KG6EAR

Every time I'm hosting a NASA event, like a curse, Groundspeak muggles my cache page rendering with some kind of new update to code or layout which breaks the page. Although I can fix some things while a cache is active (and it gets tedious to be forced to redo my pages), it begs the question: How can we truly have anything ever "archived" truly when the way the pages render after you can't even edit them anymore is constantly being monkeyed with? ???? Old pages should have rendering grandfathered in to how they were rendered at the time of authoring......... ! A CURRENTLY BROKEN EVENT PAGE RENDERING EXAMPLE: Please see my NASA - JPL Event cache page: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=f7fc60e7-9ed3-4cfe-af9d-3b3e63fd67c0 The relevant image: http://i52.tinypic.com/k46rm8.gif THE NEW RENDERING IS COMPLETELY HORRID! IT IGNORED THE FACT THAT GRAPHICS HAD ALPHA LAYERS, AND PUT ITS OWN SOLID WHITE COLORED BACKGROUND BEHIND A TRANSPARENCY OF A PLANET.. The original page had a transparency between the planet and the sparkling space gif behind it and was much nicer than this new "improved" version. PLEASE FIX THE TRANSPARENCY ISSUE...

I just created an event cache listing and the form was happy to accept a date up to 6 months in advance. This covers the vast majority of events. I imagine that this limitation is in there at the request of the reviewers, who would rather it be the system that disappoints people, rather than a note from them. Even then, there seems to have been a trade-off, otherwise maybe it would have indeed been 3 months. As a workaround, you could set the date to some arbitrary value - say, today - and then put the final date in there when you're ready to submit it. If you're doing a lot of advanced planning, and a lot of editing of the page, this last change before you submit shouldn't be a major issue. Yeah, I know we can do a lot of sneaky tricks to get around ill-thought handling and limitations present in the system, BUT it would be nice if we didn't have to.. because work arounds always are a time-wasting distraction from what we want to be doing which shouldn't be "micromanaging system limitations" and finding ways to skirt restrictions that aren't part of the rules, but built into the software of the server system. BTW: A date of today shouldn't work and should be rejected because the Groundspeak minimum notify is 2 weeks advanced.. Both in application and in "strongly recommended minimums" which always are taken as literaly and inflexibly by the reviewers as possible it seems.

ANNOUNCING THE 2010 NASA Goldstone Deep Space Network Geocoin One of the NASA geocoins being tracked on its page.. There is a very few of these coins left for sale. Partial proceeds are being sent to direct aid relief charities in Haiti such as the Hands and Feet Project (orphanage) and the Red Cross. Originally created for the 2010 NASA Goldstone Deep Space Network GeoTour event, this rare beauty is now being offered to the public at a very limited quantity and will soon disappear forever into the few hands that will find it. This beautiful golden 3-D design features a front side graced with the NASA Goldstone facility's largest antenna, the 70 meter MARS dish in a field of glow in the dark stars. Stars are typical greenish-glow "white" except for the constellation Cassiopeia which glows in a more subtle red. Circular writing along edge of coin says " * NASA GOLDSTONE DEEP SPACE NETWORK * SERVING UP RELIABLE WORLD-CLASS MISSION CRITICAL COMMUNICATIONS SINCE 1958 * The back side of the coin also features a golden 3-D design with the Mars rover happily rolling along over a lunar landscape. More glow in the dark stars illuminate the sky over it. This side has a coin trackable serial number (trackable at www.geocaching.com) and the edge of the coin says "Per Aspera Ad Astra" which loosely translates to "To the stars through difficulties" or "through adversity to the stars"... I am taking direct orders for these coins from interested parties. They are offered at $20 each + free shipping, limit of 4 per cacher. Coins are trackable and come with custom profile icon. Coins are not activated but come with activation codes supplied in a protective plastic sleeve. Coin diameter: ~ 4.5cm Coin thickness: ~ 4mm Coin weight: ~ 1.3 oz. / ~ 36.7 g

It's lame, but I've had cachers hold onto some of my TBs for over a year before FINALLY putting them back into another cache.. THAT pisses me off for sure. 3 months even is excessive. 3 weeks is not a big deal IMHO.

1. Logging travel bugs now on "your log is posted" result page, it shows coordinates of log down in the text of the log itself. This is deceptive and guides users to think that somehow coordinates got jumbled into their TB log and they will try to revise it again unsuccessfully. But the coordinates aren't in the log as will be seen when reloading the trackable item page! Just a nuisance that should be an easy quick fix! 2. Another more disturbing nuisance is that for event caches, the default log type was changed to "attended".. Now almost all my events show that they have been attended although they haven't been held yet! This is because the log type is squished together with the line below it now so it isn't as easy to notice the log type is set wrong now and the default is simply not noticed by cachers meaning to note the page that it wasn't already set for that former default. This bug is really annoying and needs to get fixed ASAP please!! 3. Map function still does not work when entering coordinates on any cache page. This visual feedback of coordinate correctness is a necessity! I just went after a FTF yesterday with my bf and we couldn't find it. Guess what? The wrong coordinates were entered. Did the cacher have an easy way to double check them? Not since the map quit working on the cache creation page.. 4. Event cache pages can't be simply authored but not released to reviewers if the intended event date is farther than 3 months. WHY NOT THOUGH? We should be able to start editing the pages as far ahead of the event as we please. The rule doesn't say we can't work on the listing 5 months or 6 months ahead. It only states it can't be published that far ahead. It should NOT throw a fit about the 3 month date until you go to submit it for review..This would allow us long-range planners to have things more ready to go well in advance of our larger events so we can plan for a whole year looking forward at any time.. Please allow this functionality.

I don't think the user built page listings and profiles are free from CSS controls yet. Why? Because my graphically intense webpages that are disfigured still all showing the same problem. <table> formatting has been skewed by changed defaults outside of my page code of which I am unaware precisely what was changed. With three successive updates each one did something new, strange, and unpretty to my listings. Here is a great example of one of my muggled event pages: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...&Submit6=Go (GC22RFT) The rainbow color transitions (until updating began) were smooth without seperations between the bands of color or other odd spacing or "border" issues. Now they are several screens long to scroll through because of being "blown out" by the addition of not-called-for cell spacing or cell padding or both . CSS would expucalain handily as the culprit here because my code didn't change to cause this problem.I fixed them the first time I noticed by being more specific in my code that each row was not to have a height greater than 1-3 pixels depending. THat approach temporarily fixed the issue until yet another update came through for which I haven't had the time to find a working fix. I think the fix is on Groundspeaks end because even if I fixed or "adjusted" my HTML code to render all my active listings the way I originally had them, what about archived pages? They are affected and can't be edited because they are archived. Do you really want to put all us poor cachers through the torture of having to patch all of our listings using tables and graphics or trick text manipulations? The easy and sure answer is to remove what changes were applied to the user code areas of the pages.... Another example: This graphics image that I animated using tricks was smooth and jointless until the 2:15 update yesterday, then it became the way you see it now. Segmented and ugly looking: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp= GC226TW&Submit6=Go (GC226TW) So when will this new table image formatting problem be fixed or "reverted" to normal? And please, can we have user warnings before any future updates attempt to revise how our own html code performs so that we can have time to test our pages given any set number of settings changes to simulate how they would look after the change occurs so we can do feedback on problems before they happen? You need like a sandbox area to play with user code without affecting existing listings and applying current or future changes to defaults by turning on and off switches to observe the differences.

I have been routinely frustrated by the mind-numbing undocumented restrictions on html code in place by Groundspeak. And as I see, like two days ago the disaster inflicted on 20 of my active cache pages when all formatting went to hell, their methods of processing page code vary considerably from time to time. Best advice: Don't do what I did, which is to push the Groundspeak server to the limit of what it is allowed to do, because being a rule bender gets you burned in the end when the rules change. Host the pages on your own server, you'll have more fun that way and you have full control that they survive the way you mean them to be viewed... OR do it my way and push it to do all that it can. Sound is not unfortunately one of the things I have figured out a work-around for, but animation.. ah.. well that's another story. Please see some great examples from my collection including my personal geo profile and these: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...a9-af6409b96185 (GC20H7Q - 2010 NASA Goldstone annual tour) http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...1d-099d7cf09a56 (GC22RFT - 2010 NASA Goldstone annual after tour dinner) http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...fe-f9f86e3bd06e (GC226TW - Triangles Mega Event planning event) a great example of page rendering broken by the latest update which isn't kind to Groundspeak "hacking" (ummm.. optimizing) like I deploy. Regards, Matt (Victorville, CA)

Somewhere I had a great idea to make a new section in my profile, JUST for tracking police encounters.... 4 entries and counting. I think I hold the record for the number of law enforcement and security swarming somebody at once!! (Rancho Cucamonga, CA at "Victoria Gardens" shopping mall... Thanks Altigenman!