Pasha

This Times Online story may be what the OP was thinking of. See the last couple paragraphs on the first page - NTT DoCoMo is showing binoculars with some sort of object recognition technology in them. No GPS is mentioned though.

Grammar and spelling are two of my hot buttons; careless writing makes me nuts. If it were up to me everyone would have to pass a written test before they'd be allowed to post on the net.

Well this just went off the rails, didn't it? I promise not to ever monitor a cache with a webcam without telling everyone first. I would hope that most others would do the same. I'm concerned about the lack of privacy in our lives here the US; probably more than most I'm concerned about it. But I don't believe that much can be done about it in the wake of September 11, 2001. We just have to live with it and have as much fun as we can without letting it bother us too much.

I finally cleared my DNF at Slumberland today. Now that was a devious hide. I actually haven't done that large a percentage of Kitsap caches, but the ones I've done... whew. There's some hard ones.

Keep in mind that the estimated error on your unit is not the only error you're dealing with; when the owner placed the cache they had an error rate similar to yours. The GPSr is not infallible. When your GPSr says you're at ground zero with a 6 meter error, you may actually be 12 or 15 meters away. Look for things that don't fit; an unnatural pile of sticks or rocks, bits of metal that containers may be magnetically attached to, around the bases of trees or stumps. Don't give up just because your first expedition came up empty. The cache is there; you're just not experienced in what you're looking for. Once you find one, the next one is easier.

My old GPS12 seems like the size of a 70's Cadillac compared to my Legend. I'm still pretty sure the 12 is more accurate.

I guess I need to use smilies more often. My original point was to say that I couldn't go for the FTF cause I had meetings scheduled all day at work. To stay on topic, I guess I can TOOT TOOT that I got my very first FTF last weekend at Fledermaus' Seganku/Seecawk Cache. Woohoo! and all that jazz.

Well said. For a Fledermaus cache that's pretty demonstrative of his body of work, try Seganku/Seecawk Cache. Great puzzle, and then once solved it still took me upwards of 3 hours to find the very devious hide.

That's a tough one. My first guess would be that something else is using the COM port; only one program at a time can use it. Make sure that anything else that connects to your GPS (like the firmware update thing, Palm Hotsync stuff, whatever) is shut down prior to running GSAK. Don't run both GSAK and EasyGPS at the same time, as it could be that they're fighting each other over the COM port. My second guess is that the COM port that the GPSr is using is not the one you think it is - if you reinstall, and it works, and then you come back the next day, and it doesn't, then try the other available COM ports. It could be that you have something else on this machine that makes use of COM ports and causes a "reshuffling" of which is which. If neither GSAK nor EasyGPS can send anything to your GPSr, I don't think it's GSAK's or EasyGPS' fault. It must be something hardware-related on this machine. Hard to say though.

Thanks for the link. Interesting stuff. I'd be further interested to hear from Clyde exactly how he determines the cardinal direction now - if it's just a matter of using greater-than/less-than, very simply, or if he's doing the Haversine thing and just displaying the cardinal direction. Having never paid much attention in class, I didn't know it was that (relatively) simple to determine exact numbers; any competent programming language is going to have those functions. My guess would actually be that he's already doing the calculations; after all, he's displaying the (reasonably) exact distance.

Dan, you're correct. Under Tools/Options/General you can specify that GSAK only use your gc.com ID number to parse the logs for found and placed caches. That said, g-o-cashers is certainly doing the safe thing by checking the Never Update option for found caches; that'll ensure that stuff doesn't get intermixed and cause a need to restore a backup or something, without having to worry about whose files are getting loaded.

Too late. Peace, Nolenator Too late for me to have meetings all day at work? I'm confused.

If you are outdoors, in public, you may very well be on camera. That's just the way it is in the USA today. I can see that it felt strange, as this game has a tradition of honorable dealings with others and family-friendly activities; the cache owner should probably make it clear that you're going to be on camera in his/her listing. Unfortunately that's their choice, not yours. You can all rest assured that if I place a cache and point a camera at it, that you'll have plenty of notice. (Well, unless I put an automated camera with a flash on it inside a cache container, and have it take a picture as soon as the cover is opened. That'll be a suprise, I think. Probably cause a few heart attacks.)

And I see >---^---:> has a brand new cache approved today, too. If I didn't have meetings all day at work tomorrow I might go after the FTF. Well done.

Ahh. Well, don't mind me, then.

Alas. We had contemplated a journey expressly to indulge our fondling urge. We shall inquire further as to Mr. Thomas and his whereabouts later in the year.

if you are premium ignore is perfect, otherwise its great to get rid of lots of webcamcaches if you cant reach a friend on tehe cellphone. Well, yeah, but the point of this tool is that you don't need to phone a friend to get your cam shot. You just fill it out and call the number when you're at the cache. Yeah, you'd need a mobile phone, because the way this works is that you fill it out, give it the number you're calling from (if you're in the USA, you'd put "+1" followed by your mobile number area code and phone number,) and then when you're AT the cache location, you dial the +49 number given and let it ring a couple times. El Achimo's server will see your call, capture the current picture on the webcam, and mail it to you. You can call the number from your home phone, but as you won't be at the cache location, in view of the webcam, it's not going to do you much good.

Yep. Working in the Seattle area, I know of around 30 cameras that catch me every day commuting, each way. Take a couple trips to the market or the mall and I'd reach 100 easily. The vast majority of them are publicly viewable, traffic cameras and such. I'm just floored that people think it's such an issue. I assume you live in Nome or Vanuatu or something if you're so concerned about your privacy. Those game cameras are pretty nifty. A friend of mine is a hunter and has one of those off in the boonies somewhere. Some of our work cameras have motion-sensitivity built in, but they work on a percentage difference basis, frame-by-frame... IOW, not very well. One of those would be even more fun than an illicit perverted webcam watching a cache - put the game camera IN the cache container, pointing up, so when it's opened a picture is taken automatically. Cachers as they really look at the moment of discovery.

Not Clyde, but I'm pretty sure that isn't changeable at this point. The calculations needed to provide the cardinal directions are significantly simpler than the calculations to give an exact bearing; with a large database I'm thinking that computing the bearing would slow things down significantly. I'm curious as to why the directions aren't "good enough"? Are you trying to do some plotting of waypoints or something?

Actually, thinking further, are you sure you don't have "None Selected" for Origin?

It sounds to me like the OP's problem is not the 500 cache limit, but the fact that the 65 mile limit doesn't seem to be working: I'd try smaller radii and see if you can get a number that actually seems to limit the results. I've never had a problem doing radius limitations, so this is pretty strange.

How strange; I text-searched the thread for my date before I posted it. (Ahh, I see, Puppers posted 4/27 instead of April 27.) Oops. So the question now before me is whether a 60CS is more of an advantage than 20oz of caffeinated goodness... hmmm. OK, put me down for the 28th of April instead.

Reminds me of another (relatively) new Kitsap cache; same sort of hide but the reward of the location is quite significant. You who've found it know which one I'm talking about.

Have either of you been implicated in the Balco scandal, perhaps through your use of performance-enhancing substances? This is information that we need to make an informed guess. Either way, I'll split two existing guesses and say April 27.

Here's a site that explains what it is.