blahginger

OK, when I first saw the hints in the MobiReader, I could have sworn that there was a link from the cache description to the hint. But on further inspection it appears that there is no link. With 100's of pages of text it is time consuming to search around for the hint in the appendix. Am I missing something again? Would it be possible to make a link from the cache description to the hint? I see that the hint does link back to the cache description. Thank you ____________________________ The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time. - Colette

Thank you. I was looking at an older file. I see them when I check out a newer one. ____________________________ The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time. - Colette

First of all I wanted to say thank you the the geocahcing.com staff for implementing the pocket query generator. I finally got everything installed today (went without a hitch) and it seems to work fine, although I have not done a field test yet. Mobi-pocket seems a little sluggish and perhaps not quite as intuitive as I would like, but that can be overcome with a little patience. My suggestion would be to provide an option to have the encrypted 'hint' automatically decrypted for the eBook download. For me the fun is in the journey to the cache not in the rummaging around in the underbrush. I suspect that you have bigger fish to fry, but I thought I would mention it in case it is something 'easy' to do. Thank you ____________________________ The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time. - Colette

I happen to like this idea. Similar to watching caches I have been to, I would like to watch friends and family as they cache. Since, as Markwell pointed out, you can already do this manually I do not see how automating it is going to be a "big brother" problem. Anyone with the intent of stalking someone is already doing it with what is currently available. I would also like to suggest that the Found list for a particular user be expanded to include all logged entries (not founds and notes as well) ____________________________ The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time. - Colette

I happen to like this idea. Similar to watching caches I have been to, I would like to watch friends and family as they cache. Since, as Markwell pointed out, you can already do this manually I do not see how automating it is going to be a "big brother" problem. Anyone with the intent of stalking someone is already doing it with what is currently available. I would also like to suggest that the Found list for a particular user be expanded to include all logged entries (not founds and notes as well) ____________________________ The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time. - Colette

Geocachers never miss the point. Geocachers top 3 priorities: Location. Location. Location. Geocaching. Get it?!? Geocache. Don't get lost without it. ____________________________ The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time. - Colette

Simmer Down now Directionless. I will grant that you may be correct in the sense that this is a "grey area" in the law, but just because someone is "stupid" does not give you the right to take advantage of them. You seem to be skirting the moral question with legal technicalities. Regardless of technical ease or the letter of the law I think the issue is simple: "If you are not invented to use someone elses resources then don't." I think that it is more of an ethical issue anyway. I agree with Mitch on this one every step of the way (including the open door analogy) ____________________________ The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time. - Colette

Warm Fuzzy, you are correct. there would be some points lost. good catch. Also, I am not sure what will happen when you try to compute the distance from the cache to the line segment when the cache does not have a perpendicular back to the line segment. In other words, what happens when the cache is found behind one of the segment endpoints rather than between the endpoints. (I may not be explaining this correctly.) The algorithm above would only work for caches that lie "between" the two endpoints, for caches outside the endpoints we would have to use a straight point to point calculation from the cache to the closest endpoint of the line segment. The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time. - Colette

OK, after a little thought I realized that my last idea was not optimum, the values returned would not be too accurate. So after some more analysis (and some outside math help) I came up with this: Similar to my last idea you would submit a series of waypoints to search on. Each set of points would define a relatively straight section of your route. Given each segment of the route you would need to : 1) determine the distance between the two points (d) 2) find all caches within (d) miles of each point (or if the users specified distance is greater than d then find caches with the user specified distance) 3) for each found cache apply the following formula Let a = distance from the cache to the first point Let b = distance from the cache to the second point h = sqrt[(d + a + (d + a - (d - a + (-d + a + ] / 2d h will equal the distance from the cache to the closest point on the route . I admit that it is a little complex, but might be fun to implement The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time. - Colette

If you are currently looking at a cache page you can hit the 'find nearby caches' link and get a list of the caches and their distances. I guess this will not easily work for far apart caches but I would think close by ones are the more likely use of this.

Maybe this could be implemented without too much trouble? Perhaps the Search Engine can be modified to search around multiple coordinates in a single search. I suspect that most GPS users have some sort of application like Garmins MapSource. It would be easy enough to create a series of waypoints along the route you plan to take (put them as frequently as you like). These waypoints can be exported as a text file and copied and pasted into a "multi-waypoint" field in the advanced search screen. Behinds the scenes, caches are found for each point the same way they are now, then combined and sorted into one big list. The format of the input would have to be standardized somehow. (Ideally uploading an EasyGPS .loc file...but that may require more complexity.) It seems that the text export of Mapsource is in a fixed format and could be parsed out easily enough. OR perhaps you could require the user to format the text themselves and use that...something like: N42 39.212 W87 57.228 N42 46.681 W87 57.228 N42 14.381 W87 51.790 N42 27.894 W87 56.733 You could then import the found caches into your MapSource (or whatever) and view them along your route and develope your plan of action from there. Without knowing the details it seems that the pieces of this already exsit (search by coordinate and sort)so hopefully things can be tweaked a little to provide this functionality. Just an idea.