narcissa

Is there a way to submit "needs archived" logs in bulk?

It's not a good idea. Without permission, it will likely cause alarm. With permission, the school children will quickly find out about it and it will disappear.

I have proposed a drinking game to go with the film. Every time you see a Guideline violation, take a drink.

IAWTC

I watched Splinterheads the other day, and didn't like it at all. It was a weak rip-off of the Adam Sandler movies that were popular in the 90s. The geocaching parts weren't horrible, but the rest of the movie was a waste of time. I wrote a detailed review on my blog. http://geonarcissa.wordpress.com/2010/03/1...ds-film-review/

Glad to read that he's okay and plans to keep caching.

150 < 60 ? Anyway... if a cache is off by 150 feet, there's more to the problem than just failure to take good readings.

Take a look at Letterbox Hybrids. This sounds like a great idea for one.

Sorry, wrote that post before I saw your reply.

Taoiseach and I had some time to kill this afternoon so we took a few waypoints at objects we'd be able to see on Google Earth. We used my Garmin Dakota 20, chose open spots (one park, two parking lots) and had good satellite reception. I then plotted the coordinates on Google Earth, and plotted second markers on the actual object as seen in Google Earth. For the first object, there was a 30 metre difference between the GPS coordinates and Google Earth's coordinates. For the second object, there was almost no difference. For the third object, there was maybe a 5 metre difference. If you do a Google search on this topic, there are all sorts of discussions about this. Many GPS owners have done little tests to compare their GPS coordinates with Google Earth. Sometimes, the difference is negligible, but it's not uncommon to see fairly large differences in the range of 20 to 100 metres. There are many factors involved. First, there is always a margin of error of at least a few feet with any handheld GPS device. I generally won't even notice that a cache's coordinates are "off" unless they're off by 15 metres or more, and it would have to be more than that before I'd bother mentioning it to a cache owner. The possibility for error is even greater on Google Earth's end, though. Sometimes there are small errors in the way the photos are aligned. Sometimes the angle at which the photograph was taken can skew distances. In many rural areas, the photographs are too low-resolution to allow for perfect positioning. Google Earth is nifty and fun, and by all means, if it works for you, keep using it to FIND caches. But don't use it to hide caches, or to "correct" someone else's coordinates unless you're set on annoying/alienating other geocachers.

I think you're right, I don't believe that the orthorectification process is perfect and honestly as long as everything on the map is spaced accurate distances in relation to each other it's still a safe tool to use even if the grid coordinates don't overlay on top of it perfectly. As mentioned previously I'm going to endeavor to discover just how much this error really is. The Google Earth error varies from place to place. I'm sure that for many traditional caches, Google Earth will get you close enough to find it. It might even be good enough, sometimes, to hide a cache. But it might not be, and then you run the risk of annoying a lot of people, including the cache reviewers. Remember, when you publish a geocache, you have to click those two little boxes declaring that you've read, understood, and followed the guidelines. Again, not trying to be mean, but it's a little presumptuous of you to tell a seasoned cacher with thousands of geocache finds and hundreds of hides that his coordinates are wrong based on Google Earth and a compass. It's neat that you're doing it this way, but Google Earth's inaccuracy is well known and much discussed in the caching community. A Garmin Map 60CX calculating coordinates on the spot with signals from 10 satellites vs. Google Earth and a compass in a region with a variable magnetic declination? I'll place my bets on the GPS.

I do.... here's one example: I did not realize you found the innacuracy of the coordinates of this cache to be due to GPS and not perhaps your methods. Thanks Toz! Haha, just went and looked at that. Model12 uses a Map60 and has over 6000 finds... if he reads that log, he'll get a good laugh at seeing his coordinates "corrected" with Google Earth.

Look for another cache that's close, and see which reviewer published the cache.

Letterboxes don't use co-ordinates, they use directions. Letterboxing was started long before GPS satellites were even dreamed up. I think the OP was referring to Letterbox Hybrid geocaches, since that's what the link was for.

Have you checked out the Ottawa geocaching community at all? We have a monthly workshop at the Dovercourt community centre, and a monthly "meet and eat" at Summerhay's restaurant. Check out our forum: http://www.ottawageocaching.com/forum I have two spare GPSrs I'm not using and I would be happy to lend one of them to you to help you get started.

Haha, my bf and I were part of the crowd that were FTF on that cache. I'm pretty certain there was a stamp in it to begin with - my boyfriend is very particular about Letterbox caches and would have said something to Mr. Packrat if there wasn't a stamp.

"Letterbox hybrids are a mixture of letterbox and geocache. They should contain a signature stamp that stays with the box, and they must conform to the guidelines for geocaches and therefore must contain a logbook and involve GPS use as an integral part of the hunt. A letterbox hybrid cannot be designed to be found using only clues." http://www.geocaching.com/about/guidelines.aspx#letterbox I'm not trying to be mean, but I think you should stop looking for ways to circumvent the guidelines and wait until you have a GPS before you start hiding caches. Or take up actual letterboxing. So I guess that one kind of breaks the rules then? There wasn't a stamp or anything in it, it was just a geocache, the only difference was that the posted coordinates were intentionally off, but close to the cache. If there's no stamp, it doesn't meet the requirement for a letterbox hybrid. Unfortunately, some people are dumb and take the stamps as swag, so it may not be the cache owner's fault.

"Letterbox hybrids are a mixture of letterbox and geocache. They should contain a signature stamp that stays with the box, and they must conform to the guidelines for geocaches and therefore must contain a logbook and involve GPS use as an integral part of the hunt. A letterbox hybrid cannot be designed to be found using only clues." http://www.geocaching.com/about/guidelines.aspx#letterbox I'm not trying to be mean, but I think you should stop looking for ways to circumvent the guidelines and wait until you have a GPS before you start hiding caches. Or take up actual letterboxing.

Final to a puzzle? i was thinking something like that, thats why i didn't post the location or coords If you contact the local reviewer, they might be nice and tell you what it is.

"In the interest of file security, caches that require the downloading, installing or running of data and/or executables may not be published." http://www.geocaching.com/about/guidelines.aspx#guide That said, if you can post the audio file online so it can be played without being saved to the computer, it should be okay. Take a look at this cache: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...d8-f1cfe19d4c23

I wonder why the good folks at Mozilla felt the need to find a different word for something that everyone else calls a "skin." Personally, I fail to see the need for such a thing. Because I like everything on my computer to be pink!

Final to a puzzle?

Repeating what others have said - if you want to FIND a cache with Google Earth, whatever. But don't HIDE a cache with Google Earth unless you want a lot of angry NA logs. Google Earth is awesome, but the accuracy of its coordinates is too inconsistent for cache placement.

If you look closely, you'll see that an Earthcache owner CAN require you to take a picture as a form of data collection. They can't require you to take a picture of yourself as simple proof that you were there.