Teasel

I think the real question is where do we want geocaching to be in 5 years time? If an association starts negotiating new rules with large landowners, then there's a real possibility that, across the majority of the UK, people will only be able to place caches if they're a member of the association. I've yet to hear an explanation as to why this would be a Good Thing. I would like cache approval to be based entirely on adherance to the rules (local or otherwise), not membership of any association. Please may I add one more question to the list?... - should it be allowed to negotiate exclusive arrangements with landowners? GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

I am pleased to announce that, thanks to the talents of westonwanderers, you can now get lists of nearby caches, and details of individual caches, wherever you are in the country, using your mobile phone! The service only works on the new java compatible mobiles so if, like me, your mobile is somewhat reminiscent of a house brick, you've now got an excuse to upgrade! Basically, you point the phone at a URL on GeocacheUK, enter your current location, and the phone will give you a list of nearby caches with basic info such as terrain and difficulty. You select the cache you want to do and full details are downloaded to your phone. Optionally you can specify your GC.com user id, to ensure that caches you have already found are not listed. To find out more, see the instructions. Have fun! GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

quote:Originally posted by Omally:if you link to anyone else site from yours, should you ask permission first? It's not usual to ask prior permission to link to someone's site, though if you let people know that you've done it, you'll often find they'll add a link back to your site in return. Some sites only allow you to link to their home page (linking to specific pages of another site - so called "deep linking" - allows people to get straight to the information they want to see, without wading through loads of adverts, and is therefore prevented by some websites). Logos and images from other sites are a bit trickier. Some sites (like geocaching.com) require you to add a long legal blurb with further links to their site, to every page on which you include their logo. Most, however, will be happy for you to just grab their logo and add it to your page. You should copy the logo to your site, rather than link to the original version on their server (unless instructed otherwise). If your site uses frames (bleugh!), make sure you add TARGET='_top', or TARGET='_blank' to your links. If you don't, the linked site will be drawn in a single frame on your page, under your site's banner, with your site's URL in the address bar. This is a guaranteed way to annoy the webmasters of the sites you link to! GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

Looks like CSV file import in Fugawi is quite flexible. The ozi or Waypoint+ formats will work. As Daisy&me says, there's also a native format and I'm in contact with Fugawi UK to see if they'll let me have the details. GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

quote:Originally posted by Daisy&me:the ability to import waypoints is very limitted Does anyone know details of the file format Fugawi uses for importing waypoints? 'Twould be a useful addition to the cache download files... GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

quote:Originally posted by The Hungry Caterpillars:For instance my gps says error to 12 ft I have a sneaky feeling that mathematically the error is in fact possibly a lot larger. I suspect it actually means that there's a 50% chance of it being within 12 ft, or something similar. quote:Originally posted by The Hungry Caterpillars:I have found this to be true even for FBM,s whose position is very carefully checked <pedantic git mode>Unless the FBM is part of the new passive network, then its only purpose in life will have been height measurement (levelling, not triangulation) and its exact position will never have been accurately determined (my figures are only accurate to 10m for old FBMs) </pedantic git mode> Also, the conversion algorithm between WGS84 and OSGB in your GPSr will not be as accurate as the one used by the OS, so that'll add another 5m of uncertainty on top of the figure quoted by the GPSr. And if you downloaded the coordinates from T:UK or Chris and Maria's site in WGS84, that'll be another 5m (though hopefully that will tend to cancel, rather than add to the other errors). A 1:25000 map, a decent compass and a knowledge of how long your paces are, is still just as accurate as a GPS in most places (though far less convenient!) GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

quote:Originally posted by wossa:But this discussion takes the biscuit for arch-geekiness. Angels and heads of pins comes to mind. But we've not even started religious wars about how many spaces to indent code by yet! quote:Originally posted by wossa:Put your anoraks on boys and go outside and get some fresh air! Anoraks? Cheek! Microporous outer shells, if you please -- Glad to be sad!

quote:Originally posted by Gunther:So it is OK for the website to be commercial but not caches. Two wrongs don't make a right! No, Grounded Inc aren't all volunteers. We could speculate that, perhaps, it would be nice if they did it all in their spare time for free... but would the site be as good if they had less time to invest in it? Or would it actually be better, if the pool of volunteer developers was much larger? Who knows? The only thing we can say for sure is that they provide us all with a free website and the only overt commercialism is a little advert for a website selling travel bugs, log books, t-shirts etc. The advert doesn't even flash! Bloody good deal if you ask me!!! As for commercial caches, land owned by McDonalds for retail purposes is unlikely to be an interesting location to place a cache. So they're likely to pay someone else to use their land for a cache. IMHO paying for permission to place a cache is not a good thing. It's already started in some places; let's not encourage it! quote:Maybe another website is in order to cater for different ideas. There already is one (at least two, in fact), as well you know! I can't remind you of its name because even the current low degree of commercialisation of Groundspeak prevents the mention of competitors on these forums. But it's something along the lines of N*vicache So your suggestion is nothing new, and not even likely to be particularly contentious (at least not on this particular forum). The fact that we are here on Groundspeak probably means that we are reasonably happy with the current state of affairs! Those who weren't probably disappeared off to the "minor league" websites some time ago... GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

quote:Originally posted by Mudplugger:True but my point was that 99% of the people who read this forum won't care. The 1% who're writing web pages should! quote:Originally posted by Mudplugger:You _can't_ manipulate users hard drives with Javascript !! full stop. No, but there are numerous security holes which allow you to read arbitrary files on someone's hard drive. That's potentially worse! quote:Originally posted by Mudplugger:Take a reality check JP people are only trying to help so get off of the soap box and word your replies constructively and not condescendingly. It seems that JP prefers to code PHP in the style recommended by the people who wrote the language. Fine by me! OK, so ASP assumes ASP is the only scripting language in the world to use <% and its tags therefore do not specify a language. If that's the way you prefer to work, then by all means configure your server to assume that PHP is the only scripting language to use <?. But please don't criticise others for writing portable code! GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

You mean a park owned by the local council which they grant the public permission to enter at certain times? AFAIK, public parks are private areas whose owners have granted the public permission to enter them at certain times. That's not to say that a park is not a good place to hide a cache! You're certainly less likely to get shouted at by the owners! Just don't be under the impression that you have a legal right even to enter the park, let alone place a cache there. (Unless there's a public footpath through it, in which case there's a 5m corridor you're allowed to walk down, so long as you don't deviate from it, and you obey all the by-laws while you're there!) Oh to live in a country with more liberal access laws! GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

Nice to see such happy code! GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

From the php manual: quote:There are four sets of tags which can be used to denote blocks of PHP code. Of these, only two (<?php. . .?> and <script language="php">. . .</script&gt are always available; the others can be turned on or off from the php.ini configuration file. While the short-form tags and ASP-style tags may be convenient, they are not as portable as the longer versions. The first way, <?php. . .?>, is the preferred method So there you go! GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

Deleted duplicate (grrr!)

Memory map's still quite an immature product. It's only recently that they introduced seamless tiling. So, hopefully, they've just had more important development work than 3-D flythroughs, rather than it being a licensing restriction. There's still quite a lot of unfriendliness in their basic user interface, but hopefully once they've got that sorted out, they'll then start giving us lots of nice fun toys like 3D flythroughs! GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

quote:Originally posted by Richard & Beth:The OS flybys can be found http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/free_fun/gislab.html. Nice! Now if only we could persuade MemoryMap to provide details of their file formats, so that we could extract a set of (x,y,z,colour) points, we could make our own. Can't see it happening, though GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

I'm not a lawyer, but I think the following is reasonably correct in England and Wales. If someone knows better, please let me know the error of my ways! Areas where you have a legal right to place a cache: None that I'm aware of. Areas where you might argue a legal right to place a cache: Land which you own. Note that placing a cache on your land may be deemed by the authorities to be providing a venue for a sporting activity. Unless you have the requisite facilities (toilets, public indemnity insurance etc) you may fall foul of the law. A number of farmers who used to grant permission to allow hang gliders to launch from their land are no longer allowed to, for this reason. Areas where you're probably OK placing caches: Land owned by people who are happy for caches to be placed there, and whose neighbours are also happy for caching to occur on their doorstep. (It was the farmers' neighbours who persuaded the authorities that they were effectively providing a sporting venue). The discussion above about public footpaths is important for people looking for caches, but has no relevance to where you are allowed to place a cache. Just because you have a legal right to walk to a place, it does not follow that you're allowed to place a cache! GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

On Windoze, my preferred editor is editplus. It's got syntax highlighting for a number of languages (including html and php), has friendly FTP integration, and good search and replace functionality. Especially if you use Javascript, but even if you don't, I implore you to test your web pages on lots of different browsers (not just the latest and greatest version of IE). Going back to IE5.0 and Netscape4.7 is a good idea. Opera is a good browser for web development. It's easy to turn off frames, inline frames, javascript, cookies, animated gifs etc, to see what it looks like for people with old browsers or who, like JeremyP, simply prefer to browse in peace without whizzy flashing bits which someone put in "because they could". Of course, its implementation of Javascript is as nasty as Netscape's, but you can't have everything! GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

Do I get double points if I do it at night? GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

Welcome back to the front line! Good on yah! Will you be moderating the forums as well? Though, fingers crossed, they seem to have quietened down now... GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

quote:Originally posted by DeputyDawg:Am not sure if you can add many comments, re access, terrain, view etc., that would helpful to others thinking of visiting...might be useful!. Please add any extra comments you feel like, especially if they'll help others. For example, you might not want to go out of your way to visit this trigpoint. As well as the comments, please fill in an overall score for the experience of finding (or not finding!) the trigpoint. In future, I hope to include the average score in the search criteria and trigpoint lists. As for photos, the more the merrier! When I go hillwalking with a group of friends, we often take a group photo of everyone on/around the summit trigpoint. So don't feel restricted to the (fb, pillar, view) triplet of photos... GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

quote:the idea of have regional cache approvers was raised The way I understand it, the admins are responsible for approving UK caches and moderating the UK forum (plus doing their share of caches in countries without their own admins). So long as caches get approved in good time and the forums are moderated in good faith, that's all that matters. If the new admins feel that "first dibs" at approving a new cache should go to someone with local knowledge, then surely that's their decision? I think we are bl**dy lucky that after all that's happened, these three teams are prepared to put themselves on the firing line to try to rebuild what's been lost over the last few days! GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

quote:Originally posted by Slytherin:If there is support for a regional split I would be happy to cover the north of the country, with DodgyDaveD doing the south. That's great news! I think you're both nuts wanting the job (sorry, does that count as offensive? ), but you have my utmost respect and support! quote:North of the Trent and Mersey Canal (Arbitrary and debatable, moveable feast?), South of said Waterway. Ah, but who does the approval when D&P place a "swimmers only" cache slap bang in the middle? Presumably, if a third person came along wanting to be part of the team, the movable feast would be sufficiently mobile to accommodate them? One thing, though... Being born and bred in St.Albans, I always understood that "the North" was somewhere up by Luton. Where is this "Mersey" place anyway? Is it right up as far north as Milton Keynes? GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

quote:Originally posted by Dodgydaved:What about the future of UK Admin, both the moderation of this forum and the approval of caches? a) I have very limited Internet Access. You only need enough to read the forums and any prospective cache pages... quote: I have nothing like the experience of others. You're in the top 20 for both finding and placing caches, and are a longstanding member of this forum... quote:c) I do not have the erudition to argue the case for geocaching politically as others have so obviously done. A moderator with no political ambitions could be just what we need right now! quote:d) I am afraid I would probably be TOO ready to censor those comments and posts I thought to be inflamatory or counter-productive. A firm hand could also be a very good thing in the short term; especially from someone with no personal axe to grind. Because you have yourself been on the receiving end of "active moderation" (he says, grasping around for a neutral phrase!), I think you'd have a lot of credibility in the role. quote:So that does not really help......... I beg to differ! DodgyDaveD for admin!!! GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

quote:Originally posted by Omally:The obvious stress generated by the tending of idiotic, self-centred, self-serving dissenters makes the position of moderator a task envied by no-one. Quite! I'd happily approve new caches (though I think the poll currently running in another thread safely makes that one a non-starter!), but there's no way I'd want to be a forum moderator! GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.

quote:Originally posted by Team Spike:Britishideas.com is my web site. I'm a British Citizen. I live in the US. The web site came out of my head. Please point me to the internet rules stating that "british" cannot be in the web site title unless the web site is in the UK. Well, since G:UK is also a US based website... I stand corrected, BritishIdeas is a very appropriate name for your website. The same might also be true of japan.com etc, but ComputerWeekly did see fit to include it on their back page (which is where I nabbed it from). I was just trying to post something uncontentious and inoffensive to lighten the mood - seems I failed, sorry GeocacheUK - resources for the UK Geocaching community.