Kite and Hawkeye
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Posts posted by Kite and Hawkeye
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I did a no-gps-required cache, which whet my appetite. Even $100 was a fairly large chunk of change to me, so I dawdled on buying the actual GPS, but then a cache appeared at the county fair. Commercial cache? Temporary cache? Whatever, it got me to get my eTrex. I ended up unable to FIND the cache, because it was a cleverly hidden micro and I was a newbie, but in the year since then we've found plenty. I wistfully wanted to place a commemorative cache at the fair again, but I know it wouldn't be approved :/. (Last year's fair cache was moved nearby but offsite after the fair was over, and we got to log a find on it there.)
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Originally posted by The Falcon:Marwell says we'll run out of GC codes by June 2003. So what's the word?
Looks like the FAQ was last updated in April; sometime around then, a new numbering system was instituted, so we're good to go for... I forget how long, but I think it was a Really Long Time. I'm sure someone can Markwell you on the matter
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Well, one of us has a bad achilles tendon and the other has a bad back, so we only do caches we're reasonably sure won't leave either of us laid up for the rest of the summer. Some 2 terrains we've tried have been pretty challenging. We did do a cache with an 800+ foot climb once, but it was on well-defined trails with a lot of switchbacks so we were okay.
I think the more detail about the terrain, the better, so people can tell whether the cache is within their abilities. Ratings can be misleading. 1/1's can be clever and fun, but we do prefer caches with at least a bit of a walk in the woods.
Incentive to get off our butts and exercise is one reason we cache, but my tendon injury is FROM geocaching -- a year ago I climbed a steep canyon ascent too aggressively when I wasn't in shape for it. I know my limits better now, and in the local canyonlands it's a rare 3 that I could realistically complete. Difficult-terrain caches will inevitably be visited less than really easy ones, but around here I know plenty of locals who thrive on them.
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Could just be a login issue. I've had it happen that the computer insists I'm logged in (note at top of page), yet I still can't view my own recently submitted (pre-approval) cache. Logging out and back in worked. The site seems confused this week about whether one's logged in or not. No upgrade is without its glitches... r
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I'm not sure if Jeremy was asking me or Criminal, but I'll answer for us as well.
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Originally posted by Jeremy:So I understand correctly, you are using the "Remember me" link on the site and you are getting logged out when you try to visit the site hours later, but only on the cache detail page and nearest cache page?
Question:
1. Are you using 2 different browsers or two different computers when this is happening?
Yes. Often I log in from home, then from work, then back at home, and/or Hawkeye logs in (using our team login) from a different computer in between my attempts. I'm getting the feeling that that's a problem? I guess I could wean myself off checking the site from work, but often I'm sitting at my computer, Hawkeye's sitting at his, we both try to remain logged in, and chaos ensues. We can hop around to 'my cache page' or 'view your profile as others see you' just fine, but as soon as we go to a nearest cache page -- bam, logged out.
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I'm still having login issues as well. I've tossed, er, cleared my cookies, to no avail. I'm capable of going to my cache page just fine, but EVERY time I click on the nearest caches link, I'm logged out. I click 'log in.' It just reloads the page. I click 'log in' AGAIN and fnally am taken to the login page. I stay logged in for a little while, but then a few hours later, if I go to my cache page and click on the nearest caches link... I'm logged out again. I'm getting really sick of logging in -- used to be, I logged in once and stayed logged in for months at a time, even if Hawkeye used the login on another computer, even if I logged in from both work and home. Is login use on multiple computers at once simply not supported anymore (which will make team caching hard), or is this not happening to other people?
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The new "new log" icon stands out even more than the old "new cache" icon. A lot of people seem to be finding this usage confusing (numerous posts of 'why are old caches being labeled as new?"). It might be clearer if the icon said "logged" or, I dunno, something other than "new." "New log" in little print? I'm reaching here. Or if the icon color was something other than yellow, it might be less flashy... The new "new" is bigger and cleaner than the old "new"... I think perhaps should be used to replace the old "new cache" icon!
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We found a tiny, partially used tube of sunblock in a cache once. Saved us from burning ourselves to a crisp on a day that turned out sunnier than we'd expected. I'm grateful that whoever used the first part left the rest. Ordinarily, I'd think such an item was a bit trashy, but it was like finding water in the desert that day.
But I still think people should have the decency to leave a CLEAN golfball.
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I like signature items, but I don't know how tracking their presence in a cache would work... or even exactly what the definition of 'signature item' should be. Are they necessarily something personalized? I always leave a little frog when we visit a cache, but I don't think it's worthy of a special icon, nor do I think people would hunt the cache for it. I would be interested in hunting a cache that has nice stuff in it; nice stuff can be TBs, interesting signature items, things of more than typical value, or something I just happen to find interesting. You can tell by reading recent logs if anyone's mentioned leaving anything you'd want to hunt, and I think that's the most practical way to go about it. It's awfully hard to track the contents of a cache, and there will always be people who don't want to admit that they took NiftySignatureItem and left a dirty golfball.
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Originally posted by Nylimb:This bug has been mentioned in the thread about the new search pages, but I haven't seen any reply yet. Maybe if it's in a thread of its own it won't get lost among the other issues.
I'm using Netscape Communicator 4.77 on an iMac. When I do a search for caches, the list shows up in a font that's too small to read. In order to read it I have to do "Increase Font Size" twice, and wait for the page to reload. This takes about 20 seconds.
Will this be fixed soon? Has anyone figured out a way to work around it? I know that Netscape's "Preferences" command lets you adjust the fonts that are used for various things, but I haven't figured out what to change to fix this problem.l
See my response about the extraneous characters -- it's a Netscape 4.7 thing. If you can upgrade to Netscape 6 or any other modern browser, everything will display fine. I feel your pain, being a Netscape fan and finding 6.0 too slow for my older iMac, but generally speaking, when 4.7 shows something wrong, it's its own fault. It failed to respect a bunch of standards that most of the rest of the world (including newer netscape) now follows.
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Ahem. As you can see, I posted that with Netscape 4.7.
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This is a Netscape 4.7 issue -- it doesn't play nice with Unicode, which is.. uh, some font-encoding thing that's all the rage these days. I'm not a technical person. The only escape is not to use Netscape 4.7. I've switched to IE (shudder, yeah), for that reason and because an increasing number of sites don't render properly in 4.7, which also doesn't play nice with some HTML standards. The new gc.com is coming out with unreadably tiny fonts in my 4.7, for example.
There's really nothing the site can do about it -- I've never liked to hear "well, get a new browser" as the response to a problem, but in this case? That's about the long and short of it. When I do use Netscape 4.7, I also get extraneous characters at the end of logs. Sometimes adding a bunch of spaces at the end of the log helps. I try not to edit my logs in that browser, either, because not infrequently it inserts a bunch of random spaces in my words. Again, the unicode thing. Unicode is a force for good, not evil, don't get me wrong -- much as I love Netscape, 4.7 was a pretty broken browser. If you can deal with 6.0, it'll fix you up nice. t
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Heh, I was assuming the NEW! icon all over the place was a bug. It's quite distracting -- when I see it, I jump, because it means a NEW CACHE! I agree with other comments -- if you really want to emphasize caches found within the last seven days, I'd suggest making a new icon rather than re-using this one. If it appears all over the page, it's hard to tell when it has real significance (a new cache, something I care very much about) or not (someone found a cache six days ago? uh, that's nice). It's adding clutter/visual noise. An animated GIF would be even noisier. I think the best suggestion is to use a different color for the "3 days ago" note on recently-found caches.
I do care when caches were last found -- I regularly scan my found list for new logs, for instance. But I do it more often than once a week, and have no difficulty scanning by the "x days ago" field. The new display has already made this more convenient than it used to be without any icon at all... but if you do want to use one, I'd suggest a less flashy one, and one that doesn't already have another meaning.
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We rarely lose signal for any length of time under tree cover, in canyons, etc, and we're using a yellow etrex. Have you been having problems, or are you just concerned that the manual cites this as a possibility? Our major cause of signal loss when we're caching is that somebody has the GPS cord around their neck and it flops face-down. Signal is restored as soon as we turn it back face-up. The worst reception we've had is downtown among tall buildings -- man, do those signals bounce around. Not many caches there, though.
Spending more money won't get you a better satellite fix, unless you go all-out on an external antenna. Many thousands of caches have been found with a GPS no pricier than yours... and if a cache is in a spot where tree cover is SO heavy you can't get a decent signal for an extended period of time, it's a bad placement. Often if a cache is in a notoriously poor reception area the owner will offer more clues to make up for it.
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I'm not particularly in favor of vacation virtuals, but a physical cache within 0.1 miles of this site does sound unwise. If someone tried to place one, it might well be rejected under the "stay away from things that look like potential terrorist targets" rule.
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I noticed that Jeremy said most of the login issues have been fixed... however, I'm still having trouble. I think it's because I access the site both from work and from home, and Hawkeye also uses the same login to access the site from his work and home computers. Before the upgrade, we never had trouble staying logged in from four different sites, but now we're getting bounced out a lot. I can go to "my cache page" and see that I'm logged in... but the logout occurs when I click one of the search links (from my home coordinates / filtered). (If this doesn't fall under the "most" issues that have been fixed, no problem, we'll wait.)
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quote:
Originally posted by Jeremy:Yeah. It sucks. I'll be changing the bolding tomorrow. Color suggestions for highlighted text, anyone?
I went back and forth with the underlining, but felt that it should be there. It's nice to know what is a link and what isn't.
You mean the new idea is that when you mouse over a link, it'll change color rather than go boldface? I think it's sufficient that a link is obviously a link, due to color and underlining; it doesn't need to do something visible when you mouse over it. The mouse-hover-bolding thing was making my browser choke earlier, so I'm a little dubious about any hover stuff that's not functionally necessary.
If I still get a vote, I say go with a slightly darker blue. I also like the gray of the followed-link text. These pretty links are making the green background look a little too bright, though, maybe you should tone it down a shade.... er, it's time to duck and cover, right?
(I may be completely misinterpreting what you mean by 'highlighted text' in this context, too.)
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That's a lovely shade of blue.
Now, when I mouse over any blue link, it turns from regular font to boldface. Kinda neat, but on my not-completely-obsolete imac my browser freezes for a good five seconds to process that, and another five when I mouse away. (I know things are currently a bit experimental and subject to change, and I really appreciate both the new functionality, and the responsiveness Jeremy's shown to the *cough* suggestions that immediately cropped up. So, in that spirit, I hope I don't sound too whiny -- it's just an observation. Have I mentioned the lovely shade of blue, the blazing speed of the searches, the exquisite grace of the filters?)
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Not to go off on a tangent, but we've all seen caches stay 'temporarily' disabled indefinitely. I hesitate to post 'should be archived' logs, lest I appear to be the cache police, but I would like to see them either restored or archived. I feel like a busybody writing personally to the owners, though.
Now that 'temporarily' disabled caches are going to be more prominent in search results (not tucked away neatly at the bottom of the screen), I guess there's more motivation to ask the owners if they intend to revive it, and suggest they archive it if they don't intend to bring it back to active status.. though I'm still afraid the reaction will be "who are you to bug me about it?".
I know we don't need more rules, but I sorta wish that a cache that remained temporarily disabled for more than a month or two would just revert to archived status. That may just be my dislike of confrontation talking, though.
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Wow, the improvements over the last couple of days are incredible. I'm left with only the minor quibble that the grey background for found caches is a bit pale -- someone mocked up a version with a stronger background color, and it made skimming quite a bit easier (while still leaving the text quite readable).
The ability to do a filtered search off of my cache page is truly a thing of beauty.
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Aha, a new San Diego cacher
. There's a San Diego thread in the West/Southwest forums, come on by and say hello! There's probably going to be some sort of local cacher picnic/event this summer, too. There are tons of great caches in the San Diego area, so if you're a hands-on person, I say go for them and learn by experience. Our first ten caches taught us more than any amount of yakking on the forums . You obviously have your datum set correctly and know how to set a waypoint (er, you did input the coordinates in the GPS and have it lead you to the cache, rather than walking around watching your current coordinates and trying to get them to match those on the cache page, right?), so you've got the basics. You'll grow more familiar with your GPS as you use it. Input a waypoint, have the GPS lead you to a waypoint. Those are the biggies. No doubt there's also a function where you can save your trail and backtrack along it, which is useful for getting yourself OUT of the woods again when all the trails start to look alike. I don't know if your unit has a built-in compass; if not, bring a separate compass, and once you're within forty feet or so of the cache, take a bearing. GPS is less useful on direction the slower you're going, and the closer you are to ground zero. As you've figured, if the terrain on a cache is 1 or 2, there's going to be a trail, and it's probably going to take you very close to the cache. If the cache is more than 50-60 feet away, see if the trail winds around closer to the cache rathe than bushwhacking toward it. Learn what poison oak looks like, if you don't already know. Don't be ashamed to read the hints on a cache, and the comments of those who have recently logged it. Often they give good information about the approach to take. Once you've done a handful of caches, you will begin to be able to use the Force and cache hiding spots will leap out at you.
I know I *should* wear long pants, but I get too hot. I've been thorn-scratched, brambled and poison oaked more than I care to recount. Luckily I don't appear to be allergic! We carry handi-wipes in our bag, which may be useful for getting some of the oak oil off, as well as cleaning the inevitable scrapes.
I'd also recommend getting a decent hiking staff -- lots of canyon caches around here and some fairly steep terrain, the odd stream crossing, etc. You'd be surprised how useful a stick will be. Plus, you can use it to poke underneath logs, in hollows, etc -- places you won't want to stick your hands. There *are* rattlesnakes in SD -- we've only met one, but better the stick than your hand.
I don't mean to be all negative, though -- this is a fantastic city in which to be a geocacher, with endless opportunities for caches both easy and difficult, and plenty of nice locals. Have fun! i
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There are quite a few urban micros in our area where you can drive very close to the cache. I think this sort of cache is often fun, especially if the hide is clever. Beats the heck out of extremely easy virtuals in my book. Actually fetching the micro might sometimes require assistance, though, if bending to the ground or reaching up overhead are problematic. A smaller handful are truly accessible from a seated position. I think hiding physically easy but clever micros would be a great idea if your area hasn't got many. Too many 1 terrains around here involve a significant hike. Our own cache is borderline accessible -- a wheelchair wouldn't quite fit, I don't think, and one does need to stand to access the cache container, but the walk is about fifty feet on pavement. Just about everyone who's found it has termed it nifty, so I am proud to say that easiness does not necessarily make a cache boring. I
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I noticed that when I do a search from my home coordinates, the "last found" dates correctly distinguish between the last date found at all (black) and the date I found it (green). It's only when I click through my public page via my "found" number that the black and green dates become the same number, both being the date I found it.
I'm liking the format more and more, the more I use it. Hope this is a simple bug that will be easily fixed.
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We once ran across a pen-less cache that the last finder had signed with a stick and some dirt. Needless to say, the log was brief.
We contributed a pen
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What makes a difficulty 5, terrain 1 cache?
in General geocaching topics
Posted
Clayjar consistently rates a bit high, but I suspect a lot of people don't use it because I more commonly complain that local caches are rated low, at least on terrain.
This was a good terrain 1, difficulty 4.5 cache. You had to decode a whole page of ones and zeroes, which turned out to be a takeoff on the aricebo(sp?) message. It was a multi (but again, EXTREMELY easy terrain), the first waypoint was very hard to fetch due to its public nature, and figuring out how to decode the message stumped more than one cacher. Some people hared off into the desert to false coordinates, despite the warning not to go anywhere till you'd decoded everything. It all worked great with the theme.. pity the Futuro House at the final cache site vanished, necessitating its archival!
I like puzzle caches. I'm not a fan of, say, college-level math puzzles, but this and Off to Find a Wizard were a lot of fun. (Though Wizard brought up the question... how do you terrain-rate a cache that requires about 200 miles of driving? The final walk was quite easy -- I'd have given it a 1.5 or 2 -- but man, we were driving all day. If anyone wanted to do it without a car, they'd have been out there a week.)