one year aniversery (and plan on returning to our first find on the day - 1/1/03).
I caught the end of an article on Geocaching on the Discovery channel and jumped onto the net to have a look to see if there was any caches in New Zealand and was suprised to find quite a few (Donovans, Gavins, BaldEd and Matd were the local cachers at the time) - talked about it non stop for a couple of days to Bernadette who went out and bought me a GPSr to shut me up
Been out most weekends since...
Cheers
Nick.
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I was using angels from Miltons 'Paradise Lost' at one stage.
Archangels for machines that were easy setups (eg mail/web servers) and fallen angels for nasty machines (eg Bind DNS - oh man do I hate Bind
)Cheers
Nick.
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I must admit that when Nandor mentioned the idea of a NZ Buxley site I was not convinced about replicating something that already existed, but when I saw the initial beta I knew he was on to a winner - the closeups of the areas that appear as densely populated blobs on the NZ view is a stroke of genius.
I now have a new default 'home' page in Mozilla.
Thanks for all the work Nandor.
Cheers
Nick.
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Have a look at this fuji camera. Now that would be easy to stick in your pocket and take caching! ($220NZ)
Cheers
Nick
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Have a look at this fuji camera. Now that would be easy to stick in your pocket and take caching! ($220NZ)
Cheers
Nick
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Originally posted by TeamHunterGatherer:yeah but then that will give him more caches to find and he'll get ahead of me
LOL - I decided that placing caches was the only stat of Gavs that I had any hope of getting higher than him in - only another 16 to go
(dadgum it, I just noticed he has placed another 2 since leaving NZ - I am never going to catch up!)Cheers
Nick.
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Originally posted by TeamHunterGatherer:yeah but then that will give him more caches to find and he'll get ahead of me
LOL - I decided that placing caches was the only stat of Gavs that I had any hope of getting higher than him in - only another 16 to go
(dadgum it, I just noticed he has placed another 2 since leaving NZ - I am never going to catch up!)Cheers
Nick.
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Originally posted by tgsnoopy:For some reason when I was looking breifly a few minutes ago I was unable to find a lot of the postings about the changes to a charter membership system, it's almost like they were deleted! I hope not!
Here is our discussion with links to the US discussions.
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The servers hosting the geocaching site must be fairly large, with a rather quick connection into the web, after all, there are now a huge number of members. I imagine his costs for the web hosting alone would be more than an average mans salary these days.Even the forum software that we are using now is not cheap - have a look.
God only knows how much traffic people looking at GC.com use, being as there are over 38000 cache pages! By the time you include all the photos there must be multi-gigabytes worth of information (in another thread Jeremy was talking about needing a US$10K rack mount server for an upgrade!) not something I would like to run as a hobby
Cheers
Nick
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Originally posted by tgsnoopy:For some reason when I was looking breifly a few minutes ago I was unable to find a lot of the postings about the changes to a charter membership system, it's almost like they were deleted! I hope not!
Here is our discussion with links to the US discussions.
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The servers hosting the geocaching site must be fairly large, with a rather quick connection into the web, after all, there are now a huge number of members. I imagine his costs for the web hosting alone would be more than an average mans salary these days.Even the forum software that we are using now is not cheap - have a look.
God only knows how much traffic people looking at GC.com use, being as there are over 38000 cache pages! By the time you include all the photos there must be multi-gigabytes worth of information (in another thread Jeremy was talking about needing a US$10K rack mount server for an upgrade!) not something I would like to run as a hobby
Cheers
Nick
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Please offer an example. Who are these people and who we have offered permission and then revoked that permission? As far as I know there is one case where we indicated that no more coins be made with the coin design originally approved (but I believe the current batch has been allowed).Just out of interest - I also received permission to use a modified GC logo for a set of die cast keyrings that I planned on creating - were you planning on contacting everyone who had received permission to use a modified design to let them know not to use it? Or is it up to us to read the forums to avoid court battles? (Not that it matters, as I did not end up minting the keyrings, but it would be nice to know if I ever did decide to go ahead with it)
Cheers
Nick
Calling Canterbury Cachers
in New Zealand
Posted
Count us in (Bernadette and I)
Cheers
Nick.