Firefairy

As a semi-newbie (definitely sticking around, but still under 50 finds), I would like to say that I still like finding nifty stuff in caches. Trading is fun, when there's anything to play with. I like themes, so I got myself stuff that all goes together. (If you see a short chick with red hair, backpack, coat... that would be me. I've discovered that for me, being obvious and harmless is better urban camo than being subtle, and I don't really need nature camo.) So, I didn't buy expensive things, but I am trying to get things that fit with either a Fire theme or a Fairy one, and it all has to be something I think is neat or would have thought was neat when I was younger. So, I've got a bag full of swag that I wouldn't mind finding in a cache, most of which cost me a dollar. Some of the tiny stuff came in sets, so those are less, but I like having something I can leave in medicine-bottle minis. Some of them are a bit more, but they fit my theme really well, like the fire-patterned yo-yo ball. Fire pattern, nifty fun toy suitable for entertaining pixies for days. Cheapest items once they are broken out into singles, micro matchbox cars with flame paint jobs, $1.75 for five, I think. Most expensive would probably be the personal fan with LEDs in the "blades" so that you get a light show when you use it, $5. Stuff I've picked up includes a rainbow smiley keychain, a 20 something coin (don't know what nation yet), a little packet of geocaching stuff, a small wooden pendant carved like an african mask, and a "lucky caching stone". Basically, give it some style, and you're probably good. If you think it's crap, no one else is really going to want it either... Firefairy

I do graphics in computers a lot; the original photo looks a lot like the artifacts you get when you compress an image too far or the data is corrupted. It is also in two of the primary colors for CMYK printing; cyan and magenta. Might still be something inside the camera providing the patterns, but I think that's where the color spread comes from.

Hi! I just downloaded the Google Earth bit, and it absolutely kicks butt- I see a lot less "darn, I'm on the wrong side of the road/stream/fence" issues in my future. :-) The problem is, in order to get maximum use out of it, I need it to work while I'm out caching, not just at home, and every time I change the view, it reloads and dumps the old points. Which means that unless I cheese it somehow, I lose the points if I change the view or turn off Google Earth and don't reload. I would like to be able to build a base map of the caches within 10 miles of my house for impulse caching purposes, but I live in downtown Denver, so that's a LOT. I've got GSAK for my GPS, so I've got them there, and I would love to complement them with a Google Earth map to match. There are a few inelegant ways to keep the points; I can bookmark all the caches I want and download them in chunks of 100, I can move around the screen and copy the points out into the static part of My Places, or I can add them manually. All are icky and prone to me screwing up and losing points. So, I would like to request that we be able to download Google Earth files from queries, not just bookmark lists. Same way we can do waypoint files. It would save a lot of time and bandwidth (as opposed to loading many many bookmark pages), and be less likely to leave things out. Even if we can only do them 20 at a time, I think the brevity of process and organized format would make it easier to combine those than to do it manually. Or possibly this could be part of a pocket query upon request? On a related note, it would be very nice to be able to view a different number of results per page on queries, but I'm not sure how that would affect bandwidth usage. I don't have a problem with 20 as a default, but I have broadband and I like to be able to compare things, so I would be happy to wait for a page with 50 or 100 results to load. I also know some people with dialup who like such lists (on other sites) to load with 5 or ten results per page so they can catch an incorrect query faster. Just my two cents, FF

I'm the systematic type, and I wanted to actually check off the fields in GSAK about which symbols my GPS supports, which I thought would be negligible to find out. Silly me. I have a nice, shiny (the screen, at least ) new GPSMAP 60, so I thought maybe I was just missing the list somewhere in the user guide, so I emailed Garmin support. They have a partial listing on their website in the Cartography section, under Map Symbols, but not only is that only a partial listing, but it includes symbols neither GSAK nor the included MapSource have even heard of. I found that on my own, and support said that's the only listing available. Image searches on Yahoo and Google didn't work, at which point I decided making a list was probably my best bet. As it did take me a few hours, I figured making it available for other people would be helpful, and as my site is (purposely) not on the search engines, that means I have to tell someone about it. Oh, horrors! So, here's a graphic listing of all the symbols in the version of MapSource that comes with the GPSMAP 60 and GPS 60 (and presumably all the other Garmin GPSs). I marked it to indicate which ones work on my GPSMAP 60, but all the symbols are there, so it should be useful for people with other units as well. The listing was pretty much the same as the one in GSAK, so even if you don't have a Garmin, it at least shows you which symbol is which name, which helps if you don't have labels on the unit, because there are no icon graphics in GSAK. I considered the icon to be the same if all that changed is that it became monochromatic. So that you know what you're getting into (for dialup connections and so on), the file is 1075x784, and 363k. Sorry about the mass, but when I compressed it more, it looked like hell. Here ya go: GPS Icon Full List

That was me! The pin is on my caching pack, my keys are on the 'biner, and the magnet is on my fridge. Back in Denver now, and stocked myself up this weekend so I could do some trading while I fulfill the wishes of the travel bugs I collected (I'm making utterly sure I don't pull any of them out of circulation). Went nuts on the Walgreens dollar aisle while I was wating for my gatorade to kick in a couple of days ago. (Forgot to take the return to the dessicating climate into account and gave myself a dehydration headache while doing my first caching run out here.) Almost every cache I hit on the east coast was wet, so I put a premium on things that don't mind wet caches. Snagged a new mini-pack so this wouldn't take over my usual one, bright red to go with my nick, and filled it with: Travel Bugs: The Travel Bug Tourist Group (the bugs I brought with me from the east coast) The copy tag for Quest for Quinn My three unreleased TBs Trading items: Beanie-style stuffed lion and white tiger, in ziplock snack bags 3 Clusters of red, orange and yellow ponytail holders 4 LED flashing pens Hair snaps 3 packs of pencils; two holographic, one glitter 1 blue LED keychain flashlight 1 pack color-changing fake nails with stickers 1 personal fan with light-show LEDs on the hub 1 set generic magnetix 3 each red and orange mini-sharpies (the kind with a lanyard ring) 1 mini-card magnet set- full house in hearts 1 purple hot wheels car 2 mini-keychain whistles (surprisingly loud) 4 mini hotwheels 4 packs small art prints (5x7 and 6x6) 2 red mini composition books to donate as replacement logs 3 seperable key fobs 1 carabiner key clip (Made obsolete by the purple one I got out of the cache ) Several ziplock bags for whatever None of them cost more than two bucks. I'm planning to make my better trade items when I get a chance. My stuff: GPS Antenna LED Pen Red pen for signing logs Walgreens pen (meant to be traded at a pen-trading cache but I left it in the car) Hand sanitizer Aloe Advil packets spare batteries Kleenex Sunblock Bactine Geocaching Pin My camera bag also comes (follows me everywhere, no matter which pack I'm using) and contains Pocket PC Digital camera Extra Flash cards Most of the things we saw in caches were kid oriented, and I kind of wished there were grownup things as well, so I tried to get non-age specific, and especially non-gender specific stuff as much as I could. The couple of things that are pretty specific (most girls won't want the hot wheels, and I think the nails are definitely a girl thing), I made sure to balance out. Trying for a mild fire and/or fairy theme as well, but it will take me a while to fill out those aspects; the sparkly stuff and the fire-colored stuff are in-theme, but I need to find something the replace the hot wheels at some point. Haven't gotten to use it much yet, as I've only hit one non-micro cache since coming home, but I only got things I would have liked to see in caches. How am I doing? Haven't come up with a signature item yet- I make jewelry, so I'm planning to make backpack charms, but I'm trying to come up with a design that isn't gender or age specific. I'd like to make a Firefairy emblem so they're identifiable without a lot of engraving Can you tell I love the trading aspect? Just a little obvious, I think.

I was born and raised in Denver, and I'm a street rat (urban equivalent of white trash), so I'm not too worried about anything I'll encounter around here; I pretty much know how to recognize a squirrely situation or person, and I know how fast I can run and where the nearest dodge spots are automatically. I don't spook easily, but I change paths when something does spook me, and I have survived unscathed walking at all hours through some of Denver's worst neighborhoods as a result. I am not a particularly dangerous person, in size or training, and I know it. I plan to learn some martial arts, but so far have been too broke, so all I know are some good dirty tricks and to never give up in a real fight. I learned early on to have an air of "I am expected somewhere immediately, will have dangerous people out looking for me if I go missing, and will eat your appendages if you mess with me", but I do everything I can to avoid having to try. Knowing the general danger signs is a very good thing, and projecting confidence helps a great deal, but the comment about overconfidence applies to these strategies as well. My dad is one of the kind of people most parents try to keep their kids away from, so I had a pretty scuzzy childhood. I'm about as un-victim-looking as a 5'2.5" female can get, have the best non-professional instincts for an urban environment you can get, and still won't go near certain intersections after about ten at night. If you don't feel confident of being able to go in and get out safely, don't go. I haven't done too much walking for lack of partners, so now caching is my "I want to get out but no one wants to come" activity. There are about 1700 caches within a hundred miles of my house, and 260 of those are within ten miles; well within my familiar stomping ground, including some of the bad hispanic neigborhoods. I feel perfectly confident caching anywhere in that radius, and the only reason I wouldn't go at night is that I'd be likely to get picked up as being suspicious if I went wandering around with a flashlight. I know to avoid urban ambush spots, I know how to listen for the wrong kinds of movement or silence, and I know to believe my instincts when something is wrong but I can't put my finger on it. Here, I am not too worried about accidentally getting myself into a situation I can't get out of, but that's because this is my home turf. The point is that I know all that for this area, and only this area- I know that none of this translates into equivalent awareness in the woods, the bad neighborhoods with other subcultures, or even suburbia. If you're a country girl, be very careful and aware in the city, because you'll be "feeling" for signals that aren't there. If you're a street rat, same deal in the woods, and so on. If you're out of your home environment, whatever it is, have some serious backup to make up for the lack of familiarity. Personally, I plan to stay urban until I get a nice big caching buddy, some pepper spray, and/or a gun. I was planning to get a stick anyway, having already learned I need something other than my hands if I'm going to dig around in Colorado weeds.

Um, crud. I've released one bug, but it's still in the hands of the friend who got me started caching, so I still have some control and can have her make modifications. I was clever enough to avoid showing his number in the pic, but he's only attached to his tag with a jump ring and he's really cool. How worried should I be? http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=165617 After the pic was taken, I added a card a bit bigger than he is, with the bullet-point list of his overall goals and the reqests that he not be kept and that they look at his current goal so they don't send him the wrong way, which I am hoping will help. I also strung them on the chain so that if you can see his cool side, you can also see the "Please Don't Keep Me". I was trying to balance his travel ability (since he has a rather long trip to attempt) and the likelihood of his going MIA. He cost me ten bucks, because I wanted something appropriate to the mission and that wasn't terribly expensive, but I'm worried he's a little too nifty. He has the website where I bought him listed under the graphic, though, so at least people can see where to get one of their own, which I hope will help...

I added a bag to one bug I picked up, because it was a soft doll and the caches I've seen recently have been wet and nasty, but I left the others alone, including the huge one plus bag and instructions. Now that it's been mentioned, I will probably email the owner of that one and ask if they wanted all that, as it makes an already large tag a pretty big bundle. My one released bug so far is fairly small and has an abbreviated version of his mission attached on a small laminated card so people know where he's trying to go, and I'm good with that. I would object to someone adding more simply because I decided how much documentation to add as a tradeoff between information and bulk, so that he would be most likely to travel. <shrug>