Sussex Leprechauns
-
Posts
50 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by Sussex Leprechauns
-
-
Is there a quick answer to the question 'how do I change the font in a cache log entry eg change the colour, embolden' etc?
If there is, could someone let me have it please?
If by necessity it is a long answer that would also be appreciated 
Thank you
Nick
-
What a great answer, I hadn't realised farming had got THAT sophisticated.
Many thanks for the detailed response Forester,Nick
-
He whizzed around a field at the back of our house this afternoon, seemed to stop occasionally and stick/plant something in the ground, any ideas what he might have been doing?
-
Brill - Prof Google will be handling all my queries from now on
-
I was searching for a thread i believe was called 'what else do you use your GPS for?' Doomed because of the ridiculous (and unique to Groundspeak?) 5 character restriction
-
We are very lucky to have some prolific and considered cache setters in Sussex - I wont risk naming them because i would be bound to forget someone and cause offence! - so there are lots of really good cache trails and stand alone caches around.
Very close to Brighton is Sadexploration's Devils Dyke Circular series which is great fun and should be compulsory for all cachers to do before they are allowed to set caches. I'd highly recommend it.
Nick
AKA Daddy Leprechaun
-
double post fairies at play
-
Much like Burtsbodgers I have been trying to load the maps onto an Etrex Venture HC using sendmap20 but with no joy. Have reinstallled garmin drivers, rebooted, retried, reloaded, refreshed, reconnected, rerun, and now resigned
Tried all of this on two different machines but the furthest i got was sendmap saying it was uploading the maps but nothing ever arrived on the GPS.
In spite of this, many thanks for your efforts in putting this together Martin, and for talking me through it this afternoon. I may have another tinker later in the week and if I have any success I will let you know.
ATB
Nick
-
Not had many dealings with them, and none recently, but when I did they seemed to genuinely understand the phrase Customer Service. Highly recommended.
Unlike insurance company who left me queuing for 48 minutes the other day - after about 5 minutes I decided to put on speaker phone and wait and see how long it would take to get a response. At 48 minutes I decided I couldn't listen to their 'your call is important to us' message any more. Direct Line since you ask
-
some people pick up their dog's poo in a plastic bag and then throw the bag+poo into the nearest hedge?
To me it seems an absolutely bizarre thing to do, but I have come across it so often - half a dozen times on yesterdays walk - that some people must think it makes sense? Am I missing some legal, environmental, recycling, public hygiene, etiquette or something-or-other point that says that if you are going to leave your dogs poo lying around then it is better to put it in a placcy bag first? -
Hi Anton,
I didn't think there would be an easy answer! BTW I just looked at your stat page and it looks really good - but we will have to get an Irish TB to make its way to you. If we qualify for the World Cup When we qualify for next years World Cup there will be millions of us there to enjoy your excellent hospitality and no doubt we can bring a coin or two
In spite of the OP TBs South Wales label I think the Welsh flag, and Wales as the region would be entirely appropriate for your stats and make sense to anyone looking at it from a UK perspective. As it is, describing it as South Wales might make people think it is from somewhere an AWFUL lot further souith.
Best regards
Nick
-
We bought a batch of 22 on EBay about a year ago and in the end they went for about £75 - much competition from paintballers and AmDram. Collected them from a very securely locked, very large lock up - which was completely empty apart from a pallet of ammo boxes.
Loaded up, asked no questions, left
-
Averaging 2 a day we're going backwards
-
I know we all play the game our own way but I came across this post from Dr Solly in another thread and thought it deserved a bit more prominence as a view (one I heartily agree with) of what caching is about it.
"It's about getting out in the open and walking round a forest on a lovely day, it's about getting stuck in a hole and having to wirk out a way to get out, it's about finding yourself on the tag end of a British Army training exercise in the middle of a forest and following the last soldier in the file, it's about solving a horribly difficult puzzle and finding the reward, it's about pushing yourself to do more than you thought you could, it's about losing weight that I don't need around my middle, it's about getting scratched and torn on brambles and gorse, it's about finding an amazing place that you would never have thought existed, it's about finding a cache disguised as something you wouldn't look at twice, it's about getting soaking wet and exhausted but still going on, it's about creeping through a wood at night following a trail of fire tacks, it's about getting down on the bank of a river and under a bridge and keeping perfectly quiet while a troop of muggles walks by overhead, it's about biking in Richmond Park at night and seeing several hundred deer, it's about finding a ridiculously small container in a crevice that you barely know is there, it's about getting back to the car and having hot coffee and a bun, it's about climbing a tree when you're of an age that you shouldn't be climbing trees, it's about devising a piece of Special Equipment that lets you retrieve a cache from a ridiculous place, it's about carrying a ladder through a forest so that you can get up an unclimbable (by me) tree, it's about getting half of the information you need to find a cache, but finding it anyway by using some good guessing and "cacher's eye", it's about finding a cache that you weren't actually looking for because you spotted something that looked like a hide, it's about getting a puzzle completely wrong, going to the wrong bridge, and finding a cache under it anyway, but not the one you were looking for, it's about gradually teasing out the solution to a puzzle without really understanding what the puzzle is about, it's about having "one more look before I gove up" and spotting something "not quite right"
So from now on instead of INATN it will have to be:
IagoitoawrafoaldiagsiahahtwoawtgoiafyotteoaBAteitmoafaftlsitfiasahdpaftriapytdmtytycialwtIdnammiagsatobagiafaaptywnhteiafacdasywlatiagswaebsgoiactawanfatoftiagdotboarauabakpqwatomwboiabiRPanasshdiafarsciactybkitiagbttcahhcaabiacatwyoaatysbctiadapoSEtlyracfarpiacaltafstycguaubmetiaghotiyntfacbfiabusggaceyeiafactywalfbysstllahiagapcwgttwbafacuiabntoywlfiagtotstapwruwtpiaiahomlbIguassnqr
Thanks Dr Solly for a great articulation of what is so good (IMHO) about caching and for 5 out of the 4,000
-
I have a Nokia N78 (picked because of the built in FM transmitter) that I am using for caching via Trimble Navigator and it all works fine - really good for spontaneous caching. But are there other applications out there that I could\should be using to make caching easier\better? For example, for rural caches I do miss having Memory Map which I have installed on my PDA.
Phone has A-GPS and locks on quickly but needle tends to be on a bit of a wobble board when stationary. I have a 4GB card which I only use for music at the moment and Nokia maps is installed (free for 3 months) but I haven't really used it (still use SatNav in car although NMaps does offer turn-by-turn directions)
So am I missing a trick? Could i be using the technology to even fuller advantage? Any suggestions, recommendations or pointers gratefully received.
Thanks in anticipation
Nick
-
Really useful page, added straight to bookmarks, just need to find time to read it now. TY
-
Thanks for all of the above, 4 caches now found in (very, very Southern) Cumbria!
-
Yay, gleaming bits of info from all of the above the easiest way seems to be:
Pick a cache known to be in the county,
Search for 'all nearby caches' ('that i haven't found' - just in case!)
Download results as loc
Import to GEarth
if required, pick most southerly and repeat
And the answer for Cumbria is? GCXKTN - Traditional Cache Motorway Mayhem M6 J35/36. Out of curiosity Rutson, how did you know that was the answer?
BTW for those of us still in a, relatively speaking, low res Gearth area the resolution for this cache is amazing, i think I can see the container
many thanks for all responses
Nick
-
Many thanks for the replies so far
Both new to me so very useful.The GetCounty function for GSAK is spookily new as it looks like it was only released yesterday! I have run it on our (small, 1500 'local' cache) GSAK database and Woo Hoo it tells me what county they are in, all apart from 6 for some reason?
And the Boundaries functions on Google Earth does an excellent job of showing the county boundaries - as you would expect
(Although having had a quick squiz at it, it could open up that whole can of worms again, but I say nice to see North East Lincolnshire restored to its rightful glory!))However, to use either of these to find a cache in a particular county I have to run a PQ based on a location that I believe to be in\close to the County I want to hit - and for the GEarth option then export\import an overlay.
If I clarify what I want to do (apologies that OP was a bit vague) then maybe someone can come up with a lazier\easier way to address this. Tomorrow, I am going to Lancaster, as I am going alllllllllllll the way up there, I might as well go as far as Cumbria to do a cache or ten there so I can 'bag' it as a County. And in the true spirit of it being all about the numbers and coloured patterns I want to drive as little out of my way as possible - no offence intended Cumbria
As it stands I will have to pick a cache I am 100% confident is in Cumbria and then run a PQ of nearest 500 and export this to G Earth - but to make sure I get the furthest South cache (price of diesel these days etc etc) I would need to pick most Southerly Cumbrian cache and run PQ from it's coords - unless i got lucky first time round and the PQ overlapped counties. All a bit of a faff for another blob on the map (but probably worth it
So, has anyone any other ideas of how I find the nearest cache to me in Cumbria, or North Yorkshire for that matter!
-
Does anyone know of a reliable and easy way to identify what county a cache is in? We keep track of UK counties cached using the INATN map and sometimes it would be helpful to find out, in advance, what county a particular cache is in - so we can colour in more bits
I absolutely don't want to start a(nother) conversation about what constitutes 'correct' county boundaries etc, etc, etc
Any thoughts?
Nick
-
Having gone ahead and got the N78 a week ago I can now answer my own question - in case anyone else might be interested. And it is a big thumbs up to it as an integrated, all-in-one, all-that-you-need, caching machine - this based on using Trimble Navagiator as caching software.
I have only done 3 caches with it so far but these were all done in the field, 'on the fly' without any prior prep. The GPSr (actualy A-GPSr) picked up a signal very quickly and the 'quick cache' function rapidly identified the nearest cache. Being able to read the cache page and logs there and then made for very easy caching. The GPSr accuracy seemed fine and being able to look at the cache position on Nokia maps helps to give a good, high level indicator of where you are aiming - so long as you are near a road, Memory Map it ain't! Arrow consistency was good and each time it took me straight to the cache, and ready access to the hint can obviously be very beneficial! Push of a button to log the cache direct to GC.com is quite a neat feature - wifey would have loved to have had it for her weekend excursion around the Chiltern 100s!
Haven't used the 'phone enough to comment on battery life but it seems good enough for how i will be using it- Nokia site quotes stand by time of 320 hours and talk time of 4 and a bit. Key pad is not to every ones liking - it gets slated in some reviews - but I have been getting along fine with it.
I will need to invest in some sort of strap\case for it as just carrying it in your hand isn't always practical and putting it in your pocket looses connectivity.
Still early days but so far I am very pleased with it as it is doing all that I hoped and doing it well. Happy to anser any queries anyone else might have but nothing too techie please!
Nick AKA Daddy Leprechaun
-
Plenty of reference is made in various threads to people using Nokia N95s, 6220s and Navigators for caching but can anyone share their experiences of using the N78? (I am due a new phone imminently and my eye has been caught by the FM transmitter element of N78, however, good GPS is most important element for me)
TY
-
Hi All,
I don't 'play' the coin side of caching much - and hadn't realised there was so much to it until recently but wonder if you could help with this query.
this is a log I posted today for one of our caches - GC10QAH
Have been meaning to post this log for some time but work keeps getting in the way Not long after April 20 DNF I did a maintenance visit to the cache and it was there safe and sound BUT......on the path to the cache there was a burnt patch of grass - quite long and narrow, not like a BBQ or campfire. And nearby in the grass was a pristine geocoin (see picture). There was also a burnt piece of paper with an 'account' reference number on it. Strange, I thought and rather than just place the coin in the cache there and then I took it home to check out its mission. Things get stranger - I couldn't find any record of the coin on GC.com and emailing the person who logged the DNF (Colonel Cachington???)brought no response.
Eventually - probably after a couple of weeks of keeping meaning to come back to it and sort it out - I twigged that what I had assumed was an 'account' code was in fact an activation code - check the picture and you can see why I went wrong? Anyway, I plug that in and bingo - the Sussex Leps have a new coin! Which doesn't seem quite right really?
So to cut a long story short, having not managed to track the coin owner (still no word from DNF logger after 3 weeks) I have dropped it off in the cache to see if the next person will have more luck at reuniting it with whoever owns it.
It would be a nice caching story if the owner was eventually able to reclaim it?
Any ideas of how I can track down the coin owner and have I done the right thing by activating it under our name? I have posted some pictures on the cache page.
Your thoughts appreciated - and if I've done wrong please don't flame me
Nick (AKA Daddy of The Sussex Leprechauns)
-
In my professional experience, in times of change, those uncomfortable with the change tend to generate noise inversely proportional to their number. For the times we life in at GC and on the UK forums I believe the term 'silent majority' is a truism.
For those leading change, paying too much attention to the noise, can be an enormous derailer.
Me? - I'm off caching as suggested
Nick AKA Daddy Leprechaun
If by necessity it is a long answer that would also be appreciated 
Many thanks for the detailed response Forester,
To me it seems an absolutely bizarre thing to do, but I have come across it so often - half a dozen times on yesterdays walk - that some people must think it makes sense? Am I missing some legal, environmental, recycling, public hygiene, etiquette or something-or-other point that says that if you are going to leave your dogs poo lying around then it is better to put it in a placcy bag first?
cache log font changes
in United Kingdom and Ireland
Posted · Edited by Sussex Leprechauns
square brackets it is for me then
many thanks for all the replies
Nick