Teasel

And welcome to the following cachers who all found their first cache in the last 7 days! ** Frenchman ** aamtodd ajam alderseyj alexball alixir Andyglass Andy_Darlz arnier Aumhur B0ulder Badge436 Ballyharry Bar Sinister Bassrock bcnorwich Beth1007 BikerKats Boba&Jango Fett bobbowden bobonacus bohpilot Burn Farm Bandits cgbpete Chalice charliebravo Chubbin' Tippers clever cats cvhq cynthiatown davetheflute derwent Dicjos diggerman Dreamer1969 DrFootleg Dr_newtron Felix11 Finnbar gadjusek geojudge geokid75 glitzymitzy gnj goyalily GPS Moose Greenadiers Groovy Gilmours grouch and bossy guypracy Hedgehunters hissingcyd hpde Inka IvarT jibbercluck jonesrg5 kellspants kizbut1 l.e.o ljay Mad GIT madders McPlum mgravestock Mif Minefield Minkie's Mate MrSporty Nine Elms Navigators oconnellmark425 omnicache Pa en Ma Beer paul999 Pete'n'Sue peteblight pkel Pony Pirates pooleorch RDKPLF rig07 RiSaRd rizdebski robwall Roving Rangers scubadoos Seat2 Table1 Sentosa Shrubbery Man simtrekking SL&A Slowryde SpecialKays stephenoldham Syrius Black T&B&Patch Team Giblert Team James tervulf The Barrington Squad The Bean Family The Buckets The Freelanders The Gladstone Gang The Hibberts The Jamesies The Madd House The Medlars TheBryans TheWeston's Tilly Tall Hair Tinsel Trove ukamerican Walker Boh Wet Herby Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged xBadgerbobby xrboyuk zenafa Not bad for one week, eh? Now, at this point, we usually have a heated debate about whether congratulations should all be done in a single thread, or as one thread per person. Who's gonna start us off?!

On the search page, you can restrict the results to the top (or bottom!) few percent of caches. So it's easy to get a list of top 5% caches near your postcode. Eg if you're looking for something really special here's a map of the top 1% of UK caches.

Yes, I'm beginning to think that they might be. <snip> I would expect that the accuracy of our given precise co-ords (the ones supplied to/by Barry Hunter) are probably good to a decimetre or better Now hang on a minute! In your first posting, you said that your sample standard deviation was 3.41m, and that you had 74 samples. So that makes me 95% certain that your sample mean is within 1.10m of the "actual" position, and 99% sure that it's within 1.44m. So, if you are telling me that the Ordnance Survey are, say, 95% sure that their figures are within 10cm of the "actual" position, then I'm afraid they win hands down! And that's before we worry that we have implicitly assumed that all of our uncertainties are due to random error, and that there are no systematic errors in our GPS measurements. Presumably the OS include both types of error in their quoted accuracies. Above you say that you think your average is within 0.37m of the true value. I'm only 53% sure that it's not just a fluke!

Certainly! And you object to this because...??? Name six! (Preferably things which wouldn't require the voluntary co-operation of all x thousand cachers, or need modifications to the GC.com website itself).

Sorry Outta Luck! I think it's a dadgum Americanism

The counties are only approximate, though generally no less accurate than the counties given in some cache names! Basically I have a coloured-in map of the pre-1995 counties (if you want modern counties, you're SOL). When a new cache is placed, I 'plot' the cache on this map and see what colour the dot is. Crude, yes, but it works much of the time. If anyone has accurate coordinates for county boundaries that they could send me, it'd be much appreciated!

Can anyone explain why this is? The GPS satellites are all in low orbits, so the relative velocities between each satellite and the GPSr will be quite large. How is it that the software on the GPSr can cope with satellites flying around the sky, but can't cope with the receiver crawling around the earth?

Depends how far you're prepared to go to bag a FTF. I believe the GC.com notification is limited to 50 miles around your coordinates, whereas using pocket queries will allow you to cover a wider area in one go. Note, however, that the PC application is against the Groundspeak terms of use. (If everyone used it, it'd be several million extra hits on the server every day!). I presume that Jim's choice of using Pocket Queries rather than, say, the publically available state/country lists, is an attempt to avoid the wrath of GC.com.

It certainly brought down GeocacheUK when they all arrived in one lump! I think I might need to make some sort of a queueing system

Ditto ^12. Guess they went up in smoke, same way as the server did!

Yes, I'm starting to get emails from people worried about what's wrong with their cache that I've pointed them at the guidelines. As a temporary fix I've added "This email is automatically sent out to all cachers when place their first UK cache." to the first paragraph. But I'm sure the wording will evolve slowly over time.

At least twelve UK cachers have received nothing in the last 30 hours. They're all queries which are set up to run on a daily basis. Fingers crossed we don't regularly start skipping days like before.

I think it's just an issue of education. The first time I saw a cache wrapped in a black bin-liner I thought "what a great idea, I'll do that for my caches". So I don't think we necessarily need to get it added to the rules, we just need to make sure that people are aware of the downside. [Edit - oh, ps taf - no, it just meant using more labour intensive ways of keeping the air out (sorry Lacto! )]

Yes indeed, please do! Too many caches suffer from soggy old bits of tat being left in them for years on end. In an ideal world the cache owner would do regular "spring cleaning", but anything cachers can do to keep the cache in trim is helpful. I'm not suggesting you throw away all the McToys / marbles just because you find them boring, but anything that's in poor condition is ripe for destruction. Take what you like and leave what you like. If you feel you have improved the contents of the cache, then who can complain? If, on the other hand, you feel you've taken a bit more than you've given, then maybe be extra generous at the next cache?

Would you prefer that I use the modern boundaries -- and see Slough afforded the same importance as the whole of Cumbria?!

Funny you should ask - I've just been playing with a county map... The original aim was to produce something like Moote's profile, but also to be able to show visually Barry's stats that Brian linked to above. Here's one which shows the average of everyone's scores, by county... (brighter colours are better scores). More soon!

There are far more than 500 caches containing travel bugs, so this will only get you partial results (is a yellow jeep worth a 500 mile round trip???) You can easily get a list of caches containing travel bugs from the G:UK stats pages (eg see this one), but I'm afraid it doesn't differentiate between the various different types of bug. Nor do pocket queries include type information about travel bugs, so I don't think it'd be possible to search for them in GSAK either.

If you would like to send me some suitably worded "welcome to UK cache ownership - here's what we do differently this side of the pond: pubs and bridges are ok; dry stone walls and SAMs are not ok; binliners are smelly... see this link for further details" blurb, I'll happily ensure that it gets sent to cachers within a day or three of them having their first UK cache approved.

Clearly not. For example, if the encrypted clue reads "Top level of Dry stone wall (under two stones at most)", is that an inconsiderate cacher hiding a cache in a dry stone wall, or a considerate cacher preventing unnecessary damage by ensuring people don't dismantle the delicate base of the wall? Does it matter if the wall is sufficiently derelict already that it's useless for containing livestock, or should we be aiming to preserve toppled walls as a relic of the past? What does common sense say?

After the plastic bags thread last month, I thought I'd raise my own "pet hate" - caches in dry stone walls. The rules/guidelines say they're not allowed, but even so there are still lots of caches which are in walls. So, should we get tough and insist that all offending caches be moved or archived, or should we be a bit more relaxed and wait until someone kicks up a fuss before taking each case individually? Does it matter what state the dry stone wall is in? (When exactly does a "dry stone wall" become a "pile of stones" anyway?) If a cache is not actually inside the wall, but the clue is such that people start dismantling the wall while looking for it, is that a case for action too? Or is it just me?

Agree 100%! The priority was to get the off the Windows server before 10th Sept, when our hosting ran out. (No way I wanted GeocacheUK funding Microsoft!). Now that I have a test system up and running, I can start tweaking html pages until it fits OK on larger screens, without affecting anyone when I get it wrong!

I've just managed to log in OK as "Matrix". You are using 'pass' without the quotes as your initial password, aren't you?

Or create a waymark category "Pebbles on the Beach" and we'd get it accurate to a couple of meters!

Apparently the coastline of Ireland is property of the Ordnance Survey and I have to pay them money if I want to use it. Well, that's true of the Republic - the Northerners wouldn't even talk to me! If anyone has a high resolution, royalty free, known-scale, mercator projection of Ireland, send it my way and I'll add it.

It's actually been rated three times so far, and very highly at that! (Top 4% of all UK caches). I think the problem is that the rating icon in your cache description links to GCJEXJ, rather than GCJEXG. Cheers, Ian