ar_kayaker

Not sure if there isn't an easy way, but after a bit of fooling around I found a way to do it. I opened up the Creative Commons section and made it wide open on the permissions for long enough to download the gwz that way.

I need to make some bug fixes to a cartrige I wrote months and months ago and can't find the lua file on my computer anymore. Is there a way I can de-compile the gwc or a gwz from the site to make the fixes or do I have to write the cartridge over again from scratch?

Has anyone asked if the OP knows the difference between MJ and wild hemp? I sure wouldn't. I'm not even sure I'd recognise a field of the stuff as anything other than garden variety weeds (the non-smoking kind.) The closest I've ever come to seeing any was a field of industial grown hemp beside the motorway in Europe that had a big sign telling the local pot heads not to pick it "Because it would take a joint the size of a school bus to get high." From that statement I would guess they look a lot alike. AK

Most reviewers are flexible if you can give them a logical reason to make an exception to the rules. I have two caches that are 300 feet apart....vertically as well as horizontially, and they were published as exceptions to the rule.

Sounds an awful lot like my wishlist.... I was thinking about the Mororola Q9 (Q-Global) with Garmin mobile XT loaded to it, but I don't think it has the wi-fi ability and I don't know if it would run GSAK. AK

You might consider temporarily raising the terrain difficulty, maybe even to a 5 if it requires a boat to access the location. I'd definately go with bumping up the terrain rating until the land dries out. If it is just wet mushy ground it should probably be a 3.5, if it's ankle deep to knee deep a 4, deeper than that should be a 4.5. On top of that, add the wadding required attribute, or the swimming required attribute if it's more than waist deep. I have one that requires a river crossing that I adjust the terrain rating seasonally because it requires some deep wading and/or swimming to get to and in the winter swimming isn't an option. AK

You might also want to check about the difference between a ROW and an easement in your area before you go pulling and archiving all the roadside caches. I'm sure it varies from place to place how they are defined, but generally speaking a ROW is an area maintained (mowed) by the road crews, it's actually owned by the government. An easement on the other hand is the 15' (or other distance depending on the locale) near the road that is owned by a person or business, but that the city/state has decreed that the owner can't build on and/or that the city/state has legal access to. The governing entity may or may not mow an easement depending on local circumstances. As far as the SC ordinance goes I'd say it's a stretch to apply this to geocaches. At the very least it would have to be an individual basis thing rather than a blanket ban because the key part of that ordinance as I read it is "No person may place, throw, or deposit upon any highway any glass bottle, glass, nails, tacks, wire, cans, or any other substance or object likely to injure any person, animal, or vehicle upon the highway." A geocache in a pull out, hidden in a rest area, 20 feet off the side of a rural road, or other location where the "object" isn't likely to cause some kind of damage (or place the seeker at risk of damage) shouldn't be an issue. I could see it stretched to cover some guardrail caches I know of because IMHO they were in locations that put the seeker at risk of getting hit by a car. (Bridge guardrails where you had to walk in the road to get to it, on street signs where the only parking within half a mile was a narrow shoulder...I chose not to seek them because I considered it too hazardous to park there/walk there) However, the majority of roadside caches I've found could never be construed as "likely to injure" anyone. AK

Aw, come on...what's 22 miles in a day? if you hid it, I'd go try to find it. (or would if it were in my state) I've found the one in Arkansas. It was one of my earlier caches (and not a 20 mile hike!) AK

I think a lot of hiders just flag the attribute without giving much thought to what it means. It certainly should be reserved for #2 and #3, but all to many that turn up on my "night" PQ are really 24/7 caches.

I use a Pentax W10 that I picked up a couple of years ago for $180. I think they have the W30 for that price now. It's a great little camera, at 6 MP, with video and most important (to me) waterproof. It goes everywhere with me. AK

I keep up with my personal numbers because I'm one of those people that enjoy math and numbers in general, but geocaching is about the find. It's like a soduko or a crossword puzzle, the fun is in the doing and in the accomplishment. Comparing numbers with other people is just another way for people to get attention. "Look at me, I have 1000 finds a day!" What's to compare anyway? Should a guy who still works for a living be impressed that a retired guy can find more caches per year? Should a stay-at-home mom who started caching in 2007 be impressed that her childless colledge-student-forever friend who discovered caching in 2001 has more total finds? And group caching....please. Let's all tag along with eagle-eye Evan and let him do all the work while we plunder the swag and get credit for being able to sign our names...if he doesn't do that for us too. AK

For those who want to try this out and don't want to spring for a new $500 toy before trying it there is a slightly cluncky work around that takes two people and a cell-phone. One person stays home and awaits a call while the other goes to the starting area. Once in the area and with cell-phone in one hand and GPSr in the other you get the Wherigo Builder up and running and load the cartridge into the Emulator. This sounds easy, but one problem with the Emulator it trying to figure out where to lead the player to when zones might or might not be visable. The player in the field will need to be using the degrees-decimal degree format on the GPSr and read off coordinates when they get to landmarks and the person running the Emulator will have to drag the person icon around the map and read the message logs to see if the two match up. The one cartridge I've published so far has some stages where the player will have to find a visual landmark rather than following the arrows to the right spot and other stages where the person at home will need to drag the icon around following the arrows and read the coordinates back to the person in the field. Most cartridges should be playable this way unless the builder has intentionally included code to prevent it. For now I am making all of my cartridges "Emulator Friendly" since there are only three PDA's and one GPSr that have been officially vetted to run the player software. AK

The only issue I have with a fix like this is that it rules out people using the phone-a-freind-with-an-emulator option for people that don't happen to own one of the four devices currently vetted to run the playing software. It was enough of a pain in the tail to do that to begin with. AK

Is there a way to link the Wherigo-hybrid cache to the cartridge other than just posting a URL link on the cache page? What about a reverse link from the cartridge to the cache page? Same deal, just list it in the text description? I've got one that I've put together and am just waiting approval from the park it is in before placing the cache and uploading the cartridge. AK

Yeah, I'm seeing that. I've been playing with the builder (sans instruction manual!) and among other things zones set to invisible (that you don't want someone playing your cartrige to see until a certain time or condition is met) show up anyway. They are just red instead of blue. That makes it possible to "armchair" your way though it, though I might be able to stop that once I figure out how to build an "input." (They would still show up, but without the correct input from on-scene they couldn't activate the items in the zone.....) If I can ever slog my way through programing a cartidge without instructions, I can at least build some, even if I can't play them properly. I just can't see buying a PDA when I've got a laptop that does everything a PDA can do except fit in my pocket. AK

I don't think it's going to see much use unless some accomidation is made for finding them with current hardware. The cell-phone/emulator idea might be a bandaid measure that will appeal to a few, but not everyone has an understanding friend who would be willing to stay home and talk them through finding a cache. Certainly not very often. Either the friend wants to cache with you (and be there) or they aren't interested in caching at all. AK

Actually nothing in that forum answered my question at all. I found a lot of things about which PDAs the Wherigo software will and won't work on (no MAC support) but nothing about running it from a laptop. Connected to a USB garmin or otherwise. AK

Would this Wherigo thing work on a full-sized laptop running XP or Vista linked to a GPS receiver? Say a Garmin 60Cx with the USB cable? What about without linking the two (I heard something vauge about an emulator...) I really don't need another expensive tech toy just to find some caches that as of earlier today there aren't even any of (within 500 miles of Arkansas.) AK

Or just the 60Cx.... I have a nice ruggedized CF71 laptop that I'd use with it. In fact I already use it with GSAK to load caches to the garmin in the field or on trips. AK

Do you have to have a GPS-enabled PDA to find these or would a GPS and a seperate PDA/Laptop work? I like my tech toys, but I can't see forking over another $400+ just for one type of geocache, no matter how neat they might be. AK

There are two parts of the OP's rant that I almost, sort-of agree with: I've had this go both ways with two different reviewers. I have two caches where the first stage of a multi/offset is within 300' of the other which is a traditional. The reviewer allowed it because there was also 300' of vertical seperation and the first stage of the multi had no container to get the two confused. On another I had a cache that was 498' away from another, both traditionals. One was on an island, the other on a cliff overlooking the island. That reviewer made me move one just to meet the 528' guidline despite the fact that there was no way to confuse the two, no exceptions. The place I had to move it to was just outside the limit, but wasn't nearly as nice of a hiding spot because it was back from the cliff edge with no view of the river. Couldn't very well move the island. A little flexabilty would have made the experience for the seekers better. Not to mention the extra day I spent redesigning the camo and replacing the cache for the sake of 30'. Although I don't really see Groundspeak ever being able to force Waymarking on anybody, repeatedly rehashing the "we don't do that here because we have Waymarking for that" argument is just a way of selling their other product and is fundamentally flawed. Waymarking is not the same experience at all. It was created as a place to dump off all the lame virtuals and keep reviewers from having to worry about defining the "wow" factor and it is what it is made off....geocaching.com's leftover trash. It also goes against the popular "one-stop-shopping" concept that most people (or at least Americans) are acustomed to. It isn't all bad. There are random categories that are as good as many of the grandfathered virtuals I've found, but the user is left to sort through the trash to find them, without even PQ's the help in the task. AK

You do realize that the reviewer can see the final coordinates, right? So if a reviewer wanted to cheat, they wouldn't need to know how it's solved. They already have the solution. Sure, they have the coordinate solution, but as an ALR finders had to answer a question built into the puzzle or I would delete the log. That is why I think she was so insistant about knowing how to solve the puzzle. Maybe she couldn't go find the puzzle for 2 weeks (I think that is the limit placed on reviewers) but there was nothing stopping freinds she gave the information to from doing it, or herself claiming to have "solved" the puzzle under her caching name after the two weeks was up. She is a well known member of the local phone-a-freind clique. AK

I very seldom use the discover option, but it does have it's usefulness. When I find a TB or coin and it either has a goal I can help with, or has no goal (or no info attached so I don't know the goal) I will take it along to another cache so I use the "retrieve" option. In the case of the coin I get the neat icon on my stats page for this. If I find a TB with a goal I know I can't help or that is going in the oposite direction I am I will "write a note" to let the owner know it is still alive and in the cache, with a note I don't have to even remember the TB number. But you don't get the icon added to your page for a "note" so if I find a coin that I can't do anything for I'll "discover" it. That still lets the owner know it is okay, and I get the icon too. AK

I had one I couldn't get approved because the reviewer couldn't solve it and I wouldn't give her the method to solve it. I don't give out hints or extra information to anyone for any of my caches, but certainly not on a puzzle cache I may have spent hours encrypting. It might have been different if the reviewer wasn't local to the cache and an active cacher under another name. AK

I figured one of the board moderators would know and be able to shoot the rumor down, that's why I asked here before the local rumor mill got too far with it. That is the way I remembered the rule too. Because I travel a lot for my other hobbies I have a rather large caching area and quite a few places across the state that I visit pretty frequently. The area I would hide caches in is in no way circular. There are places within 15 miles that I would be agravated to have to make a special trip to maintain a cache at and others 100 miles away that I'm likely to visit once a month or more regardless. At least the guideline is safe for now, and hopefully there will never be a reason to change it. AK