Teasel

quote:Originally posted by SimonG:Now the stats are going again, can we tell how many people joined after Inside Out? Well, the UK stats page shows 167 new cachers in Jan, compared to 50 in Dec. Not conclusive, but certainly encouraging. What would be interesting is a graph of one-hit-wonders, to see if publicity attracts people who stay in the sport. ps Nia - when have I ever said "Recursive Websucker"? I wouldn't know what one was!

I don't think I'm allowed to list archived caches on web pages, as that's how the trouble between GC.com and Buxley's maps originally started. I'll ask Elias for some guidelines before putting anything online. I've emailed you a raw list of archival dates. Please don't distribute the list, but if you come to any statistical conclusions, please let us know! The UK stats page is due for a bit of attention sometime (graphs needed!), and I'll probably add 'caches archived this month' while I'm at it (no details of individual caches, though). [This message was edited by Teasel on February 05, 2003 at 10:02 AM.]

quote:Originally posted by Nia:It is a lack of a database that causes problems, Strange, I'd have thought the letterboxing fraternity would be packed full of geeks!

quote:Originally posted by Nia:As the sport grows older some of you 'young' men might find yourselves in a simalar position. David is now 4 months old and we often take him caching with us. We delight in getting the pram to caches where other people have difficulty in getting themselves. I tell you, I didn't feel like a 'young man' after carrying the pram back out of Monsal Dale! (Where's the 'dead' icon on this thing?!) We do get some odd, and sometimes disapproving looks off others But if he's warm, safe and happy... It'd be nice to know what to expect, though, either by an icon or, preferably, though accurate descriptions. Even with the sling, sometimes one of us has to stay with David while the other goes off and bags the cache. With better info, we could choose caches where we could all find it together. [This message was edited by Teasel on February 04, 2003 at 05:29 AM.]

quote:Originally posted by phredd: We all ready have the "number of caches" found. Will we have "number of caches hidden" next, followed by a coloured badge to denote your achievements. I prefer stars, but you can have colours if you like I'm afraid there'll be no badge for you in the "total difficulty of caches hidden on a Saturday" category! quote:Keep Class/Elitism out of the sport Yes comrade! Interesting that you call it a sport, but are against competition and rewards for success... Personally for me, it's only a hobby. I'm just sad and like playing with numbers. But if people want to award themselves medals for achievement, I say let them. I was very proud when I got my "Gold personal survival" badge for swimming, and a friend of mine is very proud of his badge for 25yrs in Mountain Rescue. What's the difference? So long as it's purely on merit as a reward for what they've done, rather than which clique they're in, what's the harm?

There would need to be very strong guidelines about when the button should be pressed. I doubt they'd suit everyone and, frankly, I doubt many cache placers would read them. I think Team Tate want to know if "you can push someone to within 30' of the cache", which would be a good choice for the icon, but unhelpful for geocachers in wheelchairs who want to actually find the caches. The capabilities of wheelchair users vary even more widely than able bodied people. For some, the cache would have to be 3-4' off the ground and less than 1' from a path. Others would be happy to abseil in! I certainly know of paraplegics who fly hang gliders and the lifeguard who taught me to swim had no use of his legs; try telling them the cache is unsuitable because there's a log in the way! Maybe a compulsory text box "pram / wheelchair considerations" would be better than an icon?

There's a surprising number of very moral cachers out there (only one cache found, which was a virgin) Lainey seems to have a strong preference (13 out of 14)... but as for dodgydaved (only 1 out of 118) ps these figures are overestimates as everyone who found the cache on the day of its 'first time', gets it notched up. (Event caches are significant here!) [This message was edited by Teasel on February 03, 2003 at 05:08 AM.]

quote:Originally posted by The Hornet:How about double points for nighttime caching? - Now I wonder who would head the list then Or maybe give points for finding caches before anyone else? See here... All hail the Northumbrian!

quote:Originally posted by Wronskian:What I was wondering is this - instead of just the raw 'number of caches you've found/hidden', what about a score based on the difficulties of each cache you've found? You just add up the difficulty rating of each cache - a one-star difficulty scores 1, a five-star scores 5. OK, total difficulty, total terrain and total stars (difficulty+terrain) have been added to people's G:UK profiles. League tables for all scores can now be reached from any cacher stats page. The league table for total stars found can be found here. Congratulations to Tim & June and The Hornet for reaching four figures! [This message was edited by Teasel on February 02, 2003 at 05:33 PM.]

quote:Originally posted by Team Blitz:All I was meaning was that we could take a note of everyone's "today" figures, and they become each person's "zero point"... If you really want, I'm sure I could knock up a page Of course, different teams would want different 'zero dates'... Something I have been mulling over is a graph showing days in sport on the X-axis, and total caches found on the Y-axis. There would be one line for the cacher(s) in question, and one line which is an average of everyone in the sport (UK). So you could compare your progress against the "average UK cacher" or, for any rival teams out there, against each other. Anyway, CONGRATULATIONS on the century!

Count me in!

Hmmm... Iron Age fort... multiple caches gone missing... Am I being unfairly suspicious here...?

Having actually looked at the uploaded picture, this looks like file corruption and not the 'blocky' effect others mention. What browser are you using? I've found that Opera has great difficulty with file uploads. Internet Explorer copes much better.

Yes, unfortunately our postcode database is incomplete. At one point, so was the one on geocaching.com. Jeremy solved that by buying an up to date database (and was criticised on these forums for doing so!), but I'm afraid that's not an option for us. If anyone has a more complete postcode database, please let me know!

quote:Originally posted by Lisa:"relic hunters" logs:2, last: 28/10/2001 "Richard & Beth" logs:14, last: 12/10/2001 "Rob & Lisa" logs:13, last: 10/11/2001 "Robin Lovelock" logs:19, last: 03/11/2001 ...and what looks like the first stats database too! Who's Lisa?

We have an underwater cache which is in an Ortlieb map case, held down with a plastic tent peg. It's fully waterproof, but a little expensive for routine use! (Actually, thinking about it, the polymer used in this particular cache probably does contain toxic plasticisers )

quote:Originally posted by jeremyp:Of course they are also highly toxic to the local wildlife and cause low sperm count Grrrrrr!

quote:Originally posted by Pharisee:Is it politically correct to call it BLACK pudding? Might be better if you called it 'extremely dark brown' pudding Pudding of colour?

D'oh, pipped to the post!

quote:Originally posted by catering chef:I am a Chef by trade and can't wait to try some differant types of food. Make sure you try the British national dish - Chicken Tikka Massala (Don't be misled by claims about fish 'n' chips, roast beef and the like; we eat far more curries than anything else!)

We use id numbers, not the cache names, so even having two identically named caches shouldn't be a problem. eg: Windy Hill (14914) Windy Hill (41965) The cache in question is actually The CIN Fox Hunt, and the coordinates are probably Mark's old house!

Well, as far as the G:UK stats go, we don't have any historic information, so we'd have to simply sum up the current values for those caches. There are other undesirable consequences of the lack of history. For example, if you found a moving cache (eg one of the Photographers caches), it will only count against your UK totals when that cache happens to be in the UK, and your score will go down when it goes into another country!

I'm looking at adding some new figures to the cacher stats pages (OK, OK, I've just got this schoolboy urge to add 'virgins defiled' to the page ). The average difficulty is already there; calculating a total as well shouldn't be too difficult. I'd also like to provide clickthrough to a league table for each of the fields on the cacher stats page. After the sitting and waiting of the past couple of months, I'm starting to get all enthusiastic again

quote:Originally posted by The Merman:The cache you talk about is in fact a locationless cache, I have emailed you the details to save explaining it here. For anyone else it is Beach Hut Hunt by Amy and Adams Dad I'm glad you said that, 'cos I can only find one archived virtual cache in Hampshire, and it didn't look like the one.

Thanks, that's not one I'd come across before. I've added the option of downloading a Waypoint+ format file to the stats page. (I do like people who document their file formats! ) And welcome back dodgydaved!