MartyFouts

quote:Originally posted by ApK: quote:Originally posted by Marty Fouts:There's no such thing as 'good' English. The most absurd thing about that comment is that it's belied most clearly by your own good English. The fact is, your use of good English suggests, to my mind, that you are probably a pretty intelligent person (perhaps it's not accurate, but that IS more the point of this thread than anything you've said challenging a particular spelling variant or usage choice, when no one has even suggested them) and with that image in my mind, I can only figure that the arguments you are making are crafted solely for the purpose of being irritating. Others may be more patient, and I'll read their replies to you with interest, but this will be my last to you on the topic. ApK [This message was edited by ApK on September 14, 2002 at 12:41 PM.] I don't write "good" English. I write a regional dialect, and I can't spell worth beans. I have no idea why you think I'm trying to be an irritant rather than being responsive to my points, but it's pretty clear that even what you think of as 'good' grammer isn't communicating with you. Which part of "language conventions are regional, arbitrary, and variable means that there's no such thing as 'good' grammar'" are you having trouble understanding? If you want to understand what I'm trying to say, read the book I recommend. It's actually easy to read and it makes the point more clearly than I can. kg6nee

quote:Originally posted by SimonG:Okay, I've wanted to reply to about a million posts in this discussion but held back. I can't resist any longer. quote:Originally posted by Marty Fouts:This forum itself hardly qualifies as absolutely vital so it's hard to see how any particular behavior in it can do so. This reasoning just baffles me. It wasn't vital for me to go to the supermarket this evening - I still think it's a good job I stopped at all the red lights along the way. Now I'd better run this through a spell checker before I post it... If you can point out to me forum behavior that has the attendant risk of running a red light, I'll reconsider my position. Come on, folks, lighten up. We're talking about informal chatting on a web board here. The phrase "absolutely vital" is way over the top when discussing what goes on here. kg6nee

quote:Originally posted by ApK: quote:Originally posted by Marty Fouts:Or, in simple english: there are no standards. Does anyone else find this utterly wrong? Perhaps you can try explain this a little more clearly? It sound very much like you're saying the something analagous to "There's more than one GPS Datum, so there are none." So, we should feel completely free and correct in posting coordinates relative to, say, a spot in New Hampshire on the surface of an Easter egg, rather then WGS84? ApK That you pulled a sentence out of context and elided all of the material that established that context? Yeah, I find that "utterly wrong", or at least unhelpful, argumentative, and noncommunicative. If you really want to understand my point, rather than just argue from a knee jerk position, then I recommend that you read the book that I recommended. But here's a helpful hint: languages are not mathematical systems. They lack the precision, they are ambiguous, and they evolve. But if you want to just keep arguing, here's a point for you to pick on: Do you get your standard spelling from the OED or from Noah? Or, if you prefer: Do you get your grammer from the CMS or from Quirk? kg6nee

quote:Originally posted by ApK: Overlooking a fault does not mean approving of it, or condoning it, or failing to recognize it AS a FAULT, nor does it mean not discussing it, when the fault in general IS the topic of dicussion, nor does it mean that it's not a good thing to try to correct the fault. And I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until I get tired or people stop trying to use it as an argument: THIS IS NOT ABOUT POINTING OUT SPELLING ERRORS!! NO ONE HAS TRIED TO CORRECT ANYONE'S SPELLING (execpt in jest or in an attempt at irony)! READ THE THREAD!! I'm beginning to think that all these people arguing against good English have that point of view because they simply don't understand English at all! Grr! ApK Apparently not, as you don't seem to understand the point I'm trying to make. Let me spell it out. Social conventions are just that: conventions. There's no such thing as 'good' English. The "fault" (poor choice of word on my part) in a social situation is a violation of an arbitrary convention. It's not the same as a wrong or sin. In simpler language: customs differ. kg6nee

quote:Originally posted by ApK: Overlooking a fault does not mean approving of it, or condoning it, or failing to recognize it AS a FAULT, nor does it mean not discussing it, when the fault in general IS the topic of dicussion, nor does it mean that it's not a good thing to try to correct the fault. And I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until I get tired or people stop trying to use it as an argument: THIS IS NOT ABOUT POINTING OUT SPELLING ERRORS!! NO ONE HAS TRIED TO CORRECT ANYONE'S SPELLING (execpt in jest or in an attempt at irony)! READ THE THREAD!! I'm beginning to think that all these people arguing against good English have that point of view because they simply don't understand English at all! Grr! ApK Apparently not, as you don't seem to understand the point I'm trying to make. Let me spell it out. Social conventions are just that: conventions. There's no such thing as 'good' English. The "fault" (poor choice of word on my part) in a social situation is a violation of an arbitrary convention. It's not the same as a wrong or sin. In simpler language: customs differ. kg6nee

If you'd asked a couple of weeks ago it would have been around 850. There's been a huge spurt of cache placement in the past two or three weeks. kg6nee

quote:Originally posted by georgeandmary: quote:Originally posted by kurtuleas:I kinda cheated and tried to have the math teacher across the hall figure it out for me, but she said she didn't know how to do it with LAT and LONG. She DID explain what a centroid is, but with football, baby, work and commuting I just didn't have the time to figure it out. KURTULEAS Maybe I can give some lessons. I just got confirmation that my numbers were pretty darn close. I'm off by about 20 ft or so. That's close enough, and about as close as you'd expect to get considering rounding errors. I just don't have time to go get it tonight. Tomorrow. george Remember: Half the people you meet are below average. http://img.Groundspeak.com/track/5867_200.gif Guess I should have gone out and done Centroid yesterday instead of failing to find some of your caches. would have been fun to be FTF. Oh well, I'll get back to Tracy one day. -- once my ego gets over not finding 4 micros on the same day. Marty kg6nee

quote:Originally posted by georgeandmary: quote:Originally posted by kurtuleas:I kinda cheated and tried to have the math teacher across the hall figure it out for me, but she said she didn't know how to do it with LAT and LONG. She DID explain what a centroid is, but with football, baby, work and commuting I just didn't have the time to figure it out. KURTULEAS Maybe I can give some lessons. I just got confirmation that my numbers were pretty darn close. I'm off by about 20 ft or so. That's close enough, and about as close as you'd expect to get considering rounding errors. I just don't have time to go get it tonight. Tomorrow. george Remember: Half the people you meet are below average. http://img.Groundspeak.com/track/5867_200.gif Guess I should have gone out and done Centroid yesterday instead of failing to find some of your caches. would have been fun to be FTF. Oh well, I'll get back to Tracy one day. -- once my ego gets over not finding 4 micros on the same day. Marty kg6nee

quote:Originally posted by ApK:I agree that we don't have to spell check and proofread everything here. But think how much easier you may have had it in school...how much easier it would be GET YOUR POINTS ACROSS if you had gone about your life until then believing that grammar and spelling WERE important, and taking any opporunity to use them well, rather than ignoring them and only trying to use them correctly when you felt you really had to? ApK I can't recall a time when my utter inability to spell made it difficult for me to get my point across. kg6nee

quote:Originally posted by jeremyp:I say it is absolutely vital to proof read even the most casual of written communications that are destined to be published somewhere e.g. this forum. This is not because of the spelling or grammar, but because of the perceived meaning of the _content_. I bet a lot of people have posted things here that they intended to be witty / funny / intelligent but when read back turned out to be deeply insulting or wrong. For the record, paying attention to one's spelling, punctuation and grammar is IMHO just good manners as it makes the post easier for others to read if nothing else (check out Geobadger's comments on this thread if you don't understand what I mean). ------- jeremyp The second ten million caches were the worst too. http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching This forum itself hardly qualifies as absolutely vital so it's hard to see how any particular behavior in it can do so. As far as good manners, I was taught that it's good manners to overlook other's faults when you are in a social situation, and I can't imagine a fault easier to overlook than poor spelling. The word that seems to be missing from this thread is slack as in cut em some slack, jack kg6nee

quote:Originally posted by ApK: quote:Originally posted by Marty Fouts:To all those folks who have the misperception that there is a standard form of the English language (and especially those who believe they know what that form is) I strongly recommend the book _Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language_ as a starting place. Unless, of course, you have a background in linguistics. In which case I wonder how you came by that misunderstanding. or, in the venacular: chill, dude. kg6nee There certainly are standards, they just change rapidly with a living language like English, as has been mentioned in the original thread already. ApK Or, in simple english: there are no standards. Having more than one standard is like having more than one watch. You never know what grammer to use. The thing that most people seem to miss about "standards" in language is that they're ambiguous, flexible, and, as you say, rapidly changing. After all, we all know that the standard for english spelling is the way *I* spell. kg6nee

To all those folks who have the misperception that there is a standard form of the English language (and especially those who believe they know what that form is) I strongly recommend the book Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language as a starting place. Unless, of course, you have a background in linguistics. In which case I wonder how you came by that misunderstanding. or, in the venacular: chill, dude. kg6nee

for my urban micros, it's definitely the location. I like to find places that are nearby but out of the way and use the micros to draw people's attention to them. kg6nee

quote:Originally posted by georgeandmary:Clever containers, I'm not talking about rubermaid or a typical camo pattern on an ammo can. Those are good solid cache stuff but lately I've been looking for, and appreciating more creative endevors. george Remember: Half the people you meet are below average. http://img.Groundspeak.com/track/5867_200.gif not all of which i've been able to find. keep up the, um, good, work kg6nee

i like the thrill of the spot and the beauty of the hunt, myself. The thing about the thrill of the hunt is that there are really three thrills: 1) Figuring out where to go -- available only in multicaches and some puzzle caches 2) Figuring out how to get there -- which consist of both the research and the act of getting to where the gps reads 'distance 0' 3) Finding the object of the quest Because so many geocaches are tree tuperware #3 doesn't thrill me much anymore. #2 is where most of my time geocaching is spent, so I'd better find it thrilling, or i've got the wrong hobby. I haven't found enough caches that require much #1 activity. Straightahead multicaches are just ordinary caches with lots of waypoint, so they fall under #2 with a twist. So, in all, the "perfect" geocache requires that I solve a puzzle to find the destination which turns out to require a long hike in a park I've never been to before. At the end of the hike there's a cleverly hidden cache container with a log book to sign, or a unique virtual.

First I get my weekly pocket query .loc file and convert it into a CSV file. Then I feed it to Microsoft's Streets and Trips 2002. This gives me a general pushpin map that I can use for planning caching trips. When I pick a cache, if it's urban, I use S&T to help me do route planning. If it looks like it'll be much of a hike, I take a quick look at the USGS Top using National Geographic's Topo! product. More often than not, it's in a local park that has a trail map online in a pdf format. So I gather that up and take a look at it as well. When I have a day's caching planned out, and there are more than a handful of caches involved, I go back to S&T, and 'pushpin' the parking spots. I then ask S&T to give me a route description. The route description and the park maps go into the PDA, along with fragments of the cache descriptions. (Mobi sucks. GPX will rule.) If the cache is in a rural area with no park trail map, I'll print the relevant sections of topo map. And away I go.

First I get my weekly pocket query .loc file and convert it into a CSV file. Then I feed it to Microsoft's Streets and Trips 2002. This gives me a general pushpin map that I can use for planning caching trips. When I pick a cache, if it's urban, I use S&T to help me do route planning. If it looks like it'll be much of a hike, I take a quick look at the USGS Top using National Geographic's Topo! product. More often than not, it's in a local park that has a trail map online in a pdf format. So I gather that up and take a look at it as well. When I have a day's caching planned out, and there are more than a handful of caches involved, I go back to S&T, and 'pushpin' the parking spots. I then ask S&T to give me a route description. The route description and the park maps go into the PDA, along with fragments of the cache descriptions. (Mobi sucks. GPX will rule.) If the cache is in a rural area with no park trail map, I'll print the relevant sections of topo map. And away I go.

quote:Originally posted by SuperGenius:and now all I need to go along with my new channel is a pair of those Rhino's! I am still waiting for them to hit the stores. Pepper Horizontals where it's at! gonna be a while on the rinos. FCC gave garmin permission to extend their wavier from the rules again, but that means Garmin's actually got to build something that works.

quote:Originally posted by SuperGenius:and now all I need to go along with my new channel is a pair of those Rhino's! I am still waiting for them to hit the stores. Pepper Horizontals where it's at! gonna be a while on the rinos. FCC gave garmin permission to extend their wavier from the rules again, but that means Garmin's actually got to build something that works.

I've done 8 miles with 2500/3000 feet in one long day, and I'm not in particularly good shape. 4+ days for 10 miles with 4500 feet is easily within the range of someone who does a lot of backpacking. I sure wouldn't recommend it as a first backpacking trip and I sure wouldn't try it in the shape I'm in now.

Oh yeah. Getting out has made my dust allergies worse to the point where I have to use a nasal inhaler. My trick knee's acting up because of the amount of steep slope hiking I'm doing. My heel tendinitis is wose than it's ever been. I've dropped something heavy on my right hand and bruised it badly. I've jammed my toe. On the other hand, my hypertension is under control, and I can walk a lot farther than I could five months ago. Wouldn't give it up for the world.

quote:Originally posted by datum:I thought I knew the answer to this…but maybe I don’t. For the sake of discussion: Would you claim a find for a virtual cache that you are able to answer the question to without visiting it? Would you claim a find for a virtual cache that you may have visited before it was posted (say two years ago) but knew the answers to the question(s)? If you answered yes to the last question – What is a reasonable time in which to claim a virtual….two years….five years….ten? Doesn’t matter. Is it up to the virtual cache sponsor to be very specific as to what they require in order to claim the virtual as a find? I have mixed feelings about virtuals and locationless caches. Seems to me there is a lot of room for interpretation as to what constitutes a find. Of course, none of this matters. We’re all doing this for fun. We’re all doing this for ourselves. You’re only fooling yourself? So does ANYTHING go? Just curious….. I, personally, won't log a virtual unless I visit the site(s) specifically to do so. On the other hand, as a cache hider, I don't ask people if they went specifically, although almost all of the logs of my one virtual cache indicate that they have.

quote:Originally posted by Jamie Z: quote:Originally posted by Marty Fouts:Technically, you can only publish an identifiable image of individual, (in the US, other jurisdictions vary,) either with their prior consent, or because the image shows them in a newsworthy endeavor. Marty, this may be true, but we're not publishing anything. By publishing, one assumes a profit is generated. If I'm just out with my camera and take pictures of people in public, I'm not breaking any law, but if I try to _sell_ those pictures without consent of the people in the picture, that's where I can run into trouble. A webcam shot of someone looting a cache is not going to be published anywhere where any money is generated, so I think we'd be safe with that tactic. Jamie Legally, a profit motive is not required for publication, and there have been cases about the circumstances under which photos are allowed on web sites. Case law on the net is, at the best of times, tricky, but people have lost libel suits involving publishing photos on web sites. I would be very wary of posting photos along with assertions of guilt unless I was very certain I could convince a jury of guilt, because I'm not at all interested in losing a libel suit. For an interesting (but unrelated) take on how complicated the issue of web publication is, check into the law suits around Kurt Vonnegut's electronic publication rights.

quote:Originally posted by Jamie Z: quote:Originally posted by Marty Fouts:Technically, you can only publish an identifiable image of individual, (in the US, other jurisdictions vary,) either with their prior consent, or because the image shows them in a newsworthy endeavor. Marty, this may be true, but we're not publishing anything. By publishing, one assumes a profit is generated. If I'm just out with my camera and take pictures of people in public, I'm not breaking any law, but if I try to _sell_ those pictures without consent of the people in the picture, that's where I can run into trouble. A webcam shot of someone looting a cache is not going to be published anywhere where any money is generated, so I think we'd be safe with that tactic. Jamie Legally, a profit motive is not required for publication, and there have been cases about the circumstances under which photos are allowed on web sites. Case law on the net is, at the best of times, tricky, but people have lost libel suits involving publishing photos on web sites. I would be very wary of posting photos along with assertions of guilt unless I was very certain I could convince a jury of guilt, because I'm not at all interested in losing a libel suit. For an interesting (but unrelated) take on how complicated the issue of web publication is, check into the law suits around Kurt Vonnegut's electronic publication rights.

Add me to the NiMH list. I've got a Maha charger that can do AA and AAA batteries. I use AA in my GPS and am just now starting to experiment with the AAA in my PDA. It's a rare day when I don't get through the entire day on one set of batteries, but I always have two sets ready to go.