Teasel

I'm sorry, that wasn't my intention. While I believe KA was unwise to chose a rather aggressive course of action without first exhausting the diplomatic options, he appears always to have been open and visible. The same, we are told, is apparently not true of others. In their resignation post, L&E said "it has become apparent from comments made to us that we no longer have the respect and confidence of the wider reviewer community". That suggested to me that there was more to their decision than Keystone's initial actions, but rather that others were also involved who, unlike KA, do not have a mandate to meddle in UK affairs.

Oooh, this makes me so angry! Dave and Peter have the full support of the UK community and are doing a sterling job. Caches get approved at lightning speed and this is (was!) a happier place to be than I can ever remember it. They are masters both of the arts of diplomacy, and of herding cats! And, from what I gather, they also have the support of the team at Groundspeak. So, are we to understand that they are being hounded out by a group of foreign cache approvers who (should) have nothing to do with approving UK caches and who (should) have nothing to do with moderating the UK forum? That really does leave a sour taste in my mouth. I do hope that TPTB at Groundspeak will quietly bang some heads together behind the scenes and will hold the post of UK moderator vacant until they have again regained control of their volunteer staff's behaviour and can persuade both Peter and Dave to take their rightful jobs back.

Quite! My first thoughts when I read "lots" of caches and "identical logs" was that "lots" meant tens of thousands, rather than a few dozen. The map looks interesting. I'm trying to work out what he did to end up with that pattern. Of course, an excercise for the reader is to write a program to convert a b/w picture into a set of caches, then automatically log them all to make a pretty pattern on the map. Maybe I need to get out more!

NEW

Make that 11! (The middle bit is unpainted).

Can we please try to keep Irish politics out of this! We have suggested, on a UK forum, that we create a UK geocoin, tracked on a UK website. The proposed design is a map of the UK, overlaying the UK flag and, in common with all other UK coins, it was proposed that it bear a latin inscription. It seems to me that it's the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland that you find offensive. Maybe living through the "troubles" brings one to associate the Union Flag with rather negative images. But please recognise that there are those of us who, though less nationalistic and less patriotic than you, are neither ashamed of our national identity, nor our national flag. How would you feel if I entered a discussion about a RoI geocoin demanding both that you remove the Irish flag, and also that you remove Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan (on the grounds that I, personally, don't recognise the borders and feel that the whole of Ulster should belong to my country)?! Pretty indignant, I suspect, and even less likely to be persuaded to change the design than before I spoke!

Remember that we've only got five colours to play with, from a rather limited selection, and painted in blocks - so this sort of design is not going to be possible. If we're going to have relief, we'll have to do it in the metal, rather than in the paintwork. (Eg like the original design, but with a shiny relief map of the UK).

Ah, well, I had a good teacher!

Yeah but has anyone else been completely underwelmed by USA Geocoins because of their plainess? The colour is what will make our coins extra special! We could always go for an epoxy coating, which will both protect the enamel and make it look shinier. However that would add another 70p or so to the price of each coin. Similar price increments can add milled edges, transparent paints, sandblasting, detailed engraving etc, etc. We've done english vs latin, and UK/GB/Ireland so far -- how about we do price vs features next?

British Isles = Great Britain + Island of Ireland + other bits (GEOGRAPHICAL) UK = England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales (POLITICAL) The island of Great Britain is home to three countries (England, Scotland and Wales). Though a geographical term, it may also be used politically. The island of Ireland is home to two countries (Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland). The Republic of Ireland is often shortened to "Ireland", which sometimes causes confusion. The Republic of Ireland and the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" are both nation states. "Southern Ireland" is a slang term for the Republic of Ireland and should be avoided. "Ulster" is a province which includes more than just NI - do not say "Ulster" when you mean "Northern Ireland"!. Likewise, be careful with "Eire", which apparently is not quite synonymous with "Republic of Ireland", as it is a simple translation of the somewhat ambiguous "Ireland" into Gaelic.

Peter, there's absolutely no need to apologise! The thread is "UK Geocoins", the coin design shows the outline of the UK, filled in with the flag of the UK. We don't need to feel guilty that part of the UK shares a landmass with another nation state. And we certainly don't need to feel guilty for using the Union Flag on a UK Geocoin! If we're not careful, Peter's nice, clear design is going to end up a mess! Remember that we're talking of a 1" coin here - take another look at the original design and now try to imagine how well the printing will work for the Welsh dragon... The two choices suggested are to i) Remove the UK flag from the UK Geocoin or ii) Remove NI from the UK Geocoin. I like neither! Just because you, Peter, don't have a political agenda doesn't necessarily mean that others don't! I have no problem with someone designing and minting a British Isles Geocoin; I would certainly buy some and would happily offer a logging system. Ditto an Irish Geocoin, or a Republic of Ireland Geocoin, a Cornish Geocoin or whatever. But, anyway, returning to the question of the UK Geocoin... If it's accepted that the idea of colouring in the individual countries isn't going to work on a 1" coin and we decide to keep the union flag design, then we have three choices: i) Keep the current design (UK Geocoin) ii) Remove NI (GB Geocoin) iii) Add Eire (British Isles Geocoin) My preference is for i, if only because neither Great Britain, nor the British Isles have a flag! [Edit: great minds think alike - though Ali's fingers type quicker!]

Yeah, there's a facility to allow premium members to download GPX files from G:UK. Unfortunately, the powers that be won't let me switch it on.

One way of getting round that might to get the parcel sent to your US Distributer, and get him/her to send them to you as a gift, avoiding paying any duty .. Another way would to make contact with a US cacher due to fly over here, after the completion date and have them sent to that person, and arrange a cache meet over here for the hand over (I'm sure, quite a few would be up for that idea ). You could reward them by presenting them with a coin at the meet. As you can see I'm full of ideas "outside the box", if only I could think like this when finding caches . A Round Dave Ummm, asking Ali to illegally smuggle the coins into the UK, in order to bring down the price by a few pence is going a little far isn't it?!

Actually, I think you'll find that's American! Latin is used on all other UK coins (and notes), and it gets my vote for UK Geocoins too!

Perhaps a closer analogy than litter and/or frisbees would be permanently installed orienteering course markers? Orienteering fits this description nicely too; it's also considered by most to be educational; and a permanent course also involves leaving plastic objects on the land which may never be removed. So, under the new Scottish laws, would I have the right to set up a permanent orienteering course on any land where I also have the right of access? Whatever the answer, I suspect the same would be true of geocaching.

Cottages link is there for me at 09:16. Next time any disappear, could you hold fire on replacing them for a while so that we can look at the html and see if there's any evidence of a problem. I notice that the page is a dynamic asp thingy. Are you using some whizzy ad-rotator to add in the ads, or just adding static links to the page? If you suspect foul play, try downloading the .asp file by FTP and comparing it with the version on your home PC. If the two match, the problem's with your code; if the two differ then your server has been compromised.

Now corrected, thanks! (I did say it was only a beta )

Thanks! But we've got so many caches now that we're approaching the limits of what flash can cope with (it's only designed to be a marketing tool after all! ). So, rather than break the country up into bits, I've been fiddling around with a new java-based GIS system, which I hope will be better able to grow with the sport. I've got a beta test version ready. It's a bit clumsy in places (eg you have to keep remembering to switch back to the pointer tool and/or reselect the cache layer, or you don't get any links) but it's got some whizzy new features (like roads, and being able to create a G:UK search by drawing boxes around groups of caches). Anyway take a look and let me know what's broken!

URLs of photographs (both for the cache and for logs) would be a useful improvement...

Yes, the tracking address will be stamped onto the "tails" side of the coin, along with the tracking number. For many reasons, regardless of who's "supporting" these coins, it's better that the tracking address is independent of any other body. So eg coins.geocacheuk.com is probably not the best URL. The geocoins.co.uk domain has been registered and is the working assumption, though I'm not sure it's cast in stone (or indeed brass!).

If you've got the coordinates of each motorway junction, then it's relatively easy to put together maps like this. These maps only work well for roads with restricted exits, such as motorways. For A and B roads, we'd need to know the actual route that the road takes.

That's great news, well done! Is this just for the whole Cairngorm estate, or just the area leased by CairnGorm Mountain Ltd for the ski resort? Either way, it's a lovely bit of land!

As well as the forum thread that Pharisee indicated, we're also adding agreements to the GAGB Landowner Agreements Database. Where possible, I'm trying to include the boundaries of the areas in GLAD, so that we can provide maps and information about the caches on that land. This is particularly useful where the conditions of the agreement stipulate a maximum number of caches (eg the New Forest Forestry Commission), or where there are small areas of the land which need to be avoided (eg the South East England Forestry Commission). Landowners can often provide files giving the outlines of their land from their computer systems. (They're most often called "shapefiles"). Eg Cheshire County Council and the South East England Forestry Commission have both provided shapefiles of the land where we can cache. I created one for the New Forest manually, but it was quite tedious. So if people negotiating with landowners could check to see whether they can provide any "shapefiles", I'd be really grateful to receive them! Cheers, Ian

I have the same problem. After a while, there's only so much excitement to be gained from finding McToy-filled-tupperware under rocks, but you're not ready to go looking for a new hobby. Personally, at those times, I look for something else geocaching related, but which doesn't involve tupperware. For me it's G:UK / GAGB. Geocaching has become a world of corrupted data flows, broken curl sessions, inconsistent summary tables and broken DNS zone files to be fixed. After a while, of course, staring at php programs starts to get to you (as does the inevitable political strife that comes from being noticed - no good deed ever goes unpunished) and you find that going out to find some McToy-filled-tupperware makes a nice escape from geocaching!

Sorry, duplicate post!