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B+L

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Posts posted by B+L

  1. We have been somewhat taken aback by the laissez-faire attitude many cachers have about, what to us, are clearly illegal cache placements and I am not referring specifically to this thread. My own common sense tells me that a road right-of-way usually grants me nothing more than the right to use it to travel from one place to another. There are other types of rights-of-way, such as natural gas pipelines which explicitly grant other types of access, such as recreational use, but that is not what we are talking about.

     

    I'm sure we would all prefer it if all caches were creatively hidden in places of great natural beauty, or places that are intriguing for other reasons, but just about everyone will make exceptions. I suspect geocaching will eventually go the way of other booms (tennis anyone?) and perhaps issues like this will all blow over without us getting regulated to death. In the meantime, we would be all be better served if we stopped abusing the trust granted to us by the reviewers and took care use our common sense in terms of sound judgment, rather than as a synonym for willful ignorance.

     

    I realize some people might take that last bit as a shot at them, but that is not my intention. I could probably find a more artful way to write the above paragraph, but as I stated earlier, I am really more concerned about general attitudes than anything expressed by anyone in this particular thread and this thread has actually been fairly encouraging overall.

     

    I've included the relevant law from the Pierce County Code. The State, other counties, and most municipalities will all have all something similar on the books. Be my reading, geocaches placed in the right-of-way require written permission from the County Engineer and there appears to be very little room for interpretation.

     

    Before anyone jumps on me for suggesting some type of cache should be banned or claiming I'm playing cache cop, you should know we learned pretty early on how to deal with caches like this -- we ignore them. There are more caches we've ignored than we've found and it will probably always be like that. If more us ignored caches of this type, would they become less popular hiding places? Who knows, but it would be an interesting experiment.

     

    Pierce County Code

     

    12.28.010 Permission Required - Removal.

    A. No person, organization, or agency shall place, erect, or install any object of any nature

    whatsoever, within a County road right-of-way without the express permission in

    writing of the County Engineer, and any such object now in place within a County road

    right-of-way without written permission of the County Engineer is declared illegal;

    provided, that this Section shall not apply to mailboxes and attached newspaper boxes,

    placed on the County right-of-way, where these are placed as far removed from the

    driving portion of the right-of-way as possible, except that said placement shall be

    subject to approval of the Pierce County Engineer.

    B. Any person placing any object within a County right-of-way in violation of this Section

    shall be responsible for the removal of the object within 48 hours of receipt of written

    notice from Pierce County. If the object is not removed within 48 hours and it

    unreasonably hampers or prevents the proper use of the right-of-way, it may be

    summarily removed by the County; provided, that the notice requirement may be waived

    and the object may be immediately removed by Pierce County if it presents an

    immediate threat of physical harm to persons or property.

    C. Abatement of any object or encroachment in Pierce County right-of-way which does not

    interfere with the proper and legitimate use of such right-of-way may be effected

    through an injunctive suit by Pierce County authorities.

    D. Nuisance Cleanup Special Assessment and Lien.

    1. For purposes of this Chapter, any object situated on or in a County road right-of-way

    without permission of the County Engineer and not otherwise permitted by PCC

    12.28.010 shall be deemed a nuisance.

    2. In addition to any other provision authorized by law, the cost of abating a nuisance

    shall be a special assessment on the land or premises on which the nuisance is

    situated. The special assessment shall defray or reimburse the County for the cost of

    abating the nuisance. This assessment shall constitute a lien against the property that

    shall be of equal rank with state, county, and municipal taxes. The special

    assessment and lien shall come into existence and attach upon compliance with the

    provisions of subsection 3.

  2. We'll give your latest version a try later today. We eagerly await more coverage, like all of Vashon. <wink>

    VERSION 1.0.1

     

    ...your wish has been granted. :)

     

    Version 1.0.1 now online and including the rest of Vashon, as well as Green River Valley and Umtanum Recreation Area (where I'll be headed later in the week. How self-centered, I know. :)). All additional coverage in 20' contours.

     

    Any suggestions, or reccomendations for coverage, feel free to weigh in.

     

    Also, with the detail of these maps, things will get very large very fast. I believe I'll start dividing the installers into regions (like with Garmin's West/Central/East for 24k maps); any suggestions for natural boundaries?

     

    Thanks for the update. We made good use of it today during our nettle-fest. If you were to tile using 7.5 min quad boundaries, I don't think it really matters so much where you divide the installers and it would keep the size of individual tiles reasonable. As far as more coverage, we'd personally be happy with the whole state :laughing:

     

    If you were to standardize on something like the 7.5 min quad grid, it would make it pretty easy for others to assist you with your efforts.

  3. Hurrah! :ph34r: I finally got a working installer available here:

     

    RyaGeo High-Res Topo Maps

     

    ...let me know what you think!

     

    I am really happy you did this. I know what a tedious process retrieving the data can be before you can even get started converting it. Kudos to you.

     

    Earlier in the week, we installed your first revision maps and Moun10bike's together on our old grayscale eTrex Vista and explored a ravine we have long been wondering about. The topo and stream data were excellent. The zoom levels were perhaps a little off, but I see you have already made some tweaks.

     

    We'll give your latest version a try later today. We eagerly await more coverage, like all of Vashon. <wink>

  4. The nearest campground to the Hyak parking where the event will be, is at Crystal Springs Campground which is just at the other end of Keechelus Lake. It's about 9 road miles away.

     

    I've stayed there many times.

     

    Ok, so I went to the link and read the description, but when I clicked on the contact info link, it took me to an online white pages that only gave me drinking water companies! :)

     

    So then I went and searched the forest service website, but the only campgrounds they list in that area are Denny Creek, Tinkham, Middle Fork, and Lake Kachess.

     

    Anyone know how I get in contact with Crystal Springs?

     

    Cle Elum Ranger District, 509/852-1100, fax 509/852-1080

     

    Crystal Springs is nice enough, especially as a Sno-Park in the winter. You might want to bring earplugs, it's closer to I-90 than you might like.

  5. Lake Kachess is probably out of the snow by now, but it looks like it is booked for the weekend of the 28th already. Lake Easton is a huge campground (and about as nice as a State campground can get) and it appears to still have plenty of room. Denny Creek tends to be pretty damp and gloomy in the best of times.

     

    The campsites along the trail are probably still in the snow, but that could change by the end of month. Personally, we'd go with Lake Easton, even though we prefer our camping to be a little more rustic.

  6. According to Mammal Tracks & Sign - A Guide to North American Species, CG's pictures show all the signs of porcupine activity, particularly the incisor marks and the height of the damage.

     

    Of all the guide books we own, this is among our favorites. Animal tracks, scat, carcass forensics. It covers all the stuff we used to only wonder about. For example, we now easily recognize the winter gait of the common, but elusive, blaze orange bushwacker.

  7. Thanks. The System Profiler FAQ worked and now my computer is recognizing the adapter. (Yes, it is the 19-HS.)

     

    Now I need help getting it to work with GeoJournal or MacCaching. There are two viable choices for serial connection: Keyserial1 or USA19H1a2P1.1

     

    When I replaced my dead keyspan, I went with a cheaper adapter, but if I remember correctly, the two ports you see are the same. Keyspan1 is an alias for USA19H1a2P1.1, so either one should work. I have found that it is usually best to connect the adapter and turn on your GPS before launching the other software, otherwise you may not see the serial port in the software preferences.

     

    When my adapter was working, it worked with both GeoJournal and MacCaching. If you still have problems, you may want to contact the individual developers via their sites.

  8. My Keyspan adapter died recently after working fine for four years. The Keyspan website has a FAQ with a list of things you can check. The entry is titled 'The Keyspan serial assistant in windows reports "no adapter found"', but the entry actually contains Mac specific information as well. If you can't solve your problem after following the procedures in the FAQ, then Keyspan has a link on their site for support.

     

    http://preview.tinyurl.com/4nll5u

    The FAQ on their website is completely useless. The links that say where to go on their website from the Answer pages don't work.

     

    The link to the downloads page is broken. The link the the uninstall instructions works. I know this kind of stuff can get frustrating, but If you want to resolve your problem, you should at least follow the instructions in the FAQ. The FAQ tells you how to use the System Profiler to check your device and you can then determine if it is defective. Since the LED is blinking, you might just need to install updated drivers.

     

    You haven't specified the model you are using. It's probably a USA19-HS. You can download the latest drivers here for all models at the link below. Please make sure you get the correct version for your OS.

    http://www.keyspan.com/downloads/

     

    Once your device is recognized, you should get a couple new ports and that should solve your other problem.

  9. ... they disabled the HTML links I had for keeping my serieses of caches together.

    What do you mean? Which links are disabled? And who did it?

    I have caches with links to subtending caches - this works fine!

     

    One of the changes in the last site update removed support for forms in cache pages. If I remember correctly, his links were in a select tag.

  10. My Keyspan adapter died recently after working fine for four years. The Keyspan website has a FAQ with a list of things you can check. The entry is titled 'The Keyspan serial assistant in windows reports "no adapter found"', but the entry actually contains Mac specific information as well. If you can't solve your problem after following the procedures in the FAQ, then Keyspan has a link on their site for support.

     

    http://preview.tinyurl.com/4nll5u

  11.  

    Now let’s see if you can figure out what cache is located at the red X here.

     

    GC6784 - Cache Butte

     

    Another challenge - can you locate the name of the cache marked with the X along the Cache River in AK?

     

    No, but the one in AR is GCB733 - CWL008 - Cache River

     

    I think a bunch of mine may have ended up here. Can someone tell us the name of the cache nearest to this location? It’s near Cache.

     

    GCNN0R - Prickly Pear

  12. I have been using my IPOD for caching since I got it for Christmas using cachemagnet software. I have learned that IPOD notes is restricted to 1000 files of information. WHat constitutes a file? It seems that the log description counts as a file as does the hint as do the logs. So that pretty much limits you to 333 caches. What about GSAK? How does it present the info on the IPOD. Can you really get 1000 caches with all the info onto your IPOD as I have read in other posts? Can you increase this size restriction?

     

    iPod notes have several restrictions. There is a maximum of 1000 notes (files). Each note will get truncated if it contains more than 4096 bytes and HTML support is very limited. You can only carry 1000 caches if they are not spilt into separate files (description, hint, logs). There is no way to overcome the built in limits, but there are ways to work around them.

     

    The GSAK iPod macro splits the notes and so does CacheMagnet. The total note limit does not bother me personally because I have no intention of doing 1000 caches in one go, or even 333 for that matter. I am not aware of any software that handles the 4096 byte limit gracefully, although I could be wrong.

     

    After twice being unable to complete a multi because the note was truncated, I wrote my own solution that splits overly long notes into multiple linked files along with image support. The iPod is not an ideal solution, but it beats printing out cache pages or spending more money on yet another gizmo. I may rethink that after playing around with the iPhone SDK.

  13. I use an iPod. I didn't like the way the notes were formatted by the Mac software I looked at, so I wrote my own little app that parses and formats Pocket Queries and other GPX files, such as Terracaching files.

     

    IPods are limited to 4096 bytes per note, 1K for link files, and 1000 notes total. The per note limit means wordy cache pages will get truncated by default and that is a big part of why I wrote my own solution. The iPod only has rudimentary HTML support, but it does a fine job displaying pictures.

     

    I have a couple of Palms laying around. So far I have avoided them because I am not excited about dragging another gizmo around with me.

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