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crunchewy

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Posts posted by crunchewy

  1. I think Pokemon Go is OK, but for me it feels a bit too much like busy work. There's a feeling that is similar to "games" like Cookie Clicker. You keep doing it but you don't know why (not that I have played Cookie Clicker, but I've played other mobile games that had a similar effect and I was never happier then once I'd deleted the "game"). But I'm still playing it sometimes. I can't get my kids excited about geocaching, but they want to play Pokemon Go, so I'm trying to combine the two. They look for pokemon and I look for a cache, but this doesn't work all that great because there's nothing much in pokemon go once you get into the woods. Anyway, I definitely don't hate pokemon go, but I do think it's going to peter out after a while.

  2. I revisited a cache I'd previously found some time ago and couldn't remember where it was. After some searching we found it. Do I log this as a "Found" or a "Note"? At first I logged it as a found, but it bumped up my cache count, and that didn't seem right. I changed it to a Note. Then again it's useful to see that I found it because the previous person did not find it. What type of log should this be?

  3. I like to use an app called Perfect Mark to average coordinates with my iPhone 5. Works great.

     

    As long as you take your time, the phone can be pretty darn accurate. Use caution in challenging conditions (deep ravine, wet forest) and perhaps take a few readings at different times, as the iPhone's GPS antenna is not as good as a dedicated handheld GPS, typically. The iPhone 4S and the iPhone 5 are much better than the previous iPhones for accuracy, both also support GLONASS.

     

    Does the Perfect Mark app allow you to enter GPS coordinates (that you read from a GPS device) and do an averaging of that info, or is strictly for using the GPS of the iPhone? If not is there an app that does that for iOS?

  4. You can't download the Google maps. However you can switch to OpenStreetMap street maps and those can be saved for offline use. Unfortunately there is no alternate to Google for the satellite maps, so those can't be saved offline.

     

    Go to the start screen of the app, tap "Menu" at the upper left, then "Settings". Just a little down the page are the Map Sources options. Switch "Street" to "OpenStreetMap.org".

     

    Now you'll be able to save the street maps for offline use.

  5. Is the 4s GPS better than the one in the 4? Because I have the latter, and if going to a 5 would be an improvement over the GPS in the 4 (even if it is no better than the 4s), that would be extra incentive for me to upgrade. Mind you, I'd like to upgrade anyway at some point, but a better GPS would certainly be another reason. :)

  6. Tried with and without MicroSD card and with and without (single and double) eject now. Makes no difference. After disconnecting the USB cable the unit removes the USB logo from the screen but does not shut off or restart.

     

    That is a little different from what I was experiencing. It *would* reset, but it would never finish starting up. It got partway and then would get stuck. The other thing I started doing differently, but again I don't really know what fixed it, is when I disconnect I disconnect the cable from the computer, and then disconnect it from the GPS. Yeah, more black magic. :) In any case I haven't had the problem for a while now.

  7. The biggest downside (next to battery life) is the inability of the device to have differentiated alerts for emails. Ringtones, yes; text messages, yes, but all emails alert the same way. The blackberry was set up to make a horrific red-alert type noise when I got a new cache publication email (letting everyone at the office know that I was likely to be leaving early/taking a long lunch).

     

    If you use gmail (or possible other email services), then the free app Boxcar can effectively give you this. What you do is create a filter in gmail (on the web page) that when you receive an email that matches whatever criteria you want, you forward the email to a special boxcar email address. Then the boxcar app can be set to give a unique alert sound for the matching emails. I use this to do that for messages from my family and I keep meaning to set up one for geocaching alerts but I haven't done it yet. It's a little klunky how it works, but it does the trick. I do hope that iOS 6 has this feature though and we don't need anything like Boxcar to do it for us.

  8. Mine has actually not done this for a while, but I don't have any exact answers as to why. It might because mine has a problem that when there is a MicroSD card installed, then when I eject the card and GPS from my desktop (I'm on a Mac), after 4 or 5 seconds they remount, so I have gotten use to ejecting them, waiting until they remount (this way I'm sure all data is written out), then eject again, wait a second, and then quickly disconnect the cable before they remount again. Maybe this letting it remount has actually helped? Or maybe it was fixed by installing a MicroSD card. I don't know.

  9. VMs require more memory than you might have. Also, Parallels is awful software IMHO. I would recommend VMWare Fusion over Parallels any day. However you're still going to need at least 4 GB of RAM, so if you don't have that much you're going to need an upgrade. Or you can go the Boot Camp route.

  10. I use a MacBook Air, as well as a Mac mini, and the Mac garmin software and it works well. I use the Garmin plugin with Safari to put individual caches on my 62sc via the geocaching website which works as advertised, and also I copy pocket query GPX files directly on the GPS via drag and drop. Install maps with the Garmin software. Etc.

     

    I have not tried it yet, but I have VMWare Fusion and Windows XP installed in a VM. I have had good luck with Fusion including with oddball hardware (like using some software that can drive the Rock Band stage kit :), so I have no reason to believe it wouldn't work if I wanted to go that route. To me that's preferable to boot camp as I don't need to reboot into Windows and back. Just launch Fusion.

  11. I use both. An iPhone 4 and a Garmin GPSMAP 62sc. Yesterday I really got to appreciate my 62sc as I was caching in a light rain. Not a problem at all with the 62sc as it's waterproof. The iPhone 4 is awesome for on-the-fly caching, and is much better if you need to consult satellite images, such as in city caching if the GPS signal is terrible due to tall buildings - then a good satellite image is going to be far more helpful than a GPS. A standalone GPS is more accurate in general, and it will make a track for you, which is very useful for finding your way back to the trail if, like me, you are navigation handicapped. :) Also the battery life of a standalone is much better and the durability is much better so you don't have to worry so much about dropping it. But even when using my GPS, I still use my iPhone to post logs, as well as to look at logs since I can see all of them on the iPhone while only the last 5 or so are stored on my GPS.

  12. I just tried this feature on my 62sc yesterday and it worked as expected, but in my case not as I wanted. What I really wanted was the next in the series I was working on, but there was another one closer. In any case it did not show me the one I had just found, but the next closest. So I'd see if there's a firmware update available. I installed the latest firmware right away when I got my 62sc.

  13. Doesn't angry birds space have ads?

     

    The paid version does not. On iOS there is only a paid version and lite version that is only a sampler. No free full ad-supported version at all. I have read that most Android owners aren't willing to pay for anything, so they make ad-supported versions of games, but I don't think that approach would work for Geocaching which wouldn't be downloaded by millions and millions of people.

  14. I would think an iPad would be an awkward way to geocache, but I've seen others say they use one. I use my iPhone a fair amount. It works well and I've yet to drop it. The geocaching app works fine on the iPad, but it is not designed for it, so you either have a smalll iphone-sized window, or blow it up 2x which doesn't look great and everything is jumbo sized, but it does work.

     

    There are some other unnofficial apps that work and are universal so are designed for the iPad. Some are free. I am not thrilled with the two I tried, but they do have some nice features that the official app doesn't have (and are missing some the official one has, and are generally a lot clunkier), so they are a good supplement.

     

    Hopefully they update the official app to be universal at some point, but so far it isn't.

  15. It is different in the car, but the problem with it being inconsistently off appears even if I'm not in the car.

     

    I tried to return to amazon, but it's past the return window, so my only option is to send it to Garmin. I'm off on a trip this weekend and I wanted to take it with me, so I'll do that when I get back. While on the trip I guess I'll just turn the magnetic compass off.

  16. The geocaching app is not Angry Birds Space and doesn't sell anywhere near as many copies even if priced at 99 cents. It would sell more at 99 cents, but I highly doubt it would make up the difference. Ditto for dropping it to $2.99, but I can only speculate. They price it at $10 and that either works for them or it doesn't. If it does they'll stick to $10, if not they'll lower the price. So far they haven't so I guess it's working as far as they are concerned. The Geocaching app is not something that everybody with an iPhone will buy, regardless of what they set the price to.

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