TeamJiffy

Circumstances do exist, so people should understand the local approvers can and should apply discretion. My wife and I have been maintaining a state-wide 'solar system model' since early 2003. I fell quite ill in September , and in early November, a cache of mine (Saturn) in the series went missing. The local approver let that one stay in the 'disabled' state - everyone knew I was ill and hoped to come back. Well, I am happy to say I am healthy enough to be back, and my wife and I replaced "Saturn" just this past weekend. I didn't request this or even talk to our local approver - but it meant a lot to me that nobody else was asked to take it over. I like to think it meant that people expected me to get better. And that ws really important.

I've arranged to show (and will bring) a videotape of the BAB segment to the event tomorrow night. Boulter, yes, please wait before making it available here. -Fy of TeamJiffy (the female in the blue jacket - one of the two that GeoBrowns probably didn't recognize)

Oops. Re: the previous post from BADGES, I meant to be logged in as TeamJiffy!

Here's how getting past the MD5 worked... 1) Take the SALT that was specified... but as a BINARY NUMBER of 4-bytes, not an eight-character hex string. (i.e., translate it to binary representation) 2) Append, (with nothing in between them) the "password", and then the text string, using the formatting conventions specified in the note. 3) Input this as the "string" or "byte sequence" to be handled by the MD5 program. Because you have to input the binary string, it would not be possible to do this from a command line, or entering the stuff by hand on a web page. You need to be able to specify the "salt" in a binary, not ASCII, representation. After that, it was a simple brute force to get longitude (try all in 121 and 122 longitude), given the cyclotron answer, and latitude (try all in 37) given the TELLER answer... I actually tried every scientist in the memo, and had my program loop through all of them. The date I got from the clue, and the time of day was brute force again. I don't know an easy way to do this (an existing program to put the "salt" in exactly the right place), other than by modifying existing MD5 code from somewhere. -Jif

MD5 ("TELLERN 37 41.068") = d54efa60909c3a998c668aba7f2b9098

MD5 ("03-12-200420:00 PST") = b454bb41b2894b00d72bdad437e280a6

The memo for the scientists was Dec 2, 1944. So that would mean December 3rd, adding a date.

MD5 ("CYCLOTRONW 121 43.573") = 45dfd55579ca547011d415488c6a82a4

I actually have some time free! I've modified an implementation of MD5 to get the test example shown to produce the hash shown. Now I am going to try to get the other values. -Jif

I'm writing a program to play with character sets. But, work has been in the way (for MONTHS!!), this is a rare night off. I'll see how far I get... -Jif

Well, after spending all of two minutes on it... all uppercase and digits and punctuation... makes me think of a UUEncoded file. It's also 79 columns wide... makes me think of punch cards. Perhaps due to the uppercase, using an old BCD code, or CDC 6-bit code... Again, these could be entirely off the mark, or on - who knows? -Jif

We did what the previous poster suggested for a series of caches we placed. Nine caches, with information to help you form the coordinates of the tenth bonus cache in each. It works well.

There is no point in re-examining this topic. In my view, Geocaching.com is not run as a business, it is run as a passion. And my belief (not knowledge) is that the owner of the site does not have a passion over supporting virtuals, else they would still be approved at the same rate as they had been before. Reasons are given, of course. One is that placing a virtual blocks the ability to place a physical cache nearby. But, you see, if Jeremy valued a virtual as much as a physical cache, this wouldn't be a problem - because both would be viewed as equally good. But virtuals are seen as a "lesser form" of cache, so if a virtual blocks a physical placement, we have a less good result. Therefore, virtuals are to be controlled to not let this happen. Don't flame me re: the business vs. passion concept. If the site were run as a business, the decision would be based on market interests, and there would be some statement along the lines of "we have found the majority of cachers prefer...". I, at least, haven't seen any information of this sort. The only concession to virtuals I see is that they haven't been shut down entirely. Again, the clampdown on virtuals seems to me to be based on a vision of what geocaching should be about, and about the relative merit of different types of caches. Tough luck if you don't share the same vision as Jeremy or of the people who influence him. As so many have pointed out, this is his site, so get used to it. -Jif

I think you've answered your own question. You place the cache, and the name comes to you. Sometimes the name comes beforehand, if you are creating a puzzle, or a cache with a theme, where the location is kind of besides the point, but otherwise, the cache is typically named after its locale. Jif

Good golly... Look at this guy's last paragraph: Please note the sentence "I accuse them of spending time outside with children." I read this sentence to be telling me that he is being tongue-in-cheeck Please don't send this guy flame mail. I think you're missing the point if you do. Also, please realize that people are allowed not to like Geocaching. They are allowed to voice their opinion and shouldn't get a lot of flame mail about it - as long as they are honest about what the sport is about, and this guy seemed to be. We will look stupid, and get a much funnier article written about us as a result of a flame-war thrown at the guy... -Jif

Here's my pocket query request... I would like to define a pocket query as "run just ONCE, but remember me". It would appear on my pocket query list as a "remembered" query. That, any time later, I could click a button that says "run now" and it runs that remembered query. But other than that, it would sit in waiting. If I had this, I wouldn't even run my daily "closest caches" query - I would run it only when I wanted to go caching for the day. But it is a pain to re-enter all the parameters, so I keep "closest caches" as a permanent query. This would cut down on the load on your pocket query server, and I cannot believe that the "remembered, but idle" queries would eat up any amount of appreciable disk space. Thoughts? Jif

More detail on my request for a "few more things to be animated" 1) For the LOAD command, I'd like to be able to specify the values of "Clear Database before loading (yes/no)" as well as the choice of "Always/Existing Only/Newer" and "Set User Flag". In other words, give in automation all user controls in the normal "Open File" dialog. 2) Actually, those two dialog items are the only ones really pressing for me. -Jif

I just have to add to the other comments on this thread. GSAK is wonderful. I am just waiting for a few more things to be automated, and then I will be able to run a script that does everything I need to go caching with a single mouse click. Actually, that isn't QUITE true. I'd like it to be able to generate a pocket query request on Geocaching.com for me -Jif

Somewhat off topic but... every so often someone brings up the comment "the majority of cachers don't read the forums, and THEY would rather <WHATEVER>" This reminds me of those comments in years past that talked about what the "silent majority" wanted. Unless someone can statistically prove otherwise (polls, etc.) I believe the forums posters are a representative cross-section of geocaching that has only one attribute in common that makes them not representative: they share the attribute of being people who like to post on forums. Again, unless someone can prove that liking to post on forums is statistically correlated to some other preference/dislike of Geocaching, all comments about "the majority who don't post like/dislike XYZ" look equally speculative. -Jif

Suggestion: take a three day detour and add the black hills and badlands + buffalo preserve areas of the western dakota's to your trip. They really would complete your view of "the West" - a different non-mountainous area, but the West nonetheless.. -Jif

Oh GOOD GRIEF! Why in the WORLD would the FALSE STARTING coordinates for a mystery/puzzle cache block a REAL cache!?! That's absolute nonsense if it is the case. -Jif

Your coin is shaping up nicely! One suggestion: before you say "you want color" go to a coin shop and check out a few "colorized" coins - lots of them just don't look as clean as a single-color pressing... For just plain silly humor, keep it as "MORE TEXT ALONG HERE"...

You all should put a "*" or something like it at the location of the very first cache on that coin (make it subtle - perhaps a dot or something - not big & tacky). If memory serves me correctly, wasn't the first cache in Washington? Jif

Have fun on the hike, everyone! We are in Seattle today, but won't have a chance to do this as we have already planned the morning with friends here (and didn't bring anything close to what we would want to wear on a long walk), but it sounds fun! (As Fy has pointed out to me multiple times this morning, this is what happens when you decide to read the forums the DAY you are in town vs. before......) -Jif

My worst injury happened in mid-May. I have nobody but myself to blame. When jogging (I hardly EVER walk quickly - but for some reason, I was doing so here) back to the car from a micro-cache in a park, I tripped on a sprinkler-head and proceeded to fall onto a sand/gravel path, sliding about a foot after I hit the ground with my right knee. I was wearing very lightweight pants, and tore a chunk of skin off my right knee, tearing off the entire epidermal layer in area about 2/3rds the size of a cover of a regular sized Altoids tin. And I mean the entire epidermal layer... a big wedge of it was stuck to the inside of my right pant leg. I put some wound wipes on it, plopped some antibiotic salve on it, went home, washed it off, reapplied the salve, then proceeded to doze off in an easy chair. My wife came home from a movie, saw that my knee was all bloody and horribly swollen, and insisted I go to the emergency room. Four hours later, I am back home with bandages and an ice-pack. But that's not the end of the story. First, I got a staff infection in the wound. That took time to heal. Disgusting. Then, I found out that I developed a sensitivity to Neo/Polysporin. That meant that the wound just keep on weeping for weeks on end, and doctor after doctor, none suspected the antibiotic salve. So, 7 weeks later(!) I take myself to a 3rd doctor, and she says "You're allergic to the stuff". I stopped using it, and covered my knee in a cortisone cream she gave me, and one day later, the wound stopped weeping after just two doses of the cortisone, and my knee proceeded to heal. It still hurts a bit, but I can tell I am on the mend. The doctor says I can still use Neo/Polysporin (better than getting an infection!) but that I should use it for only 2-3 days max. Oh well. -Jif