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ClanWhippy

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Everything posted by ClanWhippy

  1. fair enough "in your opinion", but to play devils advocate for a moment, you can't possibly know that your opinion will be shared by everyone else. and unless you were to send out such 'advertising' 'mailshots' only to recipients who have opted in, it's only a matter of time before someone receives your mail and considers it to be spam.
  2. where did you get that idea? only 3 of the previous posts make links. i see the OP did, but they didn't ask us to, they just asked for other words beginning with geo. it's kinda hard linking to a book on my shelf anyhoo
  3. geodephagous geoduck geognosy geomalism geophila geoponics geotropism ah the wonders of a medical dictionary
  4. Forester, have you done a comparison by make/model of receiver? just devilishly wondering which turns out to be most accurate in practice
  5. if you have trouble ftp'ing your html files to your ntl web space try setting your ftp client to "passive mode". i use macromedia dreamweaver to design my pages (would be expensive to buy but i have access to it through work) and it has a built in ftp facility, which refused to play nicely when uploading to my ntl web space until i tried it in passive mode. how you actually set it to passive will depend on what client you use.
  6. love the server down graphic on geocacheing.com
  7. i think it might actually be ilegal now to unlock a phone unless you are a manufacturer or autherised dealer. not entirely sure though, maybe not. that's not to say it isn't doable, but take it into a shop and they'll likely want 30 quid or more. there's a bit of info here which might at least start you off on the search. http://www.3g.co.uk/3GForum/archive/index.php/t-20024.html +++ ah, on further rumaging it's only illegal to change the phones IMEI number, but so long as you don't do that, unlocking it from a network is ok.
  8. if you hold down the 'Alt' key and whilst it's down press 'PrtScn' the image on the clipboard is of the active window instead of the whole screen. this is sometimes useful, can make the cropping job a bit easier.
  9. i also doubt that compulsory premium membership would solve the problem of muggled caches for similar reasons to the ones already stated. i also think that not everyone would pay, some would of course, but i suspect many would not. and there's nothing really to stop a "free alternative" breakaway faction setting up their own website if this one becomes compulsory cost. and i can't imagine fragmentation would be a good thing for the sport/hobby as a whole. the other thing i think we should consider is how compulsory membership would affect new blood. would people be put off without a "try before you buy" option. my feeling is that although it's a shame that caches get trashed, it's an inevitable part of the experience. like most things in life, the best we can hope for is that the numbers are in our favour, ie. a few get trashed, but the vast majority do not. one way i think we could reduce the occurance of trashing would be if we could educate new players quickly on the importance of leaving a cache in the same or better condition than found. another option would be for cache owners to maintain them more frequently. i suspect that many times, caches do not go from well hidden to wide open in one find. it seems more likely that caches move away from a state of well hidden bit by bit over several finds. and then there's always going to be the case where a bunch of kids just get lucky and drop on one. and you really don't expect kids to read the cache explanation sheet and comply now do you? anyhow, that's my thoughts
  10. i used to work for a company that developed mobile phones. the way it "could" theoretically be done is like this. a mobile knows which base station it is "camped on" to. it knows how strong the signal it receives is. it also maintains a list of other base stations it can see and measures the signal strength it gets from them. this is how a mobile phone knows when to negotiate with another base station to do a handover when the phone roams from one cell to another. "if" the phone sent all that data (table of base stations and signal strengths) to the network, then it would be possible to roughly triangulate it's position. but signal strength is affected by more than just line of sight distance. other factors include, weather, multipath (signals bouncing off buildings), electrostatically noisy environments etc. this has been done in research, not sure it's ever been done in a live comercial network. although there were rumours a couple of years ago that the USA might pass a bill requiring this functionality for phones sold there.
  11. hi punchand welcome to the sport. i'm sure you'll get plenty of advice and opinion with a question like that. there's several packages you could use for mapping. we use Garmin Mapsource Metroguide Europe for planning our cache expeditions. got it cheap off ebay. i've heard people say they prefer Garmin Roads and Recreations but i couldn't find one when i was buying. we also have an Anquet map for the peak district, also bought off ebay. and there's a free bit of software called GSAK you should check out for managing cache data. you will find out that mapping software is not especially cheap. you can for example buy maps of the whole country from anquet but you'll pay a couple of hundred pounds. as i've said, many of these packages turn up on ebay and can be had a little cheaper. i expect others will be along shortly with further suggestions, but these are worth a google to start with. ;-)
  12. that's interesting. is that likely to be the maps that are plain wrong, or the maps showing old routes that have gone out of use and been replaced with new ones? i had assumed the maps would be definitive.
  13. yeah i know, it's pretty much "the way" with forums. some are worse than others. i don't mind deviations, like you say, they're bound to happen. just trying to give this thread a gentle nudge back in the direction of my original post. ;-)
  14. er, no offence but any chance i could have my thread back on topic please? i'm asking about maps not travel bugs. cheers...
  15. thanks all, this is really helpfull. i might add we aren't planning on going cross country with map and compass and nothing else. we do own a garmin legend which gets us by for cacheing and obviously we always carry spare batteries. but i think it wont hurt to start learning map skills as a backup. we do have 50000 scale Anquet maps for some of the areas we like to walk and have found print outs from this to be quite good. i think maybe we'll purchase a 25000 scale map and then we can see which we prefer. i am quite amazed at the prices set for map data products. it's a shame because if they were a lot cheaper i'd buy a lot of them. anyway thanks again for the info...
  16. just wondering what are the relative strengths and weakneses of the 25000 and 50000 scale OS maps. say for instance we were planning a trip into the peak district, planning to take a route along a bridleway but possibly wanting to deviate away from the route and go "into the wilderness". would a 50000 scale map be good enough or does a 25000 give usefull extra detail. i should mention i've seen a 50000 map but never laid eyes on a 25000. any info or opinions on the relative pro's and cons of the two scales would be quite usefull to us. thanks...
  17. our house backs onto a cemetry and there's a tree which local squirels come down to jump onto our back wall and then into our garden to feed from the bird table. every couple of years or so i prune a few of the lower branches of the tree, and thereafter for several days, if not a week or two, all the squirels coming down the tree pause at the points where i've removed branches. prior to the branch removal they come straight down the tree and jump onto our wall without hesitation. i presume they have a very good mental 3d map of the branches (which i suppose are paths to them) and that my removing branches makes them have to think. a bit like driving somewhere you know and then hitting unexpected roadworks.
  18. you know manchester has a very good tram service that goes from the city centre out to bury, altringham or eccles. manchester to bury for example takes 30 minutes and they run every 12 mins in all directions. so any caches along those lines are reachable from the city centre ;-)
  19. you can convert LOC files to GPX using one of the many free tools available online. I have used GSAK for exactly that purpose and it works well. although i think if you get the GPX file by becoming a payed up member, it contains a bit more data, the LOC files only have the basic coords and name, not the recent logs etc.
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