Ragnemalm
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Posts posted by Ragnemalm
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17 hours ago, Babsbaby said:
People are human beings. Caches are just stuff.
I don't see your point. Caches are owned by people, and much work may be put into it. Account names are just letters, they are not people. Caches are things made by people. So in order to be nice to people, inactive accounts could get some letters appended to free up the names for active people. Other services would delete the accounts.
So we should only care about the digital property but not the physical? Isn't it super nice to see that your best caches are still in place, being maintained, when you come back after 10 years?
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On 4/2/2022 at 6:38 PM, cerberus1 said:
We know dozens of people that got hurt (I'm one...), experienced a death in the family, or just started a new family, that haven't been "active", but have full intention of playing again when it's possible.
There are members here since the hobby began that have never placed a cache, and have less than a couple hundred finds.
- You want to penalize someone for archiving theirs?
Every cache and trackable is part of this hobby's history.
Many of my favorite hides (w/FPs) are caches that have been long-archived, most with now-"inactive" COs.
Archiving those names means my favorite hides they owned, and trackables I've moved or discovered go bye-bye too.
Quite a few years ago, one could ask a Reviewer to "take over" an "inactive" COs caches.
A reviewer stopped in the forums once to say a member came back many years later and asked what the heck happened to his property.
They don't do that anymore, and I'd bet that's why permission by the owner is a requirement for adoption.
I suggested 10 years. In just about any other activity, you can't expect things to remain after 10 years. I had a MineCraft license all the way back to the beta stage. It has expired, totally gone. Many online services expire weeks after you miss a single payment. Even bank accounts expire. Here it is just a matter of changing the name by appending _inactive.
The member that came back, isn't that just a matter of returning the remaining adopted caches, if any? After 10 years, the most likely thing that happened with the user's "property" is that it was ruined by sun and rain, was archived and then taken away as trash. In many cases, an adoption would save the cache, not "steal" it.
What happened to my property?
(1) It has been taken care of by another user. Do you want it back?
(2) It was forcibly archived five years ago since it had a wet logbook. It is still there but you can not unarchive it.
What sounds nicest to you?
Caches are archived within about two months after an NM. So we should be super nice in one way to people being totally inactive for over 10 years, and penalizing heavily in other ways after two months? Does this make sense to you?
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In my area we have 13 caches with more than 2000 days (5 1/2 years) since last find, and 47 with more than 1000. 151 are not logged for more than a year. Is that a lot, do you think?
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Good that it worked out in this case.
But it is a bit unnecessary that IDs that are abandoned for many years are reserved, even ones with little activity. Wouldn't it make sense to "archive" a user after, say, 10 years of total inactivity (maybe including after the last hide is archived)?
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Many funny logs, but let me remind you: Newcomers are valuable, and they are inexperienced, so please respond in a helpful and polite way.
Not least, newbies will often misuse NM, DNF and NA. They are just selections to them. And they will log found on a cache they have seen but not reached. I always reply as nice as I can and explain the rules as needed.
I got a "standard newbie" log yesterday: Found it but had no pen. No photlolog, just "Found it". Hm, not quite how it is supposed to work.
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1. how did you get into geocaching?
Introduction at a scouting camp.
2. why do you do geocaching?
- Get out to get exercise
- Gratification succeeding in finding/solving.
- Creativity, building custom caches, and the gratification for that when visitors like them.
- Get to new places that I wouldn't see otherwise.
3. what made you want to continue on geocaching?
I will make my own interpretation of this. We all have moments where we feel it can be time to move on. For me it was in 2016, after putting a lot of work into a mega event. I had decided to take a break to see if it was time to do something else. A month later or so, my body screamed for getting out. I went out and solved a looong reflex trail. Then I felt better... so let's get back in action.
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19 hours ago, Max and 99 said:
Not a fan of this one:
The cache owner must have visited the location and any additional waypoints in the previous two months before submitting the Virtual Cache for publication.
Or this one:
Quality: Your owned geocaches must have at least 20 total Favorite points.
I can't really see the problem. Having visited the place months before submission is very generous. I would expect "yesterday" to ensure that the location is exactly as described.
20 favorite points? That should not be hard to get unless you are in an area with very few geocachers. A CO with very few FPs might not have any ambition to make the virtual interesting.
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On 1/12/2022 at 11:45 PM, arisoft said:
This is what you can do but frankly, the cache must stay at least three months and preferably many years. Few weeks should not be a problem.
It is meant to be, but caches published after a big event where it is supposed to be an important asset are very sensitive. I made such an event recently, with a number of caches. They are custom built. Having them muggled before the event would be a disaster and the risk goes up a lot if it has to sit there for weeks.
Everything worked, they are still in place and in good shape, and maintained, but now the critical time has passed. When you have 100 people looking for the cache at a given time, you want it to be fresh. You want to place it the day before or even the same day.
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On 1/14/2022 at 7:09 AM, barefootjeff said:
Attempt higher difficulty and terrain geocaches
My average D/T rating for this year is 3.4/3.0, with the highest a 5/4:
So I think I'm doing okay although it'll probably be mostly downhill from here for the rest of the year.
Wow! That was really high! I would be happy if I could bring the average over 3. I am fond of high-T caches so taking it up in that region would be managable. But bringing both D and T up that high sounds impossible. But I might try.
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34 minutes ago, arisoft said:
That would be very impractical. Fortunately, placing a cache before coordinate check is not required.
Sorry, I mean when having a pre-defined publication time. What is that called in english?
I could get a coordinate check, but if I wanted the cache to be published, say, a month from now, it had to be in place the whole time. So in practice I had to delay the review to as little time as possible (one week) to avoid having it exposed for too long.
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IMHO the cache must be in place when it gets published. I have been hunting FTF on caches not in place at least twice. Published = available.
But this can be hard to do for a beginner. In both cases, this happened to beginner COs. A beginner simply can't predict how reviewers work. I fell in that trap myself on my second cache. I submitted it, got a no from the reviewer, it was too close to an ancient remain. So I went out to take it in, and asked the reviewer what to do, and that the remain was completely overgrown and not visible, expecting some kind of instruction about where to place it. Suddenly it was approved! Oops! I ran out and met the FTF hunters with the cache in my hand. (Don't look while I place it!)
What I am not so fond of is that the cache must be in place when I ask for a coordinate review. I can't see why it should sit there for weeks before publishing.
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On 12/29/2021 at 4:55 PM, cerberus1 said:
IIRC, community volunteer tags were trackables that would either be handed to cachers at events by a Groundspeak volunteer, or they'd drop one in a cache as swag.
I have one, given to me by a reviewer at a mega event, where I was cache builder. It happened when I was out checking the cache stages for maintenance needs. Very nice, and I almost didn't know what happened in the dark.
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I have had past goals like getting a higher D or T average than any earlier year. They are not allowed as challenge caches since they make me skip caches to achieve the goal.
Another one was to log more than one cache per day on the average. Also not allowed as challenge cache since... oh well.
This year, I had two goals: Full calendar with traditionals (fulfilled today) and double calendar (can be finished two weeks from now). Both are allowed as challenge caches despite that they make me skip even more caches to achieve the goal! Challenge caches are weird so I make my own goals.
I make no goals that require long travels. I don't want to waste resources on long travels that are made only for caching. If I have some other, more important reason, then the caches will be a bonus.
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19 hours ago, cerberus1 said:
We still have a lengthy paddle-to, and because it's a longer trip, it's lucky if it gets visited once or twice a year.
A consideration if lots of logs are your goal. Also, once locals finally hit it, the odds of people "just passing through" dwindles considerably.
- Though for some it may be the reason they picked the distant destination.
That is very much the case, the ones that takes some planning and effort to reach get few visits. I even missed more than one myself in my area since they were challenging to take on. Pity when it sounded fun, but it takes the right day, usually summer, nice weather etc.
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7 hours ago, humboldt flier said:
Maybe, just maybe ... reviewers are filtering out *(giving less weight)* to "one hit wonders" who are posting NM / NA.
"My Baaaadd"
You mean newbies? Of course, they will use NA, NM and DNF differently that we expect.
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Like others have said above, the feedback is important. Good logs which tells me something, not just "we logged 100 caches today and this was one of them". Just a few relevant words and it makes me feel happy. Photos often make it even better, not least for the more daring ones, high T ones.
FPs are nice, but I think the really good log tops it. Of course, the two often come together.
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On 12/18/2021 at 10:15 AM, arisoft said:
I put a single CR123A lithium battery to my gadget cache ten years ago and it is still running.
Indeed, a battery can last a long time if it the contaner is well built.
I made one with a 9V in 2016 and expected it to last, maybe a few weeks since the insulation was very improvised, mostly a matter of wrapping some plastic around the electronics. I might have changed the battery once, not more. It just keeps running.
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I have several of these. Over a certain distance, I do not recommend swimming and then it is a T5, boat only, otherwise T4 or T4.5 and swimming attribute. If it is possible to wade, the wading attribute will be used.
Also, if you need to cross dangerous water (much motorized boats, dangerous streams) I would think twice. Maintentance can be tricky, of course. It takes extra time to maintain this kind of cache unless you have your own boat in the water.
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On 12/18/2021 at 3:16 PM, Mausebiber said:
No, I don't think this statement was from a reviewer. Everyone can log a NA and in the past, reviewer reacted in a reasonable time. 4-6 weeks later, when there was no reaction from the CO, the cache was archived.
It was indeed from a reviewer. It was well documented that the cache was in a bad shape and that the CO did not respond to multiple attempts and was inactive since a long time. I was told that it was not OK, it should be NM. The cache was archived about three months later (not 4-6 weeks).
So the rule that the reviewer gave me was only to log NM in such a case. IMHO, NA is a strong recommendation for archiving, not just reporting of violations, but that was not the case.
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16 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:
I have a cache hidden in a dark place inside a cave. It's based around a halloween toy I bought that does spooky sound effects that are triggered by the searcher's flashlight. I'd have liked to have made it solar powered from a small panel outside the cave but couldn't see a way of concealing the power cable, so it's simply powered by AAA lithium batteries which give me about an eight or nine month life. I replace them every six months, which is a bit expensive, but for now I'm happy to keep doing that.
How about using rechargeable batteries?
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On 10/30/2021 at 5:23 PM, frostengel said:
There are different kinds of preforms (in Germany we say "PETling" more often but I am sure we are referring to the same). For the normal ones (usually about 9 to 13 centimeters long and 2 centimeters wide) the others are totally correct: these are micro caches though many cachers list them as small.
But there are much bigger versions and the biggest may hold small trackables so if you use a big one as seen in the picture small should be correct.
The picture is taken from a geocaching shop (no link, no advertisement, just google "XXL Petling" or "big PETling" or something like that). The container seen here has a width of about 4.5 centimeters and a length of 18 centimeters.
Jochen
I find the "XXL Petling to be an exception. The normal ones are definitely micro.
I have logged a "Petling" that was about 5 or 6 meters long and big enough to crawl into, and you needed to be three people doing that. It was called a "Mega PET". Amazingly, it was classified as micro... but I guess it referred to the container with the log book, inside.
So, there are exceptions, but the common ones are micro.
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According to reviewer comments, it seems to me that NA is only supposed to be used if there are complaints from locals or the cache is in violation to laws.
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1 hour ago, BunHeads said:
Smart cache owners what type of power supply do you use to power your caches?
Thanks!
You mean electronics caches, obviously. I have used three different methods:
Fixed battery, 9V or 18650. Can last for a long time if the container is well built so it doesn't take in moisture. Should be in placed where the maintenance is reasonably easy since you need to check it fairly often.
Visitors bring their own 9V. Bad, positively needs a proper protection diode to protect the circuitry from getting the power in the wrong direction. Also, the connector is likely to rust if it sticks out (I have a friend who did this and it didn't last well).
Visitors bring their own power banks. This has worked very well. I have used this for four builds. A slight risk that the connector will wear out if visitors are careless but that has not happened yet.
A fourth method is to use a solar cell. I have seen one that used that to charge a battery, which has worked remarkably well. I never used that myself. However, I made one that was powered by a solar cell directly to drive a motor. I can't really recommend that since the power was too low and it broke down multiple times.
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18 minutes ago, palmetto said:
https://www.geocaching.com/my/geocaches.aspx?archived=y
Link to page where you can see unpublished archived caches in the right pane
Title Strikethoughfor anyone who owns some.@Ragnemalm I looked at your unpublished archived back through 2017. Most were archived by you, a few by reviewers. There are 3 created in 2017 that were HQ 'bot archived 10 months later in 2018.
So all that was easily visible? Interesting.
The "few by reviewers" should be quite a few just the last two months. After that, I archived four myself just to avoid more irritation.
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Can I use an ALC credit for making a classic "lab cache"
in Playing Adventures
Posted
In case this is all forgotten now: A "classic" lab cache is physical, temporary and often experimental to its nature, therefore the term "lab".
Now I have an ALC credit like everybody else. I am totally uninterested in making another stroll through the town counting windows (there are plenty of these anyway) but making real LAB CACHES for a bigger event would be just great!
Can I do that?