Teasel

Aha - a chance to get up on my soapbox again (and so soon after a similar posting too - sorry if I'm getting boring! ) Please could we have a non-ambiguous set of "countries" (or whatever you want to call them) for the British Isles? Currently we have UK and Ireland, but the UK actually includes a bit of the island of Ireland (Northern Ireland), so it's not clear where NI caches should go (with the result that they get scattered at random between the two "countries"). Either Éire/UK (political), or Ireland/Great Britain (geographical) would be much better and make it unambiguous where each cache should be listed. IMHO the geographical solution (keep Ireland in the list, rename UK to GB) is much the best solution as caches on the same island will all share the same country on GC.com. Cheers, Ian

Hi, There appears to be a problem with the countries showing on the cache details pages. Caches in the "United Kingdom" are coming up as blank - eg this one. Caches in "Ireland" (whatever that means!) are showing as Éire, even if they're in Northern Ireland - eg this one. The country list on the home page still lists UK and Ireland. Is this a prelude to a less ambiguous set of GC.com country names for the British Isles? (Hooray if so! ) "Ireland / Great Britain" (best!) or "Éire / United Kingdom" (less good) are both unambiguous ways of partitioning this set of rocks just off Europe. Whereas the previous pair of "Ireland / United Kingdom" (worst!) doesn't make it clear where caches in Northern Ireland should be listed. Or is it just a technical glitch (Boohoo if so! ) Cheers, Ian

It wasn't the password that was hacked (AFAIK) - he got in via the Microsoft ASP upload facility. Proof, if it were needed, that running servers on a Microsoft operating system is a brave thing to do! If it happens again, you can either use the links Alex and Bill posted above, or alternatively try http://www.geocacheuk.org, which should be a mirror of the '.com' homepage. Sorry for the inconvenience!

On average a UK cache can expect to be visited about 1.9 times per month, over its entire lifetime. (This data is for all currently available caches and includes all types of log. I've excluded virtuals, events etc, but have included urban caches). But, as has been pointed out, there's often a peak of traffic just after the cache has been set, as all the locals go to bag it. In its first month, the average UK cache can expect 6.0 visits, whereas in it's third month of life, that figure falls to 2.8. But the most popular caches are often well above these averages. Here's a list of the top 20 number of finds caches have received in their first month (criteria as above)... | Visits | Cache | 43 | GCGFFG CRABWOOD (hampshire) | | 36 | GCJ6KA Forest View - Environmental Cache | | 35 | GCJ6BD The Farley Mount Highwayman! | | 28 | GCHCXF Meon Valley Mud Bath | | 27 | GCJEY1 Speybank | | 27 | GCE0B1 Cache, Dash, Stash the Cash (RED NOSE) | | 26 | GCG1JH Meet You at the Crossroads | | 26 | GCG1JG The Ivy League | | 25 | GCFC42 Up the Creek 1 (Hampshire) | | 25 | GCHRH0 Forth 2 North TB motel | | 24 | GCJEZY Sluggan Bridge | | 24 | GCK2PJ Startop Stash | | 24 | GCHJMP Alchemy Quest ~ Iron (Shropshire) | | 24 | GCG6WY Flight Reservation | | 23 | GCJ8AM Southampton Travel Bug Hotel | | 23 | GCFD78 Hawthorn Hide (Hants) | | 22 | GCKECR Warden's Rest (Berks) | | 21 | GCE5EE Virtually a Cache (Hants) | | 21 | GCHJMX Alchemy Quest ~ Zinc (Shropshire) | | 21 | GCJGQA Urban View - Solihull | Looking at the popular 3 month old caches, it's mainly the urban ones which continue to bring in regular visitors: | Visits | Cache | 20 | GCJTMD A common adder? | | 18 | GCHV2K Hyde Park #01 | | 17 | GCHV3K Hyde Park #02 | | 16 | GCE2EB Towpath Tootle | | 15 | GCH9HP Cara's College Cache | | 15 | GCHV4W Kensington Gardens #4 | | 14 | GCHV4F Hyde Park #08 | | 14 | GCH3F1 150,000 tons of Fuel Oil (Portsdown Undergound #1) | | 14 | GCGEGC Old Father Thames | | 13 | GCHV4E Hyde Park #07 | | 13 | GCHV43 Hyde Park #05 | | 13 | GCJMZP canal side stroll | | 13 | GCGBGB Last Delivery (London) | | 13 | GCHV4R Kensington Gardens #3 | | 12 | GCHND0 Watchmoor Reserve | | 12 | GCGEBD The London Stone | | 12 | GCHV3V Hyde Park #03 | | 12 | GCHV4K Kensington Gardens #1 | | 12 | GCHV5B Pet Cemetery | | 11 | GCHV54 Kensington Gardens #6 | So, depending on your needs, you can quote anything from "usually less than two per month" to "sometimes over 40 per month" Cheers, Ian

Me too. It does seem like strange behaviour. Why not limit G:UK downloads to 500 caches like G:COM does? Geocachers are resourceful people and will get the data they want one way or another. If I limited the downloads to 500 caches, they'd just do multiple downloads. Trying to make people feel bad for being too enthusiastic seems to be the wrong way to go about things. As a website owner, it's my job to come up with server-efficient ways of letting people do what they want to do, not what I want them to do!

Yes, you can use GPSBabel to convert the GPX files into memory map format. Alternatively you can use G:UK to download memory map files for UK caches.

Sorry for the recent problems with the interactive map (and pretty much the whole of the rest of the site). Geocaching.com started sending out pocket queries which said that most of the caches known to G:UK were no longer in the United Kingdom. Being a trusting sort of a website, G:UK obediently removed them from the database. Jeremy has now sorted the problems and all seems to have returned to normal. I've regretably had to remove the MemoryMap with descriptions format from the website. Mark has been suffering quite substantial excess bandwidth charges for the site, and a number of people were downloading the entire UK cache database every day. I'm currently working on a system which will allow the download of only those caches which have changed since that user last downloaded the list. This should improve the situation for everybody (especially if I'm allowed to extend the site to permit GPX downloads), and allow those (GC.com premium members) who wish to efficiently maintain a local database of all UK caches. BTW, the reason that there were 600 caches missing from the full download is that the server was killing the downloads because they were using too much CPU. Sure, I could increase the CPU threshold, but realistically I think I need to seek a better solution.

Ummm, no I don't think so. UTM is a system for dividing the world up into small chunks, such that a transverse mercator projection in each zone works reasonably well. It is not the same thing as the pair of letters at the start of a grid reference.

No, you're not being thick! Your initial post was correctly worded. They are not the same thing and there are various subtle differences between them beyond the format in which they are written. The format used on the cache pages is commonly called a "grid reference" and consists of a pair of "grid letters" which identify a 100km square, plus a pair of eastings and northings which identify an area within that grid square. The eastings and northings within the grid square can each consist of any number of digits, though 3 is common for walkers and 5 for geocachers. The OS Grid In Quest software does not convert grid references into lat/long. It, and many other similar converters, instead use "coordinates", which is a format where the full eastings and northings in m are given, without any grid letters. (The grid letters determine the "tens of thousands" digit of the full eastings/northings). Fo, for example: The grid reference TL13 is a 10km square whose SW corner has coordinates eastings: 510000 northings: 230000 The grid reference TL123345 is a 100m square whose SW corner has coordinates eastings: 512300 northings: 234500 The grid reference TL1234534567 is a 1m square whose SW corner has coordinates eastings: 512345 northings 234567 The grid reference TL12345673456789 is a 1cm square whose SW corner has coordinates eastings: 512345.67 northings 234567.89 A good tool for coordinate conversions of all sorts (it can handle both grid references and eastings/northings coordinates) is Waypoint Workbench.

Yep, everything back to normal. Thanks Jeremy!

I've suddenly started receiving GPX files without populated Country and State tags. Here's an example from 106958.gpx: When I download the GPX file from the cache details page, both tags are correctly populated: It's interesting that it only affects the emailed pocket queries, not those from the cache page, as a recent thread suggested that they both use the same code. Does anyone know why this has suddenly started to happen? It's not just my queries - at least one other person is experiencing the same problem. Cheers, Ian

If you want GSAK to show full information about caches, you have to feed it a .gpx file, rather than a .loc file. You have two options: i) Become a premium member and set up "Pocket Queries". You can run up to 5 queries per day, and the .gpx file will be emailed to you. As a premium member, you can also easily download a .gpx file for a single cache directly from the cache details webpage. ii) Use GeoToad to create a .gpx file from the GC.com web pages. This is free, but using it contravenes section 5 of the Groundspeak Terms of Use. Personally, I chose option i and will continue to do so.

You would choose a ring-road, wouldn't you?! Give this a go. It's based on the cbrd strip, but I've pasted the junctions into something approximating the geography of the thing. I'm not sure whether this is a good idea or whether I should have stuck to the cbrd approach. Problem is, it encourages people to think of it as a map, rather than a diagram, and people will expect the caches to be in roughly the correct location on the "map". They won't be - this is still just a set of junctions with "constellations" of caches drawn a maximum of 35 pixels from the junction. And I just know the next request will be to fill in the bit in the centre (it's what I'd want!). But this can't be done with the current programs (you'll have to wait for the updated flash map, or ask Ed Hall very nicely!). (Unless someone wants to donate £250 a year so we can provide this sort of map?!) Anyway, gotta go, I'm late for work...!

Who / where would that be? The ToU states that "You consent to jurisdiction of and venue in the courts in King County Washington, U.S.A. in all disputes". But I'd have thought that things start to get more complicated where multinational copyright lawsuits are concerned? Especially if it's relevant that the Swedish-written but internationally-hosted program is not itself in breach of the ToU, but any 3rd parties using it (possibly in a separate country altogether) would be! Wonderfully messy stuff, law, isn't it?!

OK, I found a good set of maps here! I've had a play around and have a first stab at the M1 here. It takes a bit of time to do each motorway, so new ones will be added slowly. If anyone has any particular requests, let me know. I'll see if I can come up with a page which lists each junction and its nearby caches as text. Then there are the download files to sort out, then trigpoints...! We're also looking at ways to get major roads to show up on the interactive map, though that may take a little longer... Cheers, Ian

Why do all the lines begin with a dash? Surely not just a coincidence...

I'm unclear as to why it's against the Groundspeak Terms of Use for the authors of GeoToad to make it available for downloading on Sourceforge. Clearly anyone who runs the program is in violation of section 5 but that, like placing a cache without permission from the landowner, or lending a music CD to a friend to listen to, is surely up to the conscience of the individual cacher? Is it illegal to provide people with the tools to commit copyright offences? I'm not saying that it isn't - I'm genuinely curious! Looking at the GeoToad source code, it doesn't seem to use P2P as I understand the term. Looks more like a good old fashioned client-server setup to me. Nevertheless, it does mean that if just one idiot scrapes the entire country, all the other idiots get it "for free", with next to no load on the GC.com servers. Perhaps the reason that it's referred to as "P2P" is a red herring to prevent GC.com from going after the owners of the central server which, like Google, is breaking section 3 of the TOU. I don't know if Thomas is a premium member but if so, like the author of GSAK, he has broken the Waypoint License Agreement.

I use the female voice on TomTom which works fine, except she has to stop every 5 minutes to ask pedestrians for directions!

Here here! [Edit] Sorry GrizzlyJohn - I never could get the hang of these new-fangled computery things! I've nothing against .NET per se, and indeed use it myself at work, but it's not something I've ever describe as "sleek" or "resource efficient". Sure it's developer-friendly, but is that really what's needed for the task of dishing up simple cache pages by the million?

Leaving aside the religious debate about how many caches people ought to have access to offline, what about the technical side...? It strikes me that the GC.com servers are struggling to cope with demand, and that the bottlenecks are probably CPU / database access limited, rather than bandwidth limited. Correct? People frequently running large PQs is very CPU/database intensive (it needs a separate server, which itself seems to be struggling), but lots of paying customers seem to want to do this, for whatever reasons they may have. (Here's my reason) So what to do? Three options spring to mind: 1) Slap the wrists of paying members for downloading data too enthusiastically and make them feel bad for downloading caches they'll probably never do. 2) Pre-generate a static GPX file for each country / state, allowing members to mirror the whole of their area with minimal CPU/database hit on your servers. 3) Allow premium members to share GPX files between themselves. Seems to me that options 2 and 3 are both better server-sense and better business-sense.

Had no pocket queries for the last 37-45hrs either

True enough. TrigpointingUK has about 270 users of whom about 75 log each month. This compares with about 4800 UK cachers of whom about 1400 log each month. But trigpoint hunting is less family friendly (and less exciting?) than geocaching. I'm sure more than 5% of UK cachers would log trigpoints if they were included in GC.com, but for me the question is how many would get hooked and go out looking for trigs which aren't also near caches? There are some advantages of country-specific trigpoint sites. Firstly, for those people who like their stats, it's possible to provide far more interesting figures than just a simple total (eg highest/lowest that you've visited, best/worst scoring trigs, graphs of what you've logged etc). The GC.com servers are already groaning under the strain of straightforward geocaching, so I fear a significant improvement in the stats offering is some way off. Also, the type of information available for trigpoints will vary from country to country and, whilst it'd certainly be possible to shoe-horn most of it into the GC.com schema for NGS benchmarks, it may be better to design a new schema for your own country. Eg compare the information in T:UK to that in GC.com. Finally, in the UK at least, almost nobody outside of the geocaching community uses WGS84 coordinates. I don't know whether Finland has its own rectilinear coordinate system on its maps but, if so, your site may have a wider audience if you use it.

OK, you can now click away to your heart's content (thanks Barry!). Hope it was worth the wait

Could be. All mine have been edited in the last week, and all five run every day and return nearly 500 caches each. They eventually arrived at 7am this morning, about 46hrs after they last ran. Hopefully it's just that editing them caused them to skip a day and I'll get them at 24hr intervals from now on.

Just to throw another option into the pot... What about sending a hash (MD5 is reasonably common) of the password / date / hour in the XML schema? It's not cleartext, is valid for a limited period, is stateless, and it keeps it a "single technology solution", rather than relying on bolt-on layers of security that just increase the complexity of clients.