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Teasel

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Everything posted by Teasel

  1. quote:Originally posted by SimonG:It doesn't seem to work for me. I say No to a couple of "Do you want to abort the script?" messages and it seems to load. I get to the point where I can zoom in and out and scroll around, but no caches are displayed. Which makes it a bit pointless really. I really wish I could reproduce this problem - lots of people seem to be suffering from it! I presume that the "Please Wait" banner is still displayed, but that you don't get any further messages asking you if you want to abort? How long have you tried waiting for something to happen (some people have to wait about 5 mins for everything to load), and can you tell if there's any network traffic after you've dismissed the final abort message?
  2. quote:Originally posted by Lost in Space:It may be me, but when doing a search for the nearest 10x caches from the mouse pointer by pressing 1-9, this only works for 1-9 from the main keyboard, not the numeric pad. Is it me????????? Nope, it's not you, it's a bug! Thanks for letting me know!
  3. There's also a list of the hardest 20 UK caches, based on the sum of difficulty and terrain.
  4. quote:Originally posted by Tim & June:We think the most important thing about placing a cache is "go out and find some first". Not sure I can add anything to the debate that hasn't been said already. Oh, except of course for some numbers... Average number of finds before first hide: 7 Number of cachers hiding after just one find: 61 Number of caches placed by people with no finds at all: 149 The last figure is (hopefully!) skewed by people who find and hide under different identities, or perhaps experienced foreign cachers who place a UK cache before finding any.
  5. quote:Originally posted by el10t:Its an age-old problem with creating top-n lists based on ratio measures. The solution is, as you point out, to disregard the top and bottom parts of the distribution. Deciding how much to disregard is a task in itself. Better ask a statistician Something needs to be done, but what? Is there an accepted 'best practice' for this problem, or do I just play around until I see what I want to see? Currently I just remove the zeros, then rank the remainder (1 star = 20th percentile). I was thinking of applying an arbitrary skewing factor to the percentiles (gamma correct them!), but this would only change the stars, not the ranked listings. Removing points from one end would be an option, as would removing cachers from one rank, based on their performance in others (eg <10 trips or, perhaps, < nth percentile in trips). My stats knowledge is limited to what I learnt at A-level half a lifetime ago, so if any real statisticians could give me some advice, please drop me an email!
  6. quote:Originally posted by Team Galaxy:My tiny little moan is that at low levels of zoom, the town of Blackpool is visible, whilst two or three increments of zoom are required to see the _City of Preston._! I chose to show Blackpool, rather than the more populous Preston, because more people know where it is. This is in common with most small scale maps I've seen (I mainly used the 2003 AA road atlas, but here's another). If you could arrange for Preston to be moved to an area with nicer beaches, I'd be happy to include it on the small scale map
  7. quote:Originally posted by Tim & June:We have checked the IP number that the post originated from Ooooh, can you do that? Any chance of posting a list of all IP addresses that "?" has posted from? Can you search for IP addresses logging cache finds on GC.com as well? We'll track him/her down yet... quote:I think we should call it a day but if you would like to raise any of the other topics which have crept in, please do it in a new thread. Sorry, didn't think it worthy of a whole new thread (it'd only encourage him/her!)
  8. Well done on becoming the latest centurion! (We seem to have the makings of a legion! ) So, what were the highlights / lowlights (is that a word?) of your first hundred caches?
  9. Wow, congratulations! So what are the most notable caches from this remarkable total?
  10. quote:Originally posted by The Targett Family:See what you think! Great new site. I particularly liked the caches link which I'm assuming will grow into a photo gallery of the caches you've visited? quote:Any Suggestions? A bit pedantic, but your grid reference for the cache in West Sussex, SU 83293 3546, is invalid. It should be SU 83293 03546. There's a bug in geocaching.com which removes leading zeros from each half of the grid reference! In this case, it's obvious that there's something amiss, but for some caches, gc.com shows a valid grid reference which is tens of km from the actual cache!
  11. quote:Originally posted by The Targett Family:Does anyone know if there a Cache there. and how would I find it? Newbee help!!! There are a number of ways you can look for caches in a particular area... If you know either the GPS coordinates of the park, or a nearby postcode, then you can use the 'Hide and Seek a Cache' page on geocaching.com. Websites like www.streetmap.co.uk can help you to find the coordinates of places in the UK. Once you've found one cache in the general area, clicking on "Find... nearest caches" in the cache description page brings up a list showing more caches in the area, together with their distance and direction from the first. If you prefer something more visual, go to your 'My cache page' and click on 'Search for nearest caches in United Kingdom' in the top right hand corner. Click on ' View cache map of United Kingdom' and you'll get a map of all the UK caches that you can zoom into. If you want something more visual still, you can try my interactive cache map in the geocacheuk stats pages. A map customised just for you can be found here. Finally, doing a keyword search for 'Queen' etc on the Hide and Seek page is worth a try - you might just get lucky! Happy hunting
  12. quote:Originally posted by washboy:Move the scale ("200 km") indicator to top-right of map (and make the bar less bold). It will be less obtrusive there. Done, by popular request. Guess I was a bit over-proud of it (first time in about 15 years I've actually used logarithms!). quote:Originally posted by washboy:The fly-over hints for the cache names are less than readable in black (and possibly in that font). White seems to work better than green (which was even worse than the black). Using a sans-serif font helps somewhat, too. It's still not perfect, but it's a bit better. quote:Originally posted by Huga:Are there any plans to get a group of smaller places? Considering the problems people are having getting even the current incarnation to work, I don't think a large increase in town names would be sensible, even if it were possible. If the input files are to get any bigger, I'd rather add more details about the caches (so you could have a button to show/remove virtuals, for example), than add thousands more towns. quote:Originally posted by Huga:Or perhaps each cacher could submit a list of towns (with co-ords) they'd like to see on the map I'm happy to add the odd dozen here or there, but I don't want to be adding too many more. I'd need files in csv format with three fields: name in caps, osgb eastings & osgb northings. Eg BUXTON,405000,372998 quote:Originally posted by Huga:Is it possible to make the county boundaries narrower when zooming in? I can't think of any way to do this, though this is my first ever Flash program, so there's quite possibly a way I don't know about. You can always switch them off!
  13. quote:Originally posted by Postie:I realy like the extra link to streetmap on the cache page when you click from the map! nice little touch. Works for eg parking coordinates in the cache description, too! quote:Any chance of getting Darlington on the map???? It's there, but it's so insignificant that you have to zoom right in before you can see it! Seriously though, we currently divide towns up into group 1 (~25 towns) eg Manchester, group 2 (~80 towns) eg Middlesborough and Others (~1000 towns). Darlington's a bit too close to Middlesborough to be in group 2 (the text would overlap at small zooms), but I agree it's somewhat more significant than, say, Guisborough. What we need is a third group with a couple of hundred towns, so that you don't have to zoom in so far before towns like Darlington appear. Problem is finding the time to do it properly...
  14. quote:Originally posted by Wronskian:One thing - the centre function isn't very intuitive. How difficult would it be to have it so that clicking on the map centres it at that location? (obviously not clicking on a cache as that pops up the page for that cache) The centre function is next to useless when all the caches in the UK are shown. It's really only there for when you're viewing the results of a query, so that you can centre and zoom, rather than zoom a bit... pan a bit... zoom a bit... pan a bit... Maybe I should remove the button when all UK caches are being displayed? The mouse is also used for dragging the map around, so I think that making a click so very different from a click-and-drag would be a recipe for frustration (even assuming I could distinguish the two in the code!). Being able to centre on the pointer sounds too good an idea to ignore, though. What about if, say, pressing 'C' on the keyboard centred the map on wherever the mouse was pointing at the time?
  15. Thanks for the feedback! You're not the only one having problems and your description is very useful, as it seems that the problems are not limited to a specific bit of the program (the 'loading caches' code is very separate from the 'processing caches' code). If you keep persevering, you should get there in the end, albeit slowly. After processing caches (which results in the blue and red dots) comes 'loading towns', then 'processing towns', then finally the 'please wait' disappears and you're ready to rumble! The browser needs to download about 350kb of data and create about 2500 'dots' on the map. On my machine (Athlon 850MHz, ADSL broadband), the whole process takes less than 45s. It will take proportionately longer on slower CPUs / modems, but I'm confused as these warning boxes are appearing. Any Flash experts out there?
  16. quote:Just one question - how did they get permission from the ordnance survey - or did they have to pay? Coastline and county outlines are available free of charge from the OS website. The only requirement is to include the 'reproduced by permission' blurb. Unfortunately, only GB is available so Ireland (by any definition!) is not shown. I know that Fourwinds from TMA, digitised the coastline of Ireland for the TMA map. I'll ask, but I doubt they'd let us have it. The town locations are the same ones as used on the cache search form, and I went through flagging up the larger ones to avoid clutter at low zooms. Not sure where Mark originally found them, but there are a number of free collections of town locations out there. [This message was edited by Teasel on February 21, 2003 at 01:53 AM.] [This message was edited by Teasel on February 21, 2003 at 01:57 AM.]
  17. So a working definition of "Ireland" is "that area of the British Isles for which Ordnance Survey use a different datum"
  18. What I'm asking is why this cache is listed under the UK, whereas this cache is listed under Ireland? I don't care about politics - just populating databases with "UK caches" (The pragmatic solution is to define the UK as including Eire for the purposes of the stats page, and hope nobody with a stronger belief system than I myself posess decides to object and demand we rename ourselves geocachingbritishisles.com )
  19. quote:Originally posted by jstead:That lump of rock is Europe No, the other East I could navigate fine until I bought a GPS, you know!
  20. quote:Originally posted by Team Galaxy:It just needs someone impartial to generate the goals. You mean someone not born on either an odd or an even day of the month? quote:generate a number between 1 and 1283. The corresponding cache then becomes a goal, say for a week I would recommend using more than one goal at a time, and either team could score in any goal. What do you think? Sounds good. I think simplifying the rules could breathe life into this game, and moving the goals around at random will stop people from forgetting about the game because they have no chance of scoring. Let's throw some ideas around and see which ones stick... I'd prefer a distinct goal for each team. It is football, after all! Select goals at random from (non virtual/micro) caches at least 50miles from the kick-off, but no more than 100miles. Keeps play contained, and the difficulty about right Once a goal is scored, that cache becomes the kick-off point for the next, and new goals are chosen. The game drifts towards the areas where people play it You can't kick the ball straight into goal from the kick-off. It is a team sport, after all! If the ball does not move for more than a fortnight (month?), new goals are chosen. Keeps things moving So basically, after the kick-off move, anyone can kick the ball anywhere. There's a goal for each team, which is chosen with the aim of making the goals achievable, but not too easy. Anyone else got some suggestions for the melting pot?
  21. Well done on an excellent total. I must get myself up your way sometime and do some of your caches! Here's to the next 200!
  22. Wow, 400, fantastic!!! (I'm assuming you've not reached 500 in the time since this thread started? ). And well done, and thank you, for placing so many caches, too. More even than the great Lord Voldemort himself!
  23. Wow, pretty speedy - 'specially over the past couple of weeks! Look forward to trying your new caches...
  24. quote:Originally posted by Tim & June:we serach the long list of caches waiting, looking for United Kingdom, Ireland and Gibraltar. Out of interest, what qualifies as an 'Irish' cache? Is 'Ireland' the large lump of rock to the east of Great Britain, or is it the state of Eire? There seems to be little consistency in Northern Ireland, with both Irish and UK caches being listed.
  25. Wow, thanks guys! The new-look stats pages came about mostly from a combination of late nights and lunchbreaks! Geocaching happens at weekends with Jayne, or when I get sent down South to the head office for meetings and the choices for the evening involve i) early night, ii) sit alone in a bar or iii) geocaching. OK, there's iv) prepare for the meeting the next day, but let's be realistic OK, the traditional rundown of memorable caches... Easiest: Definately Sunninghistory 7 - didn't even switch the engine off! Most memorable: Lots of them, but Egg on your face probably takes the prize. Most frustrating: Probably Play it again Sam. No GPS signal, lost my compass, broke my gaiters, hurt my hand, and when I decrypted the clue it was just a lesson in basic navigation skills and of no use to me whatsoever Best container: Hey Diddle Diddle. We found this on our first weekend of caching and it was to be an inspiration for caches of our own. Best overall: Probably Around the edge . I like multilocation virtuals where there's a real cache at the end of all the clues. A good family day out! Looking forward to the next hundred!
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