Teasel

I can't manually add or remove caches from the list, I'm afraid. The page works by finding all the caches where Tim&June were one of the last four visitors. It then looks for key phrases like 'left ... bear', 'no room ... bear' or 'took ... teddy', etc, etc to try to guess the likelyhood of a bear being in the cache. It's not very accurate, but it'll have to do until Jeremy adds bear tracking to the geocaching.com 'log a find' page Promptly logged finds should show up on the stats within 24hrs. If people take more than 4 days to write up a log, then there can be a delay of up to a week, but I'm working on bringing that figure down (without hammering geocaching.com more than is necessary).

quote:Originally posted by Nia: quote:Originally posted by Teasel:As yet, there's no facility to find caches containing T&J bears, though! Bother! that was going to be my next question. (But I'm sure you are working on it) Indeed! Try this... Obviously everything el10t said is entirely true. But it was fun to write and my php skills are still pretty shakey and need the practice! [This message was edited by Teasel on November 24, 2002 at 08:08 AM.]

quote:Originally posted by Slytherin:Taking "crow flies" distances from home base to each cache and adding them together would not be an accurate representation of miles travelled. You mean you don't use a helicopter? How quaint!

quote:Originally posted by Tim & June:Perhaps that's why we keep getting the feeling we're being watched Oh yes, Big Brother is watching you! Other stats will be added soon, such as how many virgin caches you've defiled. Of course, if two people enter logs for the same day, they'll both get credit for the deflowering, but it's probably best not to dwell on that one... [This message was edited by Teasel on November 23, 2002 at 05:45 PM.]

quote:Originally posted by el10t:The owner is an automatic watcher so no caches can have zero watchers. Take a look at eg GC98A4. At the time of writing, this has nobody watching it. Whilst the owner gets emailed about visits, I don't think they're included in the 'n account(s) watching this cache'. Nothing GCUK can do to find out who's watching, I'm afraid. All we can do is grab information which is already available on geocaching.com and present it in a 'value added' format. Pity as I'd love to know everyone's home coordinates so I could come up with an estimate of the total miles travelled geocaching.

quote:Originally posted by Nia:I hope someone understands that 3rd paragraph. because it means nothing to me. Explanation anyone? Yes, that's got me worried as well! I hope it means that Jeremy isn't prepared to write something for geocaching.com which grabs UK maps from streetmap.co.uk, and sticks little cache icons all over them. That's fine because i) it'd be horribly inefficient and ii) HM Govt would make nasty, legal squeaking noises... What I hope it doesn't mean is that Jeremy objects to people scraping all the UK pages off geocaching.com and putting them into their own database which allows, eg UK postcode searching. 'Cos that's exactly what I'm doing at geocacheuk.com! Jeremy, before I do too much more work on the geocacheuk stats database, please could I have your blessing (or at least a grudging agreement not to plonk trbf.com into your firewall config file anytime soon! ) There's actually been a webscraper database at geocacheuk.com for a long time now, though the new version should hammer the server a lot less.

If only we were allowed to webscrape and cache the maps on streetmap.co.uk, I could have a map server running in a few weeks. If anyone out there has a licence to redistribute decent quality maps on the web, I'd be happy to write the software... It does seem that UK geocaching is being a bit sidelined on geocaching.com. Some time ago, I sent Jeremy the code to provide OSGB grid references + links to streetmap and offered to give coding time to help implement it, but nothing happened. A similar thing seems to have happened for OS trig points. I don't much like writing 'bolt-ons' which sit 'on top of' geocaching.com; I'd far rather be involved with improving the main site so that we can keep everything in one place. That way, everyone will benefit. But the development team seems to want to stay small, and only concentrate on features for the US audience.

Oh dearie me! After some poor guy got embarassed when publicly congratulated for finding 100 caches, only to discover that he'd logged two caches twice, I wrote some geocacheuk.com pages to list people logging caches twice and people logging their own caches. If I'd realised how hot under the collar some people get about OTHER PEOPLE's stats, I'd have thought twice! In my experience, most double/self logging appears to be a result of people moving travel bugs about and forgetting to use 'post a note', rather than 'found it'.

quote:Originally posted by Monz:All you with duplicates... get it sorted, you will have the Merkins labeling us as cheats Let's just hope they don't find out how many of us are logging our own caches

If it helps, the "centre of UK geocaching" (average cache coordinates, weighted by the number of times they've been visited), is just outside Nuneaton. There's a healthy supply of motorways in the area, too, so it should be reasonably accessible. Even if it's no good for the Xmas social, it could be a good place to put a cache!

To spare anyone else from the embarassment of only finding a shameful 98 caches , this list of duplicate logs may be useful.

quote: I think you'll find that a mans position is:Always in the wrong. Reminds me of the old philosophical question: A man speaks in a forest and there's no woman to hear. Is he still wrong?

The cache database on geocacheuk has just been re-vamped, so you can filter the UK caches against all sorts of criteria (eg virgin caches within 20 miles of St Albans), plot the results on a map, download to EasyGPS etc, etc. New features are planned soon... To answer the original question, try this:list of virgin caches. Or, if you'd prefer a map, try this. As yet, there's no facility to find caches containing T&J bears, though!

quote:This now makes you the 2nd (me thinks) largest cache finders in the UK Yes, congratulations! Slytherin have found a few more caches worldwide, but there's nobody who's found more UK caches than you two! You certainly have an impressive swathe of finds! My T&J bear has pride of place on my "geocaching swag" shelf! Here's to the next 300!

As Chris says, the question is how many people are interested. Too few and what's the point; too many and I need to get the OK from geocaching.com first. As you'll have noticed, my approach is somewhat more, ummm, parasitic than geocacheuk.com I'll see how many others reply to this thread and decide what to do... I'm sure a palm friendly version could be arranged, if someone can define 'extraneous formatting'. Can I assume geocacheuk.com's webscraper is exactly what is required? Surely, though, this is a global issue which geocaching.com should be sorting out? Looking at the code in Chris' excellent spreadsheet, an EasyGPS export option should be fairly easy to provide. (Though if someone could send me a formal file format defininition, that'd be great!) But again, since the export would best be against a WGS84 datum, this is something geocaching.com should be addressing? The sheer niceness of having maps with a km square grid makes it highly unlikely that OS will ever convert to walking maps with lat-long grids. Personally I think that geocaching waypoints should only ever be displayed in whatever coordinate system is most used on walking maps in the relevant country. Sure, cachers may have to reset their GPS whenever they move country, but that's a small price to pay for not confusing people with datums they don't understand and coordinates they can't find on a map!

As Chris says, the question is how many people are interested. Too few and what's the point; too many and I need to get the OK from geocaching.com first. As you'll have noticed, my approach is somewhat more, ummm, parasitic than geocacheuk.com I'll see how many others reply to this thread and decide what to do... I'm sure a palm friendly version could be arranged, if someone can define 'extraneous formatting'. Can I assume geocacheuk.com's webscraper is exactly what is required? Surely, though, this is a global issue which geocaching.com should be sorting out? Looking at the code in Chris' excellent spreadsheet, an EasyGPS export option should be fairly easy to provide. (Though if someone could send me a formal file format defininition, that'd be great!) But again, since the export would best be against a WGS84 datum, this is something geocaching.com should be addressing? The sheer niceness of having maps with a km square grid makes it highly unlikely that OS will ever convert to walking maps with lat-long grids. Personally I think that geocaching waypoints should only ever be displayed in whatever coordinate system is most used on walking maps in the relevant country. Sure, cachers may have to reset their GPS whenever they move country, but that's a small price to pay for not confusing people with datums they don't understand and coordinates they can't find on a map!

OK, I've hacked some basic code together, which I'm throwing to the wolves to see if anyone else comes up with good ideas such as links to mapping sites. I've put the test page on geo.teasel.net. So eg try http://geo.teasel.net/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=24448 ...or just... http://geo.teasel.net Any HDDD MM.MM coordinates should be converted to OSGB, with a link to streetmap.co.uk. Like I said, it's just a mock up. Some searches don't work (eg 'by waypoint'), and cookies aren't implemented so you can't log on. My network connection is also a little tempramental... But hopefully there's enough to make it useful to people who like OS maps. Comments (+ve or -ve) most welcome...

I'm happy switching my GPS between formats/datums, but that only works for waypoints which have already been downloaded or manually keyed in (or prepared in advance using eg a spreadsheet). Yesterday we were driving to GC5F80. The cache description recommended "parking at N53*05.274 W001*49.752 and walking down to the path". A couple of weeks ago, we foolishly ignored the recommendation in GC675F to "follow the easier path via N 53 17.820 / W 002 12.322". In both cases I considered it just too much faff to change the GPS to HDDD MM.MM / WGS84, key in the waypoint manually, then change back to National Grid / OSGB36 before checking the map. And I paid the price :-) What I had in mind was something which automatically inserted OSGB references into descriptions wherever it found HDDD MM.MM coordinates. If I get some spare time, I'll code up something to show what I'm on about. Many thanks for the links - they may well come in useful!

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it awkward dealing with HDDD MM.MM format locations? In the UK, all good walking maps are based on the OS National Grid, so it seems odd that anyone would choose HDDD MM.MM... If others agree, I suggest we ask for the option to convert any HDDD MM.MM / WGS84 coordinates to National Grid / OSGB36. I'm happy to do the coding for this, and I could probably knock up a 'proof of concept' web page, if anyone's interested?

I guess the reason adding UK trig points to the site is such a low priority is that, unlike the NGS, the Ordnance Survey can remember where they put them... So we Brits don't need to go around, ahem, "rediscovering" our benchmarks :-) Still, having been going GTB'ing (gratuitous trigpoint bagging) for many years now, it'd be nice to have somewhere to record my eccentricities!